Sacred Moments

Enjoy your time alone with Jesus, savor it. Stop treating it like fast food . Because you will not find fine dining any where else like you have at the feet of Jesus.

Many come from a culture in which spirituality is measured by how solemn, dignified and holy your appearance is. This means that as a servant of God, you must wear white clothes, keep a serious face even if you are happy and carefully guard your behavior. You wouldn’t want to spoil your image by laughing out loud or running around playing with the kids.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Psalm 131:1–2 “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. ” But how do we walk and enter into this kind of life, the life of a different world—so different than the one we see around us?

Peter risked becoming the joke of his hometown when he rowed out in broad daylight to the deep waters of Lake Gennesaret and let down his net to catch fish. Everyone watching him from the shore must have thought he’d gone mad. Even a small child could have told him that if he wanted to catch fish, he must do it at night and in shallow water. But this was a moment in Peter’s life when he did the right thing first

How true it is that people do not need to be instructed so much as to be reminded. We need to be reminded again and again of what Jesus Christ, the second person of the blessed Trinity has done for you and me. We need to hear again what it means to be a Catholic, a member of the mystical body.

In the 21st chapter of St Matthew's gospel, Our Lord tells one of the lesser known parables. The story of a father and two sons. He asked the elder son to go and work in the vineyard. He said he would, but he never did. He asked the second son to go and work in the vineyard and he said he would not, but he did. Our Lord told this story to the civil and religious leaders of the day. He said to them, which of the sons did the will of the father.....the will of God.

It is no secret that we live in a society that is probably heavier laden than in the time of Christ. People are taking on larger responsibilities. Day after day, they rush from project to project, responsibility to responsibility, from obligation to obligation. Hardly a day goes by that someone is not overheard complaining about all the things they have to do. Jesus says, Come; I will give you rest. Yoke yourself with me.

What is it about marriage that causes people to answer with the phrase “Too Long”? Do people appreciate marriage? Especially among those who profess to follow the teachings of Christ? Shouldn’t a long marriage be a testimony to how a Biblical marriage should be? What is your answer when people ask you about your marriage? Are you able to tell them how many years the Lord has blessed you and your spouse? Or deep down inside, if you were truthful, would you answer the same way? “Too long.”

I am sure that there are very few people in life who are not touched by the sight of sadness. And the world is full of sadness. We see it around us every day. Failed lives, broken hearts shattered dreams. To me, one of the saddest sites in the world is a rummage sale. A sale in which almost every item is part of some man, woman or child, some home, some family, some long gone holiday of the past, being sold there coldly, publicly, impersonally, sometimes being sold for charity, but being sold, and given to a stranger.

We cannot live without peace. We cannot even die without it. For when they will finally put us in the grave, they would pray that we may rest in peace. It was Jesus' own legacy to us when he was returning to his Father. "My peace, I leave with you. My peace I give to you. His is that peace which passes all understanding, which the world can neither give, nor take away.

We say we believe in God, not some vague deity above the cloud, but the God of love. Who took you and me out of nothingness in love, who came down and died for us in love, who sustains us in love, who has destined us for an eternity of love. Do we really believe in him? When trouble comes, we wring our hands, we furrow our brows, we get sleepless nights and headaches.

In John's Gospel, we have the immortal words of Christ promising us the blessed Eucharist. "He who comes to me will never hunger. He who believes in me will never thirst. I am the bread of life. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him. My flesh is real food. My blood is real drink." These are extraordinary words and yet we read that many of the disciples could not accept those hard sayings and walked away and no longer walked with him. I wonder how they lived. Did they live, fulfilled, happy lives on this earth ? Did they miss him?

We are on a journey down here in this valley of tears. There is a woman in our lives, but we know who she is. Mary, our life, our sweetness and our hope. The Church reminds us that our lady must be in our lives under two headings. As our mother and as a model.

In the measure in which our Christian life and service are centered in ourselves, in that measure we shall experience spiritual death - in spite of our baptism and in spite of our Traditional Catholic beliefs.

Sin has consequences, yet people often condemn the consequences that have arisen as a result of sin and treat them as sin. A consequence may lead to more sin, but the consequence itself is not a sin. It is the result of sin.

Many have the wrong idea that God the Father is a very strict Person and that it is only Jesus Who loves them. This is a distortion of the truth. It was the love of the Father that sent Jesus to save us from our sins. Jesus told His disciples, "The Father Himself loveth you" (John 16:27).

We can learn from precious children. They are God's gift of encouragement, God's assurance of His investment in the future, and God's instruments of example to adults.

We all have burdens and many people have Yokes, but a Christian has a yoke that comes from Christ himself. That is why Jesus said, "My yoke is sweet and pleasant and easy and my burden is light."

We live in a victim society and people like to wear their status of "victim" like a badge of honor. While your status of victim might bring you much sympathy and you may be called a hero for openly showing the hurts, God expects you to take responsibility for submitting that brokenness to him so he can repair it and use you.

A balanced Christian life is one that looks in three directions: 1. Upward - in worship and devotion to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. 2. Inward - as a result of seeing the glory of Christ, discovering un-Christ like areas in one's life and repenting of them. 3. Outward - seeking to fulfill God's will on earth, by being a blessing to others.