It is a basic human desire to be constantly assured that God loves us, that God remembers us, and that God forgets all our sins. But the Bible teaches us that God is love and He loves us, whether we are good or bad. But as his children it is so sweet and reassuring to hear directly from God that he loves us.
The psalmist begs God to remember. But we know that God cannot forget his beloved children even for a single instant. At one time, God made this clear to Isaiah "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you (Isaiah 49;15)! Even before we remember to say to God, "Remember me", God already remember us. Yes, he remembers, in his mercy and his love for us, without limit in time, in number, and in power. But again it is so sweet and reassuring to hear from God that he love us. But how do we hear God telling us he loves us? Not by any sound, but by faith. This is the wonderful truth that each time we say to God I love you with sincerity, he says I love you first. So our I love you God is in truth a response to God saying I love you. Each morning when I wake up, I found myself, my soul, saying God I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. All day long inside me my soul says to God I love you. I need to remind myself that I can't say I love God sincerely on my own, but I say I love him after he tells me He loves me. This is the truth. Our loving relationship with God is a constant exchange of loving words. It begins here on earth and continues eternally in heaven. This is a wonderful trust about our loving God. Praise the Lord from the earth,
you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and women, old men and children (Psalm 148) All creation worships God. Do we think or reflect on this? Does all creation really praise God? Does the sea, mountain, valley, plain, show, forest, desert, waterfall and river worship God? The scripture says yes they do? But how? They worship God when they display their beauty, when they produce beautiful and gentle sound, when they produce fruits for food or flowers to please man. These are just a few examples. We need to see and behold how nature worship God. Research found that every day we are surrounded by millions of ultrasonic songs. Did you know, for instance, that whales sing and their songs can travel thousands of miles underwater? Even earthworms make faint staccato sounds! A single hydrogen atom emits one hundred frequencies which is more musical than a grand piano, which only emits 88 frequencies. One science writer Lewis Thomas summed it up it this way: "If we had better hearing, and could discern the [singing] of sea birds, the rhythmic [drumming] of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of [flies] hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet." All creation worships it's Creator. When we lift our praise to God we join a larger song of worship. However, there is a big difference between nature and animal praise and that of human praise. Nature and animal praises are offered based on instinct (or natural). Human worship is voluntary based on free will. God is seeking those who will join the song. Jesus said, "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks" (John 4:23). What creation does best for us is to point our attention to the Creator. Then we can worship Him. Makoto Fujimura, Christian artist and thinker, said, "Perhaps the greatest thing we can do as a Christian community is to behold. Behold our God. Behold his creation. There is so much beauty around us. Jesus seemed to indicate that beauty is a door into the Gospel." Let us pray: Mighty Creator, when we consider the works of Your hands, we bow in awe before You. Your power, majesty, imagination, knowledge and love impressed into Your creation calls us to praise Your name and join the song of what You have made. We praise You! For You alone deserve glory, honor and praise, forever! In Jesus name, amen.. Psalm 100:2-4
Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. Worship is at the centre of church life and the individual life of each believer. The practice of worship demonstrates an active spiritual life. Without worship, there is no spiritual life. Worship is everything we do with God, it is prayer, it is singing to God, it is meditation, it is confession, it is adoration, it is reflection of God's words, it is work of charity. For Catholics, the mass is the centre of our worship life. It is source and summit of our faith. It is initiated by Jesus at the last supper with his apostles with instructed to do it in remembrance of him. This is the greatest sacrament because Christ himself is present in the consecrated bread and wine. Jesus died more than 2,000 years ago. Through his death, man receives forgiveness and healing of our soul. Every time we celebrate mass we receives the grace of forgiveness and healing and increases our capacity to love, to be a better person, to be wise and to be joyful and peaceful. Let us thanks God for the gift of worship and let us worship together with this beautiful and spirit-filled song. Psalm 145 1
I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. David teaches us how to praise God and truly speak to the Lord with words which do not plead for earthly needs, for physical comforts, for any of those usual requests by man, who asks the Most High for very earthly things. It is not a sin to ask for them. The Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ has taught men to ask for their daily bread. But, if one were to properly meditate on it, He placed this request-for an entirely human need-after the three sublime requests:
These are words from the Our Father. The prayer that Jesus teaches us. The perfect prayer, because it is taught by the Word. After the 3 sublime words of prayer, only we ask God for our earthy needs when we say 'Give us this day our daily bread'. After this, the prayer rises up again from the human need for food to the spiritual needs of the soul when we say "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,' We finish by asking our Father to depend us from temptation, thus concluding the prayer at the spiritual level. This prayer, without any gap or defect, teaches man how, why, and for what he should pray. But man generally does nothing but pray for earthly and material needs. And if it were only for the need of bread! The ones who prays only for spiritual things and for the glory of God and the welfare of his brothers are like a star set aflame. Heaven sees these solitary people at prayer, and their prayers reach heaven like a song amidst the poor and earthy requests of ninety percent of creatures. Blessed are those who are able to pray for the spirit and for spiritual things. More blessed are those who are able to pray not even to ask for holy things, but to say, 'You, that know what is best for me, give me what's best.' Most blessed are those who come to forget about themselves and asking God to do what is best, but say only, 'I pray that what is for your glory and what may serve to sanctify my brothers and sisters may be accomplished.' "Then the one at prayer rises to perfect prayer, to that which forgets one's own martyrdoms, but entreats for others. The prayer of Most Holy Jesus on the Cross, even loftier than the prayer of obedience in Gethsemane. Loftier because it is perfect charity: 'Father, forgive them.' David has instructed us to the sing a new song to the Lord, so we obey, we sing, we make singing to God part of our life. We believe that it glorifies God when we sing to him. We believe that when we sing we show our love for God, we demonstrate our spirituality, our religiosity, our commitment. We sing because we are charismatic, we are spirit-filled.
But David gave the reason for the singing, and that is sing a new song for God has done marvelous things; or great things, or wonderful things, or extraordinary things. Our singing is driven by seeing God's marvelous things. Without the seeing, we can't sign the way David wants us to sing. We sing because God has done marvelous thing in our life. Do we see God's marvelous work in our life? We need to see because it is an important pre-condition to singing. Yes, we do have the God-given ability to see. Through the gift of faith, we see that God has provided for all our needs, for example. To make it more concrete and real, we have seen God's marvelous work when Jojoy got his working permit in the most unexpected manner, when Patrick and Anne got new jobs back at the right time, when Sonny got a renewal of his job, when Moonyeen and I got special arrangement to visit and care for our ageing parents; and John and Princess are blessed with wonderful boys. Even is difficult and challenging times, we have seen His protection, provision and guidance. If we go deeper, we can also see God's mercy. He did not only forgive our sins but also healed our soul and renewed our spirit, allowing us to take part in His work through CFC. In our community we often hear stories of repentance, conversion and transformation, These are the marvelous works of God happening in our own community. One must see the marvelous works of God. This is vital when we sing a new song to God as David calls us. Praised be to God. Amen Let us contemplate of God's omniscient power from Psalm 139:1-3
LORD, you have searched me, you know me: you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. You sift through my travels and my rest; with all my ways you are familiar. God is all knowing or omniscient. That is one important attribute of God. When we say that God is omniscient, it means that he has perfect knowledge of all things. He does not have to learn anything and he has not forgotten anything. God does not have to reason things out, find out things, or learn them gradually. He knows everything that has happened and everything that will happen. God knows us. His knowledge of us is not passive, but an active one. It means he is constantly interested in knowing us, understanding us, helping us and protecting us. Most of all, he is interested in our hearts, He searches our heart, constantly seeking our love. God also knows when we sit down and when we rise. What it means in the spiritual level is that God knows when we drop our guard against temptation, when we chose sin rather than faith. Having known this truth, we should at least acknowledge him in every moment of our life. We should try to preserve the gifts that God grants us and fulfil his will in our lives. May God be praised. Let us contemplate on God's great mercy and forgiveness from Psalm 85:2-3.
You forgave the guilt of your people, pardoned all their sins. You withdrew all your wrath, turned back from your burning anger. Why is God so merciful? The sins of the world are such and so numerous that if God is not merciful and his divine patience not infinite, the world would have been destroyed for some time. This is well understood from the story of Noah when God destroyed almost the entire world except one righteous family. Through the family of Noah, humanity survives. The same can be understood from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah when God tried to destroy the sinful city. But God instead showed mercy and saved Sodom and Gomorrah because of Abraham's request and at least 10 people who were righteous. God said to Abraham: “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” This gave sinful people time to return to the Lord before the time of Justice. When the time of Justice arrives, there is no more mercy. This demonstrates the power of prayer for others or prayer of intercessions for sinners. These prayers cleanse the world of sinfulness and filth which God could not tolerate. This also demonstrates the importance of living a righteous life. Sinfulness causes pain to God and his anger. On the contrary, righteous life covers a lot of sins and draw God's mercy and compassion. Brothers and sisters, we should not tire to always do what is just, what is good and what is pleasing to God. God has been given a precious gift, the gift of CFC, to learn and grow in justice, and to intercede for others. CFC is God's greatest gift for all of us. We should use acknowledge this gift and use it for the glory of God. Amen Let us contemplate on this verse from Psalm 25:6-7.
Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good. I believe it is a basic human desire to be constantly assured that God loves us, that God remembers us, and that God forgets all our offenses. But the Bible teaches us that God is love and He loves us, whether we are good or bad. But as his children it is so sweet and reassuring to hear directly from God that he loves us. The psalmist begs God to remember. But we know that God cannot forget his beloved children even for a single instant. Even before we remember to say to God, "Remember me", God already remember us. Yes, he remembers, in his mercy, limitless in time, in number, and in power. But again it is so sweet and reassuring to hear from God that he love us. But how do we hear God's reply? Not by any sound, but by faith. This is the wonderful truth that each time we say to God I love you with sincerity, he says I love you first. So our I love you God is in truth a response to God saying I love you. Each morning when I wake up, I found myself, my soul, saying God I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. All day long inside me my soul says to God I love you. I need to remind myself that I can't say I love God sincerely on my own, but I say I love him after he tells me He loves me. This is the truth. Our loving relationship with God is a constant exchange of loving words. It begins here on earth and continues eternally in heaven. AMEN Prayer is a basic human need. It is like eating. Man needs to eat to remain physically healthy and alive.
Man needs to pray to remain spiritually healthy and alive. In other verses, Jesus said man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from God Prayer is a mark of a spiritual man. It is the channel in which a spiritual man receives spiritual nourishment. Without prayer, man's soul is empty and dry and the soul suffers. Prayer is a conversation between man and God. When the disciple ask Lord teach us to pray. Jesus answered them by saying this is how you should pray: "Our father who art in heaven holy be your name". So every prayer should start with clearly establishing the relationship between man as a son and God as a father. Prayer is therefore a son and Father speaking to each other with love, with sincerely, with trust, with faith, with full of hope. Prayer is weapon against the sneers of the devil. Never deprive yourselves of the protection of prayer. Prayer is everything: it is confession, knowledge of ourselves, repentance, a promise to ourselves and to God, a request to God, all done at the feet of the Father. Just as the disciples did, let us ask God to teach us to pray. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you (John 16:7).
Jesus has already returned to the Father and sent to us the Holy Spirit as he promised. Through the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, we have received the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Through the CLP, we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirt that makes our community alive and active, like a heart in a body, the Holy Spirit is the heart of our community, and of the Church. It is the Holy Spirit that gives freely and distributes its gifts and graces to each and every member, so that the entire community gets some benefit. What are these gifts? One is the gift of faith to believe that God has anointed this community and each one of us is called to serve in this community. Another is the gift of charity to do charitable works for the benefit of the poor. ANCOP is a fruit of that gift. Several times in the past, the Holy Spirit prompted us to help victims of calamities and recently to help those affected by the pandemic. Another is the gift of wisdom to do what is right and what is the will of God for our community. We asked for the gift of wisdom when we are faced with difficult challenges in our service. There are other gifts as well as we know. We need to know better the Holy Spirit as our perfect guide, teacher and friend in our community life. We need to invoke Him more and more. The Holy Spirit is the love of the Most Holy Spirit, the Light of light, the Fire of fire. We need him to be our constant companion. With this word of exhortation, let us offer true worship to the Holy Trinity, to our Triune God. Amen An exhortation helps us understand the deeper meaning of certain verses in the bible and act on it. In this verse from the Psalm, David the author, tells that All God's work shall give thanks to Him and those who believe in God should bless Him.
All your works. God is always at work. And his work is to create things. Our faith tells us that God is the maker of heaven and earth. On earth, he makes the plants, the animals, the mountain, the sea and basically everything. Each creation shall give thanks to Him. Does a plant give thanks to God? Does an animal bless him? Does the mountain and sea praise God? Yes of course. When plants produce fruit for men; When animals become food; When birds sing in the morning; When mountains display its might and beauty; When the seas roar; they all praise God. Everything that is pleasing to the eyes and good for food gives bless their Maker. Man is the greatest creation of God. God created the earth, sky and stars for man. Yet, man in general (not all) does not give thanks to God enough. Man receives so much from God, life, family, faith, food, places to live, and many more. But man chooses to curse God, to complain, to worry, to hate instead of being grateful. We owe to bless God for everything and in all circumstances. Even in times of trials, difficulties and hardship, we thank and praise God. I would like to share a reflection on this verse from the perspective of a family prayer. Our topic today is about healing in the family. And prayer is an important element in the healing process. So what does this verse tells us. First, all types of prayer are good. We need both prayer alone with the Lord and prayer with a group, with family, with the church community. The first actually prepares us for second. The first enriches the second. We need to have a healthy personal prayer with the Lord to participate effectively in any group prayer. Without personal prayer, our group prayer could be dry and empty. Second, this verse refers to a group of two or three people who are gathered together. Now, two or three is a small group and is best represented by a small family, where there is the father, the mother and a child. So we can say that this is message for the family to gather together to pray. Third, it emphasizes that gathering together should be made in Jesus' name or in God's name. What is the meaning of this? His name means love. God is love. We need to gather out of our love for God, not out of duty or obligation to do this prayer everyday, then get it over with. We also need to gather out of love with one another because how can we truly pray to God if we hate the one we pray together with. So true family prayer or group prayer is an expression of love with God and with one another. It reflects the unifying effects of love. And finally, Jesus promised that he will be in the midst of us when we gather our family to pray. When God is in the midst, it means he is the centre of our prayers. All our energy, all our cries, all our praises, all our intentions are directly to him who promises us to be present in our midst. When Jesus is in the centre of our prayer, he is waiting to hear everything we say and even not say. He is eager to receive our songs of praise, comfort us with his promises of help and bless us with His Spirit. Brothers and sisters, please let praise God who invites us to gather together in his name and who promises his presence in our midst. Amen. Psalm 145-18-19: The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them.
Let us contemplate the meaning of this passage from Psalms 145. The Lord is near. We believe that God is omnipresent, that is, present everywhere. There is no place to which God's knowledge and power do not extend. In truth, The Lord is here in front of us, over us, on our side, inside us, behind us. There are passages in other parts of Psalms, in chapter 139 that support this. It says God knows when we sit down and when we rise up, God understands our thoughts from afar, God is acquainted with all our actions and ways. But there is a difference between God being present in us or around us and God being present because we call upon him in sincere prayer and in truth. What is the difference? For the former, God being present but we don't call upon him or invoke him, He comes as an observer but does not intervene in an extraordinary way. I mentioned in an extraordinary way. Because even if we do not call upon him, God continues to bless us with the basic means of survival, for example, he sends us rain, he brings us the sun at day, he allows crops to grow for food. We normally don't ask God in prayer for these things but God provides these basic necessitates to his children, whether they are good or bad, whether they ask for it or not. For the latter, God being present or near when we call upon Him, that is, when we pray with sincerity and truth, He comes not just an observer, but an active and engaging provider. He fulfils our desires, hears our cry or saves us. He addresses our specific personal needs and intervenes in an extraordinary way. This makes prayer very important. Prayer makes God so near that he listens to every word we say and every desire we have in our hearts. It reminds me of what Vassula said before that when we pray God's ear shall be stuck on our lips and He shall receive each word we say as drops of honey. This is a powerful illustration or visual description of God's action when one prays sincerely. Prayer makes heaven open and pour out its extraordinary graces and blessings. Prayer protects us from Satan's temptations and attacks; it protects us from the malice of the world and from the sins of the flesh; it also frees us from mental and spiritual pride. We know that the world needs a shower of prayer to be purified from sins. But since only a few people pray, those few must pray as if they were many. We must multiply our prayers and make it a living prayer to make up the necessary amount to obtain graces and protection from heaven. Prayers are living when they are flavoured with true love and sacrifice. If we truly understood the importance of prayers, we would never stop praying or miss our daily prayer, because in doing so we deny ourselves of special God's protection and graces. With these thoughts let us come to the presence of God and offer our praises and worship to the God who is near us and hears our prayers He will call upon Me, and I shall hear him; I shall free him and glorify him; I shall satisfy him with a long life, says the Lord. Psalm 91:15-16
From this passage, it appears that a single God is speaking. But our Most Holy God is a trinity. Three distinct persons but one God and these three persons form a unity. And each of the person in the trinity has special attributes, which are not lacking in the others, but which is more dominant in One, but also joins with the others. So, the most Holy Three complete one another forming the most perfect Perfection of our Triune Lord God. And that is why we can see the Father promises first: "He will call upon Me, and I shall hear him". Jesus teaches us to address our prayers to the Father when he told his apostles to pray to the Father. The Father promises that he answers our prayers. And that is a truthful promise towards his children. God is a perfect Father. He is not deaf to his children's call for help. He even answers sinners who are repentant, how much more to those who love him as faithful children. God the Father calls us to seek him always, to trust him, to abandon ourselves under his care and love. God the Father is infinitely holy and infinitely powerful. We are nothing, yet God the Father, in his humility, wanted us to rest in his arm, to be intimate with Him, to call upon him anytime and anywhere and He will answer us. "He will call upon Me, and I shall hear him" That is coming from God the Father; And let us consider the second line in this passage. Here, God the Son, Jesus, also makes his promises. “I shall free him and glorify him”. By his suffering and death, he obtains infinite merits to redeem us. For this reason, He is called the Christ, the Redeemer, the one who saves us. But he did not stop there. In Gethsemane, before going to this passion, he prayed to the Father “I pray also for those who will believe in me; that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” In this prayer, Jesus asked the Father that the same glory the Father had given him, and he had transmitted to his disciples will also be given to those who believe in Him. All those who live according to Jesus’ teaching will therefore be glorified by Him. Glorification means our body and spirit participates in the divine life and ultimately dwells in the heavenly kingdom. Glorification is our goal and destination. In the last line, the Holy Spirit also speaks and makes his promise. “I shall satisfy him with long life.” What is this long life that the Holy Spirit promises? Do you think it is our early life? Did he promise that if we are faithful children we will live longer here on earth, say 60 years, 70 years, 80 years, 90 years? You can see that both good and bad, both sinners and holy people can live long lives. What is the use of having a long life when life is miserable? What the Holy Spirit promises here is eternal life, a life that has no end! A continuous joy and delight in the presence of the most triune God, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Let us praise the triune God for making this truthful promise to us, that he will answer our prayer, he will saves us and glorify us, and then gives us eternal life. Psalm 31-2-4: In you, LORD, I take refuge; Be my refuge, a stronghold to save me. or you are my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead me and guide me.
Let us contemplate and comprehend the meaning of this passage from Psalms 31. David is a man of war and shed a lot of blood. His life was constantly in danger. He had countless enemies. Even his King, Saul, became his enemy who wanted to kill him, notwithstanding what David did to protect him and His kingdom. But, David calls God his refuge (which is a safe place away from danger and place where one can hide and be safe) "rock" (which shields him from attack) and his "fortress" (which is like a solid castle that protects him from all sides). In truth, God is the refuge and the rock of those who love Him, of those who serve him, and most of all of those who are under attack by God's enemies. 1 Peter 5:8-9: we are exhorted to “Be alert and of sober mind because your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that all believers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings." With the kind of life and mission we live in the community, we can’t ignore the reality that we are constantly under attack. At the personal level, we are constantly tempted; our human weakness and frailties overwhelm us many times hindering us from fulfilling our commitment and our covenant with God. There are harassment in our workplace, our livelihood, and our businesses. There are sicknesses and diseases. There are financial problems. At the family level, there are conflicts between husband and wife, challenges with disciplining our children, there are strong influences of the world. At the community level, lack of commitment, dedication, and strained relations; Among the leaders, we are faced with temptations to give up on our difficult household members. So we are constantly in a spiritual battle. So we must always seek God as our refugee and protection. And God will defend us. How? Through his holy name or by his name or for the sake of his name. What is the meaning of this? His name means love. God is love. We will be defended when we write down his most Holy Name in all our actions, in all our being. When we act in love in everything that we do. That is how we will be defended by the attacks of God's enemies. That is our shield. St Paul in Corinthian 13 says Love never fails. Prophecies will cease; Tongues will be silenced; Knowledge will pass away. Only three remain, faith, hope and love. But faith and hope will also come to an end when all that should be believed and hoped is fulfilled. So the greatest of these is love, which is eternal, like God. So let us praise God who is our rock and our refuge. Let us write down his most Holy Name in all our actions, in all our being. |
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March 2024
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