Wake up! Stop making excuses

Third Sunday of Lent - Year C

Whether we agree or not, we are masters of rationalisation – we are really good in making excuses, and most of the time we know they're lies. Making excuses is nothing new. We are pretty good at it. Sometimes we make excuses to try to keep from hurting someone's feelings. Sometimes we make excuses to avoid responsibility for our actions. We make excuses for things we did wrong, times we failed, things we don't want to do, situations we don't want to be in.  You may be comforted to know that Moses was adept at this. Moses grew up as a prince in Egypt, but fled from Pharaoh after he had broken up a fight between a Hebrew and an Egyptian, and killed the Egyptian. Having been in exile in the desert for about 40 years, Moses was tending sheep near Horeb, when he saw a strange sight. Flames were rising from a bush, but the bush wasn’t burning up. As Moses approached the bush, he heard a voice calling his name. The voice revealed itself: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” God then proceeded to share His plan with Moses: He had heard the cries of His people about their oppression in Egyptian slavery. And He wanted Moses to join with Him in their deliverance. At this point, Moses began presenting a series of excuses, some of which may sound familiar to you.

First, Moses' response to his calling was to say, “Who am I”. You’ve heard it often enough. Expressed in today’s language, it’s simply stating what you believe to be a fact, “I’m not qualified.” Second, the “Who are you?” naturally follows the “Who am I”. Moses pleads lack of knowledge in that he did not even know God’s name and what to tell the Israelites. Moses’ third excuse to God was that he did not believe he had the power to fulfill the calling that God had told him to do. It’s the pessimist’s answer to every proposal, ‘Forget about it, it won’t work!’ The fourth excuse was that his speaking and leadership abilities were lacking. In other words, we lack the talent or gift to carry it out. But Moses’ final excuse to God betrayed his real intentions - he simply did not desire to fulfill his calling and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. So, there you have it, the classic list of excuses to turn down any invitation from God to serve:

“I’m a nobody.”

“I don’t know enough about God or my faith.”

“It won’t work.”

“I’m not gifted.”

And finally the classic, “Choose someone else.”

Just like Moses, many of us grew up making excuses. We make excuses when we don't want to obey or listen. We make excuses when we don't want to go where we do not wish to go. We make excuses when we don't want to do what is required of us. Over time, we even come to believe in them. I don’t go for confession because … I have no sin (yah, right!); my sins are too trivial; I don’t see the point of going for confession because I’m going to repeat the same sins again; I don’t understand why we need to confess to a priest when I can confess to God; I don’t know how to make a confession. And then there’s the classical litany of occasional or infrequent church goers: I don’t come to church, but there’s a good reason for it: I don’t have the time; I’m too tired; I pray at home; I want to spend quality time with the family over the weekends; I’ve got some important errands to run; I don’t understand what’s happening; the mass is boring; the church is too hot; I’m having a headache; my children don’t like to go to church so I have to keep them company; I angry with the priest; I don’t like the people. Bottom line is this: I don’t want to go to church because I don’t see it as something important. I have other priorities … Period.

Excuses are actually lies we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with unpleasant truths.  They are ultimately ways of avoiding responsibility, especially the responsibility for our sins. When we choose to stop making excuses, we then can begin to take steps to change. Accepting responsibility is the first step to repentance. The second reading and the gospel reminds us that we should take full responsibility for our actions and decisions. We cannot deflect the blame and push it to others, neither can we plead ignorance because there have been constant reminders and warnings in both the Scriptures as well as in our daily lives. Ignorance is just another excuse. A mature Christian is ultimately accountable for his life; he can’t blame fate, his past, his parents, his environment or even God for what he has freely chosen to become. We are not victims of our circumstances. It is true that we are not always in control of time, the information which is disseminated or even the resources available to us. But the problem is never about the lack of time; it’s more about the lack of will to make changes to our priorities. The problem is never about not knowing; it’s about choosing to be lazy or to work at learning. The problem is never about the lack of money; but rather about how we choose to spend our money. 

It appears to me that regardless of the excuses that man concocts for not doing the will of God, God always has an answer. God, just like a hardy fitness trainer, will not take ‘No’ for an answer. Here is the bottom line. If you have missed everything else, then get this: it’s not about you. It’s never about you or about your personal abilities. Moses’ excuses were based on his inadequacies and limitations. But the story isn’t about the merits of Moses but the providence of God. God matches Moses’ excuses with these answers – God will provide the strength, God will give the support, God will be present throughout each moment of our lives, God will teach and instruct us, God will make available the necessary resources. God will provide companions for the journey. When God has chosen you, he will provide you with the necessary grace and assistance to carry out his will. So, no piece of excuse will suffice to silence God. God will never give up on you. God will not take ‘No’ for an answer.

So don’t let excuses run your life because it would mean living a lie, and Satan is the Father of lies. Fr Peter once told me that we belong to the Adam’s family (not Addams, mind you). We are in the business of blaming others and making excuses for our own mistakes, just like our primordial parents. Spiritual growth means facing the truth; it means having the courage and the humility to admit our unwillingness, our laziness, our sinfulness, our lack of faith. Shoot down your excuses, face the bitter truth, and start taking the steps necessary to change in the direction you want to go. The Sacrament of Penance would be a good place to start. Stop making excuses, get with the programme!

Relent, Return and Repent

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. This is the time to take those three penitential acts, praying, fasting and giving alms. Why did Jesus single out prayer, fasting, and almsgiving for his disciples? The Jews considered these three as the cardinal works of the religious life. These were seen as the key signs of a pious person, the three great pillars on which the good life was based. Jesus pointed to the heart of the matter. Why do you pray, fast, and give alms? To draw attention to yourself so that others may notice and think highly of you? Or to give glory to God? The Lord warns his disciples of self-seeking glory the preoccupation with looking good and seeking praise from others. True piety is something more than feeling good or looking holy. True piety is loving devotion to God. It is an attitude of awe, reverence, worship and obedience. It is a gift and working of the Holy Spirit that enables us to devote our lives to God with a holy desire to please him in all things (Isaiah 11:1-2).

Let us take one step back to examine the meaning of Lent. Lent is a 40-day period of preparation for Easter Sunday. We follow Jesus into the desert, that harsh arid environ, that barren landscape both fascinating and terrifying, and for many of us, the last place on earth we would want to end up in. It lacks the necessary vegetation and foliage that would provide shade from the accursed sun. It lacks water necessary for life. The desert is literally deserted, a place not meant for the living, just for the dead. It is there that the power of death holds sway. And yet, the desert is the perfect place to spend Lent. In the Gospels, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness to be a different kind of Messiah; to take the path of spectacle and power rather than that of humble service. Each year, in imitation of our Lord, we retreat into the desert for the forty days – the liturgical season consecrated for personal conversion and preparation to celebrate the great mysteries of our redemption.

The forty days of Lent is the annual retreat of the people of God in imitation of Jesus' forty days in the wilderness. Forty is a significant number in the scriptures. Moses went to the mountain to seek the face of God for forty days in prayer and fasting. The people of Israel were in the wilderness for forty years in preparation for their entry into the promised land.  Elijah fasted for forty days as he journeyed in the wilderness to the mountain of God. We are called to journey with the Lord in a special season of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and penitence as we prepare to celebrate the feast of Easter, the Christian Passover. The Lord gives us spiritual food and supernatural strength to seek his face and to prepare ourselves for spiritual combat and testing. We, too, must follow in the way of the cross in order to share in the victory of Christ's death and resurrection. What is the sure reward which Jesus points out to his disciples? It is communion with God our Father. In him alone we find the fullness of life, happiness, and truth.

Today, as the beginning of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, the blessed ashes are "imposed" on the faithful as a sign of conversion, penance, fasting and human mortality. The act of putting on ashes symbolizes fragility and mortality, and the need to be redeemed by the mercy of God. Far from being a merely external act, the Church has retained the use of ashes to symbolize that attitude of internal penance to which all the baptized are called during Lent. St. Augustine of Hippo tells us that there are two kinds of people and two kinds of love: One is holy, the other is selfish. One is subject to God; the other endeavors to equal Him. We are what we love. God wants to free our hearts from all that would keep us captive to selfishness and sin. Rend your hearts and not your garments says the prophet Joel (Joel 2:12). The Holy Spirit is ever ready to transform our hearts and to lead us further in Gods way of truth and holiness.

As we begin this holy season of testing and preparation, let's ask the Lord for a fresh outpouring of his Holy Spirit that we may grow in faith, hope, and love and embrace his will more fully in our lives. May the prayer of Augustine of Hippo, recorded in his Confessions, be our prayer this Lent: When I am completely united to you, there will be no more sorrows or trials; entirely full of you, my life will be complete. The Lord wants to renew us each day and give us new hearts of love and compassion. God also implores us to "re-lent," that is, to enter year after year into the spirit of Lent with our whole heart. He tells us through the prophet Joel to "re-turn" to Him and "quit" the ways of the world, even those which might be good (Jl 2:16), for His sake. Through the Church, He calls us to "turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel." We don't just turn away from worldly things; we turn to the Lord God.

Re-Lenting and re-turning must lead to repenting. During Lent, focus on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. With true sorrow, repent of your sins, confess them to the Lord, and let Him take away the guilt of your sin (see Ps 32:5). Repent of turning to the lifestyle of the world and the preoccupations of the flesh. Return to Him (Jl 2:13). Abandon yourself completely into this season of returning, repenting, and relenting. The Lord says: "Return to Me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God" (Jl 2:12-13). This year, don't simply go through the exercises and motions of Lent. Re-lent, repent, and re-turn to the Lord.

Why should I go to confession?

"Why should I go to confession? My non-Catholic friends tell me they're forgiven by praying directly to God; Why aren't Catholics? And if I do have to go, how often?" This is a question I have been asked several times over the years by my non-catholic and non-christian friends. Confession is one of the least understood of the sacraments of the Catholic Church. In reconciling us to God, it is a great source of grace, and Catholics are encouraged to take advantage of it often.

To understand why confession is important for Catholics, let us first understand how the church look at this sacrament. Confession is the Sacrament of Penance, one of the seven sacraments recognized by the Catholic Church. Catholics believe that all of the sacraments were instituted by Jesus Christ himself. In the case of confession, that institution occurred on Easter Sunday, when Christ first appeared to the apostles after his Resurrection. Breathing on them, he said: "Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sin you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained" (John 20: 22-23). You might be wondering what is the Sacraments mean to the Catholic Church. Sacraments are an outward sign of an inward grace. Since we are talking confession here, the outward sign is the absolution, or forgiveness of sins, that the priest grants to the penitent(the person confessing his/her sins); the inward grace is the reconciliation of the penitent to God.

The purpose of confession is to reconciling man to God. When we sin, we deprive ourselves of God's grace. And by doing so, we make it even easier to sin more. The only way out of this downward cycle is to acknowledge our sins, to repent of them, and to ask God's forgiveness. Then, in the Sacrament of confession, grace can be restored to our souls, and we can once again resist sin.

When we sins, we are not only hurting the relationship with God, it also injured the entire church-----------the body of Christ. I guess the first and biggest misconception we have seems to revolve around the idea that sin is somehow just about "me and God." However, we fail to recognized that humans are communal creatures and everything we do good or bad, reaches out and touches someone. Perhaps, the best analogy is to think of sin as a wild dog that we cut loose in a room full of people. Someone is going to get bitten and we have no control over that once the dog has gotten loose.

The most obvious example of this is in the basis of what we believe: We were all condemned by the sin of Adam and all saved by the obedience of Jesus. Beyond that, on a personal and practical level, let's think of how someone else's sin can change our day and the way we relate the rest of that day. We can look at the example of our lives. Just few years back, the high school where I studied before, we lost a student and his mom to a drunken driver. How tragic and horrible is that? The world was robbed on that day of gifts, talents and love of two beautiful human beings because of one man's sin. The effects of that are obvious.

Now, before we fall into any kind of self-righteous rage, how about our sins? How about gossip? That little tidbit you passed along to your friend about that guy or girl at your workplace? What were the effects of that? Do you ever wonder? Were there any positive ones? We even sometimes go so far as to try to call it something like "venting," so that it sounds healthy instead of sick. What a mess that can make! We've all been victims and we know how impossible gossip is to fight; yet we don't hesitate to pass along the bad news and our speculations about other people. The effects of just that one sin can really cause a world of damage and take people away from each other.

Using that example, we can see how that sin is never "just between God and me." It's between the wounded person, the whole world and me. The easiest response to this is to feel despair, but we've got good news that trumps all the bad. That is where confession comes into picture. God offers us a remedy and a beautiful one at that: The Sacrament of reconciliation. 

We go to reconciliation because we acknowledge that our sin is communal and God's mercy is boundless.He forgives us  for the horror that we inflict on his creation, whether we meant to or not. Not only that, but God offers it freely and with joy. Wow, awesome right?

Another great reason for us to go to the sacrament of reconciliation is because we are, ultimately, physical creatures. We were created with a need to see, to hear and to touch. I can sit here in my room and remind myself that I am forgiven, but when someone else, someone that I trust, someone representing Christ in the Church, tells me "God forgives you freely," there's some real power to that. We are all aware of our own ability to deceive ourselves, but the priest in the confessional has nothing to gain by lying to us about forgiveness. The conviction in his voice alone can, at times, be a big part of the healing.

As a personal testimony, I have to tell you that regular confession has changed my life. I'm learning more and more how deep the sin in my life goes. That sounds depressing or sad, but it's not. Connected to that knowledge is the realization that I am forgiven. More and more, I see that reconciliation is all about maintain my relationship with Jesus and allowing Him to remove everything that blocks me from receiving God's love.

So, with all that in mind, how often should you go? The church law is a little bit generous on this, so we'll have to look at it a couple ways. First of all, we are require to confess any serious sins at least once a year, so there is that. And it is recommended that we also confess our venial sins. But, beyond that, if we want to receive Holy Communion ( The Body and Blood of Christ), we need to make sure that if we have committed any mortal sins, first we need to go for confession.

Enjoy another day in God's presence!  Jesus loves you.

Celebration of the Immaculate Conception

It is often noted that pregnant mothers have a certain radiance and 'glow' about them, physically attributed to the extra flow of blood around their bodies. But of course, it is well to think that this is a beautiful external sign of the inner joy that an expectant mother experiences in her spirit as new life grows and develops within her womb. During Advent, the Church focuses her attention on several persons, and one of these is a pregnant mother, who is not just aglow with joy and her pregnancy, but also beautiful and radiant with divine grace. This person, of course, is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

During this advent season, this coming Saturday we will be celebrating the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the Catholic Church maintaining that from the moment when she was conceived the Blessed Virgin Mary was kept free of original sin and was filled with the sanctifying grace normally conferred during baptism.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is universally celebrated on December 8, nine months before the feast of the Nativity of Mary, which is celebrated on September 8. We will be celebrating this wonderful feast day tomorrow during Mass as well as other Catholic Church around the world.

As you can see the top part of my church,Our Lady of Lourdes, which written : 

'I am the Immaculate Conception'

My Church, which name as Our Lady of Lourdes, is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary invoke by Roman Catholic in honor of the Marian Apparition in Lourdes, France. 

Most prominently among these is the apparition of February 11, 1858, when Saint Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl admitted to her mother that a "lady" spoke to her in the cave of Massabielle, (a mile from the town) while gathering firewood with her sister and a friend. Bernadette Soubirous was later canonized as a Saint.

On 11 February 1858, Bernadette Soubirous went with her sisters Toinette and Jeanne Abadie to collect some firewood and bones in order to buy some bread. After taking off her shoes and stockings to wade through the water near the Grotto of Massabielle, she said she heard the sound of two gusts of wind (coups de vent) but the trees and bushes nearby did not move. A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, however, did move. From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, "came a dazzling light, and a white figure." She was dressed all in white, apart from the blue belt fastened around her waist and the golden yellow roses, one on each foot, the colour of her rosary. Bernadette, knowing the local area well, managed to visit the barricaded grotto under cover of darkness. There, on 25 March, she said she was told: "I am the Immaculate Conception"

On Easter Sunday, 7 April, her examining doctor stated that Bernadette, in ecstasy, was observed to have held her hands over a lit candle without sustaining harm. On 16 July, Bernadette went for the last time to the Grotto. I have never seen her so beautiful before, she reported. 

St.Bernadette in-corrupt body. 

 Our Lady of Lourdes with St.Bernadette.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,

Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

This is the sharing of me today. I hope it benefited those(particularly some of my friends )who  keen to know about the Catholic Faith. 

Sources: Wikipedia, Catholic Resources (many thanks )

Penance

For the passed two days, I just did my penance. This is my first time doing this and the feeling is just great to me. At first, I have so many questions that pop-up in my mind before I start my penance. I'm just wondering whether I have the ability to fast for the whole day without a drip of water and some solid food entering into my body. The first word that appear in my mind is 'FAINT'

Praise the lord that I manage to finish it and the current status about it is that I have already done with my two days penance. Well, some of you might be thinking, why do I need to do that? The answer is just pretty simple, I feel like doing it because God is good.

Does it sound simple? or much more complicated?

I do not wish to elaborate much on this, but just feel good to do so.

Another few more weeks to go, I will be praying hard that hope everything can go smoothly. Wohoooo~~~