Today's theme was to follow what God's wants of us rather than by our own human authority/decision.
Fr Joseph from St Mary's of the Angels started by clarifying that even kids have authority over decisions...they can choose either to listen to us or not. That's authority.
We can choose whether we want to make our decisions in life guided by God or our human "wisdom".
He gave a sharing that made everyone in church (even Tiffy) sit up (Feli was singing at the Children's Mass so she missed out on the sermon). This was to illustrate how he used his own judgement and things went wrong, and when he used God's wisdom, things turned out for good.
He was a young priest sent to Kuching (City of Cats) in Sarawak. That was back in 1999. There were 50 villages served by just 2 priests. One night when he was celebrating mass at a villager's home, he was called to the kitchen to bless 2 bottles of water for a woman. He saw that the water was dirty and smelly and asked her what kind of water was that. The woman sheepishly said it was "blessed" by a bomoh for her to drink as she was unwell. He immediately lost his temper at her, chided her for believing in other spirits when she is a child of God. He asked if the water had helped her, and she said only for a while, but she then got worse, that's why she asked him to bless the water for her to drink. He again chided her, she apologised and then he asked 1 man to throw the bottles in the bushes. He told the woman she has to go for confession, and so he gave her one.
During the confession, Fr felt a prompting in him to just give her the absolution, but not to pray over her personally but to let the community pray over her. He felt the prompting so strong, he recognised it was from the Lord and decided to obey it (although his previously thought to pray over her himself in the confessional).
The home he was celebrating mass at had a big beautiful altar with the cruxifix, our Lady and Sacred Heart of Jesus. He told us it is important to have our altar in a prominent place in our home and to have holy images as these are very important to us. They made a circle around the woman and Fr closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross to pray. Immediately, he saw a fire in front of him and he was shocked and opened his eyes. He got a further shock that the woman started acting like a cat and clawing around. He jumped back in fright and so did everyone there. He then felt an inner voice telling him to go forward and pray over her. What exactly did he do then, he had entirely forgotten. He only remembered the woman finally joined them in praying that's when he knew the evil spirit had been cast out of her. Later on, he learned from other priests that he should have blessed the waters 1st before throwing it out, otherwise the spirit did not have any other place to go and that's why it went into the woman. His action then was using his own human wisdom and authority, and that's when things go wrong. But once he listened to God's wisdom and authority, God knows what's best for us and everything would go well. He reminded us that in this time of gloom and doom, we should not rely on ourselves, but turn to God for guidance. We would know if we are doing God's will when we are following what the church teaches and the word of God...we'll know it if we are following God's will.
I found the sermon quite scary but at the same time, I feel that our God is the true creator of everything that everything on earth and in the spiritual world will bow to Him. If God is with us, who can stand against us?
Love Theresa
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