Grateful

 

How do I want to conclude this year? With gratitude.

Saint Paul exhorts us to "give thanks at all times" (1 Thes 5:18). I give thanks not only when things turn out favorable or according to my plans. I give thanks because, come to think of it, in anything that happens something good is always born. It may not be what I expect, but hey, who am I give the final word since I don't know the whole story. If I were to know the total and bigger picture, as only God knows, I will be surprised at the amount of good that a seemingly negative thing has put into motion.

Gratitude is an expression of faith. There is a Higher Force, a Greater Being, a loving God who is in charge. For this, I give thanks.

God's tenderness and mercy

"Because of the faithful love of our God in which the rising Sun has come from on high to visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow dark as death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace" (Lk 1:78-79).

I continue to savor the consoling promise of these words as we celebrate Christmas. In this long period of darkness, may we not forget that God continues to visit us and share our experiences of fear and darkness. As the years pass, I understand more and more that God's power is not all about having a magical solution to my problems or the world's ills. His power is in His presence amongst us that enables us to have the strength, the kindness and the perseverance to find solutions and to learn and become better persons. Christmas is a celebration of this good news. Merry Christmas to you and to your dear ones. May the coming year be filled with experiences of God's mercy and tenderness.

Tears

 

What brings peace is not force but tears.

Tears wash our eyes of our prejudices.

Tears water our hearts with compassion and understanding.

Tears clean our hands of indifference, readying it for service.

Tears remind us of our humanity. When all is said and done, we rely on a greater power.

Tears enable us to see that on that bench, in that dark alley is not trash, but a sister or brother.

The measure of a man

 

Inspired by today's First Reading (Phil 2:5-11), a homage to a friend.

The measure of a man...

is not in brute strength, but in the strength of character that makes one ready to stand alone despite the pressure of the mob;

is not in naked power, but in the power to create better conditions for a more caring society;

is not in worldly possessions, but in possessing a good heart that grieves with the grieving, that struggles with those who are struggling;

is not in loud rhetoric, but in the quiet and transforming power of following the Golden rule;

is not in self-centeredness, but in the willingness to journey to create a more inclusive "we".

Keeping hope alive

For this year's World Youth Day, Pope Francis gave the theme "Young man, I say to you, arise". In his message, Pope Francis launches an appeal to young people to have the ability to see pain and death - to look at pain and death in the eye. We live in a society where the reality of death, pain, suffering, poverty is camouflaged in different ways because we want to give an idea, or at least an image, of a perfect life. We are often afraid to express our weaknesses and failures because society gives us a subliminal message that there is no room for weaklings in the world. But the covid-19 situation has brought us face-to-face with the reality of sickness, death, poverty, misery, incompetence, injustice, desperation, and insecurity. We see images every day and there is a danger of getting used to them. So Pope Francis asks us: "All around us, but at times also within us, we can see realities of death: physical, spiritual, emotional, social. Do we really notice them, or simply let them happen to us? Is there anything we can do in order to restore life?
Our Christian faith is founded on Christ's resurrection. This is what inspires us to act proactively, to give our own concrete contributions, no matter how small they may be. We believe that we are part of and are weaving history. We learn from those who have gone ahead of us and we hope that with our good choices we leave a better world for future generations. Our Christian faith is personal, but it is not individualistic. It acknowledges that we are part of history. It acknowledges that we are part of a community.

When good people do nothing

Still missing you

I still miss you. It's almost twenty years since you've passed on, but I still remember your quiet and contagious laughter that came from your simple soul. Your laughter came not from the fact that everything was okay, but because you believed that God takes care of everything in His own time, even if that time didn't come according to our program. You were happy when we were together as a family, including the extended one, again, not because everything was perfect but because that is what a family is about.
From heaven, continue to watch over us. Pray for the world, that we may all rediscover that it is in the simple things in life, lived in authenticity that we truly find joy.
Happy birthday in heaven, nanay.

Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit, who is greater than our hearts, exposes us to our true selves, not for judgment and condemnation, but for understanding and compassion.
The Holy Spirit helps us not to run away from our weaknesses but to look at them as opportunities of grace.
The Holy Spirit helps us to rejoice for the good that is in us and for the good that we accomplish, seeing in them our participation in God, who is "the Only good" and from whom all good things come.

Lost without a shepherd

I imagine Jesus looking at the world right now with the same sentiments he had two thousand years ago! We are like sheep without a shepherd.
Many of those who are supposed to take care of the sheep are like mercenaries who take advantage of the sheep and use them for their own gain.
The sheep are scattered, each one fighting for its own survival and look at the others as rivals. Without a point of communion, the law of the jungle prevails, the survival of the fittest!
What is the way out? Awareness, and for awareness to arise, we must have the courage to let things 'hang in there' for a while, that is, not have the hurry to resolve everything; rather, take time off to sort of 'regroup' and get in touch with the deepest truths in our hearts. The only ones that will matter to us at the end of our life.
To take time off is necessary for the salvation of our soul, otherwise, we become gobbled by the chaos within and outside of us.

True leader

Seduced by a dance

Today's Gospel narrating the circumstances of John the Baptist's death reminds us of a truth all of us share. Without a strong center, it is easy to be seduced: by power, by beauty, by money, by short-term success, by practicality and convenience.
Herodias' daughter's dance played to the basest instincts of Herod - human respect, the desire to show-off one's power.
Without a firm and more stable center, it is easy to vacillate and to be seduced even by a dance.
Every day we are faced with decisions to make. Whatever our choice may be, they show what we hold dear in our life.
But there are bigger moments when our decision is a matter of life or death. What or who is the center that will eventually decide the life and death of our soul?

To preach and to heal

Jesus sends His disciples two by two, to preach and to heal. Jesus sends them out with the barest of the essentials. But a part of the essential is being sent in the company of someone, that is, the community dimension. Community is support in our mission. Community is also a message that we bring. The Good News is for all, and it unites us all in God's family.

It's all grace

Transformation or conversion begins, proceeds, is sustained and finds its fulfillment in God.
It doesn't start with having everything in my life totally in place.
It proceeds by letting grace, God's grace, fill my life and find a home in me.
It is sustained by the certainty that God loves me as I am, with still the many aspects of my life not in place.
Its fulfillment is not the self-assurance that "I made it". No, its fulfillment is being in the heart of God.
For, indeed, everything is grace.

Look for the extraordinary

Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary. This is what being childlike means. This is our gateway to heaven, for heaven is not an assembly of perfect people.
What is heaven like? I don't have any phrase to describe it perfectly. But come to think of it, even Jesus used images to explain heaven. After all, our thinking is very much limited and conditioned by what our senses can grasp.

We love God because God first loved us

This is not like the-chicken-and-the-egg thing. We do, can only love God because God loved us first, that is, unconditionally. There is nothing we can do that can diminish God's love for us and nothing we can do to increase it. What God gives us is His love that is uniquely for us.
When we correspond to God's love, His love doesn't increase, but we increase our capacity to receive it and to be filled by it.

The power of ONE

I like calendars where you can turn the page every month. There is something sort of a ritual as I turn one page to another and see the number one. It means a new beginning, a possibility to change, to get out of a rut. It is like God telling me "hey, enough with the self-pity and self-recrimination, see, I am making something new. I am renewing you".