IF I COULD TOUCH YOU (Gospel Reflection for Mark 5:21-43)

If I could touch you. I entitled this reflection based from the song "If I could touch you" by Bukas Palad Music Ministry. All of us encounter an "If I could touch you" moment especially if we have a loved one who is very far from us. We also say "If I could touch you" when we lost someone we love. The Gospel today focuses on two great faiths, the man with a sick daughter and the woman with hemorrhage. Faith is the main focus of our Gospel for this Sunday. Faith actually sustains us, it gives us life and hope during difficult moments in our life. Faith gives us the courage to face difficult situations in our life. Let us now reflect the faith of the two characters in this Gospel. First is the woman with the hemorrhage for twelve years. Hemorrhage is very dangerous condition because it is an internal bleeding. The woman's faith drove her to pass to the thick crowd following Jesus and hope with just one touch of Jesus' cloak she may be healed. We all have this kind of situation, we are sometimes prevented by a large crowds from going to Christ. That crowd is our problems, we tend to give up sometimes to the problems we encounter in life but the eagerness or zeal caused by our faith let's us push through and approach Jesus because He's the only source of our consolation. We bleed inside of us when we encounter problems but when we touch Jesus, our problems gradually disappears. We really touch Christ when we receive Holy Communion during Mass because we receive Him completely.

Second, the faith of the father who had a very ill daughter. As soon as Jesus arrives, he pleaded Him to heal the daughter but some said the girl had died. We encounter times when we say, we are dead because we lost hope. Yet inside, Jesus speaks to us and reiterates the words He said to the father of the girl, "Do not be afraid, just believe." Jesus strengthens us, He knows our weak points in life but gives us the courage to overcome those weaknesses. May we all be awaken by the faith in Christ and be not afraid for there is a God who listens as we believe in Him.

IT'S A FAIRLY ODD BLOG :)

You  may find this article rather silly because I used one of my favorite cartoons, "The Fairly Odd Parents", I'm 20 years old turning 21 but I still enjoy watching cartoons. It keeps me young hahaha!  While watching this cartoon, I remembered one episode of  "The Fairly Odd Parents" when Timmy Turner wished that he and Trixie Tang (his crush) to be the only living  person in the universe (exempting of course his fairies or else he could not wish for anything). At the beginning, Timmy finds it enjoying to be with the one you love or had a crush on. They spend time together and do stuffs together, at that time Timmy was Trixie's boyfriend (of course, who else on the universe would she choose). Trixie was just after the attention given to her, most boys would say "Gosh, your pretty!" or most of her schoolmates (including Timmy) would look up to her because she's the most popular girl in school, everybody wants to be like her, every boy wants her to be their girlfriend.   In that episode, Timmy admired Trixie with the usual "Gosh, your pretty!" just to please the person that he loved . At first, Timmy  enjoyed her company but soon, Trixie gets paranoid during the absence of Timmy like for example Timmy just went to the bathroom and Trixie thought, Timmy met a girl inside the boy's bathroom. Eventually, Timmy gets scared of Trixie because she's so paranoid that at some point, Trixie would do harm on Timmy. When Trixie got hold of Timmy, Timmy tried to bite his arm off so that he could escape Trixie.

What am I trying to point out  in this blog? Love is never jealous of anything according to St. Paul. Love is when we are happy for the person we loved and even when it hurts we must still accept it. Like Jesus Christ, our Lord, He loved each one of us and He suffered so that we may be happy in God's friendship again. Let's not long for admiration or praises for what we have done or what we look like in front of other people, Christ appeared in a very humiliating form in the cross and he didn't received any admiration but rather insults so that we could be happy in God's love and friendship. Let us not force ourselves to what we think is our destiny, like Timmy, he thought Trixie would be his destiny, but rather in the end he tries to escape from her. We too, when we force ourselves to the "destiny" we consider in life or be another person, in the end we could end  up biting our arm off or escaping from that situation.

Watching cartoon is really not that bad to watch (let's just be alert to some cartoons with adult themes)  because it shows our youth that we cannot be what we sometimes can be and learn good values as a person . Let God handle our life because He knows our needs in life.

                                  A scene from  that episode that inspired me to make this blog

GLORY TO THE TRIUNE GOD!! (Gospel Reflection for Trinity Sunday - Mt. 28:16-20)

Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. It is one of the mysteries of the Catholic Christian Faith. The Trinity is that there is one God but has three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Many non-catholic brethren questions this teaching of the Holy Catholic Church. It is very difficult to explain, even St. Augustine, a very wise and well known Theologian had a very hard time discovering it. In one story, Augustine was walking in the seashore trying to figure out how to explain fully the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity. He saw a child digging a hole in the sand and transferring the water from the sea to the small hole. Augustine asked: "what are you doing, child?" then the child replied, "I'm going to put the waters of the sea to this small hole" and then Augustine realized that the doctrine of the of the Most Holy Trinity is so broad that no human mind can explain.

In today's Gospel, Matthew tells the story of the ascension. Among the four evangelists, he sites one basis of our doctrine of the Holy Trinity. "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt. 28:19). All of us are called disciples of Christ, we share the mission He entrusted to the disciples. We Christians are commissioned to baptize in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. We are called to preach the good news. May we all have a fruitful Trinity Sunday.