How Christ’s resurrection delivers us from ignorance and sin – A homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, 2024

3^rd Sunday of Easter. April 14, 2024

Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1Jn 2:1-5; Lk 24:35-48

How Christ’s resurrection delivers us from ignorance and sin

“Now I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did.”

In these words, St. Peter speaks about the greatest act of ignorance in human history and its disastrous consequences, i.e. the people’s ignorance of Jesus Christ and the brutal murder of the God-man, Jesus Christ, by His creatures. Despite Jesus’ powerful deeds, His life-giving words, and Pilate’s desire to release Him, His people did not recognize Him and killed Him. St. Peter strongly connected this ignorance of Christ with grave sin, “You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death.”

However, the good news is that, in raising Jesus from the dead, God has not only delivered us from sin, but He has also corrected and removed our ignorance of His Son, Jesus Christ, “But God raised Him from the dead, of this we are witnesses.” (See Acts 3:13-15, 17-19) Because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, it is time for us now to know the risen Christ intimately and to experience the freedom from the dominion of sin that He alone brings. We no longer have any valid excuse not to know Christ and to wallow in the bondage of sin.   

The resurrection accounts show us the many ways in which our risen Savior labors to make Himself known to His disciples. He was not satisfied in making Himself known to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus and revealing Himself to them “in the breaking of the bread.” Despite their infidelity to Him, Jesus also graciously appeared to them in a group and offered them peace that they did not deserve, “Peace be with you.” That invitation to peace was an invitation to abandon ignorance of Him and to know, love, and follow Him now with complete abandonment.

Jesus also showed them His hands that they might come to know Him more, “Look at my hands and my feet, that is I myself.”(See Lk 24:35-48) He even ate baked fish before them to bring them to deeper knowledge that the crucified had risen and was present with them. Their past failures and infidelities should not and cannot prevent them from knowing Him intimately now.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we have been set free from ignorance of Christ through His resurrection, but do we really know Him now? There are two clear signs that we know Him as we should.

Firstly, if we know Him, we will constantly repent of our sins and return to Him in constant conversion. After stressing that God has delivered us from our past ignorance of His Son, Jesus Christ, St. Peter adds, “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.” His words echo the same call to conversion from the lips of Jesus after revealing Himself to His disciples, “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in His name to all the nations.”

If we know Jesus Christ, His undying love for each of us, and the power of His resurrection, we will keep rising from our sins and returning to Him with loving confidence. We will never get tired of beginning again if we know the heart of Jesus towards us sinners. We will not call Him a liar by trying to justify our sins or pretend that we are not sinners, “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us…If we say, ‘We have not sinned,’ we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”(See 1Jn 1:8,10) If we really knew the price our Savior paid to deliver us from our sins, we would not settle for one of those newly concocted phony blessings from a priest that the declaration Fiducia Supplicans recommends for people in same-sex relationships.  

Secondly, if we know Him and what He is doing for us now, we too will strive to obey His will and fulfill His commandments. Do we know that Jesus, “our advocate with the Father,” is constantly interceding for us so that we too can obey as He did?  Thus, “The way that we may be sure that we know Him is to keep His commandments. Those who say, ‘I know Him,’ but do not keep His commandments are liars, and the truth is not in them.”(See 1Jn 2:1-5) It is our loving knowledge of Jesus that moves us to keep His commandments and not just call Him our Lord, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”(Mt 7:21)

The risen Christ is with us now and He is always pursuing us to reveal Himself more and more to us so that we grow in our knowledge of Him. Whether it is in the scriptures we read or in our time of prayer, whether it is in the persons and events of daily life, in the moments of our service to others, or in our acts of obedience, He never ceases to reveal Himself to us.

If we still remain ignorant of Jesus Christ, we will be ignorant of the many things that Jesus alone reveals to us for our victory over sin. We will be ignorant of the power of His grace and love in our lives. We will be completely clueless about the value of suffering and sacrifices in our vocations. We will think little of the indwelling of the Trinity within us and our participation in the very life of God. We will be ignorant of the disastrous consequences of sin, our deliverance from the dominion of Satan, and our adoption into the kingdom of God, “God has delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin.”(Col 1:13)

Above all, Jesus reveals Himself powerfully to us in the Eucharist, “They recognized Him in the breaking of the bread.” We know the risen Christ now. Let us strive to know Him better so that we avoid all ignorance and begin to overcome sin in our lives.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

Experience the transforming power of divine mercy: A homily for Divine Mercy Sunday, 2024

Divine Mercy Sunday. April 7, 2024.

Acts 4:32-35; 1Jn 5:1-6; Jn 20:19-31

Experience the transforming power of divine mercy

“You are I know the most incapable person, weak and sinful, but just because you are that, I want to use you, for my glory.”

It may surprise us to know that Jesus spoke these words to St. Teresa of Calcutta before she founded her religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity sisters. Jesus first invited her to begin her mission by accepting her need for His mercy in her life. God planned to fill her with His merciful love, strength, and compassion for all the needy souls in the world if only she would accept her weakness and sinfulness and place all her trust in His merciful love.

St. Teresa responded to this invitation by accepting herself as someone in constant need of the mercy of God. She loved and served all persons without charge because she considered all persons, especially the poorest of the poor, to be like herself in constant need of God’s merciful love. She lived her life, performing heroic works of mercy for all, even when she was experiencing excruciating darkness and abandonment by God in her prayer life. Today, her missionary sisters are in virtually all countries of the world offering the same works of mercy to the poor and needy without charge and at great personal risk.

The disciples in Jn 20:19-31 remind us all of why we must first face and accept our own need for the mercy of God if we are going to do anything great for God. Despite all the powerful words and deeds of Jesus and His promise to rise from the dead, the disciples still have troubled hearts, they are filled with fear and regrets, and even discouraged by their failures, “The doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.” They had come to taste their own weakness and infidelity despite their good intentions.

The mercy they needed was much more than forgiveness for their failures. We too must not limit the mercy of God to the forgiveness of our sins. The risen Christ, the mercy of God incarnate, always provides for us all the many aspects of divine mercy that we need.

Divine mercy is always present to us. Jesus made Himself present to them, “Jesus came and stood in their midst.” Jesus chooses to be present to disciples who abandoned Him at His hour of need after they had all promised to die with Him before the Passion. The faithful one chose to be in the presence of the unfaithful.

The mercy of God is also present to us in the Eucharist today. Divine mercy never abandons His beloved ones but remains with them in all their conditions and situations. Our sins and struggles cannot and should not separate us from the mercy of God.

Divine mercy offers us an undeserved peace. Jesus repeatedly said, “Peace be with you,” because He has reconciled us with God and obtained for us a peace that we have no right to on our own.

We have access to this undeserved peace whenever we encounter the mercy of God in the sacrament of reconciliation. It is the peace that Jesus offers us as we are reconciled with Him and His Catholic Church.

Divine mercy offers us many proofs of His love. Jesus repeatedly showed them the wounds that He bore for them on the cross, “When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side.” These wounds are not meant to elicit guilt or regret on the part of the disciples but to bring them to confidence in God’s love for each one of them.

We too, contemplating the wounds of the risen Savior, should always exclaim, “Jesus, I trust in you!” We trust in Him in all our material, spiritual, and emotional needs. His wounds are useless to us if we still doubt His love for us and hold back the complete confidence we should have in Him.

Divine mercy sends us on mission. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you…Receive the Holy Spirit.” Our past failures do not disqualify us from being on mission for Jesus. Jesus does not reject us in our failures but gives us His own Spirit so that we can do His Father’s will as He Himself did.

We can see our past sins and failures as invitations to stop pretending to be strong and flawless and accept our weakness. They can serve to remind us of our need for the mercy of God to uphold us always. Divine mercy lifts us up from our past failures and moves us to continue and renew our mission with greater trust in God alone.

Divine mercy restores our faith. St. Thomas who once offered to go and die with Jesus now struggled to believe that Jesus was alive, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” The presence of God’s mercy brought Him to a renewed and radical faith, “My Lord and my God.”

Don’t we need to have our faith renewed from time to time? Don’t we find ourselves struggling to maintain our faith in the presence and power of God in our lives? Divine mercy constantly acts to renew our faith because we are helpless in this world without faith, “The victory that conquers the world is our faith.”(1Jn 5:4)

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the risen Christ wants to make us powerful witnesses of His resurrection in our world today like the apostles in the early Church, “With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all.” But everything begins with our attitude to His merciful love. Jesus never ceases to offer the many forms of divine mercy that we need. We only have to dispose ourselves to experience these acts of divine mercy that transform and empower us for faithful witnessing.

In addition to realizing and accepting our constant need for divine mercy, we must also be sensitive to the needs of others if we are going to be witnesses of the risen Christ today. In the early Church, “there was no needy person among them.”(Acts 4:32-35) Under the direction of the apostles, all the members made sacrifices to meet the needs of others in the community. They were not indifferent or uncaring for the authentic needs of others in their community. Our indifference towards the needs of others hinders the power of divine mercy in our lives.

Lastly, we must have a healthy fear of God and not take His mercy for granted. Our Blessed Mother Mary reminds us in her Magnificat that God’s mercy cannot enter into our hearts when we have no fear for God, “His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear Him.”(Lk 1:50) Divine mercy must move us to true conversion and holiness of life. We cannot be offending God recklessly and without remorse and hope to experience the transforming power of His merciful love.

Once we have this right attitude to divine mercy, God can and will surely transform and use us as powerful witnesses to His risen Son, Jesus Christ, no matter our weaknesses or sinfulness.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

The power of being silent in our suffering: A homily for the Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, 2024.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord. March 24, 2024

MK 11:1-10; Is 50:4-7; Phil 2:6-11; Mk 15:1-39

The power of being silent in our suffering

“Jesus gave him no further answer so that Pilate was amazed.”

There is a stark contrast between Jesus and the crowd that accompanied Him into Jerusalem. The crowd was noisy and boisterous in proclaiming Him as the “one who comes in the name of the Lord.” But they were also unfaithful. They will not persevere in proclaiming “Hosanas” about Jesus but will change and curse Him with “Crucify Him” during the Passion.

But Jesus was silent and faithful to His mission. He was completely silent as He entered Jerusalem accompanied by the noisy crowd. By not joining them in their triumphant chants, He appears completely disconnected from their exuberance and excitement.

Jesus would maintain this silence too as He was falsely accused by the chief priests. He did not utter a single word of refutation or self-defense, even as the chief priests “accused Him of many things.” Even Pilate found His silence in the face of many accusations unnerving, “Jesus gave him no further answer so that Pilate was amazed.”

Jesus was also silent when He was mocked and insulted as He hung dying on the cross, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross…He saved others; He cannot save Himself.” He did not try to speak or act to confound them in any way.

Jesus faced all His sufferings with silence. His was a silence that was full of confidence in His Father. He chose to be silent after saying and doing all that the Father had asked Him to say and do, “The works that I do testify that the Father sent me.”(Jn 5:36) He was silent because He was in constant communion with the Father and He was open to receive and fulfill the Father’s will above all things, “The Son can do nothing on His own, but only what He sees the Father doing.”(Jn 5:19) He was not silent because they hurt Him or out of vengeance towards them. He was silent because of their obstinacy in their ways despite all His past miracles and powerful words.

How different we are from Jesus when we face suffering. We talk too much. We grumble and complain a lot when things do not go our way. We think and imagine bad things about others who cause us pain. We remember and rehearse the hurts that others have caused us. We are quick to blame those who we think are responsible for our woes. We even begin to hurt others with our words and actions. We allow random thoughts to run through and control our minds and provoke our imaginations to the point that we are no longer aware of God’s loving presence and action in our lives.  

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we can never really understand the mystery of suffering and pain in our lives. No amount of talking, thinking, imagining, remembering, or considering, can yield any reasonable answer to why suffering enters into our lives. Jesus shows us that, if we enter into silence with trust in God, after doing all that we can do, God will surely sustain us in our fidelity to Him to the very end.

We must first learn from Jesus to be silent in our suffering. When we are silent in our suffering, we begin to sense the abiding presence of God within us. We become convinced that we are never alone, even in the darkest moments. We also begin to hear the consoling words of God to us when we quiet ourselves in God’s presence and surrender our frenetic thoughts, memories, imaginations, plans, and desires to Him.  

It is only by entering suffering with silence that we can actually pray to God from our hearts. St. Teresa of Calcutta reminds us of the value of silence when she said, “Silence is the seed of prayer. Prayer is the seed of faith. Faith is the seed of service.” The more that we enter into silence, the more that we can pray, love, serve, and obey God like Jesus did, i.e., “to the point of death on the cross.”

We live in a world of noise today. We have so many expectations in this world. We hardly stop to reflect on where all these expectations and desires within us are coming from. Our inner pain increases because we are futilely trying to meet these expectations and satisfy all our desires. The world, the devil, and the flesh tempt us to try harder to find relief from our sufferings. Sadly, we succumb and lose our focus on God and we fail to receive the amazing graces, light, and blessings that He is offering to us for our own fidelity to Him in times of pain and suffering.

When next we experience the pain and sufferings of life, let us first place ourselves in the presence of the God who loves us infinitely and constantly. I have found time in the Blessed Sacrament to be most beneficial because Jesus is truly present there, in His body that suffered, died, and rose from the dead for our salvation. Simply remain in this presence with a receptive attitude, trusting that He will surely act and enlighten us regarding the very next step we are to take in our pains.

Then, let us turn to Mary, our Lady of Holy Saturday. She is the one who stood at the foot of the cross, completely silent and receptive amid all the noise and insults around her. She was ready to receive the words of Jesus to her, “Woman, behold your son.”(Jn 19:26) She waited silently and confidently for His resurrection at Easter. We can beg her to help us be still and ready to receive whatever Jesus wants to offer to us at that very moment of pain and suffering. As our Blessed Mother, she knows and understands how noisy and unfaithful we all can be.

Being in the Eucharistic presence of Jesus and sharing in the silence of the Blessed Mother at our side, we will surely receive the graces and love that Jesus always offers to us. This is the only way that we can be faithful to God even as we face the unfathomable mystery of pain and suffering in our lives.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

We must pray like Jesus to be faithful like Him – A homily for the 5th week of Lent, 2024.

5^th Sunday of Lent, 2024. March 17, 2024.

Jer 31:31-34; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33

We must pray like Jesus to be faithful like Him.

“Father, glorify your name.”

I learned very early in my formation years in the seminary that I had to pray fervently to become a holy and faithful Catholic priest and to persevere faithfully in the priestly vocation. I was edified by the example of my confreres too who mirrored to me the power of prayer in the life and ministry of a priest and religious.

However, in light of all the challenges and struggles of the priestly vocation and our personal weaknesses, I have come to realize that praying, no matter how frequent or how intense, is not enough. For us to be faithful to our various vocations in the Church always, we must also strive to pray like Jesus Christ.

There are five qualities in the prayer of Jesus by which He was faithful to His vocation and mission from the Father.

Firstly, Jesus prayed all the time. In Jn 12:20-33, Jesus experienced success in His mission when He heard that the wisdom-loving Greeks were looking for Him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” He also felt troubled knowing that the hour of His passion and death had come, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified…unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.” Facing both acceptance and ultimate rejection, He said, “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?”

Jesus was neither carried away by His visible success nor discouraged by the suffering to come because He chose to pray at that very moment, “Father, glorify your name.” Jesus prays at both good and bad times.  

The letter to the Hebrews describes the constancy of Jesus’ prayer in these words, “In the days when Christ was in the flesh, He offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the One who was able to save Him from death.”(Heb 5:7) He persevered in prayers even as He shed tears and made loud cries to the Father.

We too must pray all the time. Some of us pray only when things are going well and we have no problems or challenges. Others pray only when things are going bad and they feel overwhelmed. We too cannot be carried away by our successes or discouraged by our failures. Without constancy in prayer, we cannot fulfill the demands of our vocations.  

Secondly, Jesus prayed because He was loved by the Father. He always called God His Father. He saw God as His loving Father, even in the throes of death, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit” (Luke 23:46) He knew that the Father loved Him, no matter His condition or situation in life, whether He was being successful or appearing to be a failure. He knew that His Father’s love would be effective even in the grave to raise Him up. His prayer was prompted by the love of the Father for Him and His own resolve to love the Father too. 

We too must pray to God as our Father because we are always loved by Him as His children, and we want to “abide in this love.”(Jn 15:10) We too must pray whether we have sins or virtues, success or failure, acceptance or rejection, health or sickness, peace, or disquiet, etc. Our prayers cannot be as constant as Jesus’ if they are based only on our conditions in life. God may not give us what we ask for in prayer but He always strengthens our wills to obey Him when we pray out of love for Him.

Thirdly, Jesus prayed for the Father to be glorified. Jesus’ life and prayer were not focused on His own preference or gain but that the Father be better known and loved by all, “By this is my Father glorified that you become my disciples and so bear fruit.”(Jn 15:8) This is the type of prayer that the Father answers immediately – prayer that seeks to glorify Him above all things, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

Our prayer too cannot be focused only on what we want in life or what we think will make us happy. Everything that we do in the Christian spiritual life – our relationships, prayers, activities, sexuality, sufferings, etc., – should all be directed at the greater glory of God. We have no business in anything that exalts us to the point of denying God the glory that is due to Him. We receive everything when we “seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Mt 6:33) above everything else. Jesus assures us that we will not go unrewarded when we seek the Father’s glory, “The Father will honor whoever serves me.”

Finally, Jesus’ prayer ultimately led Him to obedience. Jesus did not just pray for the Father to be glorified. He also pursued the Father’s glory by His readiness to pay any price for His obedience to the Father, “Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered.”(Heb 5:8) He was even ready to pay obedience’s ultimate price of death on the cross, “And when I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.’ He said this indicating the type of death He would die.’”  

Jesus prayed and obeyed the Father always to gain our salvation. Because He is always drawing us to Himself along the path of loving obedience, there is no salvation for us if we do not obey God always like Jesus, “He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” Praying like Jesus should bring us to obey God always like Jesus and begin to enjoy even now the joyful hope of eternal salvation.

My dear brothers and sisters, it is so easy for us to be deceived into thinking today that every single person is going to attain eternal life, no matter how we rebel against Jesus Christ, ignore His words, reject His merciful love, and resist the prompting of His graces. We may think that receiving baptism, being born again, attending Mass regularly, going to confession frequently, praying always, and reading our Bibles will somehow bring us to attain eternal life. These things, good and necessary as they are, are useless if they do not also bring us to share in the loving obedience of Jesus Christ to the Father, “Not only those who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my heavenly Father.”(Mt 7:21)

Jesus, who understands the struggles that we face to obey Him and be faithful to our commitments, comes to us always in each Eucharist. He always offers us His unconditional love for us in the Holy Mass, the highest prayer, as well as a share in His own loving obedience to the Father.

It is not enough to share in Jesus’ prayer at each Mass. We must also pray like Him so that we too can obey God in our vocations like Him and come to be glorified by the Father like Him and with Him.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

We always need regular spiritual checkups: A homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent, 2024

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time. March 10, 2024.

2 Chr 36:14-16,19-23; Eph 2:4-10; Jn 3:14-21

We always need regular spiritual checkups

I received lots of messages when I clocked 50 years a few weeks ago. There were many greetings of congratulations and even some humorous messages of condolence. I also received a message of caution from a dear friend: “Now that you are fifty, please remember to have regular medical checkups.” I took special note of that last message.

We all know the value and importance of having regular medical checkups as we age. Once we have persistent symptoms of sickness, we stop self-medicating and go for a medical checkup. We seek the help of health professionals to catch and deal with any adverse medical condition before it gets out of control. 

But do we also know the value of regular spiritual checkups? Are we also prompt in responding to the presence of sin and selfishness in our lives? Are we jolted into action by the symptoms of spiritual malaise in our lives? Do we care to know the root causes of our sinful choices and how they can be eradicated immediately? Are we not more prone to take our spiritual health for granted and postpone acting to stem the growth of sinful tendencies?

2 Chr 36:16-16, 19-23 show us how sin spreads, grows, and destroys persons, relationships, and communities when we fail to have regular spiritual checkups. “In those days, all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the Lord’s temple which He had consecrated in Jerusalem.”

By persisting in their sins despite the many warnings of the prophets that God sent, the people of Judah lose their independence and everything else. They lacked the strength to defend themselves against their enemies who burnt and destroyed their homes and palaces. Their beloved temple in Jerusalem was plundered and destroyed. Those who were not killed went into captivity in Babylon.

But we also see how God always acts to save His people. He would even make use of a pagan king, the Persian Cyrus, to liberate His people from Babylonian captivity and bring them back to their own country. They will also receive all that they need to rebuild their country and temple. No matter how devastated the people had become because of their sins, God never abandoned them but miraculously offered a means to save them.

Today, we are experiencing similar growth, spread, and destruction by sin in our lives and in our world. France, once proudly called the prestigious elder daughter of the Church because of her vibrant Catholic life and numerous canonized saints, recently declared the slaughter of infants in the womb a constitutional right. How an enlightened multitude can also become spiritually blind by sin.

The hands of the ordained clergy of the Holy Catholic Church are anointed and consecrated to bring new life to others through the sacraments, especially through Eucharist and Reconciliation. This same Church is now asking her clergy to extend those consecrated hands to bless people in homosexual relationships without inviting them to repentance and faith in the Gospel. This goes to show how apathetic we have become towards the spread of sin in the Church.

The destructive power of sin is evident in the many senseless acts of violence and wars in the world. How true the words of Jesus that charity dies in the human heart when sin spreads, “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.”(Mt 24:12)

This is why we need serious spiritual checkups in the light of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Only the love of God for us in Jesus Christ can save us from the deluge of sin and its destructive consequences. In the light of this love of God, we see our true sinful nature and how sin has devastated us. We grasp how hopeless we are without Jesus, the divine physician. It is only this love of God that can provide us with all that we need to respond to our personal sins and sin in the world.

The love of God saves us from our sins, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” We are no longer hopeless slaves and victims of sin. Divine love delivers us from all condemnation, “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world may be saved through Him.”(Jn 3:14-21) We do not have to give in to any condemning thought or idea about sin in ourselves or in the world.

Not only in spiritual sickness but even in spiritual death, the merciful love of God, “even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ.” It is never too late for us to let go of sin and begin to live for God and in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Through this merciful love, we have a new hope because God has “raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.” We do not have to give into despair or sadness in our struggle with sin. God is always acting to save us even as we are sick and dying in our sins.

Divine love has also offered us complete access to the “immeasurable riches of His grace in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Because of this divine mercy, grace, and kindness in Christ, we can “fulfill the good works that God has prepared for in advance.”(Eph 2:4-10) Like Jesus, we too can be faithful to God amid so much widespread evil.

In His merciful love for us, Jesus makes Himself present in each Eucharist. He sees our sinfulness and wretchedness. He will never abandon us in our sins or condemn us for our failures. But He will never force us to accept His love. He always comes to us as light in our dark world, offering us a chance for a truly liberating spiritual checkup. We do not have to make an appointment or have health insurance. The price has been paid already when He died for us on Calvary. We only need to approach Him with confidence in His merciful love.

Sadly, some of us will still try to avoid Him because of our sins, “The light came into the world but people preferred darkness to light because their works were evil.” Many of us will still refuse a thorough spiritual checkup with all its amazing benefits of new hope, a more fulfilled life, divine kindness, abundant graces, and unfathomable mercy.

If we still reject or refuse this merciful love, our sins will only grow, spread, and destroy us and our communities.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

How authentic is our worship? – A homily for the third Sunday of Lent, 2024

3^rd Sunday of Lent, 2024. March 3, 2024.

Ex 20:1-17; 1Cor 1:22-25; Jn 2:13-25

How authentic is our worship?

A survey published in 2023 by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate showed that as many as 94% of self-identified Nigerian Catholics surveyed said they attend weekly or daily Mass. This makes Nigeria the country with the highest number of Catholics attending Mass regularly.  

I was grateful to God for this report for many reasons. Despite all the violence against Christians in Nigeria, the many times that worshippers at Mass have been slaughtered by Islamic terrorists, the many burned churches and rectories, and the many Catholic priests who have been kidnapped and killed while the mainstream media remains mute, the faithful still hold on tenaciously to their Catholic faith.

But the report also raised some questions in my mind. If so many Catholics attend Mass frequently, why is the country still plagued with so much corruption, fraud, and injustice? How can one reconcile the fact that the country with the highest attendance at Mass in the world is also the country with one of the highest corruption indices in the world? It appears that the high attendance at Mass has little or no impact on the society. What then is lacking in our worship?

Biblical scholars tell us that thousands of pilgrims passed through the Jerusalem temple on any given Passover celebration. Jesus must have noticed the great throng of pilgrims at the temple. But Jesus is not into statistics. For instance, He is the only shepherd who would leave ninety-nine sheep and go in search of the lost sheep. He is not concerned with surveys about worship attendance but about the quality of the worship.

He found that the temple had become a place of material gain where money and animals changed hands freely and where awe and reverence towards God were absent. He cleansed the temple of the few who were involved in such distracting trade in the temple because they were hindering others from the true worship of His Father, “Take these out of here and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

Jesus also pointed to His body as the new temple, the place of perfect worship here on earth, “’Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up’…He was speaking of the temple of His body.” Through this same body of Jesus, we are to share in His own worship of the Father, the same worship of the Father that led Him to obey His Father, “even unto death on the cross.”(Phil 2:8)

Thus, authentic worship here on earth is found first of all in our communion with the body of the crucified Christ. This communion is achieved in and through the Eucharist. Through our communion with the crucified and risen Christ in the Eucharist, we can enter into Christ’s own worship. Because Jesus Christ “understood human nature very well,”(Jn 2:25), He knew how we could seek only our own gain while pretending to worship Him. Thus, He wisely and lovingly gave us Himself through the Real Presence of the Eucharist.  

But sacramental communion with Christ alone is not enough. We must also proclaim Him to the world in word and deed. Our sacramental communion brings us to share in the power and wisdom that God offers us in His crucified Son, “We proclaim Christ crucified…the power of God and the wisdom of God.” By the power and wisdom of God, we have all that we need to also become temples of the Lord in our world, lights shining in the darkness and bringing hope to all. This sacramental communion makes it possible for us to obey all God’s commandments and to perform acts of justice to God and to others, “You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.”(Ex 20:13-17)

This Lenten season, let us reflect on how authentic our worship is. What do we actually seek when we come to Holy Mass? Are we seeking some personal gain for ourselves? Are we there just to fulfill our Sunday Obligation? Are we there to receive something from God like healing and temporal favors? Are we there to be pacified in our struggles in life? Are we there out of habit and routine? Are we there to listen to good homilies or hear good music? These motives are not enough for us to experience the transforming power of the Eucharist. Unless we are ready to also “proclaim Christ crucified” with our lives, we cannot be transformed by the Eucharist.

We cannot proclaim Christ crucified without authentic worship of Jesus. This authentic worship that is offered us in the Eucharist is what brings us out of ourselves and towards God and others. Eucharistic worship moves us to search for the will of God always. It moves us to be more attentive and responsive to the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of others. Jesus begins His cleansing action in our hearts to bring us to participate in His own perfect worship of the Father, a worship that led Him to the cross to reveal His Father’s love for us all.

As we worship through Him, in Him, and with Him in each Holy Mass, He desires that we live in communion with Him and become His living temples in the world, radiating His light to others.

Our communion with Him is important and indispensable, but not enough. It must also lead us to live for Him and for the life and light that He offers to the world through us. This is the only worship that can transform us and our world today.  

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

Cultivate the right attitude to sin this Lent – A homily for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, 2024.

2^nd Sunday of Lent. February 18, 2024

Gen 9:8-15; 1Pet 3:18-22; Mk 1:12-15

Cultivate the right attitude to sin this Lent

I had concluded Holy Mass in a parish and was rushing for my next engagement when I noticed that a parishioner had packed behind my car in the parking lot making it impossible for me to depart immediately as I had planned. I waited anxiously for the owner to arrive and move the car. The owner casually arrived about half an hour later, entered her car, and drove out without a single word of apology to me. By then I was already way too late for my next engagement.

I could feel the anger rising within me. The thoughts of offense were going full throttle in my mind, “How rude, proud, selfish, arrogant, and insensitive she is.” It was only after a few minutes that I realized that while focusing so much on the annoying attitude of the parishioner, I had completely forgotten the presence of the Lord Jesus that I had just received in Holy Communion. As long as I was giving in to and nurturing the angry thoughts in my head, the more I disconnected myself from God’s loving presence with me and within me.  

Nothing affects our relationship with God more than our attitude towards sin – our own sins and the sins of others against us. When we do not have a good attitude towards sin, our relationship with God is wounded and our faith in Him begins to dwindle.

Jesus in Mk 1:12-15 shows us the two attitudes that we must have towards sin if we are going to have a healthy relationship with God – Resist and Repent.

We must resist and overcome temptations to sin now. Jesus, the Holy One of God, freely chose to be tempted by the devil because He wanted to be faithful to His Father who had recently declared to Him at His baptism in the Jordan, “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” All the temptations that Jesus faced were aimed at rupturing His filial relationship with His Father. But Jesus came and left the desert of temptation an ever-faithful Son of His Father. 

St. Augustine reminds us that we too share in the victory of Jesus over temptations, “He (Christ) suffered temptation in your nature, but by His own power gained victory for you.” Because of the victory of Jesus, we too can and should resist and overcome temptations by His grace. His victory is both an example and an inspiration for our own victory over temptations. Jesus even promises that we will overcome greater temptations, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”(Jn 14:12)

We should also begin to resist now, no matter the past defeats and failures. We should not postpone the day of our resistance to sin as if we can resist tomorrow while giving in to sin today. The truth is that we become spiritually weaker the more that we give in to sin.

We must repent of our sins in the past. Jesus declared this truth, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.” No repentance, no real faith in the reality that we belong to God and His kingdom. When we ignore this ongoing repentance, we begin to doubt or even question the love, wisdom, and power of God in our daily lives.

There are five sure ways in which we can begin to cultivate these two attitudes of repentance and resistance toward sin.

First, we must have patient trust in Jesus always. He suffered and died for our sins, and He is with us now, leading us to God along the same path of loving obedience that He has traveled victoriously, “Beloved, Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that He might lead you to God.”(1Pet 3:18) We must place all our trust in Him and not in ourselves, our firm resolves, past victories, deep sorrow for the past sins, etc. Remember His words, “Without me, you can do nothing.”(Jn 15:4)

We must also be patient in temptations because no temptation lasts forever. Faith matures in patience. Besides, God knows our limits in facing temptations, “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”(1Cor 10:13) The temptations will come and go but Jesus remains with us, whether we are faithful or unfaithful to Him in the temptations.

Secondly, we must pray always. Prayer opens our hearts to receive the light and grace that Jesus offers us in our temptations. Jesus prayed in Gethsemane and He invited the disciples to do the same, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” (Mt 26:41) We do not stand a chance against temptations when we are not praying fervently.

Through authentic prayer that is focused on Jesus, we also begin to desire the same things that Jesus desires. We can resist sins only when we have a deep share in the desires of Jesus. Praying to Mama Mary and with her in times of temptation is powerful because, as the Mother of Jesus who never ceased contemplating Christ, Mary helps us to focus on Jesus with receptive hearts ready to receive all that He offers to us at the moment of temptation.

Thirdly, we must practice self-denial and fasting. We are so weak against temptations when we are indulging in material things like food, drink, pleasures, gadgets, entertainment, etc. Though these things are good and innocent in themselves, overindulgence weakens our wills, making them slaves of our senses, and sluggish in regards to the things of God.

Practicing moderation in these things and even denying ourselves what is sometimes necessary train our wills to obey God and resist temptations. Unless we train our wills, we cannot respond to the graces that God is always offering to us.

Fourthly, we must know and love the truth always. We cannot resist temptations to sin when we are making choices only based on our emotions or on public opinions. We must study the sacred scriptures and know our Catechism well enough to know what is right and wrong, and why they cannot change. We can no longer depend on the priests to teach us everything at Mass without making our own personal efforts at knowing and growing in our knowldge of truth.

This knowledge of the truth is indispensable today when we are witnessing widespread deception even in the Church. For over two thousand years, the Church has been calling and equipping her children to repent and to resist sin. For the very first time in the history of the Church, a declaration, Fiducia Supplicans, completely deviated from scripture and tradition in giving permission for the blessing of people in homosexual relationships without any call whatsoever to repent and resist homosexual actions. It is more saddening to note how some Catholics remain oblivious to the wicked deception in that declaration. We just cannot hope to resist any temptation when we have a warped and ever-changing sense of good and evil.

Lastly, we must examine our conscience frequently and approach the sacrament of confession. We must get accustomed to dealing with the small sins before they become big sins that completely destroy our freedom and close our hearts to the life of God’s grace.

Our sins grow and multiply in the dark when we try to hide them or ignore them. We need the grace of sacramental confession to enlighten us, cleanse us of our sins, and give us strength to resist the sins that we have confessed. We will be remiss to ignore the frequent reception of this sacrament.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our relationship with God by faith is the most powerful thing in this world, “The thing that conquers the world is your faith.”(1Jn 5:4) This relationship is the source of all the many blessings and benefits we deeply need and desire – joy, hope, strength, peace, etc. We lose all these and more because of our bad attitude towards sin.

Jesus Christ suffered and died for our sins to bring us into this relationship with God as His beloved children. He comes to us in each Eucharist to strengthen us in this relationship with God by giving us a share in His Holy Spirit, the very Spirit that led and empowered Him to victory over temptation and the devil. He knows our sins of the past and our present struggles with sin. With His Spirit in us, our own victory is possible and paid for already. All we need to do is cultivate and maintain the right attitude to sin – Resist and Repent now and always.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

We must always respond to God’s blessings – A homily for the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2024

6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time. February 11, 2024

Lv 13:1-2,44-46; 1Cor 10:31-11:1; Mk 1:40-45

We must always respond to God’s blessings.

I consider the leper in Mk 1:40-45 the most blessed leper in all of the scriptures for many reasons.

Lepers were required to stay apart from others, “He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.” But this leper came so close to Jesus that Jesus could actually reach out and touch him.

The only words that lepers could utter in public were “Unclean, unclean!” (Lv 13:1-2,44-46) But this leper had the blessing of having a personal audience with Jesus and expressing his deepest desires to Him, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” He was so blessed to receive instant and complete healing from the touch of Jesus without any of the customary rituals, “Moved with pity, He stretched out His hand, touched him, and said to him, ‘I do will it. Be made clean.”

The leper also received one blessing that we can easily ignore. He received words of instructions and warning from the lips of the God-man Himself, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.” These words indicate the appropriate response that he was to make in response to the gift that he had received. God does not just bless us with His gifts; He also blesses us in instructing us, “Blessed the man whom you instruct, O Lord, whom by your law you teach.”(Ps 94:12)

The leper failed to respond appropriately to the gift that he received. In stark disregard of Jesus’ warning, “He went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.” Whatever his intentions were for disobeying Jesus’ instructions, the leper was obviously more interested in receiving blessings than in actually responding appropriately to the blessings.

St. Paul in 1 Cor 10:31-11:1 gives us three ways of responding to God’s gifts.

Firstly, we must use God’s gifts for His greater glory, “Brothers and sisters, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” We do not glorify ourselves or others but use God’s gift in a way that makes God better known, loved, and served by others.

Secondly, we do not intentionally offend others with the gifts that we have received from God, “Avoid giving offense, whether to Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in every way.” God’s gifts are to be used in edifying others, serving their needs, making life a little bit more pleasing for them, and bringing them joy and hope.

Thirdly, we use all gifts for the salvation of all souls, “Not seeking my own benefit, but that of the many, that they may be saved.” We use God’s gifts in such a way that we aid and support the presence and growth of divine life in the souls of others. We are not satisfied with saving our souls alone, but we labor in words, prayers, and good examples to strengthen others in their own journey to salvation.

St. Paul said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” because we are to be like Jesus in how we receive and respond to God’s gifts to us. Jesus received all from the Father, “All that the Father has is mine.”(Jn 16:15) He also used all that He received to glorify the Father, to do what is ultimately pleasing to us, and for our salvation. Even His broken body and shed blood, sacramentally present in the Eucharist, become spiritual food for our salvation.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church also affirms this indispensable need for our personal response to God’s blessings: “In blessing, God’s gifts and man’s acceptance of it are in dialogue with each other…Because God blesses, the human heart can in return bless the One who is the source of all blessings.”(CCC #2626) Thus, God cannot be conned or bullied into bestowing His blessings on us when we are unwilling to respond to these blessings.

It is unfortunate that the ongoing debates and discussions about the declaration, Fiducia Supplicans, have been exclusively focused on giving blessing to people in “same-sex” unions. The proponents and supporters of this declaration make the absurd claim that they can actually bless the partners without blessing the union that makes them a “couple.”

What about the response or lack of response to these blessings? We seem to ignore the truth that God’s blessing must include clear instructions about responding in a particular way. Are we to impart blessings without also instructing and ensuring the proper response on the part of those being blessed? Is it not a wicked dereliction of duty to simply “bless” persons in mortal sin and let them remain obstinate in their sin?  

Fiducia Supplicans fails woefully in meeting the criteria of St. Paul in responding to God’s blessings. It also does not help anyone to respond to any of God’s blessings. It does not help people to engage in sexual relations that give glory to God but tacitly condones homosexual acts that mock the very gift of sexuality and human nature. Thus, there is no authentic and appropriate response to God’s gift of sexuality. In truth, the declaration makes the unnatural sex of homosexuality into an idol that should be blessed, accepted, and revered by all.

Secondly, this declaration has offended many Catholics and non-Catholics around the world. It has offended those who rightly hold on to Sacred Scripture as the norm of the Christian life. It has offended those who have authentic Catholic sensibility. It has offended those who believe in a Natural Law, a law impressed on human nature by the Creator and knowable by human reason. It has offended those who are striving to live chaste lives while experiencing homosexual tendencies. It has offended those who strive to raise spiritually healthy children in a morally decadent era. It has offended pastors and religious who labor in the Lord’s vineyard and whose lives are proof that celibate chastity is possible and a beautiful way of life.

Lastly, Fiducia Supplicans has nothing to contribute to the salvation of souls, souls redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. It is only the blood of Jesus Christ that sets us free from sin and on the path to salvation, not a bogus blessing. Those who propose and support the blessing recommended by this declaration are keeping our brothers and sisters hopelessly enslaved to sin and unable to advance on their journey to eternal life.

God always blesses and He desires to bless us always. To all of us who struggle with sin and brokenness in any form, He offers to us the same words, “I do will it, be made clean…Be made whole…Be made pure…” Nothing diminishes His power and will to bless us.

But He also offers us instructions on how to respond to His gifts as well as grace to make our response possible. If we listen to His instructions and open our hearts to His grace, then we can also respond appropriately to His gifts now and always.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

Finding Purpose through Christlike Prayer: A Homily for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2024

Finding purpose through Christlike prayer

I recently visited a religious sister who was hospitalized with a terminal case of cancer. I was about to pray for her when a thought crossed my mind, “Supposing you pray for her, and she does not recover. Supposing she never survives this cancer. Wouldn’t it be wicked of you to give her false hope by praying for her? What use is your prayer when you know that her condition is terminal?” I ignored that negative thought and prayed for her fervently and with faith in God.

I still prayed for her because I know that prayer is not just about getting something from God. Healing is very much God’s business and He heals when we pray for healing with strong faith and the sick person is properly disposed to receive the healing. But prayer is also connecting with God and finding purpose in the things that we face in life. We must not reduce prayer to simply getting God to do something for us or give us what we need. We must also pray to be faithful to our God-given purpose in life.

St. Mark tells us about Jesus’ prayer life in these words, “Rising very early before dawn, He left and went off to a deserted place, where He prayed.” (Mk 1:29-39) What was He praying for? He surely was not praying for success in His healing ministry because He was successful already. He healed Simon’s mother-in-law the previous evening when they told Him about her, “He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up. Then the fever left her.”

He was obviously not praying to avoid demons because He faced so many of them already and triumphed, “When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to Him all who were ill or possessed by demons.” He most likely was not praying to be successful in His deliverance ministry because He was already successful, “He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and He drove out many demons.” Then why was He praying so early in the morning?

Jesus prayed primarily to connect with His Father and to be faithful to His Father’s purpose for Him in good or bad times. Through His time of prayer, He knew that the moment had come for Him to let go of the success of His ministry and continue to whatever may come, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” Though “everyone was looking for Him,” Jesus would not allow others to dictate His own purpose in life.

Jesus kept faithful to His Father’s purpose for Him by His loving contemplation of His Father always. When He was accused of healing on the Sabbath, He responded, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does likewise.”(Jn 5:19) His prayer life was primarily about entering into the Father’s purpose for Him and being faithful to that purpose too.

What happens when we lose sense of the divine purpose in our lives? Then we begin to speak and think like Job, “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery? Are not his days those of hirelings? He is a slave who longs for the shade…I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me…I shall not see happiness again.”(Job 7:1-3, 7)

Job is so fixated on his travails that he does not look forward to God’s intervention. His life has no meaning at all at this point. He forgets all the good that he has done for God in the past and how God has also been faithful to him. He is overwhelmed by this perceived senselessness of life because he is only thinking and talking to himself. He does not enter into prayerful listening to God.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, every gift of God and every event that He permits has a purpose. It is so easy for us to impose our own purpose on the gifts that God offers to us. We can have the warped idea that our bodies are for chemical or surgical mutilation in transgenderism. We can become crippled by an excessive fear of suffering because we cannot find meaning in it. We can also allow the world to dictate to us its own purpose for what we have received from God, making us fall into agnostic, consumeristic, and hedonistic mindsets.

We must pray like Jesus if we are going to be faithful to that purpose of God for us all the time.

Firstly, we must sacrifice something to be in communion with God. Jesus sacrificed some hours of sleep to spend time with His Father in prayer. He actually cut down His time of late-night socializing to be awake and alert for an encounter with the Father in the morning. We cannot pray like Jesus when we indulge in things, even things that may be necessary.

Secondly, we must seek silent moments alone with God. This interior and exterior silence is indispensable for a fruitful communion with God in prayer. I have found that a few silent moments in the Blessed Sacrament allow God to impress His own purpose in our hearts and give us the grace to be faithful to that purpose.

Thirdly, our prayer must bring us to seek to fulfill the will of God in all things. Jesus did not seek His own will or the will of those whom He served. He did not let anything, or anybody get between Him and His Father’s will. We cannot seek the purpose of God for us in our lives while holding on to our own self-will and personal agendas.

Fourthly, our prayer must dispose us to loving serving of all persons. Jesus is ready to leave those who appreciate Him and move on to others who may not appreciate Him. Our prayer life must make us available to love and serve all others. Such prayer should make us like St. Paul who said, “I have become all things to all, to save at least some.”(1Cor 9:23)

Lastly, our prayer must not be limited to asking God for the things that we need. Indeed, Jesus commands us to ask always, “Ask and you will receive.”(Mt 7:7) Let us ask Him for all that we need for ourselves and for others. It is never too late to ask and we must never stop asking Him.

But we must also expand our understanding of prayer. We must also be ready and open to receive from Him the grace to grasp and follow His purpose for us in all things, favorable or unfavorable.  

Our fidelity to this divine purpose is our only way to hope and the inner strength that we need to face and overcome all that this life brings our way.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

Beware of today’s demonic mindsets – A homily for the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2024

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 28, 2024

Deut 18:15-20; 1Cor 7:32-35; MK 1:21-28

Beware of today’s demonic mindsets

I gave a talk some years ago to a group of faithful on the need to be engaged in spiritual warfare today. After the talk, one of the attendees said to me, “Father, I am certain that I would not be able to sleep this night after listening to your talk on the demons and their activities in our lives.”

Her words reflect the sad attitude we have today regarding the reality of demons and their activities. We think that demons will just leave us in peace if we do not speak or think about them. The truth is that we can choose to ignore them, but they never ignore us for a single moment.

Let us hear from St. Peter about demons and our need to be vigilant always, “Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith.”(1Pet 5:8-9) It is thus naïve to think that we are safe simply because we do not want to hear or think about the devil and his demons.

On the contrary, demons are always busy, watching us with intense hatred, fully resolved and determined to bring us to share their destiny in hell. Because misery always seeks company, the intense misery of the demons makes them labor tirelessly to make us their companions in the fires of hell.

One way in which they labor for our eternal damnation is to communicate to us their mindset. We see elements of this mindset in Mk 1:21-28. The demon first acknowledges the majesty and holiness of Jesus, “I know who you are – the Holy One of God.” But this is only forced acknowledgment in words alone. The demon is not ready or willing to submit to Jesus in love. It is defiant and does not easily obey the words of Jesus, “The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.”

We too begin to exhibit the mindset of the demons when we only acknowledge Jesus by our words but resist Him in our actions. We struggle to freely submit to Jesus because we have believed the many lies that the demons have directly or indirectly planted in our minds and hearts through the world and fallen men and women.

Here are some of these lies.

1. They tell us that there is something good and useful to us in our sinful choices. They make us focus on the fleeting benefits of our sins while ignoring the temporal and eternal consequences. They do this today by telling us to be more tolerant and less rigid in dealing with sin. They tell us that tolerating sin is actually being non-judgmental and the highest virtue we can practice today is to tolerate everything.   
2. They tell us that Jesus does not love us all the time. They lie to us that we have to either earn His love for us or prove ourselves loveable. They also convince us that Jesus has come to destroy us and not to communicate His life and holiness to us. They tell us that obtaining human love, material possessions, and achievements, will satisfy our hunger for love. They tempt us to go in search of endless pleasure and novelty.
3. They tell us that God is a liar and that we cannot really trust in Him or in His words to us. This is the age-old lie that Satan used in the garden of Even, “God knows that the moment you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods.”(Gen 3:5) We hear this lie today in the idea that we can no longer put our trust in God’s words to us or the power of His grace. By convincing us that God does not have our best interests at heart, they tell us that we cannot rely on His promises anymore. Thus, we must re-interpret and “update” the word of God to fit our current tastes and preferences.
4. They tell us that our actions do not have consequences. We can do whatever we like, and God will understand. We see this lie in the idea that people of the same sex can enter into a civil union, engage in sexual acts as a couple, come to Church as a couple, and get a special non-liturgical blessing as individuals. How clever and innovative demons are! 
5. They tell us that praying fervently, repenting of our sins, doing the will of God with love, witnessing to Jesus, worshipping, and serving God are no longer fashionable and are actually useless things to do. They try to make us discouraged in our spiritual lives by pointing to the struggles and hardships that we face in life.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if we believe just one of these demonic lies, we will lose our peace of mind and get confused and discouraged. Demons are always present, active, clever, persistent, and strong in plotting our eternal ruin. If these demons can manifest in a synagogue, a place of worship, prayer, and reflection on the word of God, there is no place on this earth safe enough to keep them away from us. If they can manifest in the presence of the Son of God, they can lie to us no matter how deep our relationship with Jesus.

Jesus rebuked the demons in the synagogue immediately because their lies were subtle and deadly. He did not want us to be exposed to their lies in any way. He did so to give us the example and power to also resist the demons in His name.

We can resist the demons only when we also know the truth about God’s word to us, love this truth, and act on it. When we do not know the truth and live it out with conviction, we lack faith and tend to depend only on our emotions, imagination, and public opinions. This is how demons can get us to even begin to imagine such things as hell being empty despite the many instances of a populated hell from divine revelation.  

We can resist the demons when we have Jesus present in us through the Eucharist. The Real Presence of Jesus is our greatest weapon against these fallen angels. This is why Jesus said, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”(Jn 15:5) We are powerfully united with Him through the Eucharist. We are hopeless and helpless in this spiritual battle without a fervent Eucharistic devotion.

We can resist the demons when we regularly confess our sins in the sacrament of confession. The sins that we keep hidden will only become deeply rooted and spread. Unconfessed sins make us more susceptible to the ploys and mindset of demons. Regular confession also gives us light to recognize the many subtle ways in which demons bring us to share in their mindset.

We can resist demons when pray fervently and ask God for His graces all the time. We must not just pray for temporal needs. We must also pray for the grace to practice heroic virtue and to discern the hidden actions of the demons in our lives. Our perseverance in prayer is indispensable in this spiritual battle.

Lastly, we can resist the demons when we have a true and tender devotion to Mary, the Mother of divine grace. She who is forever “full of grace” passionately defends us from the enemy of our salvation who wants to destroy the grace of God in us. As the New Eve, she does not hesitate to fulfill the role that God promised in the garden of Eden, “I will put enmity between you and the woman.”(Gen 3:15)

Let us not be naïve when it comes to demons and their activities. Let us also not be afraid to speak about them and to reflect on them and how they try to project their mindsets on us.

By the grace of God offered in each Eucharist, let us begin to resist demons today and reject their mindset so that we can have true peace in this life and in the life to come.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!