Mind of Christ

Do not be conformed to the world but rather transformed. How? By the renew of your mind. Do not be conformed to the world but rather transformed by the renew of your mind.

Saint Paul says, you were born in this world as a baby boy or a baby girl. That's all. Nothing in between.

Okay? So you were born either a baby boy or a baby girl. And then you grow my daughter. You grew up.

And my son you grew up as well. Then he started going to kindergarten. Then to primary school.

Then to high school. Then to TAFE or university. And after all these many long years going and coming, mixing, having friends, and new friends, and new friends, and new things.

You picked up a lot of ideas along the way. This person taught me how to lie. This person taught me how to steal.

This person taught me how to break, how to hurt. And this person taught me how to be nice and kind. All these ideas, ideas, ideas.

I picked up so many ideas. And as I matured and reached the age of 18 and then onwards, all these ideas I started picking and selecting which one to shape me as a person. Then I became who I became after maturity.

And nice person, not a very nice person. But these two all began with an idea. I picked up a lot of things along the way.

Some good, some not so good. They shaped my personality. They shaped my way of living.

After maturity, it's extremely difficult to change someone's mind now. So as a father, as a mother, you come to your adult son or daughter, and you ask them to do things. They have now their own idea in their head, which is totally different at a lot of times to your idea in your head, mom and dad.

So what happens? Disagreement, frictions, arguments, quarreling, fighting, eruption. By force, nothing works. By love.

That's the only way to get that opportunity to change someone's mind. Love. St. Paul says, do not be conformed to this world, but rather transformed.

The world, he's saying, St. Paul is saying to all of you and to all of us, the world put a lot of ideas in your head, my son, and in your head, my daughter. The world infiltrate your way of living, shaped it and formed it for you. In order to escape the world, the temptations of the world, the way of living of the world, the only way to do that, you need to be transformed, not conformed, transformed.

How do I transform? He's saying, by the renewing of your mind. Renew your mind. The word renew is a compounded word, two in one.

RE prefix, to go back, rewind, to go back, RE. And the word new, nothing is new under the sun, says King Solomon. Everything is of old because God is the creator and everything God has created, there is nothing new because God knew what he created.

Nothing is new. To us it is, to God isn't. When they discovered electricity, that was something new, but was electricity there from day one when God created it? Yes.

So when he says, renew your mind, RE, go back, new here means origin. Go back to your origin in order to be transformed and changed, no longer worldly, but rather heavenly, no longer earthly, but rather spiritually, no longer for Satan, but rather for Christ, the King who came to establish his kingdom on earth. Go back to your origin.

What is our origin? Not the apes, not the Big Bang, not Mother Nature. Our origin is God. In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1.1. This is our origin.

In the beginning, Elohim, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. Saint Paul says, you want to have a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of way of living, go back to God who created you. That's the only way to end up being worldly and begin being heavenly.

Go back to God. When you go back to God, what is God going to give you? His Word. This Word was a thought, was an idea.

That idea was to make you like Jesus. That idea from the very beginning before creating Adam, God had this idea that when I come to create Adam, I want Adam, i.e. the human race, to be the standard of Jesus, my beloved Son. I wanted all humans to be Jesus, like Him.

So when you go back to God, He will give you His idea, the Holy Bible, His Word. When you begin reading the Holy Bible, the idea, the thought, the Word of God will start entering your intellect. That idea, that thought, that Word of God will drive away the idea, the thought, the Word of the world away from you.

When the Word of God starts taking over, reshaping you, redefining you, you will become a new creation. What is the Holy Bible? The thought of Christ. When you come to church, attend the Holy Liturgy service, the Holy Mass, the Body and the Blood of Christ and the Truth, what are you receiving? You're receiving the Body and the Blood of Christ.

Why? Because the Body of Christ is the Living Body. The Blood of Christ is the life-giving Blood. So there is the Living Body and there is the life-giving Blood.

So I need the Living Body for my dead body which died in sin. I've sinned every day. I make mistakes whether it be with a thought or with an action or deed.

Every time I sin, my body dies, my spirit dies, my soul dies. I come to receive the Body, the Living Body of Christ for my dead body. I come to receive the life-giving Blood of Christ for my dead soul because the soul lies in the Blood.

So I'm receiving the Soul of Christ when I'm receiving His Blood. So I've received the Body, I've received the Soul. How do I revive the spirit? With the Spirit.

What is the Spirit? The Word. The Word, the Holy Bible. That's why during Liturgy, what do you get? Three things.

Body, Blood and the Gospel. That's the, that's the Liturgy. Body, Blood and the Holy Gospel.

The priest comes and he says the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew and he reads. Why is he reading the Gospel? Because this is the Word to revive your dead spirit and this is the Body to revive your dead body and this is the Blood to revive your dead soul. Resurrection happens every time you attend Holy Mass service.

Christ is risen once again in you and raised you from the dead. The more you read the Holy Bible, the more the thought of God enters you and drives away the thought of the world which is influenced and driven by Satan. Before when I was distant from the Lord, I loved going clubbing.

I loved going downtown brother. I love driving a hundred and twenty k's in a 60 zone with the biggest subwoofer Habibi in the backseat going wah wah doof doof. And Sharbel is not here today.

I enjoyed it. I loved the white powder. I loved gambling.

I loved drinking. I loved all the gazelles and all the rainbow colors. When I went to church, rarely I couldn't stay in the church for five minutes.

I suffocated. But every time I went to the club and Star City Casino, oxygen came back. I was revived.

I found myself. Now you're talking brother. What church? When the Lord touched my heart, He came to establish a kingdom.

And I don't know. I wasn't intending to talk this way but it looks like the Holy Spirit wants me. Yes, yes, yes.

Maybe He wants you to hear this. When the Lord came to establish His kingdom, to do what? One thing. When through His kingdom, He had the opportunity to come now and touch you and change you, bring you close to Him.

When He brought you, He touched your heart, you started re-evaluating things, reassessing things. You started looking at things in a different perspective altogether. The next time you wanted to go to the club, you suffocated.

And every time you went to church, you were alive once again. The cycle changed. Why? Because I'm no longer conformed.

I am transformed.