Love always: Gives, Love is not self-seeking, Love cannot keep anything for itself. This kind of love is increasing foreign to us. It is this love that gives us courage and compels us to be faithful no matter what the cost. The moral courage and conviction we lack, the absence of zeal and fervor in our faith is easily cured, if we purposely incline ourselves towards God. Of course, money and material goods are not evil but good indeed, we really need money - to purchase food, clothing and shelter - in other words - to survive on this earth/the world. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to secure the physical well-being of yourself and your loved ones through the use of money. In fact, the desire is good. Then, Why should God care if people love money more than God and neighbour? It is because 'Greed is the discovered love of material riches.' Greed or avarice is called a "deadly" or "capital" sin because it gives rise to wickedness and other sins.

Therefore, we should love God above all things and our neighbour as ourselves, but sadly, we can begin to love money more than God. 'Greed or avarice is called a "deadly" or "capital" sin because it gives rise to other sins.' God cares about these matters because God cares about us. Exaggerated love of money does not hurt God - it does not diminish God himself in the least if we do not worship him. No, excessive love of money hurts all of us. It often leads to actions that are obviously sinful, such as corruption, wickedness, evil, cheating, stealing, bribing and iniquity.

But even if avarice and materialism did not lead to other sins it will still be harmful to us. Simply put it, if we love money more than God and more than other people, we make ourselves - usually sooner rather than later - miserable, and wretchedly unhappy. Hence, most of us have to struggle against avarice, a grave impediment to our own happiness of others.

Even though, God constantly uses material things to show his love and power. After all, matter is not evil, when God created the physical universe, everything God created was "very good." God plan for us is simple. Our loving God wants to give us all good things - especially eternal life.

Hence Living without God today means facing life and death as no generation before us has done. It entails giving meaning to our lives not only in the absence of a super being, but now without the forces and trends that gave hope to the past several generation of secularists, agnostics and atheists. By beginning of the 21st century, the modern faith that human life is heading in a positive direction has been undone, giving way to the earlier religious faith it replaced, or to no faith in God of all. Today life is much too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then be asked what you make of it and have to answer, "Scientific humanism" and "Artificial Intelligence". That won't do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore, I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, that is, God. Of course, the most convincing explanation for human love is divine love. More accurately, all we need is the One Who is Love. God is Love.

We tends to forget that God loves us not only more than we love anyone else, but more than we love ourselves. Because of his great love for us, God urges us to ponder and contemplate: the 3 things that last; Faith, Hope, Love and the greatest of these "is love". It's obvious that this thing called love occupies the mind, hearts, emotions and lives. "My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God, because God is love." - 1 John 4:7-8 - "We ourselves saw and we testify that the Father sent his Son as saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him/her, and he/she in God. - 1 John 4:14-15 - "Who can overcome the world? Only the man/woman believes that Jesus is the Son of God: Jesus Christ who came by water and blood, not with water only, but with water and blood; with the Spirit as another witness - since the Spirit as another witnesses, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and all three of them agree. We accept the testimony of human witnesses, but God's testimony is much greater, and this is God's testimony, given as evidence for his Son." - 1 John 5:5-9 -

Best of all, the promise of eternal life is a gift, freely offered to us by God. When we come to God and are justified (that is, enter a right relationship with God) nothing preceding justification, whether faith and good works, earn grace. But then God plants his love in our hearts, and we should live out our faith by doing acts of love. Only God's grace enables us to love others, these acts of love please Him, and He promises to reward them with eternal life.

Thus, good works are meritorious, when we first come to God in faith, we have nothing in our hands to offer Him. Then God gives us grace to obey his commandments in love, and He rewards us with salvation when we offer these acts of love back to Him. Since no gift be forced on recipient - gifts always can be rejected - even after we become justified, we can throw away the gift of salvation, we throw it away through grave sin. "The wages of sin is death." 

But the grace filled relationship with God and our obedience, hope and love in Him, combined with our faith, will be rewarded with eternal life. Amen! 

Obedience is for children, obviously, and children are prone to disobedience. Jesus was the ultimate obedient one. "I always do what is pleasing to (God)," he said - John 8:39 - "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his works" - John 4:34 - Imagine that! Jesus, the fully liberated one, does not do His own will. He obeys " the one who sent me."

For Saint Paul, obedience is one of Jesus' defining characteristics. It is what makes him the Lord. Once Jesus became human, "He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death" - Philippians 2:8 - Because of His total obedience, God exalted Him to such an extent that everyone should bow before him. His obedience transforms him into the one who is to be obeyed. In fact, His always doing what is pleasing to the Father is the basic of His authority. He is to be obeyed because He obeys.

This has great significance for how we ought to live our lives, Saint Paul contrasts his beloved Philippians - "you have always obeyed" - with the "crooked and perverse generation" in whose midst they live. Their obedience is a sure sign that God is at work in them. - Philippians 2:12-15 -

Our call is not to be "creative," to be freelancers raising our own opinions above the truth given by the Holy Spirit. It is to be obedience to God's will, indeed to live within that will. The more we obey, the more God will ask us to obey. "When God finds a person determined to obey him, He takes the life of that person in His hands...... Minute by minute, He defines the gestures and words of that person, his way of making use of His time, in short everything." - Psalms 139 - 

THE LORD JESUS CHRIST WILL MAKE YOU HIS OWN - Turn to Him at every moment and He will more and more make you His own.

The little word "obey" pops up repeatedly throughout Apostle/Saint Paul's letters. There is the obedience of faith - Romans 1:5, 16:26 - obedience to the Church's teaching - Romans 6:17 - obedience to the Good News - Romans 10:16 - obedience to the Truth - Galatians 5:7 - and obedience to Christ Jesus - 2 Corinthians 10:5 - Therefore, Obey God and know life's ultimate joy.

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the "Holy Trinity" who exercises the power of the Father and the Son in creation and redemption. The Holy Spirit is the power by which believers come to Christ and see with new eyes of faith and helped to comprehend their work with God.

And there are two kinds of knowledge of Christ; that is, the speculative and the practical. The speculative is obtained by study, and the practical only through the experiencing and encountering of the Holy Spirit, Who leads us to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour. The Holy Spirit moves even souls dedicated to sorcery and magic. Such souls in their darkness may be searching for the truth.

- No soul is beyond conversion / conversion of heart to God -

"They travelled the whole length of the island, and at Paphos they came in contact with a Jewish magician called Bar-jesus. This false prophet was one of the attendants of the proconsul Sergius Paulus who was an extremely intelligent man. The proconsul summoned Barnabas and Saul and asked to hear the word of God, but Elymas Magos - as he was called in Greek - tried to stop them so as to prevent the proconsul's conversion to the faith.

Then Saul, whose other name is Paul, looked him full in the face and said, You utter fraud, you imposter, you son of the devil, you enemy of all true religion, why don't you stop twisting the straightforward ways of the Lord? Now watch how the hand of the Lord will strike you; you will be blind, and for a time you will not see the sun. That instant, everything went misty and dark for him, and he groped about to find someone to lead him by the hand. The proconsul, who had watched everything became a believer, being astonished by what he had learnt about the Lord." - Acts 13:6-12 -

Man in search of God. In the act of creation, God calls every being from nothingness into existence. "Crowned with glory and honour," man is, after the angels, capable of acknowledging "how majestic is the name of the Lord in all the earth." Even after losing through his sin his likeness to God, man remains an image of his Creator, and retains the desire for the one who calls him into existence. All religions bear witness to men's essential search for God.  - CCC # 2566 - CCC # 296; CCC # 355; CCC # 28 - 

Cf. - Made him lord over the work of your hands, set all things under his feet. - Psalms 8:6 - 

Cf. - And he did this so that all nations might seek the deity and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him. Yet in fact he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live, and move, and exist, as indeed some of your own writers have said: "We are all his children". - Acts 17:27-28 -

God calls man first. Man/Woman may forget his/her Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him/her; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer. In prayer, the faithful God's initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response. As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself, prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama. Through words and actions, this drama engages the heart. It unfolds throughout the whole history of salvation. - CCC # 2567 - CCC # 30; CCC 142 

- For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them since God himself has made it plain. - Romans 1:19 -

Seek Yahweh while he is still to be found,

call to him while he is still near.
Let the wicked man abandon his way,
the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn back to Yahweh who will take pity on him,
to our God who is rich in forgiving;
for my thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways - it is Yahweh who speaks. - Isaiah 55:6-8 -

But you will seek Yahweh your God from there, and if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul, you shall find him. In your distress, all that I have said will overtake you, but at the end of days you will return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice. For Yahweh your God is a merciful God and will not desert or destroy you or forget the covenant he made on oaths with your fathers. - Deuteronomy 4:29-31 -

Since God who made the world and everything in it, is himself Lord of heaven and earth, he does not make his home in shrines made by human hands. Nor is he dependent on anything that human hands can do for him, since he can never be in need of anything; on the contrary, it is he who gives everything - including life and death - to everyone.

From one single stock he not only created the whole human race so that they could occupy the entire earth, but he decreed how long each nation should flourish and what the boundaries of its territory should be. And he did this so that all nations might seek the deity and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him. Yet in fact he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live, and move, and exist, as indeed some of your own writers have said: "We are all his children."'

Since we are the children of God, we have no excuse for thinking that the deity looks like anything in gold, silver or stone that has been carved and designed by a man. 'God overlooked that sort of things when men were ignorant, but has fixed a day when the whole world will be judged, and judged in righteousness, and he has appointed a man to be the judge. And God has publicly proved this by raising this man from the dead. - Acts 17:24-31 -

Every man and woman has an intellect and a will. The intellect is oriented to knowing the cause of all things which we experiences as effects in this world. By an ascent of truth. It is possible (and some human beings have been able) to ascend to the knowledge that God exists and is one truth, love, Creator and provident. Of course, this can be known through reason. Yet, it is not enough for anyone.

This action of both the intellect and will is called faith. Faith is unlike all other human knowledge. It is unlike human science, opinion and doubt because faith is not knowledge of the mind, convinced by the inner character of the evidence, but the mind convinced by the strength of the will adhering in personal reverence for the one revealing. Faith involves then the simultaneous movement of the intellect and will. Faith is a participation in a divine way of knowing in which we look at the world from God's point of view. It can never suffer a merely human explanation.

***  "Our faith cannot remain a private affair between my/your God. The symbol of "shoes-off" serves as a reminder that each time when we remove our shoes, we are one with fellow Malaysians, sharing in the same practice everyday. Through this pertinent symbol, Jesus is calling us to integrate our faith with life. We cannot have a split Christianity or religiosity. Our faith must go beyond ritualistic worship. We must be seen living what we profess in Church so that Malaysian Christian are able to encounter Jesus in the life-history of our people.

As Malaysians Christians who respond to the call of Jesus, we realize that He is asking us to understand faith as a way of life, a way of manifesting Jesus in and through the way we live. Then we shall be able to encounter and experience Him in worship as well as in life and in history of our nation. Then our discipleship will be authentic and credible in the sight of fellow Malaysian believers of the world religions.

Jesus the Shoes-off Barefoot One of Malaysia is the same person in real life and at worship. The way He is before the Father is the way He is before his fellow Jews. He prays to the Father - John 17:1-26 - and the same time lived out his faith in the context of the Jewish society by curing the sick, - Mark 2:1-12 - manifested the Father's preferential love to the sinners and tax-collectors, - Mark 2:15-17 - defended the primacy of person over the Sabbath, - Mark 2:23-28 - and even sacrificed Himself - Mark 15:33-39 - to bring about the Kingdom of God. - Mark 1:15 -

To be his followers, we cannot be two different persons, one in Church and one in real life.

Our reverence for God must be demonstrated in our respect for persons in society. How can we say we love God when we behave like a tyrant at home toward our spouses, children and colleagues? How can we worship God with such manifestation of piety when we constantly ill-treat our servants at home, condone corrupt practices, exploit the workers we employ, prostitute the dignity of women, and perpetuate the oppression of the marginalized, and even the destruction of our environment?"

***  BY REVEREND FR. JOJO M. FUNG S.J.

 -     WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY     - 

Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!

Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 - 

If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 - 

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -

Your generous contribution and support is profoundly cherish. I sincerely pray that: God blessing be upon you, always. Amen! Bank transfer: Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah - Public Bank Berhad account no. 4076577113 - Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.