Our house is a sanctuary, it is a place where God wants that our family is sanctified. So as the temple is holy, our house is holy. Our family is and needs to be center of holiness. Our family is like a child. We need a childlike attitude, full of love, of affection, of pardon…holy! Full of the Spirit. There is an expression very beautiful in the book of the prophet Isaiah, that which Jesus repeats:

The Spirit of the Lord rests on me, because the Lord consecrates me through the . (cf Is 61:1)

I always ask myself: What do you want to say “The spirit of the Lord rests on me? He is resting? He is resting on me? I looked for the significance of this expression. Until I discovered that the word “to rest” is the same used in the first book of the bible, Genesis, (GN1:2) where it says. The breath of God hovered over the waters.

These words are similar. In Hebrew the word is utilized to express that which the hen does she rests over the eggs to prepare them. She knows that to how to place herself over them, without them breaking, until the chicks are born.

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One of the things that torments us a lot is to continue cultivating fears. Fear of tomorrow: What will happen to me? With my health? With my children? With my marriage? With my family? My mother? Will I have money if possible? We are wrong in courting fears. Jesus says: “Do no torment yourself in your thoughts”.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord says to us clearly: each day has enough of its own worries. 

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Mt 6:34 NIV).

Jesus would be able to say as well: “You will always have problems.

Therefore, we do not need to remain worried with our future problems. Already we have, Our our problem for each day.” When tomorrow arrives, we will have to confront the problem then. Today we occupy ourselves with problems of today, without worrying ourselves with problems that already do not exist.

Your Brother,

Monsignor Jonas Abib

from the book “Combatentes na alegria

Translated from Portuguese

Normally we walk very well until pain comes upon us. In the hour that our emotions speak stronger, all types of worries raise themselves, the insecurities take us over, anxiety surrounds us, finally all is transformed. This is the hour of faith and trust in God, who always is with us and never abandons us. It is the hour of passing through the valley of death, but knowing that there is a Shepherd that loves us and cares for us.

Trust in God in what He has for us. It is true that you do not understand why of your difficulties, through which you are passing. Accept them, for the Lord is with you in all these moments. 

“We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?” (Jó 2,10).

We need to be firm in God, being men and women of fiber, spiritual combatants that are confronted with the difficulties that may come up. Suffering gives us the temperment of spiritual warriors.

Your Brother,

Monsignor Jonas Abib

Monsignor Abib is the founder of the New Song Community of Brazil

The spiritual life also is permeated by dry periods, times we don’t like, solitude, discouragement. In these periods we are deprived of consolations, of feelings and spirituality. This, many people do not understand, helps our growth in our prayer life and in the practice of virtues.

Nevertheless, many forces of discipline in the spiritual life, the person does not feel a taste for prayer; on the contrary he experiences fatigue, discouragement, the absence of the presence of God, as if He has forgotten us, and the time appears to have no end.

We could say that faith and the hope are sleeping. The soul appears enwrapped in a species of torpor. It is a laborious time, and one does not experience joy. But, also in this time, God works in us. Jesus Himself says to us that “His Father continues working” God acts always in our favor and as St. Paul said: All things work for good of those that love God.” (Rom 8:28)

This time in the desert helps us to detach ourselves from all that which does not proclaim the lordship of Jesus in our lives. It teaches us and educates us to look for God as He is and not for that which He offers us.

Your Brother
Monsignor Jonas Abib
founder of the New Song Community

You will be perfect as is perfect your Heavenly Father, (cf Mt 5:48.)

You will be perfect through the will of God, through the disposition of God, you will be perfect as my Heavenly Father is Perfect.

This is a great action of the Holy Spirit. The Father trusts to the Holy Spirit this great work, thus, as the beginning of the Bible says. God took mud and clay, he molded and modeled the man, the creature from the mud of the Earth. We are a work of art equally that is the work of the Holy Spirit, to shape us, mold us, to make us perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect, this is to make us in the image and likeness of the Father.

This is not that notion of perfection that we have from time to time mathematically. An irreproachable person, No!. It is as you and many of us that already know who have worked with modeling clay. Modeling clay is an art, because also when you shape it, you perceive all the perfections in the process. The model is going to become perfect quickly, No! It is for this reason that the piece of art needs to keep being modeled and modeled. You are being modeled. This is a true creation that is made by hands.

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God needs millions of people filled with the Holy Spirit in every place, because this is the only way in which our people are transformed: from men and women fillled with the Holy Spirit growing all the time in the grace of Baptism.

Those that receive the Holy Spirit take seriously this grace. God want to renew this nation, he wants to bring forth healing, miracles and marvels, he wants His word preached. He wants to transform people. 

It is urgent because the Lord is near.

Let us strengthen ourselves to know the Lord, His arrival is as certain as the dawn. His coming is certain as the morning sun, therefore, let us strengthen ourselves to know the Lord. (cf. Hos 6:3)

There is no other way to bring Jesus to our brothers. Bring him to conversion, a new life saved through the Holy Spirit. There is no other way to change our families, therefore, in order that they really Christian families it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit it is the secret.

Your Brother
Fr. Jonas Abib
Founder of the New Song Community.