Homily: June 8, 2025 Petecost Sunday (Forgiveness)

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 "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." 

Happy Feast of Pentecost! Today, we conclude the joyful fifty days of the Easter season and enter again into Ordinary Time after  Pentecost, the feast of fire, power, divine breath,  and popularly celebrated as the birthday of the Church through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Fifty days after rising from the dead, Jesus fulfills His promise that God the Father will send the advocate, the Holy Spirit to be His disciples. The Holy Spirit is poured out onto the Church, showering her with powerful spiritual gifts. 

And what is the first fruit of this Spirit? Forgiveness. The power to forgive, to remove sin, in Jesus’ name, is given to the church.

On the cross, Jesus exercised this power by forgiving His murderers and implored His Father’s mercy on the same.

Forgiveness is the foundation of the Christian life. Without forgiveness, the burden of sin will increase the weight of death and darkness on our souls. Without forgiveness, our separation from God will be permanent and we will be blocked from receiving all other graces. Without forgiveness, sin remains, death is certain. The whole of humanity will perish.

St. Paul says in today’s second reading says, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

If we persist in sin, we will die. If we are forgiven, the Holy Spirit can dwell in us, and we will live. Mercy activates our salvation. Forgiveness is not abstract. It is real.

Through Jesus, we have been forgiven. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we can forgive. Forgiveness frees the soul, restores relationships, reconciles and reunites.

You can see now how powerful the gift of forgiveness is. And Jesus gave this power to the Apostles, to the Church.

We live in a world that is quick to anger and slow to forgive, in a culture that thrives on division, outrage, bearing grudges. Social media teaches us to cancel, not to reconcile. The world does not want to forgive, it wants to blame and judge.

But the Church of Christ must be different. A Christian must be different. We have the Holy Spirit to empower us to forgive and to love.

The early Christians were set apart not by the buildings they had, but by the lives they lived, radical love, radical unity, radical forgiveness. The world saw that and said: “See how they love one another.”

Loving one another is a clear sign of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It is what the Holy Spirit does. He doesn’t just make us “feel spiritual”, He makes us holy. He is mercy.

On this feast of Pentecost, a feast of the Holy Spirit, let us pray to receive the outpouring of gifts, to be forgiven and be graced to forgive. 

Pentecost is not just about what happened 2,000 years ago. It is about what can happen today right here, right now because at every Mass, the power of Holy Spirit is invoked and our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is the spouse of the Holy Spirit and at every Mass, she intercedes for us.

May we, as church, experience again what the Apostles experienced at the first Pentecost. May we be so empowered by the Holy Spirit that we can fearlessly preach, effectively convert, mercifully forgive and lovingly heal.

May we be blessed and in turn be a blessing, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


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March 1, 2025: First Holy Communion Homily: St. Joseph's Catholic Church Seffner, Florida

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 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!"  In today’s gospel event, when Jesus saw the woman ‘crippled by a spirit’, he immediately healed her, telling her she is set free. He saw her physical state, but He also saw the spiritual bondage which shows up in her physical infirmity. Her physical impairment is a result of sin. But when we look at Jesus on the cross, physically crippled by human cruelty and evil, it shows up our spiritual infirmity. Jesus’ physical deformity is a result of our sin. When we see Jesus on the cross, we see God, fully human and we also see man, fully divine. Physically He is nailed to the cross, but spiritually, he is free. Jesus shows us how we too can live free and live fully.  St. Paul said it plainly in the first reading, by calling God, “Abba, Father!” To imitate Jesus in the way he lives, as sons and daughters of the Father, exercising the ...
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Homily: September 18, 2023, Monday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time (Men should pray)

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 "It is my desire, then, that in every place, men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument." What a beautiful vision St. Paul had! Imagine if all people are prayerful and peaceful, no anger, no argument. The world would really be perfect. It is through prayerfulness that we learn to be deeply peaceful people, and I too desire to attain this. My papa and grandma were two great examples of prayerfulness for me.  Grandma was completely blind before I was born and she was living in my home. In my memory, she prayed the rosary all the time and she would spend hours reciting all the other prayers daily which she had memorized by heart. I have never seen her forgetting her prayers or skipping her rosary for even one day. My papa, too, had always kept a regular and consistent prayer routine. He read the Bible and devoted a good amount of time for prayer on a daily basis. I also do not recall seeing him miss a single day of his beautiful habit. I do regret though ...
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Homily: June 15, 2025 Soemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

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Today’s second reading ends with this powerful phrase: “Because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Today we celebrate two beautiful events: the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and Father’s Day. So, happy Father’s Day to all our fathers, grandfathers, fathers-to-be and godfathers! My siblings and I are incredibly blessed to have had a good Christian father who fulfilled his duties both as a father and as a Catholic. My papa was a very quiet, resilient, yet very gentle person. He loved and protected all his seven children, physically, emotionally, mentally and especially spiritually. He taught us the faith and was a great model of the traditions. He made sure we never missed Sunday Mass and took us regularly to Confession. I was very much a “dad’s boy”, working with him daily on the farm, taking care of the animals together with him. He didn’t worry much about school grades, but he was very firm and strict with us re...
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Homily: Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist, Monday, December 27, 2021

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Homily: Tuesday of the Tenth week in Oridnary Time (Salt lose taste)

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