My Reflection

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Anonymous Level I'd like to remain anonymous I'd like to be mentioned by name I'd like to donate in honor of someone Please check box the appropriate box above. If you are honoring someone else, please fill in the name below. MRM will select schools or youth programs to send donated books. Our first priority is to send books to students attending schools Kahlilah loved, taught in, or attended in New York.

Price includes taxes, shipping and handling! Special Instructions Please list any special delivery instructions such as the name and address of school that you would like us to deliver the books to or the name of an organization you would like represented. Tier Two Books Price: You have the option to self-select a youth provider or school to send books to with your name mentioned as a donor. Tier Three 35 Books for 1 Classroom Price: In addition to getting a book in the hands of each child in a classroom of your choice, I will do a live reading for the class you select via skype.

Oh, and the lucky classroom teacher gets a pdf copy of the Parent-Teacher Guide that accompanies the book! Tier Four 70 Books for 2 Classrooms Price: All of the children and teachers in two classrooms you select will get a copy of the book plus a pdf Parent-Teacher guide for each classroom teacher. He had no relations with her until she bore a son and he named him Jesus.

Do you always follow the will of the Lord? Upon learning that Mary was already pregnant Joseph decided to quietly divorce her. But an Angel of the Lord appeared through his dream. And intervened and told him not to divorce Mary for the reason that the child in her womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit. After waking up Joseph obeyed what the angel told him. He stayed with Mary, He protected her and saw to it that she would receive the best love and care that she could ever have.

Such is Saint Joseph, righteous, humble, docile and obedient to the will of the Lord. In this time wherein, the Sacrament of Matrimony is not given much worth anymore. And is treated as a simple paper contract. We have Saint Joseph reminding us about the sacredness of the Sacrament of Marriage. We have Saint Joseph reminding us that we must not stray and we must not betray it no matter the temptation. We have Saint Joseph reminding us that Marriage is not only a paper contract.

It is in fact a covenant between the couple and Jesus. Let us examine ourselves on how we put value on the Sacrament of Marriage. And let us follow the example of Saint Joseph on how he deeply loved the Blessed Mother.

Quotations:

And how he subordinated his own will for the will of God. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Amminadab became the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.

Boaz became the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed became the father of Jesse, Jesse the father of David the king. David became the father of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah. Josiah became the father of Jechoniah and his brothers at the time of the Babylonian exile. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ. Thus the total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen generations; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the Christ, fourteen generations.

Do you know your own genealogy? Our gospel for today traces the genealogy of Jesus. From Abraham to David to Solomon just to name a few. As we look at the bloodline of Jesus, we would find out that some of them are sinners. But God in His infinite wisdom chose them to become the ancestors of Jesus. We may think that this is bizarre or strange, some of the members of Jesus family tree are sinners? But this is how God works, very mysterious and very unexpected.

All of us are sinners also, let us not think that because of our being sinful we are already beyond redemption and beyond the reach of the love of God. Everything is possible with our God. If we judge others or if we think of others and ourselves as incorrigible sinners. If others have already judged you as a sinner and beyond redemption already, remember that God is not judgmental towards you. And whoever has food should do likewise.

Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.

Andrew Rayel ft. Emma Hewitt – My Reflection lyrics

I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. If you will try to ask kids as to what is Christmas for them. Even if they are wrong. This is is understandable being kids their minds are being bombarded to focus on the material side of Christmas.

However, we must point out to them the real essence of Christmas and that is the coming birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. In our gospel for this third Sunday of advent John gives us another angle about Christmas that we must seriously look into. John told them share your cloaks and your food. Then he told the taxmen stop collecting more than what is prescribed.

Afterwards, he told the soldiers stop being extortionists and be satisfied with your wages. Through his actions and words John is telling us that Christmas is not all about the material things of this world. That Christmas is about giving and sharing, especially to those who are poor which cannot repay our generosity.

Christmas is also about repentance and changing our ways for the better. This consumer and gadget driven world are slowly taking from us the true essence of Christmas we must not allow it to succeed. We must continue to focus our attention on the coming birth of Jesus. Because this is the true spirit and essence of Christmas that the gospel wants us all to live and imbibe. Let us not focus on the material things for it gives us superficial joy and happiness.

Let us rather fix our sight on something that gives us real joy and happiness. Joy and happiness that nobody can take away from us. Joy and happiness that is much deeper and profound and this is the birth of Jesus. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands. Do you have the courage to advice a person to repent?

The call of Jesus for repentance continuous until this very hour, he speaks to us through people around us and through our conscience. We should not ignore it, we should listen to it because to listen and repent is the right course of action that we must take. Like John who prepared the way for Jesus, we too should become the modern day John. Thus we should also gently call for repentance to those within our sphere of environment. This is for the reason that this is a call of duty for us Catholics. Lest we forget that by virtue of our Baptism we also become a modern-day John. Therefore, we have to call for repentance and conversion as well.

For this call to be effective we have to do this with gentleness, with mercy and compassion. It is obvious that Jesus is pertaining to John as the second coming of the prophet Elijah. They have no time to listen to the messenger of God. You have nothing to lose if you tread the way of John. Yes, it will not be a walk in the park and there will be challenges as well.

But if Christ is with you who will be against you? Nobody for you have Jesus at our back silently supporting you. Are you quick to judge based on what you see? They judge both John and Jesus; John they judged as having a demon and Jesus as a glutton and a drunkard. They based their judgment on the external actuations that they saw on both of them.

However, their judgment is misplaced and farthest from the truth.

Those who judged Jesus and John should have first tried to know them first by becoming their followers but they never cared to follow, they instead quickly judged. Thus, they missed the opportunity of a lifetime to know John and Jesus. Those who are quick to judge allow themselves to be controlled by their biased emotions. Those who judge usually end up missing something worthy and beautiful from the person that they judge.

There are times that I see married couples the husband is handsome but the wife is not beautiful and vise-versa. I usually tell myself, how come they ended up together? The reason behind is simple, they never cared to judge based on what they saw on their future spouse. They instead delve deeper, thus they discovered how beautiful the character of the person they chose to be with for the rest of their lives. Are you quick to judge? From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force. All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John.

And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come.

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Whoever has ears ought to hear. What does John the Baptist brings to us? John brings to us his faithful witness for Jesus and His teachings.

Like the Prophets before him, John gave his life so that evil would not triumph over good. In essence it was the devil against God. John chose God over the devil, John chose righteousness over evil and immorality. For these reasons Jesus hailed John as the greatest amongst the prophets, yet Jesus tells us also that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John. Who is greater than John the Baptist? Jesus came into this world not with power and might. Like John, Jesus was born into this world bereft of worldly opulence. Somehow the gospel communicates to us that for us to become great in the eyes of Jesus we have to emulate John.

His humble witness for Jesus, his uncompromising stand against evil and so forth. We must not forget also that Jesus is challenging us also to become the least in the eyes of the people of this world. It means that we must not crave for money, power or anything that this fleeting world will offer us. Nevertheless, even without these worldly things we will strive to continue to make a positive difference in the lives of our fellowmen. For this is the life of Jesus when He walked on this earth. Can we emulate the life of John? Are we capable of shunning the trappings of this world and still make a positive difference in the lives of our fellowmen just what Jesus did?

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.

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A young man who was trying very hard to find his place in this world was at the point of surrender. Until he was advised by a friend to seek God and surrender every burdens that he has in his heart.

So, he went to Mass regularly and he read his bible, after a few weeks he developed a deep friendship with Jesus and he surrendered his everything to Him. We get too busy in fact very busy because we want to satisfy our many temporal wants. But come to think of it, why are we punishing ourselves too much just to satisfy our worldly desires? Why are many of us favoring this world when what we earn from this world can actually be taken from us anytime? In our gospel for today, Jesus invites us all to go to Him. We who are so busy with this world, we who tend to forget the primacy of God over this world.

When are we going to open our hearts to this invitation of Jesus? When we are already old and sick? Let us build a relationship with Jesus now and let us respond to His invitation now. If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray. In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost. Can we compare the love of Jesus with how we exercise our love for our fellowmen?

No, we cannot compare because majority if not all of us love with preconditions and conditions. We love with limitations and we love only those who give us love. We all know that Jesus is alluding about His infinite love for us when He told this story of the lost sheep. By way of this story He is also telling us that His love for us is always there no matter how sinful we are and no matter who we are.

As we follow Jesus, we must also ask Him to deepen our faith and to erase our preconditions and conditions when we love. For example, if before we could only love those who give us love, now that we have become mature followers of Jesus. We will love even those who do not give us love and those people who do not love us anymore. To love even those who do not love us and those who hurt us is very hard to do. But if we really are sincere in following Jesus, we would be able to love them. And we would search for them until we find them and forgive them without any precondition.

Let us look for those who went astray, let us forgive and give them the unconditional love of Jesus. And some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; they were trying to bring him in and set him in his presence. But not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on the stretcher through the tiles into the middle in front of Jesus. Who but God alone can forgive sins? He stood up immediately before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home, glorifying God.

How far are you willing to go to help a person in need? We have in our gospel a paralytic who was brought to Jesus by selfless men. Men who did not think of their own safety so that they could help. Men who did everything so that they could bring somebody to Jesus. What if there were no selfless men who dared to help the paralytic?

The paralytic would have remained paralytic for the rest of his life. But he was very blessed that he encountered these men who help him go near Jesus.

When you help someone in need you are opening yourself to enormous blessings from God. This is what happened to the men who brought the paralytic to Jesus.

They were blessed by Jesus and was forgiven of their many sins Luke 5: As you continue your journey in this world you will continue to encounter those who are in need.

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