Bill Hao

Gratitude Perhaps you have seen or read this passage from St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” (1Thessalonians 5:16-18) In this chapter, St. Paul exhorted the early Church in Thessalonica on specific essentials of Christian life, and some of these is to “rejoice always,” “to pray without ceasing,” and to “give thanks in all circumstances.” Having gratitude in…

God so loves the world  When Jesus said to Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. (John 3:16),” He was speaking of how God the Father gave Him up to be born as a man, to live as a man, and to suffer and die on the Cross as a man. And the purpose for all of this, is…

The Mission of the Holy Spirit St. Cyril of Alexandria (378-444) once wrote: “After Christ had completed His mission on earth, it still remained necessary for us to become sharers in the divine nature of the Word; i.e., we had to give up our own life and be so transformed that we would begin to live an entirely new kind of life that would be pleasing to God. This was something we could do only by sharing in the Holy…

Lessons from the Ascension  There are two things that we can learn from the Ascension of the Lord: Regarding the Ascension, St. Paul said that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, in accord with the exercise of His great might, which He worked in Christ, raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power and dominion, and every name that is named not…

The Sending of the Holy Spirit      Jesus said to His disciples, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it.  But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.” (John 14:16-17)  “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name — He will teach you everything and…