Thank you very much, dear God, for this weekend rest.
And as we rest from work or studies, let us also pray for the gift of remembering.
Like in the first reading when Joshua asked the Israelites to always remember the many wondrous things you have done to them so they may remain faithful to you, make us remember too that there is no other God except you who personally relates with us, blessing us with everything that we need even without our asking.
You have created us to always remember but we are also “beings of forgetfulness” who always forget everything and everyone, especially you and those dearest to us. We are easily distracted with so many other things and people that we always forget those who are truly good to us.
When life becomes nice and easy for us, when we have everything we need, that is when we forget. And sadly, when we forget, when we do not remember, that is when we also break away, we go apart.
Because, to “remember” literally means to make a member or part again, “re” + “member”.
When we remember you, O God, we affirm your presence in us and among us.
When we remember our loved ones, whether away or gone forever, we make them a part again of our lives here and now, the present moment. The same thing is true with events in the past, whether good or bad.
Thank you so much O God for this gift of remembering!
Make us like the children in today’s gospel who came to you, wanting to be one with you, wanting to be your member and part too! Amen.
Do we really have a choice with you? Of course, you are not forcing us to choose you because you gave us freedom, your most wonderful gift expressing your love for us. You never impose yourself on us and, we are always free to choose you or not!
But, how can we not choose you, O God? You are the only good, the ultimate good. And you never fail to give us the best, nothing less.
Joshua addressed all the people: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I gave you a land which you had not tilled and cities which you had not built, to dwell in; you have eaten of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.”
Joshua 24:2, 13
Problem with us, Lord, is our failure to accept and own your gifts. We keep on looking for something else when you are giving us the very best. We always insist on what we want, on our choices we think to be good but not really good. But, because we are free, you allow us to disregard your gifts and choose something else – and still bless us!
And so we pray today that you teach us to both accept and own your gifts to us, Lord.
It is not enough that we accept gifts but we must also own them to be truly a blessing that can be shared and given to others.
Material and spiritual blessings, life lessons and life-blows, and all the other good gifts from you Lord are easy to accept but unless we own them too as ours, they get wasted.
Anything received but not owned becomes useless because it does not prosper nor grow nor mature and bear fruits. Be it our very selves, our country, our jobs, our family and friends. Everything, especially you, Lord, whom we always receive but never shared because we never truly have you in us. Let us own you, Lord! Amen.
“Assumption of the Virgin” by Domenico Piola (1627-1703) at the Church of St. John the Baptist, Chiavari, Genoa, Italy. Photo from Google.
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed; the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Luke 1:46-49
Glory and praise to you, O God our loving Father in giving us Jesus Christ through Mary – for without the Mother, there can be no Son.
On this Solemnity of her glorious Assumption into heaven body and soul, you remind us also of our blessedness like her, of her being your Divine Presence that she was able to sing the Magnificat.
Fill us with your Holy Spirit, Father. Let your Son Jesus reign in our hearts so we can boldly proclaim “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord”!
Let our lives proclaim your greatness, O God!
We were wrong, O Lord, we were so wrong when we thought that without you life could be greater and better for us. We were wrong when we thought in this age that disregarding you, O Lord, and your precepts like morality life can be better for us.
We were wrong, O Lord, to think, to believe, and to assert that we are the master of our own fate and destiny when we set you aside, assuming you are dead.
Why, despite all the affluence and comforts of modern world and all those liberal ideas that have swamped us, we are still lost and empty?
Because our body and soul are nothing without you!
On this Solemnity of her Assumption, teach us to empty ourselves of our pride and bloated ego, let us be humble before you and welcome you anew into our hearts, into our very selves.
Let us sing anew your greatness, O God with our body and soul in loving service with one another.
We pray also in a special way for our brothers and sisters who are sick, the elderly, and those with disabilities that they may realise their worth is not in being strong or complete or young, but in being alive, in being persons created in the image and likeness of God. May they persevere in their sufferings with eyes focused on that great gift that await us all like the Blessed Mother at the end of time with the “resurrection of body and life everlasting.” Amen.
Wednesday, Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, 14 August 2019
Deuteronomy 34:1-12 >< )))*> >< )))*> Matthew 18:15-20
From Google.
My dear Lord Jesus,
Is it part of your grand design that this August which the pagans consider as “ghost month” is when we also celebrate the feasts of two great saints martyred at Auschwitz?
At a time when people thought you where absent, Lord, there was St. Benedicta Teresa dela Cruz (Edith Stein) witnessing to your presence in her works and courage when she offered her life to the gas chambers on August 09, 1942.
Today we remember the Polish Catholic priest St. Maximilian Kolbe who also died at Auschwitz a year earlier than her in 1941 when he volunteered to replace a married man who was rounded up for execution following the escape of a prisoner.
Like Moses in the first reading, you filled St. Maximilian with your radiance that prisoners and guards alike were stunned when he offered himself for the painful punishment.
His great love for you Jesus and deep devotion to your Blessed Mother kept him busy praying and comforting his fellow prisoners despite his frail health proving your words that “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Mt.18:20).
After surviving two weeks of starvation and hard labor, St. Maximilian cheerfully offered the executioner his arm for the lethal injection of carbolic acid and died instantly in your bountiful grace, O Lord.
Your servant St. John Paul II declared in his 1982 canonization that St. Maximilian Kolbe as the Patron Saint of our “difficult century” where a culture of death continues to prevail in the name of economic progress and a wrong understanding of freedom.
Give us the courage and enthusiasm of St. Maximilian Kolbe to uphold the value of every person and to fight erroneous beliefs that disregard and remove God and morality from life.
We also pray on this day of his feast for the drug addicts and political prisoners who, because of their situation and beliefs, are taken for granted as lesser beings by some may still accorded with equal respect and dignity. Amen.
From Google.
A painting of St. Maximilian Kolbe with his prison jacket number “16670”, holding two crowns with the prison jacket of Francis Gajowniczek, the married man he volunteered to replace after being rounded up for execution following the escape of another prisoner.
In a vision when he was 13 years old, the Blessed Mother appeared to St. Maximilian asking him to choose a crown. He chose both, white and red crowns as he promised to enter the seminary to become a priest. Unknown to him, the crowns would symbolise later his martyrdom.
A day after his execution his body was cremated on 15 August 1941, a date that would later be declared as the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary whom St. Maximilian loved so dearly. Likewise, it fulfilled his desire to immolate himself completely when he wrote, “I would like to use myself completely up in the service of the Immaculate, and to disappear without leaving a trace, as the winds carry my ashes to the far corners of the world.”
Lawiswis ng Salita ni P. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Ika-13 ng Agosto 2019
Larawan mula sa GMA News.
Bata pa lamang ako hindi ko na gusto ang buwan ng Agosto bago pa mauso tawag nila dito na buwan ng mga multo.
Nasa grade two ako nagtataka na ako bakit tuwing Agosto mabagal takbo ang panahon?
Ito ang bumaon sa murang isipan ko noon kaya hanggang ngayon hirap ako na umahon na tila baga nilalamon at nilalason ng karanasan kahapon.
Nagkataon lang ba nitong ilang taon bakit nagkagayon takbo ng buhay ko sa ngayon tuwing Agosto nagkakapatong-patong mga hindi mabubuting sitwasyon, lihis sa mga nilalayon?
Parang katulad ng lagay ng panahon mapanglaw ang kalangitan bumubuhos malakas na ulan parang walang katapusan katulad ng aking mga luha sa mga tao na di ko malaman kung kaibigan.
Kung minsan maiisip ko hindi lang buwan ng multo ang Agosto kungdi pati ng impakto at demonyo dahil kung titingnan ko ano ba ito, matapos lunurin tayo ng ulan saka naman sisikat matinding init ng araw?!
Iyan daw ang dahilan kaya maraming sakit sa katawan hanggang kasu-kasuan lagay ng panahon hindi maintindihan sala sa init, sala sa lamig parang mga tao sa paligid walang paninindigan, kay daling mang-iwan.
Bawat araw ng ating buhay ay pagpapalang kaloob ng Diyos nating mabuting-loob ngunit kung minsa'y nakakasama ng loob kapag tila lahat ay nakataob at ika'y nakasubsob.
Aking lang inaasahan at pinanaligan pagkatapos ng tag-ulan, doon mga dahon ay luntian sa bawat unos na dumaraan, nasusubok katatagan ng halaman mabalian man ng sanga o malagasan ng bunga naiiiba na siya at lalong gumaganda sapagka't sa bawat pagkakataon at panahon, Diyos ay naroon.
Larawan ay kuha ni G. Howie Severino ng GMA News sa Taal, Batangas, Nobyembre 2018.
Tuesday, Memorial of St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus, 13 August 2019
Deuteronomy 31:1-8 >< )))*> <*((( >< Matthew 18:1-5. 10. 12-14
Photo by Jim Marpa, 2018.
The disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:1-4
I must confess to you, O Lord Jesus Christ, that so often I act and think like your disciples, asking you “who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?”
And it is not really to know who that person is or what kind of a person is that.
It is more about me – I want to be the greatest and be looked up to. Or, be affirmed and accepted. Especially by you.
When you called that child, you showed me how you have remained a Son of the Father, always humble and open to instructions from the Father above. Most of all, obedient to the Father’s will.
True greatness indeed is in becoming like a child, always young and willing to learn new things, raring to go and follow those above for new adventures in life like Moses and Joshua in the first reading and, St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus whose martyrdom we celebrate today.
As I prayed on that scene at Jordan where the Israelites prepared to enter the Promised Land, the imagery of Moses and Joshua came to me like children ready to take on new tasks and directions in their lives from God as Father.
The same imagery of little children submitting themselves to you, O Lord, despite their old age I have found in St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus who were both greatly at odds with each other at the beginning.
St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus. From Google.
As Pope, St. Pontian was lenient in readmitting Christians who have turned away from the faith during persecution; St. Hippolytus strongly opposed it that later he broke away from Rome to become an anti-pope as he refused to relax his rigid views of the faith.
But you found ways of bringing them together, Lord, as exiles at the island of Sardinia.
In the midst of harsh labor, the fatherly St. Pontian was able to bring back into the Church the rigorist St. Hippolytus.
Help us to keep in mind, Lord, that age is just a number, that we are forever young like children when we humbly abandon ourselves to you, holding on to these words by Moses:
It is the Lord who marches before you; he will be with you and will never fail you or forsake you. So do not fear or be dismayed.
Deuteronomy 31:8
Let me remain as your faithful and trusting child, O loving God our Father. Amen.
Deuteronomy 10:12-22 >< }}}*> < *{{{>< Matthew 17:22-27
From Google.
Moses said to the people: “Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and be no longer stiff-necked.”
Deuteronomy 10:16
Your words, O Lord, today are so shocking. Even funny. And difficult to relate with.
But that is exactly what we need to hear and learn these days: your words that shake and jolt our inner selves that cleanse and lead us to a more genuine and intimate relationship with you.
Like those Israelites wandering at the desert, rebelling against you, we have become stiff-necked. We have refused to look up to you as well as look inside our hearts to see you and follow you.
Help us to circumcise our hearts – not physically but spiritually – like what Marie Kondo has been advocating of decluttering our spaces to experience inner joy. So often we refuse to admit how our outer selves and homes look like indicate our inner selves.
It is you, Lord Jesus, who probes our hearts and guide us like Marie Kondo, step by step, to declutter our hearts.
May your light enable us to see and remove the many stacks of materialism, compartments of insecurities, and drawers of pretensions and other lies that clutter our inner selves, our hearts that keep us away from you and from others.
Like what you did today in the gospel when you taught Peter a beautiful lesson of being nice among our enemies and detractors who try to destroy us always, may we look more often inside our hearts to see YOU as the most essential in life than simply following the ways of the world.
May the example of St. Jane Frances Chantal whose feast we celebrate today, help us to keep that inner glow of your love within us when facing difficult situations in life like problems with in-laws and being widowed.
Fill us with the same charity you have given her in helping the poor as well as the forgotten people of the society.
We pray through her intercession for parents and children separated from one another due to many reasons, either by choice or circumstances.
Bless also the members of the congregation she had founded, the Sisters of Visitation that they may continue her wonderful works of charity among the poor. Amen.
People told me that is the “age of enlightenment”.
And I believe so.
After living half a century, I have realised so many things in life that I had Bill LaBounty’s 1982 hit as my theme song, “Livin’ It Up.”
Like the gospel today when Jesus tells us to “gird your loins” or be on guard because death could come so sudden, LaBounty’s “Livin’ It Up” is the perfect Sunday music.
Girding up one’s loins, being on guard means living it up… taking a new persona when we learn to let go of our past to accept and appreciate every present moment, believing deep inside our hearts of more better and more meaningful things to come in our lives.
Girding up on’e loins, being on guard means living it up as matured men and women disposed to more things that are more profound and meaningful than mere existence because we are so aware of our mortality, of our coming to something more lasting that is eternal.
I finally got my life together Scraped my heart up off the floor My attitude is so much better And I hardly ever cry the way I did before
I’ve been livin’ it up Having my self in time Livin’ it up Right from the women to the wine Livin’ out all those fantasies I never did get to Those Crazy things I never got to do
I got my self a new persona Took the service off my phone These days I live the way I wanna And I’d do just fine as long as I’m not left alone
One of the series I am following at Netflix is “Money Heist”. It is very suspenseful because unlike other crime series, its plot is unpredictable and spiced with amusing conversations. Like one episode when the lead character called Professor repeatedly mentioned to the Police Inspector during their first date of how he is not a “Basic Instinct” material, referring to Michael Douglas who starred in the movie with Sharon Stone. I felt the line anachronistic because the Professor is so young in the series to make a point reference to the 1992 erotic thriller. But it was a very good line expressing fully what the scene was all about, of a man and a woman following their basic instinct in having sex without really knowing each other so well, especially the Inspector who is a battered wife newly divorced from her husband – also a police officer- and in a relationship with her sister!
Now you see what I have been telling you… but, what I really wish to share with you is an archaic term related with “basic instinct” that Jesus used in the gospel today:
Jesus said to his disciples: “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have the servants recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.”
Luke 12:35-37
From Google.
Loins refer to that part of our body between the lowest ribs and hipbones, the pelvic area where the genitals are also located. It is believed to be the source of erotic or procreative powers we refer to as “basic instinct” or simply guts as in gut feeling.
During the time of our Lord, men wore long clothes and they have to “gird their loins” in order to move freely when walking and working. Eventually, men ceased wearing long clothes with no need to gird their loins but still have to tighten their pants, sometimes with a belt, to move freely as well. And even if there were no more loins to gird, the expression continued to be used to mean being on guard, being ready for any emergency and situation like a military attack.
This is the whole point of the Lord’s teaching this Sunday: we have to be on guard and ready always for his coming. In fact, anything can happen instantly that could also be life-changing. Girding one’s loins, being on guard and ready for the Lord’s coming requires active faith on our part, an inclination towards God already present in us.
There are actually three parables in our gospel this Sunday but we are given the option to use only the one we have heard which is the second set. In this parable, Jesus used the imagery of being on guard like the “faithful servants waiting for their master’s arrival from a wedding feast” to indicate his coming in the Eucharistic celebrations. Every Mass is our dress rehearsal for our entrance into heaven but we always take it for granted, finding all the reasons and excuses to skip especially the Sunday Mass.
Altar table of the Church of Dominus Flevit (the Lord Wept) with the old Jerusalem at the background. Photo by author, April 2017.
The Mass is our expression of our readiness to enter heaven as we joyfully proclaim after every consecration of the bread and wine that “Christ will come again.” But, even those who regularly come for the Sunday Mass do not take it seriously, not truly present with “full and conscious participation” enunciated by Vatican II 50 years ago.
Notice how in the third parable Jesus mentioned “faithful and prudent stewards” (Lk.12:42) to emphasize the need for servants and ministers at the altar to be more prepared than anyone else for his coming. So true! How can the people pay attention to the scriptures being proclaimed if the lector’s voice is very soft or incomprehensible? How can the congregation thank God for speaking to them anew if the lector’s face and disposition are so gloomy and even horrific?
And this refers more to the priest as presider of the Mass! Much is expected from us priests not only by the congregation but also by the Lord himself! How can the people feel Christ’s coming in every Mass when the priest himself does not meet the Lord, when he is not prepared physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually? What a shame when people complain that they hardly feel the Divine in every Eucharistic celebration! Always we find two extremes in many parishes where at one end are lethargic priests lacking the energy to lead their people into heaven during the Mass while at the other side are the showbiz priests so in love with themselves, with their voice and showmanship that the Eucharist has become a variety show.
Jesus reminds us in all his parables this Sunday that we priests and ministers at his altar of the Sacrifice of the Mass are his servants waiting for him, our Lord. We are never the focus but Jesus Christ alone! Let us not steal that honor from him.
Pyramids of Egypt, May 2019.
Speaking of stealing, Jesus added towards the end of his second parable on the need to gird one’s loins for his coming because it is like the coming of the thief at night. We must always be prepared because nobody knows when the thief strikes. And we find elucidations of this from the first and second readings we have earlier heard that speak about disposition for God.
From the Book of Wisdom, we are reminded how the liberation of the Israelites – their Exodus from Egypt – happened in the darkness of the night. Every celebration of the Mass is an active waiting for the Lord’s coming that also calls for an active faith wherein we are disposed or inclined towards God already with us. Such was the attitude of the Israelites leading to their Exodus from Egypt when Moses told them of God’s plan that every day, they were raring to go.
In the Letter to the Hebrews, the author beautifully expressed that “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen” (Heb.11:1). He gives us Abraham as the perfect example of a truly faithful one to the Lord, always ready for his coming. In three instances, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews showed how Abraham had the perfect disposition of actively waiting for God’s fulfillment of his promises to him: journeying from Ur to the Promised Land he did not know where; being the father of nations as numerous as the stars of the sky when he and Sarah were still childless at their age of 90; and, in obediently offering Isaac to God.
Girding our loins, being on guard also means having the discipline of waiting for God. It is not enough to wait; we need discipline, we need to follow certain things to stay focused. As we have mentioned earlier, the loins is the region of our basic instinct. So many opportunities have been missed by many men and women simply because of small mistakes, of being caught off-guard in simple instances when everything snaps in an instant when they followed the lower basic instinct, forgetting the higher ideals.
Abraham girded his loins so well that he never wavered in his faith in God until his promises were fulfilled because he always had that disposition for him. This Sunday, Jesus is reminding us to be patient in waiting for him, to have the discipline to stay focused with him and our dreams and aspirations in life for he will fulfill them in his time. It is very important that like Abraham and the faithful servants in his parable, we are always present when he comes to seize his blessings! A blessed week ahead with you! Amen.
Saturday, Feast of St. Lawrence Deacon and Martyr, 10 August 2019
2 Corinthians 9:6-10 >< }}}*> <*{{{ >< John 12:24-26
“Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, with Two Benedictine Nuns” by Jacobello del Fiero (1425) who introduced “International Gothic” painting style in Venice using elegant and bright colors. The two Benedictine “witnesses” are nuns believed to belonged to the San Lorenzo convent in Venice who commissioned del Fiero to paint the scene. Photo from Rijksmuseum via useum.org.
Praise and glory to you, God our loving Father for the gift of humor.
Yes, Lord, thank you in giving us funny bones, for enabling us to laugh – and be holy!
Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
2 Corinthians 9:7
Keep us cheerful always, Lord, like St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr, patron saint of chefs and comedians.
It was pure grace of love for Jesus Christ and his Church that St. Lawrence suffered so much with a lot of sense of humor and joy.
When Emperor Valerian asked your deacon St. Lawrence to bring him all the treasures of the Church of Rome he was tasked to safeguard, he asked permission to leave jail to gather them.
And he was so witty and courageous that when he returned, he came with the poor as “treasures of the Church” that made the emperor so furious and ordered St. Lawrence be roasted to death on a giant gridiron.
Again, in the midst of intense pain while being roasted alive, St. Lawrence never lost that spark of wit and humor when he told his tormentors to “turn me over, I am done on this side…have a bite.”
As a deacon, teach us, O Lord, to serve like St. Lawrence with a deep sense of dedication and passion plus a lot of smiles and joy!
Everybody is so stressed out these days, Lord, for so many reasons like traffic and lousy services everywhere, including in our parishes.
Thanks be to you, O God, we do not have to suffer so much like St. Lawrence.
Give us the grace of wearing always a warm smile and cheerful face to serve those in pain and suffering.
Let us laugh a lot, Lord, to share with others the real fruits of our work in you. Amen.
Deacon’s dalmatic and stole. Photo by Lorenzo Atienza, 12 June 2019, Malolos City.
