WORD ALIVE FR. BEL SAN LUIS, SVD Somebody quipped, “At his funeral, an atheist (non-believer in God) is all dressed up but with with nowhere to go.” Part of the feast of the Commemoration of the Saints and of Souls is to remind us Christians where to go after death.

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For us believers and Christ’s followers, our ultimate goal is to become a saint. When you tell that to somebody, chances are he or she will look at you oddly and say, “To be a saint? That’s not for me. I’m too worldly for that.”

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But the truth is that our ultimate goal on earth is – and should be – to become a saint; in short, to be with God in heaven. If you don’t aspire for that goal, where will you go in the next life? Someone said, “There are only two places in the next life – the smoking (Hell) and non-smoking (Heaven) area. Will you spend your eternity in the smoking or non-smoking area?”

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Did you ever pause and ponder on that? And are you doing every means to achieve that goal? The French novelist Leon Bloy very well put it: “The only tragedy in life is not to be a saint.”

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          Becoming a saint does not mean imitating the extraordinary feats of the martyrs like St. Lorenzo Ruiz who bore torments, persecutions, and died for their faith. If you can do it, that would be a supreme act of faith. But becoming a saint in our modern times means more of imitating people who stumbled and kept rising again morally and spiritually.

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For instance, they may have committed mistakes in their marriage or religious life, but kept rising, learning from their mistakes, faithfully following God’s will again. Remember such saints like Matthew, the dishonest tax collector, sinful Mary Magdalene, the once depraved  Augustine, converted Francis of Assisi, former soldier Ignatius of Loyola, and countless others.

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If such people had anything extraordinary about them, it is that they never stopped trying to be faithful to the Lord and his teachings in spite of their weaknesses and failures. They were ordinary people who lived extraordinary faith.

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We can be saved and become saints if we repent, reform, and make reparation for our wrongdoings. As the saying goes: "If you're headed in the wrong direction, God allows  U-turns.”

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QUIPS TO PONDER. If you think you are indispensable, take a walk around the local cemetery or columbarium. Rich or poor, famous or infamous, all life leads to the grave.

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You may party in Hell, but you will be the barbeque! Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to MEET Him soonest.

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Try Jesus.  If you don’t like Him, the devil will always take you back.

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SEND AHEAD YOUR TREASURES. “Lay up treasures in Heaven where neither rust nor moth can consume,” Jesus says. One way of doing this is helping our needy seminarians under our Adopt-A-Seminary scholarship program and sick indigents: Jhosel Cabcaban aged seven who needs brain treatment after a tricycle accident  and six-year-old leukemia patient Alison Genesis L.

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For inquiry, e-mail me at: [email protected].

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POPE’S FINANCIAL AID TO VICTIMS OF SHIPWRECK. Fr. Paulo H. Prigol, CS, chaplain/director of the Apostleship of the Sea, writes:

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“Pope Francis, through the Dicastery for the Integral Human Development, has sent an economic contribution to all the families of the crew members of the ship M/V Gulf Livestock 1 (39 Filipinos, 2 Australians, and 2 New Zealanders), which sank in the Sea of Japan near the island of Amami Ōshima last 2 September, after experiencing a main engine failure while typhoon Maysak was raging. The boat was sailing from the port of Napier (New Zealand) to the port of Jingtang, Tangshan (China).

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        “The financial aid, in cooperation with the Apostolic Nunciatures, and the Stella Maris of the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, will be personally handed over to the families of the missing and the two survivors, together with a personal gift from Pope Francis.

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        “This contribution is accompanied, from the very first days of the disaster, by spiritual, psychological, and personalized support offered to Filipino families.”

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FAMILY TV MASS – is aired on TV5 Sports Channel 59,  Free TV Ch. 41 at 6-7 a.m.  Sunday and anytime at “MCFI SVD Media” Account on YouTube and Facebook Page. Priest presider: FR. BEL SAN LUIS, SVD. The FAMILY that prays together stays together.