Team Jesus

Today in our gospel, Jesus tells a parable addressed to the people to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. "Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity --greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” As you can see in the Pharisee’s prayer, it is an act of supplication of all the good he has done and of his faithfulness to his religious obligations. But all he did was just boasted about his good qualities before God and to show that he is much better unlike the rest, this kind of prayer is overbearing and self-righteous. On the other hand, the tax collector just stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God,...

This Sunday's gospel scripture talks about faith. Faith is a well-known gift from God. It was already involved in our lives and we are truly baptized in a church as well. Faith  grows in a different groups and situations. It also grows in church communities, in the parish, in the school, and in the family. In the gospel  scripture, it also mentioned that the Lord said, "If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you." The mustard seed, which the Lord used for giving a simile to faith, is one of the smallest seed in the world with a diameter about 1 to 2 millimetres. Now, why did the smallest seed became a huge mustard tree? Well, when people kept cultivating the mustard seed, there was a biggest chance that a seed will grow into a huge tree. Just like faith, if we keep on cultivating it even through our own little ways like praying, then there is a high chance that...