SOLEMNITY OF CHRIST THE KING

CHRIST THE KING.
Ez 34:11-12,15-17; I Cor 15:20-26,28; MT 25:31-46

A second grade teacher tells her class that she's a big “Los Angeles Lakers” fan. She's really excited about it and asks the kids if they're Lakers fans too. Everyone wants to impress the teacher and says they're Lakers fans too, except one kid, named Josh. The teacher looks at Josh and says, "Josh, you're not a Lakers fan?" He says, "Nope, I’m a Christ the King fan!" She says, “I have never heard of a state basketball team by that name! Well why you are a ‘Christ the King’ fan, and not a Lakers fan?" Josh says, "Well, my mom is a Christ the King fan, and my dad is a Christ the King fan, so I'm a Christ the King fan." The teacher's not real happy. She's a little hot under the collar. She says, "Well, if your mom were an idiot, and your dad were a moron, then what would you be?!" Josh says, "Then I'd be a Lakers fan!"

Today is the feast of Christ the King. The Gospels assert that Jesus was of royal blood, descended from the House of David, the king. He was a king of a different order than all the other earthly kings. What king was ever like Jesus, born in a stable not a palace, with no place to lay his head, and buried in another man's tomb. His accession to the throne was his entry into Jerusalem, the royal capital, riding on a donkey rather than in a state coach. His royal robe was a spittle-covered purple rag, his crown was of thorns and his sceptre a reed. He made his royal progress weak and bleeding through the streets, to the jeers not the cheers of the populace. At Calvary he was enthroned on an executioner's gibbet.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus is the long-awaited king of the Jews. In the Annunciation, recorded in Lk.1: 32-33, we read: “The Lord God will make him a king, as his ancestor David was, and he will be the king of the descendants of Jacob forever and his kingdom will never end.” The magi from the Far East came to Jerusalem and asked the question: (Mt. 2:2) “Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star… and we have come to worship him.” During the royal reception given to Jesus on Palm Sunday, the Jews shouted: (Lk.19: 38) “God bless the king, who comes in the name of the Lord.” When Pilate asked the question: (Jn.18: 37) “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus made his assertion, “You say that I am a king,” then went on, “For this I was born and came into this world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.” Luke’s gospel tells us (19: 19), that the board hung over Jesus’ head on the cross read: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews,” and Jesus (Luke 23: 42-43), promised paradise to the repentant thief on the cross, who made the request: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Before his ascension into heaven, Jesus declared: (Mt. 28:18) “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.” Today’s gospel on the Last Judgment presents Christ the King coming in his heavenly glory to judge us.

The Feast of Christ the King was established nearly 85 years ago by Pope Pius XI. After the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, the inhuman atrocities and untold misery, made people lose their hope and faith in the just world. Then, the Pope reasserted with the proclamation of the Feast of Christ the King, that in spite of wars and insurrections, Jesus remains the King of all history, all time, and all creation and of the entire universe. In 1969, Pope Paul VI gave the celebration a new title, and he assigned to it the highest rank, that of "Solemnity".

The Kingdom of God is the central teaching of Jesus throughout the Gospels. The word kingdom appears more than any other word throughout the four Gospels. Jesus begins His public ministry by preaching the kingdom. "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14). In Christ's kingdom, “we are all a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).

There is only one king in the whole of history who had served his followers. Approximately 2 billion Christians in the world today declare him to be their king. His kingdom is everlasting, because it is built on the everlasting principles, of love and service.

Christ the King has nothing in common with earthly rulers, so his kingdom can be nothing like an earthly kingdom. In his realm there are no masters because everyone is a servant. Even the King came to serve and not to be served. Those who would be greatest in the Kingdom are those who make themselves the least. The reward for service is not promotion and financial gain but to be given further opportunities for service. To be his follower would mean hard work, the hours are long and the pay is low. But the retirement benefits are very grand and out of this world.

Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, was brought before the Roman authorities and told to curse Christ, and he would be released. He replied, "Eighty-six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong: how then can I blaspheme my king Jesus Christ who saved me?" The Roman officer replied, "Unless you change your mind, I will have you burnt." But Polycarp said, "You threaten a fire that burns for an hour, and after a while is quenched; for you are ignorant of the judgment to come and of everlasting punishment reserved for the ungodly. Do what you wish."

In the parable about the separation of sheep from goats in the Last Judgment, Jesus reminds us to get ready to answer “yes” to his six questions based on our corporal and spiritual acts of charity. “I was hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, sick, imprisoned; did you help Me?”
Blessed Mother Theresa explains that they are, "hungry, not only for bread, but hungry for love; naked not only for clothing, but for human dignity and respect; homeless not only for want of a room of bricks, but homeless because of rejection. This is Christ in distressing disguise." Jesus lives within these hurting people, behind their eyes, their tears, and their pain.
This feast is an invitation to all those who have power or authority in the government, public offices, educational institutions or in the family to use it to serve Jesus. Let us examine our own consciences asking the following questions: Are we using our God-given authority in order to serve others? Are we using it to build a more just society rather than to boost our own egos? Are we using our power in any way that could help alleviate pain instead of causing pain? Let us conclude the Church year by asking the Lord to help us serve the King of Kings to the best of our abilities.

XXXIII-Ordinary Sunday-A Cycle

XXXIII Sunday- A Cycle.
Prov. 31:10-13, 16-18, 20, 26, 28-31; 1 Thess. 5:1-6; Mt. 24:36, 25:14-30

This parable of the talents has a number of messages for us. First of all it tells us that God gives man differing gifts. One man received five talents, another two, and another one. It is not a man’s talent which matters; what matters is how he uses it. God never demands from a man ability which he has not got. He is not someone who gathers from where he did not scatter, as the man who got one talent was afraid of.

Men are not equal in talent; but men can be equal in effort. It is quite remarkable that the man simply entrusted the talents to the servants. He did not tell them what to do with them. Neither did he tell them that he would demand them back on his return. The servants drew conclusions for themselves. Two of them decided to take risk and put them to use. While the third decided to play safe, burying it. As the man expected his servants to be fruitful we are also expected to be fruitful. We are also expected to appreciate all of the gifts that we have received, not only appreciate them but also use them to their greatest potential.

Our history is the history of a few who put their talents to use, and who have applied effort for their realization. We remember Socrates, Hippocrates, Alexander the great, Julius Caesar, Helen Keller, Michael Angelo, Beethoven, Gandhiji, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa and a few like them. Because they tried to do something. Gandhiji could not wipe out violence from the face of the earth, Martin Luther King could not wipe out apartheid, or Mother Theresa could not wipe out poverty, but they put their effort to realize their dreams. That made them different from others. Many people asked Mother Teresa, do you think you are able to save all the poor people ? She said I will do what I can.

There is a little story that comes from a book called the Star Fisher. An elderly man is walking along the edge of the water and stops occasionally, picks up something, and then tosses it into the ocean. He then walks a few steps more, picks up something, and tosses it into the ocean. A young jogger is running along and has been watching the man. Finally his curiosity gets the best of him and he stops and goes over to the old gentleman and asks: "Excuse me, what are you doing?"

The man answered: Well, I am saving the life of these star fish. The storm washed them ashore last night, the sun will be up in thirty minutes, and then they will all die. I am throwing them back into the water to save their lives.

The jogger was a bit astounded. Old man, he said, don't you know that you have thirty miles of beach ahead of you and that millions of those star fish were washed ashore last night. What possible difference do you think that you are going to make. The old man took another step picked up a star fish, and with all his might hurled it into the ocean, then turned to the jogger and said: "Well, son, I guess I made a difference in that one's life."

We are all gifted with some strength. The small size of the hummingbird, weighing only a tenth of an ounce, gives it the flexibility to perform complicated maneuvers, such as beating its wings 75 times a second. This enables the humming bird to drink nectar from flowers while hovering, but it cannot soar, glide or hop. The Ostrich, at 300 pounds, is the largest bird, but it can’t fly. However, its legs are so strong that it can run at up to 50 miles per hour, taking strides of12-15 feet.
Some people discover their unusual talents accidentally. Mohd Ali at the age of 12, discovered his talent for boxing through an odd twist of fate. His bike was stolen, and Ali told a police officer, Joe Martin, that he wanted to beat up the thief. "Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people," Martin reportedly told him at the time. Ali started working with Martin to learn how to box, and soon began his boxing career.

Many of us in the church are like this third servant. Because we do not see ourselves as possessing outstanding gifts and talents, we conclude that there is nothing that we do. There was a woman who loved to sing but she would not join the choir because she was afraid she was not gifted with a golden voice. A young man would like to spread the gospel but was afraid he does not know enough Bible and theology. Imagine if only those birds sang who only sang very well, the woods would have been terribly silent.

This parable lays down a rule of life which is universally true. It tells us that to him who has more will be given, and he who has not will lose even what he has. Its meaning is simple. If a man has a talent and exercises it, he is progressively able to do more with it. If he has a talent and fails to exercise it, he will inevitably lose it. It is the lesson of life. Talents – use them or lose them.

Some people don’t use their talents and abilities but just let God do everything for them, even the things that they can very well do themselves. A man got mad with God. "God," he said, I have been praying daily for three years that I should win the state lottery. You told us to ask and we shall receive. How come I never received all these three years I have been asking?" Then he heard the voice of God, loud and clear. "My dear son," says God. "Please do me a favor. Buy a lottery ticket."

The only way to keep a gift is to use it in the service of God and in the service of our fellow men. Some of us are clearly very gifted with valuable abilities, but there is no one, absolutely no one, who can say he has been gifted with nothing. Stop crying about what you do not have, and start concentrating on what you do have.”
All of us in the church today have received at least one talent. We have received the gift of faith. Our responsibility as men and women of faith is not just to preserve and "keep" the faith. We need to trade with it. We need to sell it to the men and women of our times. We need to promote and add value to faith. This is a venture that brings with it much risk and inconvenience. But, unless we do this, we stand in danger of losing the faith just as the third servant lost his talent. The way to preserve the faith, or any other talent that God has given us, is to put it to work and make it bear fruit.
Have I made the best use of my talents ? With whom can I identify myself, the one received 5 talents, 2 or 1 ? Let us discover our special talents. It may be to sing, to dance, to draw, to write, to do farming, to sympathize with others, to be a good listener, to teach or to serve. When we earnestly try to cultivate them and use them for the good of our brothers and sisters, God will tell us, “Well-done good and faithful servant, come and enter into the joy of your master.”

XXII-Sunday-Cycle A.

XXXII- SUNDAY.
First Reading: Wisdom 6: 12-16; 1 Thes 4: 13-18;Gospel: Matthew 25: 1-13

There is an old legend about a man who had a rather stupid servant. The master often got exasperated with his servant. One day in a fit of frustration he said to the servant, "You've got to be the stupidest man I've ever met. Look, I want you to take this staff and carry it with you. And if you ever meet a man stupider than you are, give him the staff." So the servant carried the staff. Often out in the marketplace he'd meet some pretty stupid people. But he was never sure they were worse off than he. Years passed with the servant carrying his staff. Then one day, he came back to the castle and was ushered into the bedroom of his master. His master was quite sick. In the course of their conversation, the master said, "I'm going on a long journey." The servant said, "When do you plan to be back?" The master said, "This is a journey from which I'll not return." The servant said, "Sir, have you made all the necessary preparations?" The master said, "No, I have not." The servant said, "Could you have made preparations?" The master said, "Yes, I guess I've had my life to make them, but I've been busy about other things." The servant said "Master, you're going on a journey from which you'll never return, you could've prepared for it, and you just didn't?" The master said, "Yes, I guess that's right." The servant took the staff he'd carried so long and said, "Master take this with you. At last I've met a man more stupid than myself."


Through the parable of the foolish maidens, Jesus emphasizes the fact that each and every one of us should be prepared, because we do not know the day or the hour when we will be summoned to answer before the Lord God. This parable, found only in Matthew's Gospel, probably served as a warning to early Christians who hoped for a speedy return of the Savior. Matthew is telling them that the return of the Lord may be delayed beyond their expectation and that they should, therefore, prepare for the long wait by providing enough oil for their lamps. Many details of the parable make good sense when seen against the framework of this principal theme.

The virgins represent the Church that is waiting for Christ’s Second Coming. The bridegroom is Christ. The wedding feast is the great and joyous occasion in which Christ comes for his Church (Rev. 19:9). The delay of the bridegroom corresponds to the delay of the Second Coming. The bridegroom's arrival in the dark of night is the Second Coming itself. The closing of the door is the final judgment.

This parable warns us that there are certain things which cannot be obtained at the last minute. It is far too late for a student to be preparing for the examination on the last day. To be prepared is half the victory and the best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

We go on living as if we think this earthly life will go on forever. Nothing is further from the truth. Death is not a distant point in the future, an endpoint of our lives. Rather, it accompanies us each step of the way and could come upon us at any time.
It’s possible to get this lesson wrong in two ways.
First, we can lull ourselves into thinking that “the day and the hour” won’t come for a long while yet. We can think we will have plenty of time to worry about our relationship with God later. That is the more common mistake, and Jesus is doing his best today to shake us out of that self-delusion. But there is another possible mistake too.
We can become so obsessed by the second coming that we start getting kind of superstitious, and we see signs everywhere that it will be such and such a day or such and such a year. This too is a mistake. Our Lord says plainly that we should always be ready because we know neither the day nor the hour. We simply need to live each moment as true, authentic Christians, and not get fixated on empty predictions and waste our time watching the clock.

If we are overly worried about the date and time of Christ’s Second Coming, we need to practice living fully in the present moment. There is absolutely no better way to prepare for the final call than to learn to spend each day in the company of Jesus, remembering his assurance, "I am with you always."

The second point in this parable is the symbolism of oil. Perhaps, the best explanation is that the oil stands for our personal relationship with God who is the source and power behind our good deeds or "fruit-bearing". It is not something that one can attain overnight or borrow from someone else, as the foolish virgins attempted to do. This “state of grace” is the gift God offers us which we must, personally and freely, accept and use. Oil stands for character and Christian values, which we cannot buy or borrow.

We cannot depend on a Sunday morning service to provide for all our spiritual needs, nor on Christian fellowship to provide us with spiritual development. These things come through routine, mundane attention to ordinary spiritual disciplines, and ensure that we will have enough oil or spiritual fuel. They make our life powerful against the onslaught of the world. And the light of our lamp will keep burning without flickering or going out due to shortage of oil. Let’s keep vigilant and watchful, eyes fixed on the arrival of the Lord with a lamp burning with full of oil in it.

XXXI-Sunday in Ordinary Time. (A)

XXXI- Sunday- A
Mal.1:14-2:2, 8-10; 1 Thess. 2:7-9, 13; Mt. 23:1-12

On a vacation to Australia, a Texas farmer meets an Aussie farmer and starts talking to him about his farm. The Aussie takes him to see his big wheat field, but the Texan isn’t impressed. "We have wheat fields that are twice as large as this one," he told the Aussie. The Aussie farmer drives him around the ranch and shows off his big herd of cattle. "Oh, our longhorns are at least twice as big as these," the Texan bragged. The Aussie farmer is getting frustrated, when the Texan suddenly notices a herd of kangaroos hopping across a field. "What on earth are those?" he asks. The Aussie turns to him with a mischievous smile. "Don’t you have any big grasshoppers like this in Texas?"

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” – Proverbs 11:2
In the first reading, the prophet Malachi condemns the irresponsible, proud and lazy priests of his day. In today’s gospel, Jesus offers a word of judgment against contemporary religious leaders who are more concerned about self-promotion than service to others. Christ-like leadership calls for integrity and honesty from all those in authority, whether priests, parents, teachers or politicians.
As a prophetic peacemaker, Jesus challenges those who pervert religion into an opportunity to gain personal honor, glory and power. Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of seeking the glory that rightly belongs to God. The real goal of the Pharisees was to dress and act in such a way as to draw attention to themselves instead of glorifying God. In their misguided zeal for religion, they sought respect and honor for themselves rather than for God. They expressed their love of honor in several ways, thereby converting Judaism into a religion of ostentation.

Jesus condemned the scribes and Pharisees for seeking the places of honor at feasts and in the synagogues. They loved to be greeted in the marketplaces. In those days, politeness demanded that the length of one's greeting correspond to the dignity of the person. By dressing as one who maintained a great devotion, the individual would draw longer greetings.

Pride is a cancerous, lethal, and destructive quality, which probably more than any other negative quality, has brought down more kingdoms, toppled more empires, caused more wars, destroyed more marriages, ruined more friendships, and made many criminals than all of the other negative qualities combined and put together.

The saying that “pride goes before the fall” is a universal truth. But, though pride is hated by most people, many still succumb to its enticing and seductive nature, and many end up losing everything as a result of the consequences of wallowing in it for too long a period of time.

Once pride starts to seep into someone’s personality to any significant degree it will start to seep into their emotions, actions, and behaviours. And once this negative quality starts to manifest into their actions and behaviours, then their judgment will start to cloud. And once their sense of proper judgment starts to cloud up, they will no longer be able to separate truth from error. They eventually end up becoming their own little god, thinking they have all of the answers to everything and that the entire world revolves around them. Hence, the scriptures emphasize the need to be humble. St. Peter wrote, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time (1 Peter 5:6).

The proverbs teach us about the transitory nature of our existence. Hence, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.” (Proverbs 27:1)
When we hear of Hawaii things that come to mind are beaches, palm trees, sharks, cruise ships, bigger sharks and Pearl Harbor. What you may not know about our 50thstate is that before it became a part of the USA, there was a civil war in Hawaii between two rival chieftains.
Now, one of the generals in this war was a man named Kaiana. Kaiana was a seasoned warrior, and had gained a big advantage in the war by positioning his forces in some strategically well-defended areas. Kaiana was also a proud man, and he was known to display his rank among the soldiers by wearing bright clothing with many colors. Unfortunately, Kaiana failed to realize this would make him more noticeable on the battlefield, and the general met his end after being shot by a cannon.
The Bible has some pretty dire warnings about dealing with pride: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud. Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers, and blessed is he who trusts in the LORD.” – Proverbs 16: 18-20
Pride will always be one of the most difficult sins to guard against because it has a way of hiding behind the things we value. Perhaps you take pride in your athletic ability, but do you flaunt that ability over your teammates or use it to inspire them? Maybe you take pride in having a nice job with a high salary, but does that pride make you generous or arrogant? What about your appearance? Are you proud of the way you look, and if those looks were gone, would others still find you beautiful?
Take a lesson from Christ. He was the son of God, yet chose to lay down his infinite majesty to become a human. His followers could have been priests and princes, but he extended his hand in friendship to fisherman, foreigners and outcasts. He was the King of Kings, but the only crown he wore was made of thorns. Don’t allow pride to shape who you are. God made you to be an amazing person, and trust me, his work is always better.
Jesus finished His message by saying that the greatest is the one who is the servant. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who are humble will be exalted. In other words, one should wait until such time as God grants him a place of honor. He should not be creating his own place of honor.

One of the best stories of humility I know is that of a man who arrived in 1953 at the Chicago railroad station to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He stepped off the train, a tall man with bushy hair and a big mustache. As the cameras flashed and city officials approached with hands outstretched to meet him, he thanked them politely. Then he asked to be excused for a minute. He walked through the crowd to the side of an elderly black woman struggling with two large suitcases. He picked them up, smiled, and escorted her to the bus, helped her get on, and wished her a safe journey. Then Albert Schweitzer turned to the crowd and apologized for keeping them waiting. It is reported that one member of the reception committee told a reporter, "That's the first time I ever saw a sermon walking."

We've been given a great task - to live in harmony, to weep with the mournful, to laugh with the joyful, to not be conceited. Especially, we are called to be righteous, but not self-righteous. We are to be humble.
We need to become servant leaders in a serving community: The church is a servant community in which those who hunger are to be filled; the ignorant are to be taught; the homeless to receive shelter; the sick to be cared for; the distressed, consoled; and the oppressed, set free. Leaders should have a spirit of humble service in thought, word and deed. “The measure of a true Christian is not how many servants he has, but how many men he serves.”

XXX-Sunday-A

XXX-Sunday- A
Ex.22:20-26;1Thes.1:5c-10;Mt22:33-40

Jim was a drunkard. The doctors had warned him that his drinking would kill him. Jim’s wife spoke to the pastor about her husband’s alcoholic problem. The priest promised to call over. On the day the priest arrived, Jim was dead drunk and lying flat on the floor. The priest spoke to him, “Jim, do you know that alcohol is your worst enemy? Why don’t you give it up?” “Alcohol,” said Jim, “is my enemy. But Father, you preached in Church that Christians should love their enemies, and that is what I am doing; I love alcohol, my enemy.” The priest replied: “True, we have to love our enemies, but I did not say you should swallow your enemies.” We laugh at the alcoholic swallowing his enemy. However, many Christians today, swallow not only their enemies but also their friends. We gulp down people and their rights.

The central theme of today’s readings is the greatest commandment in the Bible, namely to love God and express it in action by loving Him in our neighbor. In answer to the lawyer’s test question, Jesus quoted the great Shema from Deuteronomy, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength." This is the sentence with which every Jewish service still opens, and the first text which every Jewish child commits to memory. Even today, a pious Jew, as he enters his house, will touch a little box called a mezuzah which contains the words of the Shema, which is attached to the door post. The gesture reminds him of the great commandment.

But Jesus went further, by naming a second commandment which is like the first, the law from Leviticus, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." When Jesus tells the lawyer, "On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets," the lawyer approves.

Here Jesus laid down the complete definition of religion. Religion consists in loving God, and man. To God we must give a total love, a love which dominates our emotions, a love which directs our thoughts, and a love which is the dynamic of our actions. In short a total commitment to God. The natural outcome of such a commitment will be the second commandment. “Love your neighbor.” When we love God man becomes lovable.
One without the other makes Christianity meaningless. A bird requires two wings to fly; a man needs two legs to walk. To fly or to walk to God we have two commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. Without these two commandments we may fail to meet God in this life and in the life to come.
We were created in love, for love, by a God who is love. All love comes from God and is directed toward God. The desire to give and receive love is one of the most authentic and natural desires; for where there is true love, there is God.

Jesus underlines the principle that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves because both of us bear God’s image, and to honor God’s image is to honor Him. Love for our neighbor is a matter, not of feelings, but of deeds by which we share with others the unmerited love that God lavishes on us.

Love of God and love for neighbor are oars of the same boat. Or the two sides of the same coin. If one side is not printed the coin is considered counterfeit.
Lewis L. Austin, “in This I Believe”, wrote: "Our maker gave us two hands. One to hold onto him and one to reach out to his people. If our hands are full of struggling to get possessions, we can't hang onto God or to others very well. If, however, we hold onto God, who gave us our lives, then his love can flow through us and out to our neighbor." Truly loving one's neighbor entails valuing them as gifts of God.

St Thomas Aquinas suggests that it is impossible to love our neighbors if we do not love ourselves. So we should first love God, then ourselves, then our neighbors, then our bodily life (Summa Theologiae II.II.25,12). The problem is that we feel that we should avoid anything that seems like 'self-love' because that sounds too much like self-indulgence, self-centredness and selfishness. Loving oneself as the image of God is not selfishness.

Jesus is the one who teaches how to love God and our neighbor. There is no shortcut to learning Christ-like love. It's like learning to swim - you really have to jump into the water and get wet. The Holy Spirit is a great instructor, but he can't make any progress unless we are willing to take the risk of diving in.

But the sad, fundamentally simple word that defines the majority of humanity in taking a dive is “if”. When comes to tolerating our siblings, our neighbors or our co-workers we put an “if”, if only he did not do that, if only he did not say that, if only he did not behave like that…..indefinitely goes on our excuses. We take comfort in the excuse “If only things had been different, and If only people had been different.” But things do not need to be different. People do not need to be different. But we need to be different.

There is a story about a man who had a huge boulder in his front yard. He grew weary of this big, unattractive stone in the center of his lawn, so he decided to take advantage of it and turn it into an object of art. He went to work on it with hammer and chisel, and chipped away at the huge boulder until it became a beautiful stone elephant. When he finished, it was gorgeous, breath-taking.

A neighbor asked, "How did you ever carve such a marvelous likeness of an elephant?" The man answered, "I just chipped away everything that didn't look like an elephant!"
If we have anything in our life right now that doesn't look like love, then, with the help of God, let’s chip it away. Let’s chip away anything that does not look like Christ’s love on the cross + the love that reflects the Father’s love to the human kind and the love that Jesus had for his fellow beings.

XXIX-Ordinary Sunday- Cycle A

XXIX-Sunday.
Isaiah 45: 1, 4-6; 1 Thess. 1: 1-5 ; Matthew 22: 15-21

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost?"

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest." To which the scientist replied, "Okay, great!" But, God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."
The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt. God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt."

With numerous and tremendous inventions man feels God is not necessary in this system, without ever realizing that it is God who set the foundation for all this when he said to the first human beings “Be fruitful and multiply, conquer the earth”. And therefore, God needs to be acknowledged and honored as the Supreme Being in this world.

Some people say: Let the church take care of its own business and keep their noses out of social and political issues. That would be fine if it worked. There are obligations we have to the governing authorities, such as paying taxes, exercising our right to vote, and obeying civil laws. But as followers of Jesus Christ, our ultimate obligation is to "seek first the kingdom of God," and all other obligations have to have a lower priority. There can only be one top priority.

Every Christian holds dual citizenship, each one of which has its own benefits and duties. Our birth made us citizens of an earthly nation; our baptism made us citizens of a heavenly Kingdom. Sometimes they overlap, but in the end, our earthly citizenship will finish, while our heavenly citizenship will last forever. It's obvious which one is more important. Through the centuries, the many Christian saints and martyrs have taught us that if we are ever forced to choose between the two, if ever Caesar tries to take what belongs to God, we must be faithful to our true, everlasting homeland, even if it means suffering painful consequences here on earth. We know about St Thomas More who gave his life for the sake of defending to give what belonged to God. To give supremacy to God and his Church than to King Henry VIII of England.

In his second Encyclical Letter, Pope Benedict made this same point -both citizenships are important, but our Christian citizenship is more important: "When the Letter to the Hebrews says that Christians here on earth do not have a permanent homeland, but seek one which lies in the future (cf. Hebrews 11:13-16; Philippians 3:20), "this does not mean for one moment that they live only for the future: "present society is recognized by Christians as an exile; "they belong to a new society which is the goal of their common pilgrimage and which is anticipated in the course of that pilgrimage... "Hence, while we must always be committed to the improvement of the world, tomorrow's better world cannot be the proper and sufficient content of our hope." (Spe Salvi, #4, #30)

There is no reason why the state and the Church cannot work together to improve the lives of their citizens. There is usually no conflict -- unless the government forces people to act in a way contrary to God’s law. Then we must act in accordance with God’s law and not man’s because, while the state only exists in this world, God’s law exists in this world and the next. This means that sometimes we have to refuse to obey our government. In South Africa's apartheid system, many Christians were forced to violate the immoral laws of their government. In the United States, both the black and the white people violated the segregation laws of many states. Wherever there is immoral or unjust behavior, there has to be conflict which paves the ground for society’s progress.

What exactly belongs to God? Do we owe any taxes to the heavenly IRS? All of us know the answer immediately; it is written in the very first pages of the Bible. All that we are, all that we possess, and all that we can hope for has come to us from God. Just as the Roman coin bore the image of the Emperor who made it, so the human soul bears the "image and likeness" of God our Creator and our Father. He called each one of us into existence; he wants each of us to exist, so that we can enter into and develop a personal relationship with him. This is the whole purpose of our lives: to live in communion with God, starting now and leading into everlasting life. As the Catechism puts it (#44): "Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God." Freely living by our bond with God means living as he created us to live. And he has shown us how to do that by sending us his Son, the model of every Christian life, the Friend of every human soul. And so, giving to God what belongs to God mean obeying his commandments, following the example of Christ, our Savior and older Brother, and heeding the teachings of his Church. Ignoring God and his commandments, as if he were far away, uninterested, or foolish - that would be a kind of spiritual thievery, like stealing the Emperor's coins.

It is precisely our Catholic faith, full of God's revelation, that enables us to distinguish between foundational and secondary issues. Treating unborn children like a disease, as abortion does, is a foundational injustice - what good are any of the other human rights if those innocent people never even make it out of the womb? Treating homosexual unions like true marriages is a foundational injustice - true marriage between one man and one woman is the DNA of human society; would you like someone to mess around with your DNA? When we vote for political candidates and issues, we cannot pretend that those kinds of foundational issues are on the same level as other important but secondary issues like taxes, diplomacy, and alternative energy sources. These secondary issues are like the walls of a house: you can knock out a wall or rearrange a room without the house falling down, but if you mess with the foundation, you lose the whole structure. If foundational issues are at stake in an election, we must give them first priority. Foundational issues are things that belong to God, not to Caesar, and when Caesar tries to take them over, we who are God's children must defend them. When the state oversteps the mark and puts itself in the place of God, Christians are, in the last resort, absolved from obedience. We must give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and not the things that are God's. We must “obey God rather than human beings.”

We have the right and the responsibility to apply a moral litmus test to the dictates of our nation. The people of Germany did not do this in their own country during the last century and closed an eye to Nazi anti-Semitism. They now suffer the guilt imposed by their lack of action.

Jesus reminds His questioners that if they are so concerned and careful about paying taxes to the state, they should be much more concerned and careful about their service to God and their obligations to Him as their Creator and Lord. Do I pay to God what He is worthy of..my time, treasure, talent ? Do I love God with all my heart, all my soul and with all my mind ? OR do I steal from God what he owns ?

XXVIII-Sunday in Ordinary time -Cycle A.

XXVIII Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Is 25:6-10 / Ps 23:1-3, 3-4, 5, 6 / Phil 4:12-14, 19-20 / Mt 22:1-14

At a church conference in Omaha, people were given helium-filled balloons and told to release them at some point in the service when they felt joy in their hearts. All through the service worshippers kept releasing balloons. At the end of the service it was discovered that most of them still had their balloons unreleased. If this experiment were repeated in our church today, how many of us would still have our balloons unreleased at the end of the service? Many of us think of God's house as a place for seriousness, a place to close one's eyes and pray, but not a place of celebration, a place where we can have fun. The parable of the Great Supper in today's gospel paints a different picture. The Christian assembly is a gathering of those who are called to the Lord's party. In the Eucharist we say of ourselves, "Happy are those who are called to his supper." The Lord invites us to a supper, a banquet, a feast. Can you imagine a wedding feast in which everyone sits stone-faced, cold and quiet?
The parable shows us three possible kinds of guests. There are the absentee guests who initially accepted the invitation, but when the time came to honor the invitation they drew back. There are the guests without wedding garments who attend the feast but do not take the trouble to prepare adequately for it, as the occasion deserves. And then there are the guests with wedding garments who make the necessary preparation to present themselves fit for the banquet of the King.

The scary thing about the absentee guests is that they are not sinners. They were not engaged in sinful activity. One went to his farm, another to his business. These are gainful and noble employments. Sometimes what keep us away from the joy of the kingdom is not sin but preoccupation with the necessities of life. To be serious with our job is a good thing, but when our job keeps us away from attending the Lord's Supper, then it becomes an obstacle that hinders us from experiencing the joy of the Lord in our life. Some people attended church service to fulfill a "Sunday obligation," otherwise it would be counted against them as sin. This kind of fear no longer motivates young people today. More people would probably come to church if they knew they were missing out on the fun of celebrating and feasting with the Christian community.
The point of the parable is: if you must go the dance, you must wear your dancing shoes. If you must go to a wedding, you must wear your wedding garment. By not wearing a wedding garment, he was physically in the party, but his mind and spirit were not there. He was in the feast but he was not in the mood for feasting. Jesus hates this kind of hypocritical attitude. In fact, it is better not to attend at all than to be there and yet not there. The invitation is to all, the party is free for all, yet anyone who decides to attend has a responsibility to present himself or herself fit for the king's company.
The kingdom of God is freely offered to us. Those of us on the way to the kingdom must spare no effort in acquiring the moral and spiritual character that is consonant with life in the kingdom.
To those of us who have accepted the invitation to come in, this parable warns us not to take God's grace for granted but to clean ourselves up and become the most beautiful person that we can be in God's sight.

In ancient Palestine, one of the social customs at wedding banquets was for the host to provide a festive garment for all the guests - it was almost like what a welcome gift is for modern parties. It could be something as simple as a colored scarf or shawl. With all the guests wearing this garment, an atmosphere of unity and joy was created, and the special honor of the bride and bridegroom (who were wearing different garments), as emphasized.

In the parable, after the banquet has begun, the king comes in to greet the guests. And lo and behold, he finds a guest without a wedding garment. Who is the man without a wedding garment? It is any one of us who has heard the Good News of the Kingdom, but who doesn't change his or her life and live by the teaching of Jesus.
There are only two possible reasons why a guest wouldn't have a wedding garment: either he sneaked in without being invited, or he didn't care about celebrating the wedding and just wanted enjoy the food and drink while doing his own thing. In either case, such a guest is not a guest at all - he has no relationship to the bride and bridegroom, and so he has no reason to be there. And so the king threw him out. When we try to follow Christ without accepting his will and the teaching of his Church, we are trying to get in to the wedding banquet while refusing to put on the wedding garment.
This is what so many public figures in our generation are doing when they say that they are Catholic, but then support things like abortion and homosexual marriage, which directly contradict God's plan for the human family. Christianity is not a self-help buffet where we can pick and choose according to personal preference; it's the revelation of God, and it requires humility, obedience, and trust. The important question before us is, whether we have a wedding garment. It was given to us on the day of our baptism. It stands for sanctifying grace. It is the garment essential for our salvation. Our entrance to the heavenly banquet table depends on our wedding garment.

We need to wear our wedding garment for the Eucharistic banquet: God incarnate waits for us in his house of worship, offering himself for us on our altars and inviting us for the sumptuous banquet of his own body and blood for the nourishment of our souls in the Holy Eucharist. According to St. Gregory, men and women who come to the wedding feast with hatred in their hearts do not wear the acceptable garment spoken of in the parable. Men and women whose faith and love are cold, who attend Church for social reasons, to show off their clothes and jewelry, or to visit with acquaintances are not dressed in a wedding garment pleasing to the King, Christ Jesus. Our wedding garment is made of our grace-assisted works of justice, charity and holiness. Let us examine whether we have fully accepted God’s invitation to the messianic banquet and remember that banqueting implies friendship and intimacy, trust and reconciliation.

XXV- Sunday in Ordinary Time

XXV SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Isaiah 55: 6-9; Philippians 1: 20-24; Matthew 20: 1-16

Imagine there are four houses on your street. Yours is valued at $400,000. The house next to you, at $300,000, The third, at $200,000. The last at $100,000. One day a realtor offers you $500,000 in cash for your house. You are delighted and you sell it. The next day you learn that the other three homeowners on your street got the same price by the same buyer that you did. How would you feel about their getting the same price even though their homes were not nearly a good as yours ?. The parable of the vineyard workers offends our sense of fairness. Why should everyone get equal pay for unequal work?

When the apples ripened, Tina, would sit all her seven children down, with pans and paring knives until the mountain of fruit is reduced to neat rows of filled canning jars. She never bothered keeping track of how many each one did, though the younger ones undoubtedly proved more of a nuisance than a help: cut fingers, squabbles over who got which pan etc. But when the job was done, the reward for everyone may be the same: sweet apple pie. A family understands it operates under a different set of norms than a courtroom. God’s grace does not come to us depending on the amount of good works we do, but according to our need. If your six-year-old child misbehaved, you would not call the police, you would not subject her to the rigor of the law; your correction of her would be gentle and proportioned to her age - in other words it would be merciful. So is God’s mercy too.

In today's gospel we hear of a harvest in which some workers put in more work than others. When pay time comes, they are all treated equally and the early birds among them begin to complain and grumble. Why do the workers in the vineyard complain and grumble whereas the workers in the family do not? The answer is simple. One group of workers is made up of family members and the other of unrelated individuals drawn from the wider society. The norms of behavior, of contribution and reward, in a family are different from those in the wider society. The big question that the parable poses to us in the church today is, "Do we see ourselves as family with a common purpose or do we see ourselves as a bunch of individuals, each with their own agenda? We call ourselves brothers and sisters. Why then do we often see and treat one another as rivals and competitors?
For the early-bird workers who ended up being reprimanded by the landowner it was all a business affair. Their working in the vineyard was preceded by a well spelt-out contract regarding their wages: a full day's work for a full day's pay. The latecomers were less legalistic in their approach. They took the job trusting in the landowner's word of honor. "He said to them, 'You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.' So they went" (Matt 20:4). In fact, those employed in the sixth, ninth and eleventh hours were told nothing whatsoever about payment. There is no employer-employee contract here. Everything is based on trust.

This parable is also a warning to us. We, cradle Catholics, belong to the kingdom of God. We feel we are entitled to more privileges and rewards than others, who have entered the Church recently. This wage-oriented attitude towards God is seen in our lives. We claim we have heard more masses, attended more novenas, visited more shrines and said more prayers, so God must be more generous to us. The result is that wage-oriented persons quit God and leave the Church, because God did not give them the wages and rewards they thought they deserved. God is love, and a lasting friendship with Him has to be based on love. God is like the compassionate landowner, who gave a day’s wage even to the man who worked for an hour. It was no fault of the worker that he was not employed till 5 in the evening. God also welcomes and rewards with a denarius, His heaven; the one who dies full of years and another who dies in the prime of life, and even those who turn to God at the hour of their death.

We need to follow God’s example and show grace to our neighbor. When someone else is more successful than we are, let us assume he needs it. When someone who does wrong fails to get caught, let us remember the many times we have done wrong and gotten off free. We must not wish pain on people for the sake of fairness. We become envious of others because of our lack of generosity of heart. Envy should have no place in our lives. We cannot control the way God blesses others.
"My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways," says the Lord. If my ways of thinking and judging are truly far from the Lord's way, then I must have some adjusting to do! Perhaps I need to work harder in the areas of forgiveness, mercy, and generosity, to mention a few. St. Paul urges the Philippians today to conduct themselves in a way that is "worthy of the gospel of Christ."

Let us allow this parable to break open the narrowness of our own imagination and expectations. The Lord is good to all, compassionate to every creature (Ps 145:9). God is more than just to us; God is generous. If God were strictly just to us we would all be in a bad shape. Our hope lies in the fact that God is also merciful. In His sight the first may be last and the last, first. A repentant thief may enter heaven first than a righteous man. The repentant prodigal may be more close the heart of the Father than an obedient home staying older son.

Our call to God’s vineyard is a free gift from God for which we can never be sufficiently thankful. All our talents and blessings are freely given by God.
Jesus is the volcano of generosity. There is no better example and proof of this extraordinary generosity than the Eucharist, where he allows himself to be handled by him. During this Eucharist let’s pour out our hearts in gratitude for God’s generosity.

XXIV-Sunday .Cycle A.

XXIV SUNDAY
Sirach 27: 30 – 28: 7; Romans 14: 7-9;Gospel Mathew 18: 21-35

There is a story about a judge in a middle-eastern country who was trying to resolve a difficult case. The wife of a deceased man was asking for the death sentence to be imposed upon the man who had killed her husband. It seems that while he was on a tree gathering dates, the man had fallen upon the woman’s husband and fatally injured him.
“Was the fall intentional?” the judge inquired. “Were these men enemies?”
“No,” the woman replied. “Even so,” she said, “I want my revenge.”
Despite the judge’s repeated attempts to dissuade her, the widow demanded the blood price to which the law entitled her. The judge even suggested that a sum of money would serve her better than vengeance. No dice. “It is your right to seek compensation,” the judge finally declared, “and it is your right to ask for this man’s life. And it is my right,” he continued, “to decree how he shall die. And so,” the judge declared, “you shall take this man with you immediately. He shall be tied to the foot of a palm tree; and you shall climb to the top of the tree and throw yourself down upon him from a great height. In this way you will take his life as he took your husband’s.” Only silence met the judge’s decree. Then the judge spoke: “Perhaps you would prefer after all to take the money?” She did.

Very often we feel like returning in the same coin. But it is disastrous for us. Today is September 11, a date that Americans consider one of the most significant in the nation’s history. It has become one of the epic historic events equivalent to the founding of the United States, the ending of the conflict between the North and the South, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the ending of World War II and the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. September 11, 2001 is a date that challenged both the freedom of a free people and the grace of forgiveness that Americans are told by our Lord Jesus Christ to offer, even to their enemies. But forgiveness is not an easy gift to give. A country can better deal with external aggression than internal uprisals. President Mubarak of Egypt and Gaddafi of Libya would have efficiently dealt with aggression if they came from outside. But the internal discontent, they could not contain and had to leave. As a nation we need to be forgiving for the great aggression of the Al-Quaida. But it doesn’t mean that we should sit passive and not watch out for the enemies.

French author Victor Hugo has a short story titled, "93." In the midst of this tale a ship at sea is caught in a terrific storm. Buffeted by the waves, the boat rocks to and fro, when suddenly the crew hears an awesome crashing sound below deck. They know what it is. A cannon they are carrying has broken loose and is smashing into the ship's sides with every list of the ship. Two brave sailors, at the risk of their lives, manage to go below and fasten it again, for they know that the heavy cannon on the inside of their ship is more dangerous to them than the storm on the outside. So it is with people. Problems within are often much more destructive to us than the problems without. Today, God's word would take us "below decks" to look inside ourselves concerning the whole matter of forgiveness. The Al-Quaida killed less than 4000 people on 9/11. But national census shows that more than 4000 innocent babies are killed every day in our country. So who needs more forgiveness from God and humanity ?
All three readings today remind us and challenge us to continue on the path to forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation. The Book of Sirach says. "The vengeful will suffer Yahweh's vengeance; for He remembers their sins in detail. Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven." Sirach reminds his listeners that if they don’t heal and forgive and show mercy to others, they can’t expect to receive much of that in return. This is what we pray in our “Our Father”..do not forgive our sins if we fail to forgive others’ sins too.
Peter knew Christ’s mind about the forgiveness of injuries. He had heard the Master say to them to turn the other cheek. But Christ had not said how many times to offer the other cheek; so for future action in exercising authority he wants a clear answer to the question. How many times must he forgive the transgressor? Peter was conversant with the teaching of his times on forgiveness. Rabbinic teaching, based on Amos, prescribed that God’s forgiveness extends to three offences and that He visits the sinner at the fourth offence. Now if God will not pardon at the fourth offence; what about us, mortals? Peter knowing that Jesus was a forgiving person expected him to be kinder than God. So Peter doubled God’s triple forgiveness and added an extra one for good measure.

Simon Peter was expecting Jesus to say: “Excellent Peter. You go to the head of the class. You get A+.” But Christ tells Peter, “Seventy times seven,” which means infinite. It portrays not a mathematical reply but a symbolic answer. Forgiveness is not measurable.

The Our Father teaches us to forgive rather than to love, because in this world love cannot appear except disguised as forgiveness. Forgiveness is love’s might. Married love would be a sham without forgiveness. Lack of forgiveness destroys the best of friends. Parents, spouses and children who keep within their hearts petty injuries, will soon find their love destroyed.

A certain married couple had many sharp disagreements. Yet somehow the wife always stayed calm and collected. One day her husband commented on his wife’s restraint. “When I get mad at you,” he said, “you never fight back. How do you control your anger?” The wife said: “I work it off by cleaning the toilet.” The husband asked: “How does that help?”
She said: “I use your toothbrush!”

In the light of eternity and the shortness of our span of life, harboring old grudges is pointless. Neighbors who remained hostile and unforgiving till their death are buried a short distance from one another in the same cemetery. Our ability to forgive is the measure of the depth of our Christianity. Let us remember St. Francis Assisi’s prayer: “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.” Our failure to offer pardon means that we have forgotten God’s goodness or have not fully appreciated the unconditional forgiveness we have received from Him.

Forgiveness finally changes us from prisoners of our past to being liberated and at peace with our memories. Grudge-holders are grave-diggers and the only graves that they dig are their own. "The world's most miserable person is one who won't forgive. Real forgiveness keeps on leaving the sins of others and our hurts in the past. To keep on forgiving is a God-like characteristic. It is contrary to human nature. But we need to keep trying with God’s grace.

A story is told of two friends who were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand, “Today my best friend slapped me in the face.”

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from nearly drowning, he wrote on a stone, “Today my best friend saved my life.”
His friend asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?” The other friend replied “When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.”

Where do have I marked the hurts I have taken, in stone or in sand ?

XXIII

XXIII SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10;Mathew 18: 15-20

In the first reading, God tells Ezekiel that he is a "watchman for the house of Israel,” obliged to warn Israel of moral dangers. If Ezekiel should refrain from speaking God’s word intended to convert the wicked, God will hold Ezekiel responsible for the death of the wicked. In the second reading, St. Paul points out that the love we should have for one another should be our only reason for admonishing the sinner. Love seeks the good of the one who is loved. Therefore, we should admonish one another so that we all may repent and grow in holiness. In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches that true Christian charity obliges a Christian not only to assist his neighbors in their temporal and spiritual needs by material help and by prayer, but also to correct an erring brother if his sins are public.

When one Christian has a case against another, the first step will be an attempt at private reconciliation. This protects both parties from humiliation, and from forming a public position they cannot back away from. Only when this fails are witnesses brought forward, and after that it is brought before the Church publicly. This is perhaps a mirror image of our world, where we rush to public conflict, and only resort to personal reconciliation when all else has failed.
It is difficult not to be overcome by the bitterness and feelings of revenge.
A pastor preached a wonderful sermon, saying we should love our enemies. And, when he got through he asked, “Is there anybody in the audience who can truthfully say that he or she has no enemies?” An old gentleman got up right underneath the pulpit, and he said, “Father, I ain’t got no enemies.” So the Pastor tells the congregation, “Let’s listen. This man has the secret. He can teach us something. Go ahead, sir, now tell us how we do that.” “Oh,” he said, “it ain’t hard. You see, I’ve outlived all those rascals.”

One New Year’s Eve a mother asked her two quarrelling daughters to reconcile one another and wish happy new year. The older daughter went over the younger one and said “I wish you a happy New Year,” and she added, “but only one.”

Nelson Mandela was freed from jail after 27 years and as he came out of the jail he was full of bitterness against those who put him in there. But then he thought to himself : "They've taken everything from you that matters. Your cause is dead. Your family is gone. Your friends have been killed. Now they're releasing you, but there's nothing left for you out there.' And I hated them for what they had taken from me. Then, I sensed an inner voice saying to me, "˜Nelson! For twenty-seven years you were their prisoner, but you were always a free man! Don't allow them to make you into a free man, only to turn you into their prisoner!'". You can never be free to be a whole person if you are unable to forgive. There are many people who are imprisoned by their own anger, their own hurt, their own inability to let go of the past and move on.

One woman who was bitten by a rabid dog, and it looked as if she was going to die from rabies. The doctor told her to put her final affairs in order. So the woman took pen and paper, and began writing furiously. In fact she wrote and wrote and wrote. Finally the doctor said, "That sure is a long will you’re making." She snorted, "Will, nothing! I’m making a list of all the people I’m going to bite!"

One of the wise folk sayings of the Russian people is this: Make peace with men, and make war with your sins." Unfortunately, we usually do the opposite!" It is said: The only people you should try to get even with should be the ones who have done some favors to you.

Let me conclude with this story: In one of the popular Chicken Soup volumes, Dennis E. Mannering tells about an assignment he once gave to a class he teaches for adults. He gave them the assignment, "Go to someone you love, and tell them that you love them." At the beginning of the next class, one of the students began by saying, "I was angry with you last week when you gave us this assignment. I didn't feel I had anyone to say those words to. But as I began driving home my conscience started talking. Then I knew exactly who I needed to say ‘I love you’ to. Five years ago, my father and I had a vicious disagreement and never really resolved it. We avoided seeing each other unless we absolutely had to at family gatherings. We hardly spoke. So by the time I got home, I had convinced myself I was going to tell my father I loved him. Just making that decision seemed to lift a heavy load off my chest. At 5:30, I was at my parents' house ringing the doorbell, praying that Dad would answer the door. I was afraid if Mom answered, I would chicken out and tell her instead.

But as luck would have it, Dad did answer the door. I didn't waste any time. I took one step in the door and said, ‘Dad, I just came over to tell you that I love you.’ It was as if a transformation came over my dad. Before my eyes his face softened, the wrinkles seemed to disappear and he began to cry. He reached out But that's not even my point. Two days after that visit, my dad had a heart attack So my message to all of you is this: Don't wait to do the things you know need to be done. What if I had waited to tell my dad? Take the time to do what you need to do and do it now!"
That's the advice that Jesus would give us. People hurt us, sometimes intentionally, sometimes without meaning to. But sometimes who is in the right and who is in the wrong is not as important as finding a common ground where the relationship can be maintained. Sometimes that means that we have to take the first step, even though we know that the other person is in the wrong. And the best time to take that step is today!

XXII-Sunday-Cycle A.

XXII SUNDAY OFTHE YEAR

JEREMIAH 20: 7-9; ROM 12:1-2;Gospel: MT 16: 21-27

It is said that St. Augustine was accosted one day on the street by a former mistress some time after he had become a Christian. When he saw her he turned and walked the other way. Surprised, the woman called out, "Augustine, it is I". Augustine as he kept going the other way, answered her, "Yes, but it is not I."
It is an amusing story ,but when Christ calls a man to follow him, he calls him to die." Augustine was dead to his former self, and so he said, it is not I.

Today’s readings explain how we can truly follow Jesus. Jeremiah, in the first reading, is certainly a prototype of the suffering Christ. In the second reading, Paul advises the Romans and us (Rom 12:1-2):to ‘’offer our bodies as a living sacrifice” to God by explicitly rejecting the ungodly behavior of the world around us and by discerning and doing the will of God.
In last week's readings, Peter was given the keys to the kingdom, and in this week's readings, he nearly gets them taken away from him! Jesus is so upset with him that He exclaims, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Peter got himself in trouble for strongly protesting Jesus' prediction of His Passion. In effect, Jesus is telling His disciples, "I never promised you a rose garden!" Jesus announces the three conditions of Christian discipleship: “deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me”. Unless we constantly remind ourselves of the demands of this difficult vocation from God, we will fail to be the kind of disciples that Christ expects us to be.
Suffering, when we bear it with faith and unite it to Christ's suffering, is like the oven that cooks saints, the fire that purifies our hearts of selfishness. Gold is purified in fire. Adversity helps develop endurance. A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.

All the sufferings are not God given sufferings. Some we create for ourselves. Some come from Satan as he knows that some people renounce God when they meet with sufferings in their life and leave their faith in God.
Bob Hodges, a Presbyterian minister in Rogersville, Tennessee, tells about duck hunting with a friend of his on Cherokee Lake in East Tennessee. His friend, Riley, who had just recently given his life to Christ, began to ask some serious questions about his Christian pilgrimage. Riley's old friends were making it very difficult for him to remain consistent in his obedience and commitment to Christ. They seemed to delight in trying to get him to fall back into the old patterns of life. They ridiculed him for spending so much time with "the preacher." Riley asked, "Why is it that I'm having more trouble since I became a Christian than I ever did when I was lost? Everything seems to go wrong. I'm having such a struggle!"

Bob Hodges spoke up, "I'll tell you why, Riley. A couple of ducks fly over and you shoot. You kill one and injure the other. They both fall into the lake. What do you do? You have to get out of the boat and go pick up the ducks, but which one do you go after first?"

"Well," Riley drawled, "that's easy. I go after the injured one first. The dead one ain't goin' nowhere!"

Hodges said, "And that's the way it is with the devil. He goes after injured Christians. He's not going to bother with the man dead in his sin. But the minute you give your life to Christ, you'd better get ready; the devil is going to come after you. He is going to chase you; he's going to make it hard on you."
Sometimes, when life's crosses are especially heavy, it is hard for us to remember that God is with us in our sufferings. At times, like Job, we find ourselves rebelling against the suffering that God permits to come our way, instead of finding its hidden meaning. Those can be lonely, dark times, full of temptation and sadness. But God promises that he will be faithful. St Paul wrote: "God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians10:13). St Augustine says: "There is more courage in a man who faces rather than flees the storms of life, and who holds cheap the opinion of men.

The Church has decreed that above each of her altars there should be a crucifix. Whenever we enter a Catholic Church, therefore, the crucifix will be the focus of our field of vision. The crucifix is a depiction of humiliation, torture, pain, and death. Why such pride of place given for such a cruel reality? Why not put scenes of Christ's birth above every altar, or of his resurrection, or ascension? Because, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." Christ dying on the cross was the perfect sacrifice offered to God in loving atonement for our sins and the sins of all people (2 Cor. 5:15).

To get any where in a mirror-image world, you must go in the opposite direction! If you walk in the forward direction you will reach only the mirror, not the destination. Christ's teaching is a bit like that: If you want to be a follower ... renounce yourself! And walk the opposite direction of where the world is walking. If you want to save your life....be prepared to lose it! The Sermon on the Mount spells out the apparent contradictions.
Society tends to take the Peter approach: 'You can't do that!' To be a success, you must be strong, not weak; rich, not poor; aggressive, not meek.
Nothing stands in the way of our ultimate salvation as much as our own 'cosy' Christianity, the sort that wants to be a follower of Christ on our own terms, preferably without the 'nasty bits' of suffering, death and self-sacrifice.
Jesus did not turn back from suffering and death, he went through the heart of it, and it was transformed into resurrection. If we keep our sufferings close to the cross of Jesus, we are sure to be risen with him. Let’s bring all our crosses to him who promises to turn all our sorrows into joy.

XX-Sunday- Cycle A.

XX Sunday ISAIAH 56: 1, 6-7; ROM 11: 13-15;Gospel: MAT 15: 21-28

Billy Graham once told of an incident that happened a long time ago when teachers could talk about religion in the classroom. A teacher was talking to her class of young boys, and she asked, "How many of you would like to go to heaven?" All the hands shot into the air at once, except one. She was astounded. She asked, "Charlie, you mean you don't want to go to heaven?" He said, "Sure, I want to go to heaven, but not with that bunch."

Unfortunately, that is how many religious groups feel about one another. Consider the Middle East, and, in parts of Lebanon, Christian militias fighting each other. All three great faiths in that part of the world trace their origins through the patriarch Abraham. All three embrace the Mosaic Law. All three are monotheistic. And yet as the political walls of this world come tumbling down, the religious walls seem to grow higher and higher. How tragic. Today’s gospel tells us how Jesus healed the daughter of a Gentile woman in spite of the religious prejudice of his fellow Jews for the Gentiles.
All three readings today speak of the expansive and universal nature of the “kingdom of God,” in contrast with the protocol of the day which demanded that salvation should come first to the Jews and then to all the people of the earth. Although God set the Hebrew people apart as His chosen race, He included all nations in His plan for salvation and blessed all families of the earth in Abraham (Gen 12:1-3). By declaring through the prophet Isaiah (the first reading), “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” God reveals the truth that in His eyes there is no distinction among human beings on the basis of race, caste or color. The long-expected messianic kingdom was intended, not only for the Jews, but for all nations as well.
Today’s psalm rejects all types of religious exclusivity: "Let all the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. For you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth, so that your saving power may be known among all the nations."
The gospels describe only two miraculous healings Jesus performed for Gentiles: the healing of the daughter of the Canaanite woman and the healing of the centurion’s servant (Mt. 8: 10-12). The encounter with the Canaanite woman was the only occasion on which Jesus was ever outside Jewish territory. The miracles foreshadow the extension of the gospel to the whole world.
By granting the persistent request of the pagan woman, Jesus demonstrates that his mission is to break down the barriers and to remove the walls of division and prejudice between the Jews and the Gentiles. God does not discriminate but welcome all who believe in Him, who asks for His mercy and try to do His will.

Jesus first ignores both the persistent cry of the woman and the impatience of his disciples to send the woman away. He then tries to awaken true faith in the heart of this woman by an indirect refusal, telling her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But the woman is persistent in her request. She kneels before him and begs, "Lord, help me." Now Jesus makes a seemingly harsh statement, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

She does not get angry, nor does she lose her temper on being called a dog. It is said that disaster makes one better or bitter. Her disaster made her better, better in her faith and trust in God, than become bitter to others and God. She actually admits that Jesus is right. It looks like as if she would be telling Him: —I am a dog, but the dog is under its master’s protection.
Jesus was completely won over by the depth of her faith, her confidence and her wit and hence responded exuberantly, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish."
God does not distribute his blessings denominationally. So we need to pull down the walls of separation and share in the universality of God’s love. Very often we set up walls which separate us from God and from one another. Today's Gospel reminds us that God's love and mercy are extended to all who call on him in faith and trust, no matter who they are. In other words, God’s care extends beyond the boundaries of race and nation to the hearts of all who live, and God’s house should become a house of prayer for all peoples. It is therefore fitting that we should pray that the walls which our pride, intolerance and prejudice have raised, may crumble. Next, we have to be grateful to God for all the blessings we enjoy. As baptized members of the Christian community, we have been given special privileges and easy access to God's love. But we also have serious responsibilities arising from these gifts. One of these responsibilities is to make clear to others, with true humility and compassion, that God's love, mercy and healing are for them also because they too are the children of God.

Often when it is asked to the candidates in RCIA, why it took them so long to decide to become Catholic, many times the response is, "No one ever invited me!" If due to lack of our initiative any one loses the chance to come to a deeper experience of Christ and the sacraments, we are no different from the disciples who were embarrassed by the shouting of the Canaanite woman after them and asked Jesus to dismiss her. From September 6th we begin our RCIA in the parish. Let’s decide to invite at least one person to our program there by helping to fulfill the prayer of Jesus: "that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that the world may believe that you sent me." (John 17:21) After his resurrection, Jesus would tell his disciples: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature (Mk 16:15). It is our duty to preach the good news near and far.
The word “catholic” also means universal. Our church and our homes should be a place every one should be welcome. Jesus is asking us to hear the requests of the Canaanites of our families, neighborhoods, schools and cities. It is easy to admit the attractive, powerful, wealthy, flattering, and useful immigrants into our personal little islands. Jesus kept crossing boundaries with His welcoming and healing words and touch. Let’s be Catholic in the true sense of the word.

XIX-Sunday-A

XIX-Sunday:1 KGS 19: 9, 11-13; ROM 9: 1-5;Gospel: MATTHEW 14: 22-33

Three ministers were out fishing together in a small boat. One of them, suddenly realizing that he had left his tackle box in the cabin, stepped out of the boat, and walked on the water over to shore. Just then, the second one said he had forgotten his faithful fishing hat on the front seat of the car. He too stepped out of the boat and walked on the water over to shore. When they had both returned, the third minister who had watched this remarkable demonstration with mouth open and eyes wide, reasoned to himself "My faith is as strong as theirs. I can do that too."

So he stepped out of the boat and promptly sank to the bottom. His two companions dragged him out, but once they got him in the boat, he was determined not to be shown up. He stepped out once more, and immediately sank again. As his friends pulled him out, he sputtered, "My faith is as strong as yours. Why can't I walk on the water?"

The first two looked at each another and one finally said, "We'd better tell him where those rocks are before he drowns himself."
The gospel episode explains how Peter lost his trusting faith in Jesus for a few seconds and consequently failed during his attempt to walk on water. Peter ventures into this dangerous element, and makes his way while he keeps his attention on the Lord, but he sinks once he thinks about danger.
Jesus’ walking on the water follows the miraculous feeding in Matthew, Mark, and John. However, the account of Peter walking on the water is found only in Matthew. Thus Matthew expands the purpose of retelling this event to say something about Peter and his faith. While we might emphasize Peter’s fear, his sinking and his “little” faith, we need to look also at his leap of faith. Peter represents all who dare to believe that Jesus is Savior, take their first steps in confidence that he is able to sustain them, and then forget to keep their gaze fixed on him when they face storms of temptations. From the depth of crisis, however, they remember to call on the Savior, and they experience the total sufficiency of his grace to meet their needs. It is this type of “little faith” of Peter which Jesus later identifies as the rock on which He will build his Church. The only faith Jesus expects of his followers is a faith which concentrates solely on him. In other words, when we simply heed Our Lord, we can do great things. So, with His grace, we have to raise our awareness of God’s presence in our lives. As we become more aware, we will step out and proclaim that presence, even in surprising places.
For Elizabeth Blackwell “walking on water” meant something entirely different. Elizabeth wanted to become a doctor in the 1840s. At the time, medical schools were only for men. Elizabeth Blackwell had to fight just to get in. Finally, at one school, Geneva College of Medicine in New York, the students voted to let her in as a joke. But the head of the school didn't know it was supposed to be a joke, and he let her in. When she got there, the students made fun of her. They refused to share their notes with her. Some professors tried to keep her out of their classes. She refused to give up. In 1849, she graduated at the head of her class. When no hospital would allow her to practice, she opened her own hospital. Then she opened a medical school to train women. Elizabeth Blackwell got out of the boat and walked on the water.
Matthew recorded his Gospel after Peter was crucified, when the Christians were being persecuted. The two storm stories address issues of danger, fear and faith. In both stories, the boat seems to represent the Church, buffeted by temptations, trials and persecutions. In both, Jesus appears as the Church's champion, strong to save those who call on him in faith. The recounting of this episode probably brought great comfort to the early Christians, especially those of Matthew’s faith community. For, it offered them the assurance that Christ would save them even if they had to die for their faith in him, and that, even in the midst of persecution, they need not fear because Jesus was present with them. The episode offers the same reassurance to us in times of illness, death, persecution, or other troubles. It teaches us that adversity is not a sign of God's displeasure, nor prosperity a sign of His pleasure, that illness is not a sign of inadequate faith, nor health a sign of great faith. Paradoxically, the storms of life can be a means of blessing. When things are going badly, our hearts are more receptive to Jesus. A broken heart is often a door through which Christ can find entry.
Storms let us know that without him, we can do nothing, without him we are doomed to fail. Yet, when Jesus shows up, we gain the strength to join Paul, saying, “In Christ I can do all things.” But this demands a personal relationship with God, with Jesus, enhanced through prayer, meditative study of scripture and an active sacramental life.
Peter's cry for help is a pure expression of prayer. "Sinking times are praying times….Short prayers are long enough….There were but three words in the petition which Peter gasped out ("Lord, save me!"), but they were sufficient for his purpose….
A great deal of failure in the Christian life is due to acting on impulse and emotional fervor without counting the cost. Peter, fortunately in the moment of his failure clutched at Jesus and held him firmly. Every time Peter fell, he rose again. His failures only made him love the Lord more deeply and trust him more intently. The Lord keeps watch over us at all times, and especially in our moments of temptation and difficulty. Jesus assures us that we have no need of fear if we trust in Him and in his great love for us. When calamities or trials threaten to overwhelm us, how do us respond? Do I turn to the Lord and pray as Peter prayed “Lord, Save me”?

XVII-Sunday in Ordinary Time

XVII- Sunday-1 KGS 3: 5, 7-12; ROMANS 8: 28-30;: MATTHEW 13: 44-52

There is a story from the Desert Fathers about a young monk who asked one of the older monks why it is that so many people came out to the desert to seek God and yet most of them gave up after a short time and returned to their lives in the city.
The old monk told him, "Last evening my dog saw a rabbit running for cover among the bushes of the desert and he began to chase the rabbit, barking loudly. Soon other dogs joined in the chase, barking and running. They ran a great distance and alerted many other dogs. Soon the wilderness was echoing the sounds of their pursuit but the chase went on into the night.
After a little while, many of the dogs grew tired and dropped out. A few chased the rabbit until the night was nearly spent. By morning, only my dog continued the hunt. "Do you understand," the old man said, "what I have told you?"
"No," replied the young monk, "please tell me father."
"It is simple," said the desert father, "my dog saw the rabbit."
Jesus told a parable about a man who one day in the market place saw the pearl of great price. The merchant understood at once the value of the commodity before him and he sacrificed everything to obtain it.

The Kingdom of God is a treasure worth selling all that we have in order to possess. This treasure is of such great value that anything else we may own pales in comparison. It would be easy to give up everything else in order to have the Kingdom of God, and, unlike the treasure hidden in the field, the love of Christ is a treasure everyone is invited to possess.
Wisdom gives us insight into what is truly important in life, an awareness of the meaning and purpose of living, and of what really matters. Wisdom is an understanding of where our real well-being and happiness lie. Wisdom is indeed the “pearl of great price," that Jesus speaks of. Solomon discerns and follows the right way, and so he is a model and a challenge for us. His request invites us to cultivate his prayer for a heart and mind attuned to God's word and docile to His desires.
Ancient people hid their treasure in their fields. Frequent battles and foreign invasions encouraged the people of Palestine to bury their treasures like money and jewelry in their fields. For example, the great religious treasure – the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” discovered in the caves at Qumran in 1947 – was hidden there over 2,000 years ago. When enemies attack, they would flee for their life, leaving the treasure in the field. Years later a hired ploughman would find such treasure.
Sometimes unclaimed and forgotten, the hidden treasures awaited some lucky finder. Jesus tells the story of one such lucky treasure-finder who sold everything he had in order to get ownership of the field. According to the Palestinian laws of that time, the mere finding of buried treasure did not entitle the finder to possession unless he also owned the property in which it was found. In the parable of the treasure in the field and in the parable of the merchant who sought fine pearls, we see the image of one who recognizes the value of the kingdom of God and gives everything to possess it. Matthew, a tax-collector, might have experienced something like this when he discovered the eternal value of the kingdom preached by Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus wants us to know that the kingdom of God is worth all we have. He has come to offer us God's Kingdom, a unique pearl of the greatest price. The genuine disciples are those who respond to this opportunity with joy and selfless commitment, eagerly giving top priority to life in the Kingdom by doing God’s will. This parable teaches us that, although we are baptized Christians, we still need to pursue the true and full meaning of the Gospel which can escape us for many years. We always need to understand more, to love more, and to serve more.
What the parables really teach us is that, when one discovers Jesus and his vision of life, everything else becomes secondary. That is what St. Paul meant when he said: "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ" (Phil 3:8), and again "For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Phil 2:21). To have a personal experience of Christ and personal relationship with Him is the most precious thing in the world.
At time we stay focused on things of little pleasure that we lose sight of the most precious pearl. Our hearts tend to remain satisfied with that.
Little Mary listened intently in Sunday school while the teacher explained the parable of the “treasure” and “pearl” and gave a detailed description of eternal bliss in heaven. The teacher concluded her class asking the question, “All those who are ready to go to heaven, raise your hands.” Every hand went up except one. “Why, don’t you want to go to heaven, Mary?” asked the teacher. “Well,” Mary replied, “Mom was baking apple pie when I left home!”
For Mary, Apple pie was more dear and attractive than heaven. What is our Apple pie ?
We should live every moment in view of our precious goal. Most of the time, we are chasing false treasures such as money, status or pleasure. Often we are locked into regrets over the past, or focused too much on the future. As a result, the enriching present passes us by, and the treasure is never discovered. Thus, the really valuable pearl of sharing in God’s life here on earth and later in heaven is never found. Let us always remember that heaven is within the reach of all who follow the ordinary vocations of life and partake of this world's joys and pleasures within the framework of God's commandments.
The kingdom of God is God’s reign in our hearts, in our lives, in our homes, in our society, and in our world. Only those who develop a searching mind and are willing to give up everything for the great treasure of God’s kingdom, will be rewarded.
During these precious moments with the Lord, let us ask ourselves: Have I experienced the joy of finding the treasure and the precious pearl? Am I ready to sell everything in order to enter into the Kingdom of heaven? Let us ask for the wisdom of God to recognize the preciousness of God’s Kingdom.

XV-Sunday in Ordinary TIme

XV Sunday -A
ISAIAH 55: 10-11;: ROMANS 8: 18-23;Gospel: MATTHEW 13: 1-9

The young man Eric was giving testimony to the turnaround in his life since he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. Two years before, he confessed, he had no appetite for the Word of God. On Sundays he used to shop around the neighbourhood churches for the priest that gave the shortest homilies. His idea of a good church service was one that took as little time as possible. The shorter the better. But now that he is born again he could sit down and listen to the preaching of God’s word for hours on end. Our disposition for the Word of God is a good indication of our relationship with the Lord. Today’s gospel is an invitation to review and renew our attitude to the word of God.
Jesus’ parable of the seed sown in various soil types was an attempt to boost the morale of his frustrated disciples. They were upset and discouraged because they realized that their master was facing opposition and hostility from the scribes, Pharisees and priests. The synagogues refused to admit him to preach. So Jesus had to go to beaches and hillsides. Some of the Pharisees were planning to trap him, and the common people were more interested in his ability to heal them than in his preaching. Using the parable of the sower Jesus assured his confused disciples that the “good news” he preached would produce the intended effect in spite of opposition and controversy.
One important truth this parable teaches is that our freedom doesn't operate in a vacuum. We truly are free to choose to follow Christ or not follow Christ, but outside factors influence that freedom, trying to get us to choose a self-centered life over a Christ-centered life. The first influence is the devil, represented by the birds that eat the seed of the path. The devil is real. He and his army of fallen angels hate God and God's followers. They influenced our first parents, Adam and Eve, successfully tempting them to disobey God's commandments, thereby breaking off their friendship with God. The devil wants to do the same thing to us. So he is always planting half-truths in our minds: God won't mind if you have a little fun; God won't be able to forgive that sin; you don't really need the sacraments, you can just go to God directly, all by yourself...He uses subtle deceptions to uproot our friendship with God.

The second influence is our own tendency to laziness and comfort, what St Paul calls "the flesh." This is represented by the rocky soil. Many times, God's will demands self-sacrifice - we have to carry crosses, just as Jesus did, if we want to be faithful to our life's purpose. Our ingrained love for comfort resists self-sacrifice.

The third influence is the culture around us, which is a product of fallen human nature. This is represented by the thorns. This fallen world promises perfect happiness in money, achievements, popularity, or passing pleasures. That's a false promise, because God alone satisfies the human heart. When we follow God's will and stay true to our friendship with Christ even in the face of these contrary influences, then our lives bear the abundant fruit of wisdom, compassion, and lasting happiness.

Different circumstances control our reaction to the word of God. Some days we would feel like we are on road side being tormented by Satan; other time we feel like we are not open to any kind of spiritual food; some days we feel like full of so much preoccupation that we don’t find time for any spiritual things; and some days we feel great spiritual hunger and perk up our ears for the word of God.

Comparing our different dispositions to different types of soil has one crucial limitation. Soil cannot help being what it is. We can. And so the question that follows is: “How can I improve the disposition of my heart so that the word of God can bear fruit in my life or bear fruit more abundantly?

The questions we need to ask ourselves today are: Am I merely hearing God's word without understanding it? Does God's Word meet with a hard heart in me? Am I too anxious about money, security, provision for retirement or old age? Is God's word taking root in me? Converting me? Transforming me? Enabling me to sacrifice? And what about the "fruits" that we are being invited to produce: justice and mercy, hospitality for the immigrant and those with AIDS, the dispossessed, the unborn, the single mother? By refusing to consider these, we may be missing the healing that the Word of God can bring into our lives.
How we respond to the Word of God is the key to how fruitful the gospel is going to be in our lives. Unlike the situation in nature, we can, as it were, change the kind of soil that we are. God allows the seed to land on the hard paths, on the rocky ground and in the thickets of our lives in the hope that in those places it will find a place to mature and bear fruit, that those things which impede growth will be removed and that the soil may be just a little deeper than it at first appears to be in those rocky places. We are always challenged in our faith, to grow deeper in the love of God and blossom.

There is a story about an old man who always had witty and wise answers for people who asked him anything. Once, a smart-alecky came to him with his hands covering something he was holding. He told the sage that he had a small, newly hatched bird in his hands. He challenged the old man to tell him whether the bird was alive or dead. He, of course, planned to prove the old man wrong, because if he said the bird was dead, he would simply open his hands to expose a perfectly healthy baby bird. But if he said the bird was alive, then he would crush the bird before opening his hands. The old man proved wiser than he thought, because he said, "The bird is whatever you choose him to be."

And that's the way it is with the kingdom of God. The choice for the kingdom to live or die is within your grasp. What do you chose?

XIV-SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

XIV-SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
ZECHARIAH 9: 9-10;: ROMANS 8: 9; MATTHEW 11: 25-30
Once a lady brought her husband to a doctor. After examining the Doctor said: Your husband needs rest and peace. Here are some sleeping pills.
When must I give them to him? The wife asked.
Doctor said in reply: “No. No. No. They are for you...”
We live in a world where we are not often treated directly for our ailments. We get to the proper solution or treatment may be as the last step. When we are tired and weary we go to many other places, but to Jesus, who is the real source of strength and refreshment. Jesus invites those who are weary and heavy laden to come to him for rest and peace.
Jesus addresses people who are desperately trying to find God, who are exhausted with the search for the truth, and who find the task impossible. God gave His People basic guidelines for a holy life, but the Pharisees ended up making God's Law inaccessible and impossible to follow. For the orthodox Jew, religion was a matter of burdens: 613 Mosaic laws and thousands of oral interpretations which dictated every aspect of life. Jesus invites burdened Israel and us to take his yoke upon our shoulders. In Palestine, ox-yokes were made of wood and were made to fit the ox comfortably. The yoke of Christ can be seen as the sum of our Christian responsibilities and duties. To take the yoke of Christ is to put ourselves in a relationship with Christ as his servants and subjects, and to conduct ourselves accordingly. The yoke of Christ is not just a yoke from Christ but also a yoke with him. A yoke is fashioned for a pair -- for a team working together. So we are not yoked alone to pull the plow by our own unaided power but are yoked together with Christ to work with Him using His strength. By saying that his “yoke is light, Jesus means that whatever God sends us is made to fit our needs and our abilities exactly. Liberty comes through being yoked with Christ
When Jesus claims that his burden is light, Jesus does not mean that the burden is easy to carry, but that it is laid on us in love. This burden is meant to be carried in love, and love makes even the heaviest burden light. When we remember the love of God, when we know that our burden is to love the God Who loves us, both directly and by loving men, then the burden becomes easy. By following Jesus, a man will find peace, rest, and refreshment. Although we are not overburdened by the Jewish laws, we are burdened by many other things: business, concerns about jobs, marriage, money, health, children, security, old age and a thousand other things. Jesus' concern for our burdens is as real as his concern for the law-burdened Jews of his day.
One of the functions of Worship for many of us is to give us a time for rest and refreshment, when we let the overheated radiators of our hectic lives cool down before the Lord. This is especially true when we unload the burdens of our sins and worries on the altar and offer them to God during the Holy Mass. The absolution and forgiveness which we have received as repentant sinners take away our spiritual burden as well and enable us to share the joy of the Holy Spirit.
To take the yoke of Christ is to associate and identify ourselves with him: our destiny with his destiny, our vision with his vision and our mission with his mission. It is to know that we are not pulling the yoke alone and by our power but together with Christ and by the strength that comes from him. It is to know that Jesus is not just a teacher who gives you homework but also a friend who helps you do it.

There is an old story about a little boy who was out helping dad with the yard work. Dad asked him to pick up the rocks in a certain area of the yard. Dad looked over and saw him struggling to pull up a huge rock buried in the dirt. The little boy struggled and struggled while Dad watched. Finally, the boy gave up and said, "I can't do it." Dad asked, "Did you use all of your strength?" The little boy looked hurt and said, "Yes, sir. I used every ounce of strength I have." The father smiled and said, "No you didn't. You didn't ask me to help." The father walked over and then the two of them pulled that big rock out of the dirt. Often we try to carry our burdens alone like this boy, caring not to ask the Lord to be partner with us in carrying the burden.

"Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart." Humility is the secret to experiencing Christ's peace. The more we grow in humility, the more Christ's peace, strength, and wisdom takes over our hearts. Like all the virtues, humility grows gradually, like a muscle, if we exercise it. Lucky for us, there are three very easy ways to exercise humility. First, prayer. Every time we pray sincerely, we acknowledge our dependence on God - an act of humility. This is why St John Vianney used to say, "God commands you to pray, but he forbids you to worry." It was his variation of the old saying, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers." Second, speaking well of other people. Every time we observe and praise the good points of others, we loosen the shackles of arrogance and envy that bind humility. Third, obedience to God's will. When ever we conscientiously fulfill our responsibilities in life, follow our conscience, and obey Church teaching, we are humbly reversing the arrogant rebellion of original sin. Today, Jesus will once again prove his own humility and love by coming to us in Holy Communion. When he does, let's tell him how much we long for his peace, and ask him to lay his restful yoke of humility upon us.

We should never forget that we are yoked with Christ. When life mistreats us let’s turn to Jesus for comfort and consolation as Jesus turned to his Father. And confidently let’s pray: “Lord, help me to remember that there is no problem I am going to face today that you and I together cannot handle.”