My Articulate Heart

Our happiness here on earth is an indicator of how happy we will be in eternity. Eternal life in heaven is unquenchable happiness, and it begins right here. Happiness is not the absence of pain and anguish, but the inextinguishable joy we receive in Jesus Christ. This is the joy of having “found ourselves” in Christ. This very joy is what Jesus displays on the Cross. Happiness is to be found in Christ crucified. Jesus on the Cross is not overcome by sadness. He possesses an unshaken joy and peace because He is detached from wealth, power, pleasure and honour—the very things in which we often seek our happiness. Jesus has nothing to lose but only to gain, immeasurable gains. What Jesus does on the Cross is grow out of Himself, surrendering Himself totally to the will of the Father and embracing what it takes to set His children free, so that they may be eternally happy. To be happy, we must despise what Jesus despised on the Cross and love what Jesus loved on the Cross. Jesus said, “If ...

When we sin and lose the sanctifying grace, there seem to be a futile attempt from our part to ascribe false holiness and false righteousness upon us and pretend to look alright. Eventually we end up having to manufacture fake goodness because pride prevents us from accepting the failure and return to the mercy of God. When we lose the state of grace we are in a state of fear and rejection. God becomes a merciless judge and we stay away from His sight. We begin to doubt the goodness of God. We assume God is angry. So we stop praying, we cave in and start doing useless things, we act weird, our daily duties are postponed, daily prayer is rescheduled, happiness is lost, people around us seem unkind, we find excuses for not doing things we ought to do, And these excuses begin to look serious and original - the church will be noisy, traffic is bad, I have a headache, I must catch some sleep and the list is endless. The best word to describe the post sin drama is 'procrastination...

If we ignore prayer, or if prayer is a burden, the only possible reason is that we have misunderstood prayer. Some feel prayer is a useless activity that only the ignorant and the weak resort to. Some feel prayer is an unfair demand religion forces upon them that robs their time and freedom, while some surrender concluding prayer is an unfortunate, boring exercise, having to please an egoistic God in order to receive their daily needs. For some others prayer has become a meaningless habit or just a feel good thing. Our appreciation for prayer will grow only when our understanding of God grows. When we seek to know God more personally and intimately, our prayer too grows into a wonderful love relationship with God. Prayer is the means by which we develop this deep relationship and communion with God. When we come to know God's true nature, and who we are in God, prayer becomes the most cherished, joyful and fulfilling experience that we never want to part from. Prayer is nu...

Holiness is sharing in the communion that exists between Jesus and the Father. The mission every Christian is called to undertake is the very mission of Christ. The mission of Christ was to enable people to share in the communion that exists between Him and the Father—in other words, to share in the holiness of God. Christ entered this world to establish the Way, the one true Gate that leads to God the Father. Those of us who enter through this Gate are given a holy desire to share this gift of communion with others, because at the heart of divine communion is love, expressed through service and total self-giving. As we grow in holiness, we grow to become missionaries. We become servants of Christ’s mission and servants of those around us, both near and far. When we share the Good News of salvation with our brothers and sisters, especially those who have not yet known the “only Way,” we serve them. This service is a fitting response to the great mercy and love of God, who saves us and ...

Let the Holy Spirit open our hearts so that we may always see and know the “Truth” that Jesus revealed through the Word of God, both written and spoken. At every point in our spiritual journey, we must aspire to an increase of divine life within us and never become complacent. What stagnates our growth is the attitude, “I already know it all.” Such an attitude can leave us ignorant of the great distance one could journey in seeking the fullness of truth and divine life, despite our frailty. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” — 2 Corinthians 4:7 It is only when we know the truth that we can begin to pull ourselves towards the peak of the mountain, raising the standards of our Christian life from ordinary to extraordinary. Come, let us trek to the mountaintop. The rope is Scripture. Life's problems are the recesses in the mountain on which we firmly set our feet as we climb higher. However big the mountain...

Marriage is losing its sacredness and sacramental value. It is fast becoming a social event, a mere arrangement for better economical viability. Money rules lives and all life’s decisions. Families are losing their relevance. Children with diseases are quietly terminated in the womb, and outside the womb. People are hoping to custom design their kids! The letter ‘s’ next to the word ‘kid’ will soon be considered a violation of human rights. Money rules lives and all life’s decisions. Our lives as well are reeling under a strategic move by those who uphold the culture of death. We too have become helpless victims of consumerism. Quality of life today is determined by seeing what our neighbor has that we don’t have. We are being trained to think that ‘our worth’ is something that needs to be purchased at any cost. We are being deceived. We have become mere ‘toys’ in the hands of the few. Our precious lives are now considered as ‘products’ for the few to multiply their money. Our ignor...

Eternal Life is to share in the divine life of God. Whoever follows the will of God has eternal life. The will of God is that we believe in the one God sent into the world to save human race - Jesus Christ. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you will love Him. Those who love Him obey His commandments. In order to obey His commandments, we need God's Grace and the power of the Holy Spirit. The grace and the power of the Holy Spirit that are required to live a life according to the statutes of God are granted in Sacraments of the Church. Sacraments become effective when we receive them worthily. Sincere repentance makes us worthy. Sincere repentance is a combination of the knowledge of the gravity of one’s own sinfulness and true humility. Remember guilt comes from pride. We seek to be justified by the good works we do. But our good works blind us from the reality of our sinfulness and unworthiness. Good works we render are the ‘work of God’. When we take ownership of our good works,...

Drug abuse is the denial of our fundamental right to have life. And those who are involved in the business of providing drugs to people, especially little children, are either ignorant of the gravity of damage they are causing or they are simply blinded by the false hope money gives. We know that our body is sacred and the Triune God dwells there. Our body is not a prison or a useless shell from which we must escape from, as some believe. But instead it is a sacrament that manifests the invisible mysteries of God. We see the true beauty of the human body on the cross, in mother Mary and in the lives of Saints. We believe in the glorious resurrection of our bodies just as Christ experienced it. Yes, it is in the same body with which we are going to spend eternity in union with God. The human body is sacred and priceless. Man’s rejection of God (Original Sin) has caused human lives to become treacherous and painful. But God out of mercy and love towards His own suffering children se...

Often we think God was punishing Adam and Eve when He sent them out of the Garden of Eden. We also think God was cursing them when He said to man, “You will live by the sweat of your brow,” and to the woman, “You will suffer the pain of labor.” God did not cast them out of the Garden. They distanced themselves from God when they sinned. This distancing is the natural result of sin. Nobody can come into the presence of God without holiness. We see how Adam and Eve hide themselves behind the bushes. We see them trying to cover themselves with leaves. That’s what sin does to us. It distances us from the presence of God. Sin is not an act but a condition—the condition where man loses his capacity to know, love and serve God, and also his neighbor, even if it is not lost completely. The acts we commit are the fruit of this condition. Are we not then confessing only the fruits and not the condition itself? We also see how God covers Adam and Eve with animal skin. We can assume that an innoce...

Even though a man sincerely chooses to follow Christ, the sinful nature in him remains. He is able to follow Christ not because he is already free from his sin but because God loved him first. When we repent and turn to Christ, the grace that God weaves around us is much like a cocoon. Grace is the loving, living presence of God. This unconditional love and the faithful presence of God provide us the right condition to grow and emerge into a beatiful butterfly. When we begin to live in the grace of God, we live no longer by the law of flesh but by the law of the Holy Spirit. We experience freedom. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. [Rom 8:2] This cocoon around us is weakened when we commit venial sins and it is completely destroyed when we are in mortal sin. As we know little sin draws us to little more sin. It is so because si...