Galatians 1: 6-17

Saint Therese of child Jesus, Guardian angel, Saint Francis Assisi, Saint Therese of Avila, Blessed thevarparambil kunjachan, Saint Luke the Evangelist, Saints Simon and Jude apostles

God created us out of free and unselfish love. When a man loves, his heart overflows. He  would like to share his joy with others. He gets this from his Creator. Although God is a  mystery, we can still think about him in a human way and say: Out of the “surplus” of his love he created us. He wanted to share his endless joy with us,  who are creatures of his love.

We are here on earth in order to know and to love God, to do good according to his will, and 

to go someday to heaven. To be a human being means to come from God and to go to God. 

Our origin goes back farther than our parents. We come from God, in whom all the happiness 

of heaven and earth is at home, and we are expected in his everlasting, infinite blessedness. 

Meanwhile we live on this earth. Sometimes we feel that our Creator is near; often we feel 

nothing at all. So that we might find the way home, God sent us his Son, who freed us from sin, delivers us from all evil, and leads us unerringly into true life. He is “the way, and the truth, and the life”

God has placed in our hearts a longing to seek and find him. St. Augustine says, “You have 

made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”  We call this longing for God

RELIGION. It is natural for man to seek God. All of our striving for truth and happiness is 

ultimately a search for the one who supports us absolutely, satisfies us absolutely, and  employs us absolutely in his service. A person is not completely himself until he has found God. “Anyone who seeks truth seeks God, whether or not he realizes it” (St. Edith Stein)

Man can know by reason that God exists, but not what God is really like. Yet because God

would very much like to be known, he has revealed himself. With Jesus Christ, has everything been said, or does revelation continue even after him? In Jesus Christ, God himself came to earth. He is God’s last Word. By listening to him, all men of all times can know who God is and what is necessary for their salvation. With the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the REVELATION of God is perfect and complete. To make it comprehensible to us, the Holy Spirit leads us ever deeper into the truth. God’s light breaks so forcefully into the lives of many individuals that they “see the heavens opened” (Acts 7:56). That is how the great places of pilgrimage such as Guadalupe in Mexico or Lourdes in France came about. The “private revelations” of visionaries cannot improve on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No one is obliged to believe in them. But they can help us understand the Gospel better. Their authenticity is tested by the CHURCH.