the only real friend...

When we feel beaten up and we feel that we have had of life's battles and struggles, we cry out in despair "When will I run out of troubles? When will I run out of enemies? O When, O when, will my enemies leave me in peace?"
Well, the Lord never promised us a life without struggles, without troubles, without enemies...
God never promised us a rose garden, so to speak. God seemed to be so sure that we will always have enemies that He advised us to simply love them. "Love your enemies," the Lord said.
He Himself had enemies. A good man that Jesus was , He had the Scribes and the Pharisees who always looked at Him with contempt and disgust. With friends like the Pharisees, who would need enemies? Jesus had also to contend with the pro-Roman group among His countrymen.


They saw in Jesus somebody who was not a friend of Caesar- a threat to the empire. Then there were the enemies in His own circle of friends. Judas comes to mind so quickly. But so was Peter who wanted to tempt the Lord and make Him run away from the cup of sacrifice.


Finally, there was the archenemy- the tempter in the desert who wanted Him to to change the stones to bread, who wanted Him to make a clown of Himself, who wanted Him to kneel down and worship the evil one.


We have our personal enemies and we also have our common national enemies.


There are people who seem to have taken it to themselves to make life more difficult for us.

It seems that there are some people who are disruptive by nature.

These are the kind of people who will disagree with everything they see and hear.

Their mission in life is to criticize. Their mission in life is to express their being disgruntled about everything.

If you arrive at a consensus, these are the same people who will not be satidfied. They will continue to criticize the consensus and they will wait until it is proven wrong.

In the end, they will say: "I told you so, I told you it would happen."


There are those people who threaten our lives, our property and security. There are those who tempt us into laziness, into greed, lust and dishonesty.


When all these people have been won over to our side, we still have to contend with the greatest enemy, the self! Our greatest enemy is the sinful self; the old self that urges us to take the easy way out; the self tat tells us to get over others; the self that makes a fool out of us.

The destructive self that opts for revenge rather than forgiveness.


We have many enemies too, on the national level. We have the so-called terrorists: real or imagined or made up. We have self-serving politicians and appointed public servants who have begun to like power and have become afraid of losing them. We have the heavy taxation system that is hardly working and has become a heavy burden that the poor find impossible to carry. We have a government that opts to raise revenues by legalizing things immoral. We can lay the blame on our situation, on all things and on people, and on all events of the past.


But we will get nowhere unless we lay the blame on ourselves. Let us be mature enough to recognize that our greatest enemy is ourselves.


Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me!


Let there be change in the society and let that change begin with me.


Jesus won over all His enemies because He was true to Himself.

We, too, can claim victory over all these enemies if we recognize the enemy within us that have started to cuddle and to protect and to safeguard.


Our friends can become our enemies one day. The self that we love very much today can become our own condemnation one day.


God will be our only faithful Friend.. Let us ask Him, as we spend the last day of the fourth week of Lent, to show Himself to us- our real and authentic faithful friend to the end!