Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

Today's gospel is simple. Love your Enemies!

We have heard the principle, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Our Lord requires His followers not to seek revenge, but to be merciful. This is the most difficult challenge perhaps in Christianity. Anyhow, Jesus never said it would be easy to follow Him. We need to let the Holy Spirit help us. We need to pray for it.

Today we celebrate our faith's highest mystery. Let's learn how to live it in our lives.

Honesty and simplicity may not be in vogue nowadays. What is in is complicatedness, wordiness, falsehood, misinformation, etc. Jesus reminds us in today's gospel about the importance of truthfulness and the commitment we each make in declaring each truth.

We read today's gospel about Jesus teaching about the requirements of His Law. He discusses the nature of sin originating in man's higher powers. Hence, any sin begins in our thinking and willing. Then, He instructs us to flee from occasions of sin. Lastly, He clarifies the evil of divorce.

We celebrate today the best gift we have in Jesus Christ as the Priest. With His priesthood we have been saved. All His actions on earth were transformed by His priestly nature and mission that we can now enjoy filiation with God and destiny in Heaven. We are all called to assume a priestly soul, in imitation of Christ.

Our Lord Jesus Christ reveals in the gospel today His mind and intentions with regard to the Law that Was revealed before His coming. He had no intention of changing it, but to fulfill it. Just like what we saw yesterday when He introduced a clarification regarding the sixth commandment. Adultery is not only committed in physical terms, but also in the realm of thinking and willing.

What would you say of a lighted bulb not giving off light? Or a live charcoal not giving off heat? A Christian is supposed to change his environment and to bring it closer to God.

Jesus gave us His Mother to be our Mother too! Mater Dei, Mater nostra! Children look like their parents. How do we try better to imitate her?

Today, the Church opens so officially with the coming of the Holy Spirit in the fullest sense, enough to send each of the weak and fearful apostles to evangelize the Church, and even face martyrdom. We need Him more, nowadays.

We end the reading of the gospel written by St. John, the Apostle. This ending comes with two details. The first one is about the preoccupation of St. Peter for the future of St. John. St. Peter just received his mandate to take care of Jesus' flock even though he had denied Jesus three times. Jesus only asked for his love. Jesus admonishes him not to be concerned about what the vision of the others would require of them. He demands that we only follow Him. The second detail is about the fact of Sacred Scriptures not being able to contain all of Jesus' activities and words. In other words, there is another source of Sacred Revelation, i.e., Sacred Tradition.

St. John, the Evangelist's gospel ending is the focus of today's mass. He tells us two things. First, St. Peter, after having been told about how he would die, wondered what would happen to St. John. Jesus teaches us also about focusing ourselves in fulfilling God's Will for us personally, instead of making the call of others a factor in how we respond to our calling. Second, St. John assures us that the written Word of God is limited. That means that there are other details of Divine Revelation that are preserved elsewhere in Sacred Tradition, which is the unwritten Word of God.

Today's gospel reveals to us God's attitude and disposition with respect to any of us sinners. He only asks us one question. Our imagination and egoism worry us with meant questions to rob us of self- worth and peace. "Do you love me?"is all He is interested in. That question launches us to the great adventure of working together with God to become a saint and help others to become one as well.

Let us each contribute our share to seek unity in the Church.

The gospel today brings up the matter of Jesus' priestly prayer for unity. It is a divine attribute. Jesus prays that we be one with Him. Unity is a attribute of the divine nature. He is One, indivisible in Himself where everything in Him is identified with His nature, although we by the limitation of our knowing and nature, we see Him to be composed of different parts; He is One because there cannot be two or more Gods aside from Him. Since He is One, He prays to His Father that we are one with Him and that we are one with one another. This unity with one another is respectful to our identities. Although we are to be one with God, each of us preserves our individualities. The demon is the source of disunity.

Take courage, I have conquered the world! We should listen to these words of Jesus all the time to remind ourselves that we belong to the Easter people and Alleluia is our song, borrowing the words of St. John Paul II. He conquered death. He won our salvation. We fear nothing now. What the devil does is try to scare us, make us doubt, etc. Events, tragedies, failures, uncertainties etc may stagger us. But hear those words of Jesus! They are the positive version of the usual "Do not fear."

We celebrate today the Lord's departure for Heaven in His Ascension to Heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father, from there He shall come to judge the living and the dead. This is what we contemplate in the second mystery of the Glorious Mysteries. I we have been looking at Him when He was on earth, we will then continue to look up to Him, eager to join Him there. Against our tendencies to fall down for creatures, we oppose them by looking at Jesus. We look upwards. We look for the things in Heaven. These things are the permanent values of the Good, the Truth and the Beautiful. Creatures have different amounts of these. Thus, we should not be fooled by pursuing creatures as if they were divine. They should lead us to God.

Let us rush to do good, like Mary making haste to help her cousin.

Today, the gospel continues to tell us about joy. That no one will remove our joy from us is what Jesus assures us. Very much part of our Christian vocation is being joyful. Are we happy? We should be happy--not in the sense of an animal that is excited because it is going to eat--in the sense of celebrating life. We are joyful because we are headed for Heaven. We are joyful because God is our Father. If our joy is dependent on external factors, then we should expect our joy to be unstable. One who keeps his sights on the goal of a trip, he will maintain his hopes up. One who forgets the goal or when one neglects to keep in mind that goal, we would expect that he or she would become sad at times. Hope gives us life. New life cheers us up.

Our dear Lord Jesus seems to like to play hide and seek. Life is full of this, just like He made Our Lady and St. Joseph look for Him for the 3-4 days He was missing and was found in the Temple. In today's gospel, He apparently meant something like that, that He was leaving His apostles and that He would be found after a short while. Listen to the homily about this.

Jesus reminds us that the Holy Spirit will come. He will guide them to the Truth. Normally, we depend on our thinking power to navigate through our lives. Jesus reveals to us that He will send the Spirit to guide us. That guidance will come in the form of enlightenment so that we can see better. The Lord has already revealed all the truths He needed to leave with us in the Church regarding the journey we all make to Heaven. However, we must face such challenges as our proneness to error, of limited intellectual capacity, the influence of the environment, contrary views and examples of living, etc. Hence, we should set out to deal with and receive the Holy Spirit's assistance with His Light, Gifts and grace.

The Lord Jesus prepares His followers for His departure. He explains to them the reason He needed to leave them, even though this would bring them grief. He emphasized to them, and to all of us and those who will follow Him till the end of time, that the Holy Spirit should come to act on us, to transform us to another Christ, Christ Himself!

The Church in today's liturgy of the word is more explicit in mentioning the Holy Spirit, Who will be sent from the Father. Jesus says that He is another Advocate for us in front of God. He is also the witness of Jesus before us. The reason is that He is the Author of our sanctification, that is, us becoming more and more Jesus Christ. This is to be expected because the life of grace is the very life of Jesus Christ, that is of God, in our souls.

Today, the Church proceeds in Her plan to introduce to us the Third Person of The Blessed Trinity, namely, the Holy Spirit. For that, she continues to preach about love. A result of love is unity. The bond of the Blessed Trinity is the Love of God. In fact, God is Love! Now, the Holy Spirit is the Love of the Father for the Son and vice versa. The Blessed Trinity is a solid Unity because of this unbreakable love between the Persons of the Trinity. Further, Jesus calls us to be one with God, just as God is one. We need to possess this unity. Without it we cannot think that we could enjoy being with God, or the Blessed Trinity, for eternity. To become one with God never means that we are called to lose our individuality. We are to remain as each is, but to be one in the Blessed Trinity.

Thus, we have the explanation of many of our problems in this world. There is sin and its allies in the world, the flesh and the devil. Jesus speaks about this opposite force against His desire to save and redeem man and the universe. Let us be aware that we are not made to find our home in this place. Our proper place, or we should say, our home is in Heaven, that is, to be with God. We can be anywhere but to be with God for eternity. Today's gospel encourages us to keep this in mind. Our place is in Heaven and not here. That is why we should not stake everything on anything this world offers. Admittedly, we are tempted to value all kinds of creatures to the detriment of our pursuit of God and distraction from Him. We are tempted to settle with creatures to such an extent that God is displaced and practically replaced.

We hear Jesus loud and clear. In another homily, Jesus spoke of this commandment also, but He referred to this commandment as the new commandment. That is evident, since we need to be reminded of this all the time. It is so easy to disobey this, especially in this imperfect world full of imperfect and defective people. No one is exempted of some degree of imperfection. We are commanded to love them, all the time! Jesus is clear that the standard of our love for the others is His love for us. That is a tall order, right? As they say, "dura lex sed lex." The law is difficult to follow but it is the law!

Today, our Mother the Church feeds us with this episode of Our Lord's life where He connects love, with keeping His Commandments, and joy. He continues to invite us to follow His commandments because that is how we prove our love for Him. No other or better way! In this way, we solidify our union with Him. Only then will our joy be complete!

The Lord reveals to us a physical image about a supernatural reality. The allegory is the vine and its branches. He is the vine and we are the branches. It is clear that being connected to the vine will keep us the branches alive and fruitful. Not only that. Those that are fruitful are pruned by the vine dresser so that we bear more fruit. That means that God subjects us to tests, pain, suffering etc. in the fulfillment of our ordinary duties. In this way, we never stagnate and remain the same. If we do, then that'd mean we are retrogressing in life. Life grows continuously. Our supernatural life of grace needs to be constantly nourished for it to grow and develop.

Jesus illustrates to us the meaning of the claim that we follow Him. Today, Jesus proposes certain comparisons and analogies about what it means to follow Him. The idea He wants us to grasp is that following Him is absolutely more demanding than any other earthly requirement. God must be followed first and foremost. We may need to drop everything else to follow Him.

Today's gospel reveals to us Jesus' revelation of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. It is God revealing Himself to us. He revealed He has a Logos of Himself, the Word of God, begotten by the Father. Those are two divine Persons. Then the third Person is revealed to us who proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of Love, that is, the love between the Father and the Son for each other.

Jesus called this commandment a new commandment, namely, love one another. It is not new because it just came out from God instructing us on how to deal with one another. It is new because we can always begin again. We find it to be difficult to love those who are hard to love. It is easy to love when the object of our love is pleasant. But this is temporary, gets outdated, or we are open to the vicissitudes of circumstances in this valley of tears which is this life. Our emotions give us problems, especially during our times when the feelings are exalted to high heavens. What is right is what feels right! Instead of thinking with our minds, our emotions influence us so much that we might be described as thinking with our feelings. The problem with feelings is that they wane or entirely disappear. We don't feel like it anymore. Would that mean that we cannot love anymore? We can and we should because we have a different life in our souls in the state of grace. We have God's life in our souls in the state of grace. We are called to live His life through our life on earth. If we persevere in this, we can go to Heaven because Heaven is only being in God, in the Blessed Trinity. Anyhow, explore the intricacies of this supernatural love in the homily.

Today's gospel is most interesting! It consists of Jesus' revelation of His relationship with His Father. Philip, one of His Apostles, asks Him about showing the Father to them. Jesus replies that the Father and Him are one such that when you see the Father, you see the Son as well. The Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father. There exists a mysterious union about the two Persons. Jesus is little by little revealing the reality of the distinct persons in one God. To capture this well, we need to pick up what St. John says in the prologue of his gospel.

Jesus speaks to us about our troubles in today's gospel. We all get troubled, one way or another. It is very proper of creatures because of our limitations that troubles assail us. We fuss about things too. Many times we get ourselves uselessly troubled. Jesus invites us not to be troubled. He assures us of reaching heaven, where He has something prepared for us. That's remarkable! Then, He reveals to us that He is the Way, and the Truth and the Life. He is the way to go, all the time!

We are situated by today's gospel in the sermon on the mount of Jesus. After He taught the Beatitudes, one of the things He was saying referred to two images that He identified Christians or followers of His should be like. Those items are salt and light. Jesus emphasized that, "You are the salt of the earth," and "You are the light of the world." Salt and light! Two realities that affect what is around them. Salt in food gives it taste. Light in a room brightens up the place. Christians need to like them: salt, because our faith should influence the environment so that it grow further in being Christian; light, so that the dark areas and corners of an increasingly paganized world be shown light on to dispel obscurity. Being salt we give flavor to all we do, i.e., things become Christian. Every aspect of life and of our lives should be Christianized (e.g., sex, entertainment, politics, business). We are to be light too, to enlighten the paths of different endeavors in the middle of the world. People talk about doubts, obscure knowledge, error, falsehood, dishonesty, lies, fraud, etc. We are to shine the light of Christ on them. The Catholic Church has been doing this since its inception. Hence, pagan practices like divorce, wife-exchanging, abortion, materialism, etc., have been changed to having a more Christian culture. The struggle is still there since pagan practice is being promoted by the devil, the world and the flesh.

Today, we celebrate the feast of an Apostle. Matthias is his name. He was chosen to replace the slot of the twelve--clearly taken from the number of tribes of Israel, i.e., twelve--vacated by Judas Iscariot. They cast lots and the lot fell on Matthias. This is the wonderful thing. It is God who calls, but the way He calls may be just like that, as casting lots. It is God who chooses always.

Today's gospel continues the Good Shepherd theme of yesterday's liturgy. Our dear Lord cautions us so we learn to discern good from bad, i.e., the good helps us to reach our true and final destiny, namely, heaven; but there are other actors in this theater of operations who are not interested in us getting there, but they exert their influence on us by wiles, deceptions, lies, etc., to get us to another destination, hell. This is the first principle we need to be aware of. In this trip to Heaven, there are obstacles and enemies, namely, the devil, the world, and the flesh. Thus, we should see the importance of God providing us the figure of the good Shepherd who leads and defends His sheepfold. We need to follow His lead. We need His discernment to filter out those who are thieves or robbers.

Who is the Good Shepherd? This is the 4th Sunday of Easter theme. The shepherd leads his sheep to clean waters and healthy grass. He protects them from dangers and predators. But the sheep need to learn to listen to him, and let itself be led by him. We need to learn to listen and then to listen to God.

The Lord's Eucharistic discourse winds up today in the gospel taken from St. John Chapter 6. It all comes to a head because Jesus proposes that we need to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood to have eternal life. Many of His followers found this shocking and unacceptable. Many of His followers left Him. He did not adjust His teachings. He challenged His apostles whether they would like to leave too. They respond in the words of St. Peter, " Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."

Jesus now goes full mode in revealing His doctrine about His Body and Blood being real Food and Drink. We need this nourishment to enter eternal life. His words indicate that this need is absolutely. Without this Food and Drink we will not have Life in us. The opposition to this doctrine is seen in the beginning of today's gospel. His listeners wonder how He will give His Flesh and Blood as Food and Drink. Sounds ridiculous. Sounds poetic too. But it is not poetic of some veiled language pointing to another reality. Jesus repeats His lines without much change. He tells us we need to eat His Flesh and Drink His Blood.

We continue with John Chapter 6 today in the gospel. We have our dear Lord reveal to us for the first time that the bread of life He was offering to the Jews was His very own Flesh. What that means remains to be seen in the next installments of this text from chapter 6 of St. John's gospel. The initial point of the text of today's gospel, however, lets us know the dynamics involved in this matter. Jesus affirms the first step in getting us involved with God in any way. That step is always taken by His Father in Heaven. This is so such that God is the first act on us for this relationship with Him to happen. Our task is simply to foster a good disposition for that to happen. And even that effort requires God's involvement already.

Today, Jesus reveals that Will of His Father and His role in getting that Will to be done. We pray quite often the Lord's Prayer, where we beseech our Heavenly Father to grant that His Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. That Will's contents will be revealed to us by the Lord. It will be through the taking in of the Bread of Life that that Will shall be done. Listen to the homily for today.

The gospel today prods us to want this food from Heaven. Jesus invites us to this. If we want to enjoy Heaven, we need this kind of food He is offering. Jesus identifies Himself to be this Food from Heaven. If we eat this food, then Heaven will ours. Let us aspire to get this Food!

We continue reading today about Jesus and His Eucharistic Discourse. He had performed the miracle of multiplying the bread and fish. Now, He changed the setting to help us realize that He wanted to set the stage for the next step in His plan. In the end, He is going to reveal the promise of the Holy Eucharist, the Bread of Life, which is Himself. But He wanted to prepare the people for this doctrine. He began by getting their attention by feeding so many with so little. Then, He moved to another place. They looked for Him. They find Him and Our Lord introduces them to wanting to be prepared for what was coming. These individuals need to perform the work of God, and that is to believe in Him as sent by God.

The Church presents to us the third appearance of the risen Lord to some of His disciples when they went fishing. He is only the fellow who happens to be standing by the sea shore near where they are fishing. He asks them about their catch. To their negative reply, He suggests they throw their nets to starboard. They catch a lot of big fish. Then, they realize that it is the Lord. It so happens that the Lord may look like He is not present. But He actually is--all the time!

When the Lord resurrected from the dead, He instructed His apostles to spread out and reach all places in the known world to preach the Good News. The Greek term employed in this instruction is evangelion. The Romans used this word to refer to the announcement of a victory or huge development for the Roman Empire to the villages where the conqueror or hero would pass. It was the good news! But the Christians adopted the word to designate the Gospel, or the Good News, of Christ's definitive victory over sin and death. We are instructed by Jesus, the risen Lord, to announce to the others this good News of His Resurrection. He is ALIVE! Thus, the way of life of a Christian is still valid and made more powerful by the Lord's rising from the dead.

What would you do if you're invited to have breakfast with the newly resurrected Jesus Christ, who was crucified and confirmed dead a couple of days before? The risen Lord appears to His disciples while they were fishing. They did not recognize Him. They had caught nothing and were again at their wits end about catching some fish. A certain individual at the shore shouted His suggestion to throw their nets at the precise moment and to the starboard side of the vessel they were in . Then, they realized they had caught lots of fish, that this all seemed familiar to them, bringing back memories of that other miraculous catch of fish. That was when the Lord called them to catch men. They got to shore and had a difficult time hauling in that great amount of fish. Jesus invited them to breakfast. He had the coals alight with fish and bread cooking. Breakfast with the Risen Lord! We have this opportunity to be with the Lord in any noble and honest activity in the world.

We today about the recipe of our Lord for our lives. He lived this recipe first, since He is our Leader in Life. He went ahead of us to suffer, die and resurrect from the dead. This is the paschal process we need to undergo also. Without the suffering, we cannot reach the resurrection. This is the ironclad lesson of Holy Week and our Jesus' life. Hence, we need to understand that God will send us the cross in many forms and in varied degrees depending on his infinite and wise Providence. Are we ready for this?

We read again about Judas Iscariot. But this time from the gospel of St. Matthew Chapter 26. We find him approaching the chief priests of the Jews asking how much they'd pay him if he handed Jesus to them. Wow! This shocks me. Imagine an intimate friend of Jesus, personally chosen by Jesus to be among the first twelve apostles, someone who enjoyed the teachings of Jesus and His special attention and care because these apostles would carry His words across the entire known world. He wanted to betray Jesus, his Master. He was interested in the money. The amount they agreed on was thirty pieces of silver. That is another terrible discovery we make here. In Judas' eyes and to the eyes of the enemies of Jesus, the Son of Man was only worth the price tag of an ordinary slave. Oh my gosh! Shall we treat Jesus also in that condescending and belittling way?

Our dear Lord's Way of the Cross is very like our own journey in this Life.

We read in the gospel today about that Mary who "wasted" an expensive perfume used also for anointing corpses in Jewish culture, on the feet of Jesus. This gesture was evidently one of love and affection. Mary was the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Jesus frequented their home in the town of Bethany. Jesus praised her for that gesture, hence, the title of this homily. But He did that after Judas Iscariot emitted a complaint and criticism of that gesture. He feigned concern for the poor in letting out the comment that that perfume should have not been wasted on Jesus, but sold to the poor to raise some money for them. It was nothing of that actually, St. John tells us in the same gospel text. Anyhow, Jesus praised Mary's gesture and He continued to prophesy about His own demise and that His body would need that perfume.

Today, we join the entire Church with Jesus Christ to begin Holy Week. Today is referred to at the day of the triumphal entry into the ancient city of Jerusalem, where Jesus would triumph over sin and death. For Him to triumph over death, He needed to die. Only then, would He resurrect. Let us join Him with the entire Church in this swing of His Passion, usually referred to as His Paschal Mystery. This is about His undergoing His passion, death and resurrection, from Holy Thursday to Saturday's Easter Vigil.