Tagged: message of the day

“Oh, that I might be firm in the ways of keeping Your statutes!” –Psalm 119:5 Is your Ash Wednesday Lenten resolve still firm or are temptations wearing down your self-denial? Our weak flesh is vulnerable to the relentless pressures of temptation. We desire to do what is right, but we don’t have the power (see Rm 7:18). Our old, sinful nature rebels against our new, redeemed nature. There’s a civil war raging inside us (see Jas 4:1). What wretches we are! (Rm 7:24) “Who can free” us? (Rm 7:24) Jesus has set us free (Jn 8:36). He freed us for...

“If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all My statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die.” –Ezekiel 18:21 Lent is a powerful call to repentance, and repentance is a matter of life or death. Therefore, Lent is a matter of life or death – everlasting life or the death of damnation. This Lent, many people will turn away from all their sins (Ez 18:21). This will be the Lent of a lifetime leading to the total love and perfect happiness of heaven. This...

“Help me, who am alone and have no help but You.” –Esther C:14, 25 We have been taught to always have something to fall back on. We have insurance, savings, a nest egg, or an ace in the hole. We avoid ever getting in the position where we would have to depend on God for our next meal. However, the Lord may be doing something almost the opposite of what we’re trying to do. He is trying to strip us and leave us with nothing but Him to depend on. For example, when He sent out His apostles on mission,...

“This is an evil age.” –Luke 11:29 Jonah prophesied to the people of Nineveh. “When the people of Nineveh believed God, they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth” (Jon 3:5). All 120,000 citizens of a city steeped in sin, violence, and murder (see Na 3:1ff) repented in one day (Jon 4:11). They expressed their repentance by communal fasting. Pope St. John Paul II prophesied to the people of the world, especially to Catholics in the Western world. He called our Western society a “culture of death.” He called us to pray that America...

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. This is how you are to pray: ‘Our Father…’ ” –Matthew 6:8-9 The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert where the devil questioned whether He was God the Father’s beloved Son (see Mt 3:17; 4:3, 6). Jesus overcame these temptations, and the Holy Spirit cried out in Jesus’ heart: “Abba” (Father) (Gal 4:6; Rm 8:15). This Lent, as we imitate Jesus’ forty-day desert fast, we also wish to emerge from the Lenten desert confirmed by the Spirit in our Father’s love for us. On Easter Vigil and on Easter...