Saturday, March 30, 2013

Beauty of Easter Sunday


O the beauty of Easter Sunday! Faith sustained, Hope recaptured and love endured! What can be more beautiful than a risen Lord? Blessed are we sons and daughters of Eastern Morn. Our lives are not worthless, our past forgiven, present blessed and future secured. Alleluia! The Lord has risen indeed!

by aats

Friday, March 29, 2013

The Good of Friday


Good Friday will never be good without sacrifice. The element of sacrifice makes Friday good. Jesus showed us how to be good. To be good is to be willing to sacrifice for others good. This is the mark of real love. Only real love is capable of sacrifice. Are we capable of sacrifice without complaints?

Thank you Jesus for your goodness. Amen. 

by aats

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Holy Eucharist

 
Today Catholics celebrates the Institution of the Holy Eucharist when Jesus took the bread and wine telling His Apostles to do it as a remembrance of Him. His real presence in the Eucharist is a comforting and assuring thought in a world full of suffering and despair. Having Him freely in the Holy Communion is a sweet free embrace. The Eucharist is at the heart of our faith and its fruits are service.  It cannot be that we have Jesus, believe in Him and cannot do good. It just doesn’t make sense. 

by aats

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

For God


Saint Ignatius used to ask, “What have I done for God? What am I doing for God? And, what MORE can I do for Him?" May everything we do reflect Gods grace to others and bring glory to Him. Let us pose this question to ourselves as we go deeper into the Holy Week. 

by aats

Monday, March 25, 2013

The Path of Betrayals


Holy Tuesday and the gospel reading were recounting the story of two betrayals. Here the betrayal of Judas and that of Peter were foretold. Eventually Judas and Peter did betray Jesus, Judas by few silver coins and Peter by fear of suffering. Money for Judas and the fear of being persecuted himself if associated with Jesus for Peter. Realizing what they did, Judas overcame with guilt decided to take his own life while Peter overcame with grief was remorseful and was eventually given a chance to lead the Church.

The path to Jesus can be filled with betrayals. In mission we deal with people, trusting them with our secrets, dreams and desires. When we open up ourselves into a relationship, it makes us vulnerable to betrayals, for in relationships there are people that can take advantage of us. But there is no other way; we have to build relationships because it is the only way that the love of Christ can be shared. We might not have control of others but we can for sure control what kind of response we have to betrayals. Jesus response to betrayal is more love.

It was this love that saved Peter. It is the same love that will save us. 

by aats

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Signs and Wonders


Todays gospel reading from John 10:31-42 tells us about how the Jews were trying to stone Jesus. They said they were stoning him not for his good works but because of His claim that He is God. Jesus ended up on the far side of the Jordan to which those who followed him came to the conclusion saying that John gave no signs and yet everything that he said is true about him.

For the Jews, no amount of good works, signs and wonders can convince them that He is the Son of God. It is this kind of close mindedness that prevented them from seeing what Jesus is doing as a sign from God. If this encounter happens at this present time, it will also be hard for people to believe.

There must be openness so there can be room to study further any claims a person has. Usually the works, signs and wonders confirm the claims being made. And, for us believers who most of the times, asks and looks for signs and wonders from God, let us use it to further our faith. Gods signs fulfills its purpose when we ended up believing in Him.

Signs and wonders should increase our faith. 

by aats

Tradition and Right Intention


Being an image and likeness of God, we always have this deep longing of knowing Him more, so much so that we try to define Him according to our human experiences. We picture God by how we relate with people so that whatever God has given us in glimpses we try to magnify by making it our tradition. The problem sometimes with tradition is that as it is being passed on from one generation to another what is left is the external actions devoid of the real meaning of why we are doing such in the first place.

The Pharisees was very much after the external ways of honoring God. They cling on to tradition because that was the way they can grasp the God they cannot see. They wanted to follow His ways and they translated it into a series of very strict implementation of laws. The objective probably was good, they wanted to make themselves pure, but I would say the intentions are not. Traditions and external actions are meaningful only as to our intentions of having it. The psalmist cries out, better one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. He rightly expresses his deep desire of God. His intention was on God not on tradition.

This is our challenge today, to focus on Jesus so that when we apply His ways, we will do it not because it is a tradition. In YFC, we worship not because it’s our tradition to worship, nor we pray because it’s a tradition pray. We worship and pray because we desire God deep in our hearts. Our intention is to worship Him not because we are just used to it.

by aats

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Grace Over Fears


I was sharing with a good friend of mine about life, hopes and dreams. I shared about certain fears to which she said, “When the Lord chooses and leads us to the right thing, He will make His grace stronger than our fears.” How true indeed.

Grant us O Lord the grace enough to overcome our fears. Amen.

by aats

Monday, March 18, 2013

Joseph Spirit

 

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Joseph, foster father of Jesus and spouse of Mary. It’s so hard to imagine Mary with Jesus without Joseph. It’s not just because it’s an incomplete family picture but more so because it’s so hard to raise a child alone. A father figure will raise a good child and give him an idea of what family is. The role of Saint Joseph in raising the Messiah is huge and highly important. God wants His son to be born in a family with a father and mother. Under Josephs protection the child grew securely in the arms of his mother.

It is this spirit of real manhood that we ought to emulate in him, a deep sense of responsibility born out of real love and compassion for Mary and Jesus. May all fathers be like Joseph who can raise Christ-like children like him. Saint Joseph help us to be responsible and accountable like you. Amen.

by aats

Saturday, March 16, 2013

It is Not Enough to be Good


In his first mass as a Pontiff, Pope Francis was quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "We can walk all we want, we can build many things, but if we don’t proclaim Jesus Christ, something is wrong... We would become a compassionate NGO and not a Church, which is the bride of Christ... He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil. When we don’t proclaim Jesus Christ, we proclaim the worldliness of the devil, the worldliness of the demon"

Being good is not enough. Everybody can do something good, even the bad people can do good to certain people at certain time. We need to believe that there is God; we need to believe in Jesus. Our goodness should come from our faith in Christ. 

by aats

Friday, March 15, 2013

On Answering The Call


When we answer to a certain calling, the usual reaction is what am I going to give up? Certainly there are things that we will have to give up. Every decisions made always means something to give up. However, if we keep on looking on what we are to give up, we are actually missing the point, because if we answer to the personal call, we are actually receiving more blessings.

We are not counting how many we surrendered, we are counting how many blessings we received!

by aats

Monday, March 11, 2013

Seeking and Waiting


Last Sundays gospel reading talks about the prodigal son who came back home and found himself in the embrace of a loving father. It was a picture of an unconditional love of someone who is waiting for the return of someone loved. There are other two parables within this discourse that also talks about the nature of Gods love. The first, talks about the lost sheep. The shepherd upon knowing that one was lost, he left the 99 to look for the one lost sheep. The other talks about the lost coin wherein upon knowing that out of 10 coins she lost one, she started searching for the lost coin. In both stories both did not rest until they found the lost sheep and coin.

These three parables, all in one chapter of the gospel of Luke, give us a glimpse of the nature of Gods love. In the lost sheep and coin stories, it tells us that Gods love always seek out the lost. He will never rest until we are found. Isn’t it comforting that when we are lost someone is actually looking for us?

In the prodigal son story however, it shows the other nature of His love, a love that waits. The father never gives up on the son. He never loses hope that someday he will come back. We might ask, why is it His love seeks out and yet in another story his love actually just waited?

The first two parables, the lost were not human person but a sheep and a coin. They don’t have the capacity to comprehend as much as a human person does. On the other hand the last story was about a person who has full knowledge of what he was doing. If we are like the sheep or the coin were we don’t fully know well what we are doing, or we don’t fully comprehend that something is leading us astray then God will surely seek us out until we are found. On the other hand if we are like the prodigal son, who willfully squandered the inheritance, knew fully well what he was doing and was in full knowledge of all the bad things he has done, then the Lord who knows that we know, will wait until we come into our senses and return to him.  We can say then, that the response of God can actually defer depending on the posture of the heart of the receiver.

Love is always seeking and waiting. 

by aats

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Where It All Begun


After years of absence I’m finally back here in Cebu. I was blessed to hear confession and mass in Cebuano after many years. O, how sweet to hear the words of your mother tongue!

I was last based in Cebu in 2007 when I was transferred to other area. I always considered it a home away from home and my fellow brothers and sisters, Titos and Titas of Couples for Christ as a family away from family. The passion and conviction for His mission planted in me started to grow and took root here. I was able to grow because of the perseverance, love and care of our coordinators and leaders and for that, I am forever grateful. 

Last weekend I was able to join with the Fulltime Pastoral Workers and Mission Volunteers of Cebu on one of their meetings. Being with them is a coming home for me. I started becoming crazy with the Lord in this province and it’s always good to be back where I first heard the call. Mission is home and seeing fellow a missionary is home too, for each of our presence is a presence of home.

After conducting a mentors talk, I was privilege too with the meeting of campus base leaders of the province. I started in Cebu with campus base and being with them brings so much good memories of missions back then. In the presence campus volunteers, presidents, senior sisters and officers is such an affirmation that the mission continues. I said to myself, indeed, we are but passers by, we come and go but the mission remains.

I thank the Lord for allowing me to see what the mission looks like years after you were gone. Can there more affirmation than seeing the mission of the Lord flourishing?

Thank you Lord for allowing me to see the goodness of your work. Amen.

by aats

Sunday, March 3, 2013

God Helps Anyone


Jesus is telling a story in Luke 4:24-30 about where Elijah was sent during famine and who God healed with leprosy. Elijah was sent not to any Israelite but to a widow in Zerapath while God healed not the many lepers in Israel at the time of Elisha but Naaman, the Syrian.

The Israelites was enraged, they could not accept what they heard. When confronted with history they could not accept the truth. When will we learn from history? Jesus was merely pointing out what happened in the history of Israel. History is telling us that God does not identify what race you are before he helps.

by aats

Friday, March 1, 2013

Correction


It is so easy to give correction but when we are the one being corrected, we are having a hard time accepting it. We make excuses and we justify. We all have our blind spot and the only way for us to grow is to allow others to see us as we are and correct us if necessary. A person who cares does not hesitate to correct. Correction is an act of love.

Christian correction dictates that we correct out of love to the other person. Only with a pure and loving intention can correction bear good fruits. Do we correct with pure and loving intention? When corrected, do we accept our mistakes and promise to do better next time?

by aats