We all are called to love God and do the Father’s will, even when it is difficult. But love involves sacrifice—dying to self and making sacrifices for the one we love. We can use the example of Christ in the Garden to accept our crosses well.

This Gospel reminds us that the way we see best, is through the eyes of faith, for then we see the world the way God sees it. But first we have to recognize that without Jesus, we are truly blind.

Jesus invites us in this Eucharistic table – our “well of encounter” today. He comes so close to us that we can see him with our own eyes, hear him with our own ears and touch him with our own hands. We become part of him; and he becomes a part of us, the God-within!

We tend to believe good times will last forever. While it's nice to be optimistic in that respect, we tend to worry that the bad times will last forever as well. The truth is that life is a series of contrasts—mountaintop experiences followed by deep valleys.

Friends, we’re like the two men on a camping trip, called: a passage of renewal in the SEASON OF LENT. However, fear hides us under a blanket of a desperate humanity immersed in a pathetic world of hopelessness.

We begin our Lenten readings in a most appropriate place: the desert. In the desert, life is stripped to basics and everything, including our weakness, is exposed. We are forced to stand alone and vulnerable before God. Our faith is put to the test. Little wonder, then, that Jesus went to the desert to fast and pray before plunging into his public works. It's there, amid the rocks and reptiles, that the devil comes to him with three temptations.

During the Season of Lent, let’s develop a habit of doing the following: “a loving word a day keeps temptations away,” “a prayer a day keeps the devil away,” and “a Eucharist a day keeps Satan away.” By practicing these habits – we might have a “temptation free” week.

During the EASTER SEASON, may the elect’s prayer be our prayer as God’s holy people and say with renewed faith: “Risen Lord, now I’m 101% available. How can I help?” “With Jesus, we’re loved! With Christ, we’re alive!”

Let’s begin this Holy Week at the foot of the CROSS, and consider it the most sacred week for God and us by proactively following the three spiritual prescriptions of Holy Week: PRAYING everyday; FORGIVING each person and LOVING each other with a love that never dies! BE A SAINT... even just for one week!

We are God’s masterpiece of love: his image and likeness. This is the reason why Jesus tells us a million times: “I love you. Remain in my love...” (JN 15:9) We are truly the reflection of God’s glory and beauty.

Today, as people of repentance, let us become the “gardeners” of the world. Let us cultivate in our hearts the core values of peace, hope, faith and generosity; then let us fertilize them with the virtues of love, compassion and mercy. That perhaps, the single honorable and desirable fruit is what we can become – the “visible signs of God’s love!”

Let our trust craft a transfiguration bridge that connects us to God and to one another. Become catchers of broken lives! Be spiritual companions in making shattered lives be whole again. In God we trust!

LENT is here! It started last ASH WEDNESDAY by the imposition of ashes on our foreheads in the form of a Cross. The Cross on our forehead isn’t an amulet; it’s a reminder that God is alive in our hearts. We need the Cross to clean our hearts, and we need our hearts to love the Cross. At times, when we promise something, we always say: “Cross my heart!” In short, I describe LENT as #crossme-lovemeforgiveme season!

Ash Wednesday, March 6th Is a day of Fasting and Abstinence

EASTER is RESURRECTION TIME – a festival of life and love!

We cannot discover who we truly are and what we are here for—we cannot become perfectly ourselves—amid the noise and confusion of the world. It is times in silence, stillness, and solitude that allow us to make sense of all that is life.

You cannot avoid problems and suffering, but you can avoid the lessons they have come to teach you. This is wasted suffering. It is like a man who goes to the gym and lifts weights for hours every day but does not know the proper shape and form each exercise should take. He puts in the hours, he suffers, but he is worse off than before he started because he has done damage to himself.

This Sunday we find ourselves at a crossroads. As we approach the great mystery of Christ’s Death and Resurrection, we are coming to the end of our Lenten journey. It is a time to both look back and reflect, and to look forward and prepare. Holy Week is a unique time in the Church calendar where we are suddenly walking minute by minute with Jesus as he goes through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Starting today with Palm Sunday, we enter into Jesus’s life in “real time.” The way God works in time during this week can really help us to enter into friendship with Jesus as we walk with him in his sufferings.

How often we hear people say, “Worrying won’t help” or “Worrying is not going to change anything.” As true as these words are, they don’t empower people to turn around and say, “You’re absolutely right. I won’t worry anymore.”

Contribute or perish—this is one of the fundamental and guiding principles of the universe. We observe it in a thousand ways in nature, and we witness it in the lives of people. The question we must all ask ourselves is this: What will my contribution be?