Obedience

Are you obedient to your parents?
Do you follow their will? or not?
and most of all,

Are you obedient to your God?


Friends, When Jesus approach John the baptist and ask for baptism, John prevent Him and said "I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?" but Jesus answered, "Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."

What I want to tell to you is simple, that from the start, even if it don't look alright, even if it is not the best way to do, there is only one thing in the mind of Christ. Fulfill the will of the Father.

If the father declares Jesus as His beloved son with whom He is most pleased, It is because Christ His son knows how to listen and obey Him.
That defines the Son.

Obedience.

It came from a Latin word, obi-dire means listening and obeying.

In the end we as the new children of God, will truly be pleasing to Him if like Jesus, we also know how to listen and to obey.

___


Today, many Filipinos are focused on the Black Nazarene of Quiapo.
According to some source, 6 million people will go to the church just to see the image.
Also on this day, the tradition of pulling the ropes during the procession and throwing their towel in order to touch the image of Jesus is done. They are doing all of this sacrifice because they want to be blessed.
We all wished for good life, more blessings, less problems and less sufferings. But the Black nazarene, image of Jesus we celebrate, is Jesus who is kneeling, full of blood, carrying His cross with all of His wounds and crowned with thorns.

This is the God who did not refuse all pains just to obey his Father.

What I am telling you is this, If we are truly have faith in Him, what we must ask more than the wealth, more than the luck, more than this financial blessings is like Him we may be obedient to the Father that we believed in. That is when true devotion begins to happen. When you go near to the black nazarene of Quiapo, remember a suffering God, because He wanted to obey His Father's will.

More than all of the blessings, ask for the gift of OBEDIENCE, because that is the only way that the Father can say, that is whom I am pleased, that is whom I loved, that is my child because he/she became obedient to my will.


Sometimes, the problem is we are very much attached to our own will. We want our own will to be done. And sometimes we modify what God has already planned in our life.

Today, we end officially the celebration of Christmas and it is true that during Christmas, we rejoice in this one fact that the Son of God humbles himself to be a man. But today because of baptism, we are rejoicing for we, the children of man unites with Christ, exalted and became children of God.

Now, our responsibility is to continue His mission and live up to the dignity of being children of the same heavenly Father.

Let us hope that one day will come, when the Lord will look at us and declare as He has declared for Jesus His son,

"That is my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased"


Let us obey His will, even if we do not really understand, even if we do not like, and we will truly be defined as beloved to Him.

Obedience.
Today we ask for that grace.
and may the Father truly one day say,


"They are my children, knows how to obey. I Love them."




May you life truly be blessed,

Ash








(inspired by fr. mar)