There are many misconceptions about following the Lord Jesus. Some believers think that it offers a problem-free, challenge-free and stress-free life.
But to contrary to this myopic view, following the Lord has a lot of demands to consider. It is truly costly:
“If you WISH to be a follower of mine, DENY yourself and TAKE UP YOUR CROSS each day, and follow me.”
Deny oneself and taking up cross each day! Wow! Such costly and daunting tasks to carry! Who can bear that? All the more if we are to carry them DAILY?
We know, by human standards, it is difficult to set aside our selfish desires and to shoulder our burdens each day. It is never a joke.
That is why, it takes courage and trust to follow the Lord and to be his disciples. Courage, because we are not taking the control of our life. And trust, because we have to surrender and sacrifice a lot for this life. Thus, those who follow Him are truly brave men and women.
Nevertheless, Jesus did not promise an easy life and smooth journey. He just said:”For if you choose to save your life, you will lose it; But if you lose your life for my sake, you will save it.” No assurance of a happy and smooth-sailing life’s journey.
What we can thread out from these words of Jesus is that our life and its meaning can only be fully achieved by spending one’s life in serving God and others, not from what the world offers. And the loss of eternal life can never be compensated or satisfied by worldly pleasures and material goods put together.
Finally, in this time of your life, will you be willing to take a leap of faith and to pay a high cost to follow Jesus and to place your relationship with him above all else?
What if that something which you are so attached to is needed to be let go in order for you to grow? I remember when I was still a young boy, I was so attached with my baby bottle. I used that bottle until I was about 5 or 6 years old. However, I was asked to let it go and stop using it since I was already big enough and was about to start schooling. I wanted to start school with my friends but I found it very difficult to let go of my baby bottle. I was told that I could not bring it with me and the only way of going to school with my friends was to let go of that baby bottle.
When we develop forms of attachments, whatever that may be, we could become rigid and stubborn. Our attachment will become the focus of our world that we may refuse to see what is beyond it. Thus, we would tend to limit ourselves from discovering more about ourselves and about others because we are already fixated to one or two. Nevertheless, there is certainly a need for us to look at our attachments and fixations and see if they are helpful or not in deepening our friendship with God and others.
Our attachments or fixations in life may not just be about material things that we possess but they can also be our beliefs, our opinions and ideas, biases, prejudices and perspectives and even our way of life. Because they have become central in the way we think, in the way we relate with others and in the way we live our life, we also find comfort and familiarity in them. When these happen, they become difficult to let go because those attachments or fixations have gripped us already.
As a result, we experience tensions and conflicts when we are also asked to detach ourselves from our attachments. We may feel being threatened because of the desire to remain in that state, to remain in that comfort and familiarity.
This is the scenario behind the story of Prophet Jonah. Jonah, as a Jew, hated the Ninevites. Nineveh was the capital of city of their enemy, the Assyrians. The Jews were assaulted and attacked many times by the Assyrians. However, at this time, God asked Jonah to go there and proclaim God’s message to them. Jonah tried to escape from this because he did not want this. He hated them so much. Yet, because he could not escape from God, he went to Nineveh against his will and called the people to repentance. Jonah must have wished that the people would not repent and be punished by God because he wanted them, dead. However, the people repented and turned away from their sins and God showed mercy.
This was something that Jonah found it difficult to understand. He thought and believed that God was only for the Jews. Yet, he realized too that God is beyond his limited understanding of God’s mercy. God is for everybody. God’s mercy is borderless. Jonah understood this later on because he was also able to let go of his biases against his enemies. Jonah let go of his prejudices against them and began to see life in God’s perspective.
Indeed, the experience of Jonah teaches us how God shows His infinite and borderless mercy. In fact, it was not just the Ninevites who repented from their sins, Jonah also repented from his biases and hatred towards the people. This was how Jonah showed his growth as a person and as a prophet of God.
In the same way, Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians brought this challenge not to be gripped and to be too attached to the things in this world. Though Paul did not say that everything we have in this life are unimportant, but, Paul brought out the essential aspect of what is to come. That is why, he said
let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.
For the world in its present form is passing away.
Paul reminds us really of the danger to be too attached of what the world offers us. Our possessions and even our life itself is not ours. Again, making ourselves too absorbed with our attachments and fixations, deprives us to experience the fullness of life with others and with God. Thus, it is when we learn to give more emphasis on God that we also discover the boundless generosity and mercy of the Lord to us.
This is the very story that we have also heard in today’s Gospel. The call of Simon, Andrew, James and John was a radical call to follow Jesus and to give more importance to God in their lives. As Jonah repented from his hatred and changed his perspective in God’s perspective, the disciples also turned away from their comforts in order to follow the Lord. By following Jesus, they too embraced a life that completely changed the course of their way of living from being fishermen into being missionaries.
This is basically what Paul told us in the second reading – and that is in giving more importance to God’s offer to us. Remember, we can only do this and respond like the disciples when we also repent and change our way of life. Jesus, at the beginning of this Gospel, proclaimed, “Repent and believe in the gospel.”
Indeed, these are the invitations for us this Sunday – TO REPENT AND TO BELIEVE in the gospel, in the Word of God made flesh.
To repent is to turn away from our sins, as well us turning away from those attachments and fixations in us that are preventing us from growing to become mature in our relationships with one another and with God, and those that are preventing us to see life in the way God sees it to be.
To believe in the Gospel is to respond with generosity and availability to God and to those who are in need of mercy. To believe in Jesus is also becoming dependent on God and in His providence that will allow us to embrace new perspective and fresh beginnings in life and to embrace change in our way of life according to God’s desire for us.
May these invitations to repent and to believe, inspire growth in us and bring us into the fullness of life with Jesus and with the Church. Hinaut pa.
Our Christmas songs that filled the air have stopped playing. Most of our Christmas decorations were all kept and hidden. However, the spirit of Christmas lives on. Our liturgy portrays to us today how the spirit of Christmas continues to call us towards God as we also begin the first week in Ordinary Time.
Here in Ordinary Time, we do not celebrate any particular aspect of the mystery of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Rather, what we celebrate during this time, is the mystery of Christ honored in its fullness, especially on Sundays (from the Ordo 2021). This means that in Ordinary Time, we are called to listen, follow and live the invitations of Christ revealed in his public ministry. The mystery of the resurrection is also fully celebrated during the ordinary Sundays.
Now, our Gospel today from Mark, begins with the invitation to listen and follow the Lord. This call ultimately brings us to live fully the invitation of Christ. Hence, Mark tells us how the Emmanuel, who is Jesus, walks and encounters people as he goes along in his journey. In those encounters of Jesus, the Lord calls and invites people to follow him.
From what we have heard in the Gospel, we might have wondered if those men, Simon and Andrew as well as James and John followed Jesus immediately without any difficulty. Mark only described to us the symbolic change of ways in following Jesus by leaving behind their “nets” and their “father.”
Moreover, Mark was actually trying to tell us about the attitude of these men by being able to change their way of life. This is what we have heard today in the Gospel, “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” And so this was what these men did. They changed their ways by becoming fishers of men and women from being previously fishermen as Jesus invited them, “Come after me.”
They abandoned their comfort zones in order to go beyond from themselves. They gave up their old attitudes that prevented them to go forward. These include accepting their sins and failures and accepting too that they were in need of God’s mercy.
Their personal encounter with Jesus gave them the confidence in themselves and faith in the Lord who believed in them. They had been given the courage to believe in their capacities and potentials and to believe in God’s tremendous love for them.
For us today, the Christmas Season was really an opportunity for us to encounter the Lord intimately in our life through our families and friends and through our Church and even through the difficult and dark situation that we have been through. We went through advent to joyfully wait for his coming and to be more vigilant of God’s presence. We have celebrated the Birth of Jesus to affirm that we are indeed loved beyond our expectation despite being unworthy.
Hopefully, our Christmas experience had really given us that opportunity of intimate encounter with Jesus. Our encounter with the Lord, just like the first disciples, allows us to be more familiar with Jesus’ voice to follow him wherever he may lead us.
Thus, allow Jesus to call us today, to motivate us, to inspire us, to give us courage and faith so that he may lead u to change our old ways that prevent us from going forward. Allow the Lord to challenge us and lead us to go out from our comfort zones so that we may become free and happier.
In this way, we may discover more and more who Jesus is in our life and who we are before God. This is discipleship. This is following the Lord closely. In this journey, we may find more adventures and wonders to un-learn our selfish human ways in order to learn God’s ways. Hinaut pa.
What prevents us to fully commit ourselves to a relationship? Why are we being prevented and what makes it difficult to fully commit?
A couple who was about to be married shared to me their thoughts and plans. They were surely in loved with each other and wanted to live as husband and wife. Yet, they too shared to me that as a couple they planned not to have a child. They just wanted to live as husband and wife. I asked them why. The two of them confirmed that, to have a child is difficult for them. Both of them were at the peak of their careers and their individual profession was so important that losing them was not a choice. Thus, if they will have a child then their careers will be affected.
Christian marriage is not just limited between the union of husband and wife. This love and union should also overflow towards their children. Completely closing the doors to the possibility of having children, rearing, loving and nurturing them is after all, a non-commitment to Christian marriage.
Thus, our many attachments can actually prevent us from fully committing to a relationship. It is indeed difficult when we are called to let go of our many attachments. These attachments could be our careers and jobs, positions and influence, power and wealth, or unfulfilled dreams and desires, our traumatic experiences or past broken relationships. These can also be our various addictions and compulsive behaviors, or just our family and circle of friends.
These attachments prevent us to fully commit to a relationship because we are being held back and we allow ourselves to be caught up. This happened to those whom Jesus invited to follow him.
Jesus said “follow me.” The person certainly wanted to follow Jesus, BUT, in following Jesus, there were conditions attached. Jesus emphasized the urgency of following him but then the person was being held by his attachments. These attachments prevented him to follow the Lord by making conditions.
This is something Job realized also in the first reading. The story of Job tells us about the human suffering of those who find themselves righteous and good. Yet, life is not under our control. God remains the author of life and decides about our life. Job here slowly realized that he was not the master of his life. All the things that he possessed are not his, including the life of his family and his very life. His suffering was a proof that attachments in life do not give security and contentment and that he can just set conditions in his relationships with God, the almighty.
Today, Jesus also calls us to follow him freely and without conditions. Each of us is being invited, wherever we are and whoever we are. Whether you are working and married or single, unemployed or a simple vendor, a professional or a laborer, well and healthy or sick, a religious or a government official, young or old – the Lord calls us to commit ourselves to Him. When we commit ourselves, then, we too are challenged to let go of our attachments that may prevent us from fully following Jesus.
Let us ask Mary, Our Mother of Perpetual Help, t to guide us in recognizing our unhealthy attachments so that we will be able to let go of them and realize the freedom and peace of choosing Jesus. Hopefully, in choosing to follow Jesus we may also discover the joy and the beauty of allowing God to be the center of our commitment in our relationships. Hinaut pa.
Have you ever come to a point where you felt so unworthy, useless and even felt disgusted with yourself because of something wrong that you have done before? This happens when we have a deep consciousness of our own sinfulness, imperfections and weaknesses. Yet, when we also tend to focus to what is only wrong and ugly in us, we also begin to lose self-confidence, self-worth and self-value. We also begin to underestimate our capacities and ourselves.
In relation to this, the way we relate with God is also affected because we would tend to relate with Him as someone who would judge us and punish us for what we have done. Then, we relate with God in fear and guilt rather than in love.
This kind of attitude was very strong during the time of Jesus. Sinners had no place in the Jewish society. When a person is poor and sickly, they believed that God punished him/her for the sins the person committed or committed by his/her parents in the past. People believed that sinners must be driven away from the community.
This is the reason why lepers were untouchables, or the paralytics, the lame and the blind were despised by the “normal people,” because they were sinners and were punished by God. The seemingly normal people who were identified as the Pharisees and Scribes maintained a status quo that separated them from the sinners. These people would not touch any known or public sinners. They would not join them in any celebration. They forbid those sinners from entering the synagogue and the Temple. They disowned the sinners, treated them as less-humans, despised them and condemned them.
Thus, every sinner felt unloved, unwanted and condemned. However, this is not the case with Jesus. Jesus turned the condemning culture upside down. Jesus went away from the rigid, judgmental and unforgiving Pharisees and Scribes. He surprised them with forgiveness, mercy and love.
This is what has been proclaimed in today’s Gospel as Jesus called Matthew, a tax-collector to follow him. Matthew, since he worked with the Roman rulers and collected tax among his fellow Jews, was considered a public sinner. His fellow Jews despised and prohibited him to enter the synagogue and the temple and even to mingle with his fellow Jews. Matthew, like any other sinner, was condemned and excommunicated by the Jewish society.
For the Jews, no righteous Jew shall talk to him or touch him. Yet, Jesus did all these things. Jesus talked to Matthew, touched him and even dined with him, made him a friend and called Matthew to be one of the disciples. This tells us how Jesus calls and brings many wonders in the life of a person who responds.
Jesus proclaimed his message to everyone as he said, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” This tells us that God is a God of forgiveness, of many chances, of healing and freedom. Jesus understands the struggle of a sinner though he was not a sinner himself.
The letter of Paul to the Ephesians tells us that each of us has been given the grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. As Matthew, the sinner was given the grace of forgiveness and acceptance, and so we are. The presence of God is the grace that liberates us from whatever burden, shame and guilt that we are suffering from.
Hence, we should be careful then, when we feel the temptation to appear righteous and superior. Jesus said that he did not come for the righteous but for the sinners because righteous people do not need God. In fact, when we feel too righteous, we become arrogant. Arrogance keeps us away from God and would make us deny God’s mercy.
This is the invitation for us today. We are called to humble ourselves by acknowledging our sinfulness. This moves us then, to recognise our need for God, need for forgiveness and healing. And when we recognise God in our life, then, we also allow God to transform us, to change our lives, to call us and to touch us like what happened to the public sinner, Matthew. As he allowed Jesus to call him, Matthew’s life was changed forever who became an apostles and an evangelist. Matthew, through his past life, brought many people to know Jesus until today.
Hopefully, this kind of attitude towards ourselves and towards God, our attitude and treatment to those who failed, committed mistakes and have wronged us, may also become more like Jesus – that we may become welcoming of other sinners like us, by forgiving those offenders like us, and by promoting healing and reconciliation and not condemnation and destruction of sinners and offenders like us. Hinaut pa.
A DOSE OF GOD TODAY 