THIS LENTEN SEASON
We are reminded
There should be a no difference between the faith we profess and the life we live.
Faith is not only what is spoken by mouth it must be clearly seen in our way of life.
Do you say you believe in God but you are living your life like a follower of the devil 👿?
In appearance you look like a saint, but inside, you are something else...
Now is the time of change. Wash make yourselves clean, take your wrongdoing out of my sight (Isaiah 1:11ff)
THIS LENTEN SEASON
PAGANS HEARD THE WORD OF GOD, THEY BELIEVE, THEY REPENTED AND GOD BLESSED THEM WITH HIS SALVATION. JONAH 3:1-10
YOU ARE NOT A PAGAN, YOU HAVE HEARD THE WORD OF GOD, MOST TIMES CALLING YOU TO CHANGE YOUR WAYS, WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR RESPONSE?
BELIEVE MORE IN GOD, REPENT AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED BY GOD HIMSELF.
I put before you today : life and death, choose life that you may live.
Discipline and deny yourself now so that you will be happy forever.
Be charitable, give out even what you need. It may be painful but that is the meaning of true generosity.
This is part of what we are called to do this season
God bless you
CHRISTIANS
Yesterday when we celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, we heard the Father's voice from Heaven saying you are my beloved Son, my favour rests on you. The same words can be applied to us, dear friends, for at our own baptism we became God's children, His beloved and favoured ones.
You are God's beloved child, do not tarnish your image by a life of sin and disobedience to God's Word. Rather we are to heed the words of Jesus today, Change your ways and believe the Good News.
We are reminded today that we are God's favoured ones as we heard in the first reading 📖 from the Letter to the Hebrews, " at various times, God has spoken through the prophets, but in our own time, he has spoken through His own Son" aren't we favoured? Ofcourse we are. For we have received the message of God from the God Himself and not even through the angels.
This is a wonderful privilege that we have as Christians and we are to follow our Lord Jesus Christ, the One sent to us directly by the Father.
The Gospel reading 📖 tells us what is meant to be a Christian, and true followers of Christ. It tells us that the essence of Christianity is not just about following a set of rules and principles, rather it is in following an inspiring Person. People are not easily moved by words but more by the good actions and life of a person. The martyrs that we celebrate 🎉 didn't die for an abstract set of rules and principles, but out of love for a person , our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what we are called to do as Christians. Our Lord Jesus Christ calls us everyday as he calls the first four disciples "Come, follow me" . That's our mission
This mission is urgent ,the call is also urgent so the response must also be urgent. An urgent call requires an urgent response.
Just as the four disciples hurriedly answered and followed Jesus, so must we.
The call is not a once and for All event. God calls us everyday , every time to be true witnesses to His Gospel. And so we must answer and respond everytime and every day .
Let each second , each minute , each hour , each day , each week , and every month be opportunities to always respond urgently and hurriedly to The call of God, to change our ways and believe the Good News .
The disciples left everything to follow Christ , some have also left everything to follow Jesus. This is not just once and for all, we are all called to a constant abandonment of things that will hinder from fully following Jesus.
May God help us to be better Christians through Christ our Lord .
The parable ends with the words of the gardener. It doesn’t say what happened at the end of the year, whether it yielded any fruit or it was cut down. What might that imply? It means that you and me (not somebody else) are called and challenged to finish the parable of the fruitless fig tree.
Many true-to-life stories would find a similar situation as the parable of the fig tree. We can take the role of the gardener who has control and either cuts down a hopeless tree or graciously gives it an extended opportunity to grow and become fruitful. Should a wife for example give an unfaithful husband a chance to change? Should a convinced rapist go to the death row? Should a student caught cheating in class lose her scholarship?
Whatever it would be, the message of repentance, God’s compassion, tolerance and great patience is being given directly to us. The fact that we are still here, alive and generously given a new chance everyday to grow and bear fruit, we should not waste this time of grace. God desires for us s fruitful life. In the “holy manure,” we have an abundance of hope that will never be vanquished
A King summoned the court jester, gave him a walking stick and said: ‘Give this staff to anyone you find who is a greater fool than you are.”
One day, the King lay down dying and he complained, “I’m going to a foreign country and I’m never coming back.”
The court jester told him, “King, you know rightly well that one day you would be going to that strange land. I’m sure that you must have done everything to make sure that you would have a house to move into there.”
The King admitted that he had not done this, so the jester passed the walking stick to the King and said, “It belongs to you. You are a bigger fool than I am.”
Fool is he/she who keeps on believing that death will come later in life. Repentance is a call for everyone, right now. Delaying to repent is a luscious temptation: “Have you fling now and convert later. No hurry. Take your time.” This is the slogan straight from the hell network.
Let’s make our life meaningful. Why settle for less? If we are called to live with God, to share his divinity, there must be something in us which is very special. We are loved by God. We are special. God does not lie for he is the God of truth. God’s love is the God of truth. God’s love is overwhelming, that is enough reason to trust, believe and to love Him more.
Tears unspoken words and feelings of our hearts. We feel something, we can't express in words and so it comes out as tears.
Two persons shed tears in our Liturgy today: St John in our first reading 📖 and Jesus in Gospel.
St John was crying because no one could open the scroll 📜 for him. He could not open it, only One person can, and that person is described as the Lamb that was slain. The scroll was so important to John that he had to start crying 😢. Yes because the scroll contained the secret revelations of the Kingdom of God .
Don't we find ourselves in such situations at times ? We look for things when we don't get, tears start rolling down our cheeks. And some of us , may have experienced a deepest longing in our hearts at prayers . Moments when you are deeply in touched with the Divine, words are no longer adequate . The only thing that comes out is tears. The tears helps to communicate what you are short of in words and God understands and respond immediately .
The Bible never records that Jesus laughed, no. But two to three Times, it recorded that He cried, he wept and he wailed. John 11:35 at the death of his beloved friend, Lazarus . At the garden of Gethsemane Hebrews 5:7 and the gospel of today where He wept over Jerusalem .
The weeping of Christ means that He shares in our Sorrows and pains, in our misfortunes and failures. He understands our weaknesses. and so when you Are in distress and seems you are Not getting it right, don't panic because you have a saviour who understands and who is standing by you, supporting you.
In today's Gospel, Christ wept for Jerusalem because the city did not live up to its name . Jerusalem means city of peace. But peace is not found there instead we have violence and disobedience to the words Of Jesus. And Jesus cries over the city .
Hmmm, is Jesus not crying because of some of us? You bear a Christian name, you chose the names or they were given to you. Are you living up to the meaning of your name? Is your name faith? Are you faithful to your Christian calling ? Are you David , do You have or have you asked the enabling graces to face and overcome all the Goliath in your life.
But the name that envelopes all of us is the name CHRISTIAN which means Christ-like . Are you really behaving like Christ ?
May God not cry over us through Christ our Lord .
REMOVE THE LOG IN YOUR OWN EYES FIRST.
Frank Mihalic cites this story.
One man was planning to go to Italy to see the Pope. He has saved money for so many years.
The day before he left, he went to his barber to have a haircut and he told the barber he will be going to Italy the following day. The barber tried to discourage him. 'are you going with Italian Airline ' 'yes I am' was the reply. The barber said you will not like it, their services are so awful. 'What are you going to do?' 'I want to go and see the Pope '. The barber answered ha forget it, you will not see him, you are a nobody. You are mister zero.
But the man gathered courage and left. Six weeks later, he came back and went straight to the barber. My friend I went to Italy, I used Italian airline, their service was amazing and wonderful. I even saw the Pope, infact I even kissed his ring.
The barber became excited and wanting to know more he asked, what did the Pope tell you, what did he say to you? The man replied "he looked down at me and said, 'where did you get that awful haircut? '
First of all, Remove the log in your own eyes 👀 so that you will see clearly the splinter in your brother's eyes 👀.
Our Lord Jesus Christ in today's Gospel condemned hypocrisy and faultfinding.
We need to always have a constant and sincere examination of conscience everyday so that we will realize that we are always not perfect and in need of God's love and mercy.
God bless you.
