Entries Tagged 'Faith and Religion' ↓

This month marks the Feast of St Jude. This saint has been my patron for sometime, in times of difficulties and uncertainties I always prayed to him so that he intercedes for me. Many a times, my prayers were answered. Glory be to God for all the graces He has given me.

Prayer to St Jude
(Feast: Oct 28) 

Most holy Apostle, St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honours and invokes yo universally, as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone. Intercede with God for me that He bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need that I may receive  the consolation and help of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, particularly - (make your request here) - and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever. I promise, O Blessed St. Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favour granted me by God and to always honour you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you. Amen.

The reason why I prayed to St Jude is not because I believe merely in the miracles he has done. But to remind me, as a human, that if I pray for power equal to my tasks, then the doing of my work shall be no miracle but I shall.

Looking ahead, there are a number of things and events which I need to tackle within this few weeks. Aduhai! Trial experiment and six more specimens to construct, Sunday School Camp in November, Carolling in December… Life is gonna be super crazy!

I’m truly thinking hard, madly obssessed with my things and deeply digging my brain for more creative juice. I love this kind of hectic life. I feel just like me, the busy leader in me is shouting to get out after being kept long inside.

I can’t afford looking backward now, I can only look forward! My time frame has been set so that I accomplish whatever needed be done.

Today I started class with a short prayer. This time, my prayer to God sounded like this:

“God, may you guide us in this class that what I say is about you. May you also open up the mouths of my wonderful students so that they may speak and share their thoughts during our discussion. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

It worked. During the discussion, they spoke what’s in their mind albeit some still took a long time to respond.

Today we looked at how advertisements affected our daily lives. Advertisements drawn us to buying things that we want rather than things we need. I shared with my students, in our lives, in order to survive we only need air to breath, food to eat, water to drink, place to stay and clothes to keep us protected.

However, when human has the basic needs, we tend to ask for more, we just want more and more! Instead of a Perodua Kancil, we want Mercedes Benz. Instead of a Pilot pen, we want a Parker pen. We look for money to buy what we want. In the end, we lose our souls to these earthly desires. It is important we learn to discern what we need and want.

The way I look at entertainments is that I told them our lives are just so short - say 70 or 50 or maybe less, we need to enjoy this life. God, who created us in His image, gave us a chance to be on earth. Speaking of St Paul, he reminded us “not to conform to this age.” We have to have our stand not to drawn to things that are fashionable and convenient.

We then proceeded to a “thinking” session. I got them to think of one way to promote the Bible which is the Word of God to others. We know that an advertisement is a very good communication tool to bring messages to others, if used properly. They had 5 minutes of brain storming session.

So if you would like to know, some of the ideas are to present the Bible in the form of “recorded documentaries or videos”, “games”, “mangas”, “drawing as in art”, and make it assessable to the “web”.

One suggested that perhaps we could instead of holding a big book all the time; we divide the Bible into a series of small booklets. Make these booklets colourful, filled with pictures and light to encourage others to carry along with them.

Another idea sprang up from a very shy spoken lady. She said, “Promote the word of God through youth camps.”

I shared with them that we are all Ambassador of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20)? What is an ambassador anyway? An ambassador is someone who speaks for what he believes in, for the person or country he truly loves. In the context of Ambassador of Christ, what we do is we through our lives portray ourselves in a God-like manner and to share with others our faith.

That should be some insights to share with my dear friends. I am still learning hard to express myself well, to be more catchy, and to bring those messages right into their heads. Oh God, guide me well.

The blue month is coming, as such I made a tweak with the colours of my greenish blog so that it suits the theme of the coming month - BLUE. If you are wondering why it has to be blue I think you have to ask why they portray Mother Mary in blue almost all the times.

For Catholics, October is the month in which Mary, Most Holy Queen of the Holy Rosary, is venerated. The picture on your left is my favourite Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Pope Benedict XVI in his Angelus (October 2, 2005) said, ”The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary, the unique contemplative prayer through which, guided by the Lord’s Heavenly Mother, we fix our gaze on the face of the Redeemer in order to be conformed to his joyful, light-filled, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. We entrust the work of the Synod to Mary: may she lead the entire Church to an ever clearer knowledge of the proper mission of service to the Redeemer truly present in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.” 

I remember I wrote a post about half a year ago about my newly bought sapphire rosary. Just in case you keep asking what is the rosary or how does a rosary looks like? A picture tells a thousand words.

I have to admit that I am quick to fall into my temptations, for guys you know what I am saying. I feel guilty every time when I committed a sin. I hope that the Rosary month will be a purifying month for my soul through the intercession of Mother Mary.