my Articulate Heart

God our father has authored our lives in perfect love and that's why He has authority over us. God created us not out of necessity but out of love. He created us so that we might be like Him. We are created in God's own image that is "perfect love". God's authority is the result of His love for us. Because His authority is founded on perfect love, it does not insist to assert His own will upon us. It instead upholds and respects our freedom to choose. His authority wants us to make our choices in perfect freedom. His loving authority desires to perfect us even when we reject His perfect love and choose evil. We see this love at work in the self gift of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection restoring for us what we lost due to our disobedience. In lieu of the perfect reparation Christ accomplished on the cross He gave us His authority by commanding us to love as He loves us. This is why the authority that God grants us as husbands, parents, administrators, m...

If a man who is set free from chains continues to live as if in chains, what is freedom! Freedom becomes liberation only when we live it. The sacraments cannot do what it is capable of doing, if we do not live the truth it embodies. If baptism freed us from the clutches of sin and restored our sonship, why do we still sin? If Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus given to us as his self gift, why despite frequent reception we remain unchanged?. Why despite so many confessions, we have the same laundry list?. Is it because of the inefficacy of the sacraments itself or because we deceive ourselves? Are we not trying to false justify ourselves and experience some kind of a phony make over by queuing up to receive these sacraments? Fact is we do not want to change. We love our sins. We have blinded ourselves and denied us the reality of the ultimate ecstasy we are capable experiencing in union with God. We h...

The consequence of original sin deprives us of the capacity to love as God loves. The lack of love within causes us to sin. Sin committed by all generations is a result of the original sin. By offering himself as a ransom Jesus paid the price for the original sin once and for all thus Jesus’ sacrifice is a valid reparation for  all sins. In baptism you and I receive the merit of Jesus’ priceless redemptive work -freely. This is called sanctifying grace. By choosing to submit their will to the source of death (satan) and rejecting God the father, the source of life, our first parents deprived themselves of the divine life they shared with God. This resulted in a wound (vacuum) deep within that kept humanity enslaved to sin. We too have inherited this woundedness and are thus inclined to sin. Today you and I who are baptized have the sanctifying grace unless we reject it by un- repented sins. But we have a wounded heart too. Primary objective of Jesus’ incarnation was to heal t...

When we decide to try harder and love Jesus more, we unfortunately are being proud. Even though our intention of choosing to try harder and love Jesus more is highly desirable and life giving, it renders fruitless and short-lived because we choose to be 'still control' while do this. We bank entirely on our own capacity to fulfill this desire. Since 'human love' is conditional and opportunistic, our physical and emotional conditions greatly influence and regulate the measure of our love for Christ. It even diminishes altogether for a while in worst conditions. This is true as long as we are affected by the consequences of original sin. On the other hand, in order for us to experience Gods love, all we must do is to prepare ourselves to receive this torrential love which is waiting to explode into us, in proportion to the exact measure we open up ourselves. God's love is unconditional and unchanging. It is 'unconditional' because there is nothing we can do ...

Jesus calls each of us to a 'totally faithful' relationship with him when he says "no one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other" [Mathew 6:24]. We see in the Gospels, examples of lives thrown open in total submission to Christ. Let me illustrate three such lives here. First is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary's holiness is the result of her total submission to Christ. We see her responding with with emphatic 'yes' when she says 'be it unto me according to thy word'. We witness her life being completely in submission to Christ from beginning to the end and it continues to be so. When Jesus tells the disciples 'my mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it'.[Luke 8.21], he is telling them if you want to know what is it to be mothers and brothers, you must learn from my mother and brothers. The relation Mary shared with Jesus was...