The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Wednesday, Easter Wk. VI, 29 May 2019
Acts 17:15,22-18:1 >< }}}*> John 16:12-15 >< }}}*>
My dearest Lord Jesus: As I prayed last night, I cannot remove from my mind that beautiful sight of a man in a chapel, so absorbed in conversing with you, that he seemed to have lost his head in prayer.
Photo by JJ Jimeno of GMA News, UP Chapel, 27 May 2019.
Today our readings speak of the need to lose our selves in you.
St. Paul tried to win over the people of Athens at the Areopagus, proclaiming your Gospel without condemning or attacking their religion. He even cited their shrine “To An Unknown God” (Acts 17:23) as a step closer to discovering you and following you as the true God.
He never lost his cool even when people did not believe his teachings of your resurrection from the dead. He simply had himself lost to your will and left Athens to proceed to Corinth where you have prepared great things for his ministry.
Lord, so many times, we cannot let go of our heads, of our know-it-all-attitude in life that we cannot let go and let God.
Let us always remember your words during the Last Supper, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now” (Jn.16:12).
Let us be patient, waiting for your Holy Spirit to come to us, to fill us with your wisdom, to remind us of your teachings and to guide us in doing your work.
Let us lose not only our heads but our very selves to you so we may do your work in the way you would want it be done. Amen.
Photo by the author, parish sacristy, 10 March 2019.
Did our prayer touch you? Share us your thoughts and prayers. You are prayed for. Follow our blog for you daily recipe for the soul. God bless you! fr nick
Lawiswis ng Salita ni P. Nicanor F. Lalog, ika-27 ng Mayo 2019
Larawan mula sa Google.
Ipagpaumanhin kahit ako'y hindi naman mahinhin Bakit tila baga tayo ay nahuhumaling sa mga usapin At paksang karimarimarim kung saa'y Kalaswaan nagiging isang katatawanan?
Hindi lamang minsan kungdi kadalasan Ito na nga yata katauhan ng mama sa Malakanyang Na kung hindi kasinungalingan o kalokohan Kasalahulaan at kalaswaan laging binibitiwan.
Kailanman ay hindi katatawanan Gawing biro lamang o paksa sa usapan Na wala namang katuturan Panghahalay sa kababaihan.
Larawan mula sa Google.
Simula't sapul palagi na lamang Kababaihan tampulan ng mga panlalait at sisihan Na tila baga walang kasalanan Mga kalalakihan sakdal sa kalinisan at kahusayan.
Madalas hindi nalalaman ng kalalakihan Hinugot ang babae sa kanyang tadyang Hindi lamang upang siya ay ingatan at pangalagaan Kungdi dahil kapantay sa dangal at katauhan.
Sa lahat ng paglapastangan sa kababaihan Panghahalay ang kasukdulan Dahil niyuyurakan sinapupunan Na siyang pinanggalingan ng sangkatauhan.
Larawan mula sa Google.
Napakinggan mo na ba Daing na hindi maisigaw o maibulalas Ng isang hinalay, lalo na yaong nag-alay ng buhay Upang mamasukan sa ibang bansa?
Nakita mo na ba mga mata na hindi makatingin Ulo ay nakatungo dahil sa bangungot na hindi magising Luha hindi mapahirin sa bigat at sakit ng damdamin Ng isang babaeng hinalay o puri'y nadungisan?
Aynakupo...! Nag-aalimpuyong galit kasabay Ang pait at sakit sa tiyan at dibdib Na halos ika'y mabuwal at maduwal Sa gayong sinapit na dama pa rin ang sakit.
Ang pinakamalupit kapag babae ay hinalay Ay iyong mapagtanto na isa itong impakto Nagkukubli sa inapi na maaring babaeng iyong itinatangi: Sariling ina o asawa, kapatid o anak.
Kapag kalaswaan ay nagiging isang katatawanan Dangal ng katauhan di lamang ng kababaihan Ang hindi na pinahahalagahan hanggang maubos ang halakhakan Dahil mga tao'y magsasakmalan na parang mga hayop na lamang.
Estatwa ni Maria nang dalawin niya si Elizabeth sa kaburulan ng Judea; mula sa kanilang sinapupunan sumilang ating kaligtasang hatid ni Hesus na inihanda ni Juan Bautista. Dalawang kababaihan kumakatawan sa kadakilaan at karangalan ng mga babae sa ating buhay: ina, asawa, kapatid, anak, at kaibigan. Larawan ng may-akda, Abril 2017.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Tuesday, Easter Wk. VI, 28 May 2019
Acts 16:22-34 >< }}}*> John 16:5-11 >< }}}*>
Church of St. Peter Gallicantu (Rooster), Jerusalem, 05 May 2019.
Praise and glory to you, O God our loving Father! Thank you for the night, whether we were able to sleep soundly or not; thank you for the rains, for the sunrise, for the brand new day! Thank you for the internet, thank for the grace of prayer, thank you for the gift of life.
Thank you for your gift of presence in Jesus Christ!
Your readings for today remind us that every presence is always a gift. It is always best to have even a little of anything than nothing at all.
Some of us while reading this still have same problems that persist like a sickness not getting worse, bills to be paid, debts piling up, problems getting bigger. Sometimes for many of us, life is so dark that we cannot even feel you, Lord.
In moments we feel like giving up in life, giving up on you, Jesus, please send us a St. Paul who would shout in a loud voice to us like in the first reading, “Do no harm to yourself; we are all here” (Acts 16:28).
Give us the grace and courage to be present to anyone like St. Paul so we can uplift their sagging spirits and continue to find meaning in life in our simple presence.
Fill us with the Holy Spirit to bring joy and conviction to those who doubt you. May they believe in you and find your presence, find fulfillment to be reassured of the beauty of life. Amen.
Sunset in the desert of Jordan on our way to Amman, 01 May 2019.
Did our prayer touch you? Share us your thoughts and prayers. You are prayed for. Follow our blog for you daily recipe for the soul. God bless you! fr nick
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Easter Week VI, 27 May 2019
Acts 16:11-15 >< }}}*> <*{{{ >< John 15:26-16:4
Photo by Dra. Mai dela Pena, Carmel Monastery in Israel, 2014.
Praise and glory to you O Lord Jesus Christ! Today I praise and thank you in a very special way because of this immense love you have made me experience these days. I feel so blessed because I feel so loved. And I feel so loving too.
You know O Lord I have always looked down at myself, always doubting my abilities and most of all, my goodness. Every time I go on my personal retreats, in my own silent moments with you, I find it so hard to see myself as you see me — a beloved one.
So many times even if I know you have forgiven me for my many sins, I always still feel unworthy and untidy before you.
But when people come to thank me, to remind me of some kindness and charity I have extended them, you overwhelm me.
Maybe that’s the problem with us: we always doubt you love us, that we are loved, that we mean so much to other people. We tend to look on our dark side than on the bright moments you have worked in us and through us.
Teach us to be realistic and humble like Paul who was prevailed upon by Lydia in her generosity to receive them because of their goodness coming from you.
You are absolutely right, Lord Jesus: some people think they are doing God a big favor hurting us your followers because they have not really known you and the Father.
They have never experienced really knowing you, entering into a relationship with you as a person, as a Father, as a Brother.
That’s what make Christianity so different where we have a relating God, a God who knows when to give us that proverbial pat on the shoulders when we forget our goodness in you. You are a personal God who knows us and relates with us.
We pray for those burdened today, for those who feel neglected and even useless because of their plight and sorry condition. Remind us always that despite our many flaws and weaknesses, sins and failures in life, you still love us and would always love us no matter what. Amen.
Our pilgrimage team at Petra in Jordan, 01 May 2019.
Did our prayer touch you? Share us your thoughts and prayers. You are prayed for. Follow us for you daily recipe for the soul. God bless you! fr nick
It’s a lovely day but before thoughts of the work load waiting for you tomorrow distract you, here’s The Boomtown Rats’ 1979 hit “I Don’t Like Mondays” for our last Lord My Chef Sunday Music this month of May.
Written by Sir Bob Geldof and his fellow Irish Johnnie Fingers, I Don’t Like Mondays is a song about the 1979 Cleveland Elementary School Shooting in San Diego, California that killed two adults and injured eight children and a police officer.
According to Geldof, he wrote the song after reading a telex report of the shooting incident while being interviewed at Georgia State University’s campus radio station WRAS. In that report, he learned how 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer fired at children in a school playground in San Diego because she said, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
Geldof found Spencer strange who also showed no remorse for her crime. She gave no other answers except “I don’t like Mondays” when journalists asked her to “tell me why” the shooting spree. On his way to his hotel, Geldof kept thinking about Spencer’s “senseless reason for the senseless act” that he told himself the “silicon chip inside her head had switched to overload.” He then wrote the song “to illustrate the perfect senseless reason for doing the perfect senseless act.”
Geldof clarified he never intended to exploit the tragedy though, after many years later, he admitted he regretted writing the song that made “Spencer famous.” The song hit the number spot in the UK charts after its release but reached only the 73rd spot in the US where the Spencers tried unsuccessfully to prevent the single from being released there.
In our reflection for this Sunday’s gospel, we said the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus and sent by his Father acts as the “memory” of the Church. Jesus told his disciples during their Last Supper that the “Advocate, the Holy Spirit will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (Jn.14:26).
Like the “silicon chip” of a computer, the Holy Spirit “processes” in us the meaning of the words of the Sacred Scriptures so that we can respond accordingly to the many issues presented to us by the modern world. In that way, we continue to become the presence of Jesus Christ today where some people have become not only senseless but also loveless, causing so many pains and miseries among us.
I Don’t Like Mondays reminds us that despite the modern technologies we have today, what is still most essential among us is the love we have inside, the respect and concern we have for others around us. And this can only be found in Jesus Christ who dwells inside our hearts. Let us “switch” him on and become his presence of love and mercy in this world that is becoming heartless and even senseless sometimes.
A view from the entrance to the Temple Wall of Old Jerusalem, 04 May 2019.
Life is a series of coming and going where we never really leave at all.
I have been sharing you this quite often since Advent last year. We do not leave completely but simply come to new levels of relationships with our loved ones. When children grow up and go to college, they move into new environment, new stage in life. They never leave but come to new beginnings. Eventually, they leave home when they graduate in college and get married only to start their own family and home.
We call this series of coming and going in life as “presence in absence”. Sometimes it happens that it is after someone had left us, whether temporarily or permanently like death, that we even get closer with that person. Here we find the wonderful truth that if you want to be eternal, love. Then, a departure no longer becomes an exit but an entry to new mode of presence and relationships.
This is why Jesus commanded us last Sunday to love one another as he loved us, that is, to always love in his Father who is love himself. When we love in union with the Father, then our love is made perfect as it is God who eventually works in us.
The Lord deepens this teaching to us in our gospel today as he prepares us for the great celebration of his Ascension on Sunday, a kind of his own “leaving and coming”. Our gospel today is still part of his long discourse during his Last Supper when Thomas, Philip, and Jude asked him some questions about his impending departure that they could not really fully grasp at that time. Anyway, Jesus now answers the last question from Jude concerning his presence while at the same time prepares them for the inevitable when he has to “leave” them first for his Passion and Death and second, when he returns to the Father in heaven.
( Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”) Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name — will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
John 14:22-23, 25-26
Altar of the church Dominus Flevit (the Lord Wept) with the old Jerusalem as background, April 2017.
First thing we notice in the Lord’s statement is the great honor for each of us to be the dwelling place of him and the Father. Can you imagine the kind of intimacy that means we now have with both the Son and the Father dwelling in us? It is something beyond our expectations or hopes when all we want in life is to be with him in heaven after death. But we do not have to wait for our death because right now, right here, Jesus and the Father are dwelling in us. And because of this reality, we are able to find meaning and fulfillment in life despite its many trials and difficulties, pains and tears along the way.
We have experienced the Father’s presence through the words and teachings of Jesus passed on to us through the Sacred Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church. Jesus himself stressed that his words are not really his but the Father’s. Loving the Lord and keeping his words are the same because Jesus is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us according to St. John’s prologue to his gospel. It is for this reason that we are also able to call God “Abba” (Father) because we have that inner recognition of him deep within us in Jesus Christ.
Clouds over Sinai desert in Egypt, 07 May 2019.
Jesus continues his presence and teachings in us in our own time in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the second part of his discourse in our gospel today, his sending of the Holy Spirit upon his return to the Father to be his apostles’ and our Advocate or defender and inner guide to all the truths he had taught us.
Christ did not say everything to the apostles. Aside from the fact that the time of his “presence” on earth was limited (33 years), it was impossible for the evangelists to report everything he had said and done (Jn.21:25). But he knew the totally different situations his disciples would be into and that includes us in the present time. Jesus knew very well the shifts and upheavals coming but, as we have seen in the past 2000 years since he went back to the Father, his Church has continued to exist despite the many predictions of its end. And that is largely due to the work of the Holy Spirit as our Advocate or defender.
From Google.
As our Advocate, the Holy Spirit acts as the “memory” of the Church like in a computer that it “processes” us disciples to act according to the Scriptures and teachings of Jesus in our own time. The Spirit powers us like a dynamo to continue to be the living presence of Jesus in his “absence” in a world that tries to delete him. This was first experienced in the first Council meeting of the Church in Jerusalem in the year 50 AD (Jesus ascended to heaven 33 AD) when the first Christians were plunged into a controversy regarding the imposition of Judaic traditions on Gentile converts. The first reading from the Acts tells us how the Apostles were guided in their proceedings by the word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit continues to do the same in the Church when our Pope and bishops pray and reflect on the Scriptures in making its stand on the different issues now confronting us that were non-existent 100 years ago or 2000 years ago like the Internet or global warming. The Holy Spirit is the “heart and soul” of the Church’s living tradition that makes Jesus present in the world today through each one of us, its dwelling-place.
In the second reading, John tells us of the splendor of the heavenly Jerusalem where God is at the middle of everything. It is also the challenge of the gospel to us today, as the indwelling of the Father and of the Son, do we make God present in our family, in our places of work and study? Do we remain faithful to his word that we are not ashamed of praying even in a restaurant?
See that after explaining his mode of presence through us in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus spoke of the gift of peace. Peace is always the fruit of love when we have Jesus as basis within us in all of our undertakings. How sad that even in many families, couples and children plan on their own for their many projects and activities without including their spouses or children in the process. There is no internal unity that often leads to misunderstanding and divisions that make peace so elusive.
Last Wednesday night I was invited to guest in a radio talk show hosted by former colleagues in the news. They complained to me how the Mass is no longer holy and has become very showbiz. Lourd De Veyra complained of priests not prepared with their homily and so “in love” with their voice that they talk nonsense like TV hosts. Photojournalist Melvin Calderon formerly of TIME Magazine and Pulitzer Prize winner last year Manny Mogato of Reuters News lamented at how our churches have become to look like a studio or a stage with all the pomp and pageantry, empty of any sense of the Holy. Though their observations were painfully true, I still felt so glad for them because despite their being so immersed in the world, they all long for the peace of Jesus Christ they believe can be first found among us priests and in our churches! May we go back to the Father so we may be able to share Jesus, only Jesus, and always Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Lord Is My Chef Recipe for Wedding of Bryan and Catherine, 24 May 2019
St. Francis of Assisi Chapel, Fernwood Gardens, Quezon City
Ephesians 5:2a,25-32 >< }}}*> <*{{{ >< John 15:11-17
The Tamsui Lover’s Bridge, New Taipei, Taiwan. Photo by author, 29 January 2019.
Congratulations, Bryan and Catherine!
Our gospel is very clear today with Jesus telling you, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (Jn.15:16). In his infinite wisdom, God had planned this day to happen today, not last year or last month nor tomorrow or next month.
Today the Lord had chosen you Bryan and Catherine to tie the knot as husband and wife in this lovely chapel so you would be his witnesses of his immense love for us. You went through a lot of challenges in your love that is a certified “LDR” – you got me thinking for sometime what those letters mean.
As classmates in elementary until you were separated in high school when Catherine and her family moved to Marilao, you remained friends. When you pursued your dreams in college, the great distance between UP Los Banos and UST in Espana did not keep you away from each other as friends until you realized you love each other that you became sweethearts.
After graduation, Catherine had to move again with her family and this time, thousands of miles away from you Bryan when there were no free messaging apps yet like Messenger and Viber. Bryan had to make those expensive overseas calls while Catherine had to be patient with the unreliable, cheap call cards bought in Asian and Filipino stores in New Jersey.
Thanks very much to Mark Zuckerberg and you had more time seeing each other in social media that your love deepened through time and distance. But, Facebook did not resolve your main issue at that time.
It was Jesus who moved you both to realize that “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn.15:13).
Both of you Bryan and Cath sacrificed so much to be finally together, today and forever. Married life is not a competition in love, in seeing who loves most. Husband and wife simply love, love, and love. St. Paul said it so well in our first reading, “live in love as Christ loved us” (Eph.5:2a).
To live in love like Christ is to respect one another.
In our gospel, Jesus said “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (Jn.15:11) which is to love like him, giving up one’s self to your friend.
Bryan and Cath, you are now the bestest of friends. In the word “friend” you find a letter “r” that if you remove it, you get the new word “fiend” or enemy, the exact opposite of friend. That letter “r” in “friend” stands for respect which means in Latin “to see or look again”.
Without respect, any love will not grow. Without respect, love withers and dies. Respect deepens our love because in seeing again, in looking back to our loved ones, we remember our vows to always love.
From Google.
Three things I wish to share with you Bryan and Catherine about respect so you may live in love as the bestest of friends.
First, always look at your very selves, see yourself as the beloved of God.
God makes no mistakes. You are God’s perfect creation as he intended when he created you, Bryan and Catherine. Be proud of who you are even you have lost your hair or have had wrinkles, or gained weight to have so much “love handles” around your waist.
Bryan… Catherine… you are not only one in a million… you are a once in a lifetime.
Catherine, stay true to who you are as a woman. St. Paul never meant in our first reading that the wife must lose her identity in a relationship. Everything and everyone changes for sure, but a healthy marriage will always grow with you and never against you.
When you are apart and not together due to work, always look at each other. Always try to see the other looking at you. That is respect because in that way, you remain faithful to each other and avoid sin.
Second, always look back to your dreams, to your plans and vision in life.
The ideal man finds himself first before he finds his ideal woman, and vice versa. What do I mean? Many people have sights but not all have visions. A visionary is someone who dreams with eyes wide opened. Vision makes us see where we are going and what it will take to get us there. Like the “Mission-Vision” thing you have Bryan in Maynilad.
The moment a man/woman starts to have a vision of himself/herself with a partner in achieving that dream in the future, then he/she has become the ideal husband/wife. When you have a purpose in life and included in that is someone special, even if you have not met him/her yet, then you are the man, you are the woman.
When trials come in your lives Bryan and Catherine, look again into your vision and dreams in life. Start to work for it again with each other, together as one. If you have to start all over again, do so. Together. Pursue your dream and make it come true!
Third, every day, Bryan and Catherine, look again to God. Always see God in your life. Remember the Holy Family how every year they would go to Jerusalem to worship God. When the child Jesus was lost and they could not find him, they went back to Jerusalem and found him in the Temple. Mary and Joseph looked to God to find Jesus and they found him!
When you always look to God Bryan and Catherine, you will also find yourselves and your dreams. In that, you live in love, respecting each other always as gifts from God.
May today be the least happiest day of you life as husband and wife, Bryan and Catherine! Amen.
What a lovely Friday you calling us friends, Lord Jesus! What an honor for you to regard as your friends even though so many times we disappoint you, even betray you with our sins.
You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
John 15:14-15
How funny, Lord, that just one letter in the word “friend” can spell the big difference to turn it into its exact opposite, the letter “r”: from friend to fiend or enemy.
So many times, Lord, it is the lack of respect that leads us to sin against you and one another, that we become fiend than friend. Friends always respect, which is from the Latin roots re and specere or to “look again”.
Teach us, like your apostles in the first reading to learn to respect one another, especially those different from us that we may always see them as brothers and sisters despite our differences like backgrounds, culture, and color.
Teach us, O Lord, to see more of you in others to be the very basis of our friendships rather than looking more into our many differences that we always make as excuses in being apart. Amen.
An optical shop in Madaba, Jordan. Photo by author, 02 May 2019.
Did our prayer touch you? Share us your thoughts and prayers. You are prayed for. Follow us for you daily recipe for the soul. God bless you! fr nick
Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 23 May 2019
Our fellow pilgrims to the Holy Land who made it to the top of Mt. Sinai in Egypt, 06 May 2019. Photo by Atty. Grace Polaris Rivas-Beron.
A catechist asked her class, “where is God?”
A small boy right away raised his hand and boldly answered “God is in our toilet!”
The catechist was shocked with the boy’s answer but did not want to put him on the spot so she asked, “how did you know God is in your toilet?”
And he said, “every morning I see my dad knocking at our toilet door, asking, ‘my God, are you still there?'”
The shore of Lake of Galilee in Capernaum where Jesus used to visit the synagogue nearby. Photo by author, 02 May 2019.
Main reason I always encourage people to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is to experience God.
The Franciscans who safeguard the holy sites in Jordan, Israel, and Egypt teach that the Holy Land is the “fifth gospel” after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John found in our bible. In the Holy Land, one can surely experience God speaking and conversing with you in the very places where he had appeared to the great prophets or had come in Christ Jesus and did wondrous deeds to his people. There is a different level of understanding and appreciation of the many stories found in our bible when you go to the Holy Land that can really be life-changing depending on your personal disposition.
There are two instances where we experience God in the Holy Land: first in the country of Israel and second in the churches at the holy sites.
Israel, the Promised Land.
How could God call this country “the Promised Land” when it is so small and sits on a vast tract of limestone and desert? Technically speaking, a desert is an area that receives an average rainfall of 25 centimeters or ten inches annually. That is why it is barren and desolate.
But not Israel.
Once you see the greenery abounding at Israel’s desert, you immediately feel God’s presence there, fulfilling his promise of blessing the land “flowing with milk and honey” as the bible says. Aside from their local date and fig trees with so many other varieties that are the best in the world, plants and trees imported from abroad like bougainvillea and acacia thrive so well in the Israeli desert. From the Philippines, they have imported and improved our mango trees that bear more fruits, yielding higher income to their farmers. Interspersing the greenery on their desert are the colonies of greenhouses that shine in their silvery color during the day while producing many varieties of fruits and vegetables inside. Likewise, exports of Israeli wines and dairy products are steadily growing due to increasing demand from abroad.
All these produced at the desert!
Resort at the Dead Sea area, April 2017.
Like any Filipino pilgrim to the Holy Land, one then remembers what foreigners say that our country is literally a paradise with the right amount of rain and sunshine throughout the year with very fertile soil when we cannot even have enough rice to feed our people? How tragic that we have to import rice from Vietnam and Thailand, our two neighbors in Asia that sent their farmers to Los Banos 40 years ago to learn growing rice scientifically! And it is not only rice that we import but even other basic food stuffs like onions, garlic, and fruits that include cut flowers lately. Drive for two hours outside Manila and you find vast tracts of land with so much grass but we have to import beef, chicken and pork to satisfy our local cravings even for the simple chicharon (pork cracklings) because our local farmers cannot meet the demands.
Where is God?
God has blessed our country with wide arrays of flora and fauna, more amazing beaches and mountains, and friendlier climate and weather. But, God is nowhere to be found because we have lost him in ourselves. We have lost him in our hearts that we took our country for granted, molesting and abusing her like Boracay or the Manila Bay. God dwells among the people, not on the land. Pope Francis reminds us in his encyclical about the care for the environment “Laudato Si” that “we have only one heart and every act of cruelty against nature is contrary to human dignity.”
If we wish to find and experience God blessing our own land, we have to be like the people in Israel who kept him alive in their hearts by thinking bigger than themselves.
Our group posing with two 19-year old Israeli female soldiers at the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized. It used to be a part of Jordan that Israel had occupied after the 1967 Six-Day War.
God in the noble simplicity of a church.
For us Catholics, God is truly experienced present in the Holy Land through the many churches – all beautiful – spread out throughout Israel. But, what really makes the churches and chapels or oratories in the Holy Land so special and unique is not only the fact they are on the very sites or near the areas where Jesus had stood to preach or performed a miracle. Aside from the aesthetic factors that make these churches so beautiful and moving that you experience God inside is because of their “noble simplicity”.
The inside of the modern main chapel of Our Lady of the Milk Grotto in Bethlehem, 05 May 2019.
Unlike the churches here in our country that have become so kitschy that look like cheap cakes with too much decorations and scandalous colors, those in the Holy Land are definitely clean cut, no clutter whatsoever. There is always the sense of the holy right upon entering every church and chapel despite the great crowd present. Most of all, with the church’s noble simplicity, there is always that sacred space for God to be encountered.
When the church is so cluttered and so mixed up, signs that should point to God fail miserably, leaving the church banal and empty of any transcendence or sense of the holy. And I must confess we priests are so guilty of this liturgical abuses when we have made our churches the extensions of our very selves and eccentricities, totally disregarding Jesus Christ. We have evicted God from our church as we priests lorded it over among people with us becoming more known and popular than Jesus Christ.
Can you really feel God present in your parish with all the tarpaulins and giant flat screens around with matching giant fans above? What would Jesus do if he comes today in our churches and finds all kinds of stores, not only those selling religious articles that are sanctioned and even maintained by priests right inside our church premises?
Inside the beautiful Church of the Beatitudes, April 2017.
What a church looks like indicates the kind of pastor and parishioners it has. No matter how big or small a church is, its true beauty lies on the sense and feeling of sanctity or sacredness it creates, not popularity or mass appeal. And as always, like anywhere else, holiness comes only from God who dwells on his people who pray together, moving as one body in the Holy Spirit.
Recently I guested in a radio talk show hosted by some former colleagues in the news who lamented at how our churches have become very “showbiz” with all the pomp and pageantry of telenovelas. So true! It is a reality that unconsciously shows how we in the Church are slowly losing that touch with the holy when everything has gone down to human level despite our pretentious claims of artistic expressions.
When God appeared in a burning bush at the Sinai desert, he asked Moses to take off his sandals for he was standing on sacred ground.
The whole Earth is a sacred ground, a holy land created by God. The challenge is for us to let go of ourselves and let God. And that is when we discover where God is.
A blessed day to you!
Facade of the St. Katherine Monastery of the Greek Orthodox at the foot of Mt. Sinai, Egypt. Inside is a chapel built on the site of the burning bush of Moses. At the back is the staging point of pilgrims’ ascent to Mt. Sinai where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.
The Sphinx with the Great Pyramids that express more than words the great love of ancient Egyptians to their gods and rulers. Photo by author, 09 May 2019.
Today is “throwback Thursday”, Lord. We call it tbt. And I cannot resist humming that song by the Extreme, “More than Words” as I prayed over your words for today.
How amazing is the power of a word, especially your words, Lord. Whatever you said came into existence for you words and your being are one. In your goodness, you shared this great power of the words with us that we are your only creatures able to communicate using words.
Before you went back to the Father, you told us to keep your words, to remain in your love so that our joy may be complete.
How sad that we have taken this for granted as we desecrate words of their sanctity and true meaning.
How sad that so often we never meant what we said. We have to multiply our words in order to be meaningful, for others to believe us and trust us.
Help us to regain the sanctity of words, of “palabra de honor” that has long been gone in a world of words that lie, mislead, and deceive.
Help us rediscover anew your words of life, Lord, like the Apostles who relied heavily on your words when they met at the Council of Jerusalem to resolve their first issues as a Church.
May your words guide us anew so we may discover the true meaning of life that in the process, like the ancient peoples, we may express in more than words our great love for you through our wonderful works of art and charity with others. Amen.
The Treasury of the lost city of Petra in Jordan built in 1 BC that express in more than words the beliefs and values of the ancient Nabataeans. Photo by author, 01 May 2019.
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