THE readings of the Mass on Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter (cfr. Act 13,26-33; Jn 14,1-6) remind us of our duty to really know who Christ is since he is the very pattern of our humanity, the savior of our damaged humanity. How he is is also how we should be. And given our journeying condition here on earth, Christ offers us “the way, the truth and the life” proper to us.   We have to realize very deeply and abidingly that we all have the need to know Christ well. This need involves not only a few of us. It involves all of us. And so, we just have to see how we can go through th ..read more

THAT’S “Go forth, the Mass is ended” in Latin. With these words, we are reminded that all of us who attend Mass are being sent forth the way Christ sent his apostles to “go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” (Mk 16,15)   May it be that we are always aware of this mandate Christ is giving us. We are being sent to go as far and as widely as possible to proclaim the Gospel. We are being sent to make Christ known and loved by as many people as possible, because Christ is actually everything to us.   To be sent by Christ to proclaim him in all cor ..read more

THE readings of the Mass on Wednesday of the 4th Week of Easter (cfr. Acts 12,24-13,5; Jn 12,44-50) somehow remind us of the need to spread the word of God, which is another way of saying that we have to make God not only known but also loved and pursued to such an extent that we truly become children of his, sharers of his life and nature, as God wants us to be.   In the first reading, we see how the early disciples of Christ started to go around to preach about Christ. In the responsorial psalm, we are made to realize that we have to the desire to let God be praised by all the nat ..read more

WE should not be too surprised and bothered by this phenomenon. Given our human limitations and weaknesses, this predicament can take place anytime and often. What we need to do is to go immediately to God, ask for pardon and the grace to begin again. Our failures should not alienate us from God and from the others. Rather, it should humble us and urge us to go to God and to begin again.   It’s true that we should try our best to be very consistent with what we preach. But given our wounded human condition, we cannot expect that everything will be consistent in our life. There are j ..read more

WE have to continually listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit who always intervenes in our life. And that’s because it is actually the Holy Spirit, more than us, who shapes and directs our life, who deepens, widens, if not purifies and corrects our understanding of things.   This truth of our Christian faith is brought out in that episode in the Acts of the Apostles where St. Peter was made to understand that he was not only meant to work on the Jews, but also on the Gentiles. (cfr. Acts 11,1-18)   We have to be wary that we already know everything and that we are al ..read more

TO be truly Christian, we should really have the very heart of Christ. We should have his attitude toward all possible conditions our life can find itself in, irrespective of whether these conditions are favorable to us or not.   This can mean that in spite of doing a lot of good, we can still be misunderstood, unappreciated, contradicted and rejected. And yet we should never succumb to hatred and condemning people. Like Christ we should be willing to offer our life even to those who do us evil, even offering forgiveness to them. We have to go that extent.   Like Christ ..read more

WE need time and effort to develop a great love for the Eucharist. More than that. We need to rev up our faith so we can truly take seriously these words of Christ that refer to the Eucharist: “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has everlasting life and I will raise him up on the last day.” (Jn 6,53-54)   We need to rekindle our Eucharistic amazement and to intensify our Eucharistic piety, since in the Eucharist we really have Christ with us and he offers himself as food for our ..read more

THAT’S what we can gather from what Christ said about himself being the Bread of Life. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eats of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.” (Jn 6,51)   This gives us a great reason to be truly happy and confident in our life which will always be marked with all sorts of challenges, trials, difficulties, etc. Christ wants to give himself completely to us so he and us can be one as we should, since we are God’s image and likeness, despite our weaknesses, limit ..read more

THAT’S what we can gather from the readings of the Mass on Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter. (Acts 8,1-8; Jn 6,35-40) Whatever negative things we can encounter along the way, the good, which is a matter of believing in Christ, if not, identifying ourselves with him, will always prevail, if not soon, then in the end.   It’s amazing to note that, as narrated in the first reading, the still-unconverted Paul was one of the fiercest persecutors of the early Christians. And yet, later on, he became a most intense apostle.   Miracles indeed can happen. Extraordinary change ..read more

WE have to learn the art of how to stay on course in our life so that we do not get distracted, confused, entangled and lost. For this, we have to be clear about what the real and ultimate purpose of our life is, as well as know how to relate everything in our life—both the good things and the bad—to this purpose.   This, of course, would require us to undertake regular review and updating of our plans and strategies through practices like daily examinations of conscience, monthly days of recollection, annual retreats, etc. And even during the day, we should make a number of pit sto ..read more