It is 15th February 2019. The readings are from Genesis 3:1-8; and the Gospel from Mark 7:31-37. It is when we have chosen wilfully to be deaf to God and the Word of God, we are beginning to adhere someone or something that teaches us to do the contrary things against God. Who is in our life teaching us and conning our minds to think and do the opposite of what God expects us to do? We were not created with the inborn rebellion. When God created us, God did not even put this rebellion and indifference towards God in us. There is someone for sure misleading and convincing our wavering minds to try something other than what God has proposed us already for our wellbeing. No one created us other than God and therefore there is no one can have a claim of our being unless we have decided to sell the birth right and its privileges for the fleeting pleasures. It is needless to say and so obvious indeed that if we are not communicating with the Lord who loves and forgives us, we are surely communicating with the one whom we have placed our trust and love other than God. It is the devil who manages to convince us through the ever-alluring and ever-promising words that mislead our hearts from God. When we fail to listen to the Lord, we are sure to fall like our first parents presented in the first reading. Death enters not through the temptation but sheer disobedience of us to God. It is very hard to obey the Lord when we have chosen not to read the Word of God and the teachings of the Church. We have chosen to listen something else and eventually we have to face the spiritual consequence of losing our faith and blessings. The devil destroys our faith gradually through bombardments of the social media and sinfully intimate human interactions that based on pleasures of the flesh. Our minds are attracted to fake news not Good news. Truth is distorted and dissipated by through our dumbness of our minds and eager longing for pleasures. Either we believe the Lord and live with the absolute truth that leads us to eternal life, or else, we might end up believing the alternative truth proposed by the devil that so attractive and pleasurable to our minds and misguide and mislead us to deny and disconnect from God. The alternative truth is loaded with lies coined by the father of lies and it is manipulative in nature that deviates us from God without being realising that we are living a life that is opposed to God’s love and mercy. Testing God is the outright abuse of freedom and disregarding grace. More we engage ourselves conversing with the devil, much more we expose ourselves to its seductive words that destroys life of God in us. The evil one infuses and injects our minds with a false hope and knowledge to match or to replace God with our skills. How long are we going to hide from God and live in sin? To be happy one needs to discern the ways of the Lord. The responsorial Psalm praises, “Happy the person whose offence is forgiven.” (Ps.31:1). In the Gospel Jesus offers to heal our deafness. Only Jesus alone can open what the devil has shut it in our souls, minds and body. Jesus cures our deafness as He cured a deaf man in the Gospel. Unless Jesus open, we might end living in the prison of dumbness and refuse to speak and act against the evil. He is prepared to open the closed doors when we are prepared to cooperate and open to God. We need to have sensitive ears that hear the movements of the Spirit of God in our life. May the Lord continue to bless us so as to listen to God and live with God for ever. May you have a good day.