The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Monday, Easter Week IV, 13 May 2019 (Fatima)
Acts 11:1-18///John 10:1-10
From Google.
Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep… Whoever enters through me will be saved.
John 10:1-10
Dearest Lord Jesus Christ:
Today we go to the polls to choose our lawmakers and local executives.
We pray for wisdom and enlightenment to use this great power and freedom you have given us. Let us listen to your voice, follow your voice. Let us enter through you in exercising our rights in choosing our shepherds for you are our gate who leads us to true development and growth as a nation.
Help us realize that to enter you as our gate means to keep always in our minds that ultimately, we all belong to you. That every decision we make in this life, be it in politics or in economics or any field of humanity always has an impact to our ultimate end which is to be with you in eternal life.
Help us realize that to enter you as our gate means ultimately, to follow you alone in love and sacrifice, in suffering and in death on the Cross. That there is no such thing as easy way or shortcuts in this life; keep us on guard with those thieves who try to seduce us with so many promises of a better life as they clearly use power to escape the harsh realities of life.
Let your Holy Spirit enlighten us like those who confronted Peter in Jerusalem after learning he had interacted with Gentiles in Joppa.
May your Mother who appeared in Fatima 102 years ago today lead us back to you, Jesus. The message of Fatima has shown us that you continue to work in our lives in these modern time. Most of all, any change in the world and in our lives can only happen when each one of us returns to you in love and penance, O Lord, our gate. Amen.
The Crucifix at the main altar of Basilica di Santissima Trinita in Fatima, Portugal; at the altar is a painting of Mary with the three children of the 1917 apparitions at left and the Apostles with John the Baptist to the right. A beautiful imagery to show that in Fatima, Mary points us all to Jesus who remains our gate. Photo by Arch. Philip Santiago, October 2018.
There is something very unique among us that binds us Filipinos as one whenever we go abroad aside from being “maganda” as the people of Jordan, Israel and Egypt described us in a recent pilgrimage. Whenever we are in a foreign country, we Filipinos have that inner recognition that we are kababayan, something like what Jesus tells us in the gospel today.
“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.”
John 10:27-28
This Sunday, we start a shift in our gospel readings: there would be no more stories of the appearances of Jesus after Easter until his Ascension with passages taken from St. John to deepen in us the meaning of Christ’s Resurrection.
Observe, my dear readers, the four verbs we have in our very short gospel today: hear my voice, know them, follow me, and give them eternal life. Right away we notice the inner recognition of Jesus Christ and his followers us, his sheep. See the flow of the first three verbs in our Lord’s declaration: my sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. It is quite odd in the sense that the sheep follow the voice because the shepherd knows them when it should be the other way around: my sheep know me, they hear my voice and they follow me.
Remember the inner recognition we talked about the other Sunday, that feeling of “a basta!” when deep inside us we are so certain of somebody or something? This is an example of that experience we have going abroad when we meet a kababayan: by just looking at each other, we already know we are Filipinos as if they first knew us, then we hear them, and follow them. It is something we also have deep within us with Jesus our Lord and God.
The lovely district of Jaffa Tel Aviv where you meet many Filipinos too. Photo by author, 03 May 2019.
These four verbs of hearing, knowing, following, and giving express relationship and ties that bind us together as a people and nation. To hear and to follow imply communion; anyone who hears and follows somebody recognizes the speaker’s authority and voice, entrusting one’s self to his or her guidance like in the family where we hear and follow our parents as we celebrate Mothers’ day today. Hearing and following lead to a kind of attachment as children to the parents or a disciple to a master. The parents, especially the mother knows her children very well that she always thinks the best for them, doing her best to give them a better and secured future. On our return flight yesterday from Bahrain, we chanced upon many Filipina OFW mothers returning home with their children – some are still infants, others are little children or young kids. They are the mothers who sacrifice so much so their children and family can have a better future.
Going back to Jesus Christ our Good Shepherd, we level up the meaning and application of those four verbs, especially the knowing and giving that pertain to Jesus Christ.
More than our communion and unity in Christ as his disciples, we ought to hear and follow him because only Jesus knows us so well. Only Jesus knows our deepest pains and hurts, our deepest longings and desires. Most of all, only Jesus loves us so much despite of his knowing of how sinful we are that he calls by name like Mary Magdalene on that Easter morning or Simon Peter at the shore of Lake Tiberias after asking him thrice if he loves him to assure his forgiveness of denying him thrice on Holy Thursday.
Most of all, we ought to hear and follow Jesus because only he can give us eternal life for he is life himself (Jn.11:25)! It was only Jesus who had walked with us in every valley of darkness, never abandoning us, and most of all, passed over through every pain and suffering, even death so that we may share in the glory of his new life. Only Jesus can bring back our shattered lives when we squander this gift of life like the prodigal son. It is only Jesus who would never judge us or put us into shame in our sinfulness to give us a chance to sin no more like the woman caught committing adultery. Only Jesus can promise us heaven because it is only him who had joined us in our sinfulness without committing sin by dying on the cross like Dimas the repentant thief.
These, my friends, are the inner unity that bind us together in Christ Jesus our Good Shepherd of which John the beloved was given a glimpse in the second reading. This also shows us how salvation for everyone, not only for Jews or any particular group, has always been in God’s plan from the beginning that he sent us his only Son Jesus Christ. May we all hear and follow his voice always, especially through our dear mothers. Amen.
Entrance to the miraculous “Milk Grotto” chapel of the Franciscans beside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Photo by the author, 05 May 2019.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe, Saturday Easter Wk. III, 11 May 2019
Thank you very much Lord for the gift of pilgrimage to your Holy Land. Thank you for the gift of experiencing you, meeting you not only at your holy sites but among our fellow pilgrims and the people we have met.
Most of all, thank you for a glimpse of you in our hearts, in our selves and being. There is something we cannot express or say for they are too deep for words.
Like Simon Peter, all we can say is, “Lord, to whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn.6:68-69).
Life is a series of coming and coming. Every time we leave, we also come. We leave the Holy Land to come home.
But home is where the heart is and where our heart is, there our treasure is.
May you remain in us Lord Jesus and let us come to you always. Amen.
Top photo mosaic of Joseph’s dream to bring Mary and child Jesus to Egypt outside Church of St. Sergius; above, the flight to Egypt of the Holy Family at entrance to the Cavern Church where they stayed. Both churches are Coptic Catholic.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Friday of Easter Wk. III, 10 May 2019
Our loving Father:
The city of Cairo reminds me of your story of creation – of how order comes out of chaos!
One of the things I have learned here in Cairo is to be more patient with our traffic situation in the Philippines.
Cairo is a bedlam where pedestrians and drivers alike seem to be blind, guided only with their horns. Yet nobody seems to quarrel because of the traffic.
Our readings today Lord teem with instances of quarreling. Saul in the first reading is on his way to Damascus to arrest Christ’s followers. It was a big quarrel! More so when you called Saul to spread the Way?! I could imagine the big quarrel with that but, nothing much as told by Luke except the issue of circumcision.
In the gospel, John tells us “The Jews quarreled among themselves” after Jesus declared his Flesh is true food and his Blood is true drink.
So often we quarrel among ourselves, but never with you.
We quarrel with others – not with you – because we can always insist with others what we want. The more others do not give in to our desires, the more we quarrel, the more we insist.
We do not quarrel with you because you do not “insist” on us. You always invite. And wait.
No insistence, no quarrel. Like here in Cairo. They just blow their horns but never their tops.
Teach us Lord to always give in to your will, to always step back and let you lead the way like Ananias who welcomed Saul. Most of all, Lord, let us not quarrel with anyone by learning to give way to others, even by deferring to them if what they insist are nothing at all but simply a power trip of our ego. Amen.
Traffic at Cairo; the peaceful Nile River. Photos by the author.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Thursday, Easter Wk. III, 09 May 2019
Dearest Jesus:
In today’s readings, I was struck by the verb “to go down”.
The first reading tells us how the Ethiopian eunuch “went down into the water” to be baptized by your Apostle Philip on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8:38).
In the gospel, you mentioned twice Lord that you are “the bread that comes down from heaven” (Jn.6:50-51).
It is something very opposite with our mindset today when we all want “to go up” and rise, to be on top, always the best, the most.
We believe more in ourselves than believing in you our Lord and our God.
Make us realize Lord Jesus that you chose to come down to show us the way up to you by always going down in humility and simplicity. Help us rediscover that beautiful reality of having someone and somethings above us always, that it is coming down, in being lowly in you Lord are we truly exalted. Amen.
Top photo chapel of the third station of the Cross at Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem (Jesus falls the first time); above is part of the Sinai Mountain range.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Easter Wk. III, Wednesday, 08 May 2019
Praise and thanksgiving to you, O Lord Jesus Christ as we enter the final stretch of our Holy Land pilgrimage today.
It is very different experience to be in the wilderness of the Sinai desert – so cold, so barren, most of all, so isolated.
Lord, we are tired and longing for home. Now we can imagine the extreme difficulties and hardships of your people in the desert.
But you are so loving and merciful, so generous that you gave them bread from heaven, manna.
Now we have you Jesus as our bread, our life.
Like your first followers who were scattered following Saul’s persecution of the Church, they still went preaching the word – YOU.
We pray for more strength and courage to remain faithful to you, Lord, when we go through our desert in life. Let us share you as our bread to nourish the weak, gladden those who are sad and tired so that we may all persevere to meet you like Moses in the burning bush. Amen.
First photo is the Mt. Sinai mountain range at sunrise while the one above is the enclosed site of the burning bush Moses saw now under the care of Greek Orthodox monks at the St. Catherine Monastery.
Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 07 May 2019
We are now traveling to the Mt. Sinai area to cross into Egypt. As I have been telling you, this is my third time in the Holy Land and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial of Israel. I shall write later of my reflections but below is my email written the first time I came here:
23 June 2005
Shalom everyone!
Until now, I could still feel the impact Yad Vashem had on me.
I would just like to add here a story shared with us by Ronnie before our tour….
Accdg to Ronnie, he acted as a guide to a group of young Americans at the Yad Vashem last summer. They met a Jewish woman who survived the holocaust after their tour and told them firsthand her own experience from the Auschwitz camp.
The young tourists were so touched with her story, of how she had lost her parents, siblings and friends. As she wiped her tears, a young man asked the survivor: have you forgiven the people who killed your family?
And Ronnie said, the woman replied this way:I could only forgive if you would always remember.
We were also so touched with the story and the woman’s declaration: I could only forgive if you would always remember.
One of my favorite philosopher is Martin Heidegger, a German existentialist who, unfortunately, was blinded by Hitler’s rhetorics in the beginning but later denounced Nazism.
According to Heidegger, we are all “beings of forgetfullness”; he explained that this is the main reason why we always lead “inauthentic living.”
And that is true. We always have to remember the past not to take tally of how we were hurt or maltreated by others; we remember the painful past so that we would not repeat it and do them again onto others.
It is so sad that in our lives, we keep on remembering how we got inflicted with wounds so that we could wound others; hence, what we have is a vicious circle of violence and retributions.
That I think is the essence of “learning from history”—-of not repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
This is often at the root of many of our problems in our dealings with other people: parents, priests, teachers, supervisors or almost anyone who always remember the difficulties they have gone through when they were younger; we are sometimes guilty of harking at our painful past and get even with those presently under us. And the pains and the hurts increase, forgetting the lessons that could have been learned.
Our country is in deep, deep, deep crises because we are mostly “beings of forgetfullness”—we have a poor sense of history, we can’t remember the lessons of the past because we did not learn at all or just maybe, preoccupied with getting even or vengeance.
Forgiving does not mean forgetting because that is impossible; God programmed us to always remember so that we could become more loving, more forgiving, more understanding, and more like Him in seeing what’s good in everyone.
At the back of Yad Vashem is a breathtaking view of Jerusalem below. After seeing and somehow experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust, I can’t help thinking how come God could accept and allow the Jews, Moslems, and Christians live together in His old city when we can’t even stand the sight or the smell of the person next to us because he is not of same color or creed with us?
God bless!
With my parishioners the other day at Yad Vashem. Many cried at the sights in the museum but we were all touched with the personal story and reflections of our guide, a 70 year old man we fondly call Lolo Mendy. Will write his stories later.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Receipe for the Soul, Tuesday Easter Wk. III, 07 May
The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?” (Jn.6:30)
Thank you Lord Jesus in bringing us here to your Holy Land, for seeing the places you have visited to preach and to heal. Most of all in being one of us to bring the Father closest to us.
Long before we have come – and douted God – you have been here. Everything was created in you, with you.
When I look at the barren desert and wilderness with old cities and oases still there, the more I see your signs of presence.
You are life, Lord.
Problem is when we destroy nature rather than enhance it like the farmlands here in the Dead Sea area.
Worst of all Lord when we hide you from the people because of the elaborate designs of our churches that have become so kitschy or baduy.
Teach us to appreciate your noble simplicity and beauty like the many churches here in the Holy Land.
Teach us priests especially to keep in mind your church is your house of prayer and encounter, not of show and comfort.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe, Monday, Easter Wk. III, 06 May 2019
Praise and glory to you O Lord Jesus Christ!
Thank you for this gift of Monday. Thank you for bringing us here in your birthplace and place of death as well.
How ironic and tragic, Lord.
As we arrived here in Bethlehem, fighting erupted anew at Gaza Strip, with rocket attacks reportedly killing and injuring undetermined people yet.
Fightings continue to this very moment and thank you for being far from it.
Lord, it is the most baffling mystery in life: your land is the land where peace remains elusive. And maybe because our hearts have always been far from you.
Like the people who spread lies against Stephen and the people who came looking for you for more food.
We always have our hearts filled with our very selves but never with you.
Let us be your John the Baptist in this time, one who prepares your coming by preaching and living peace. Amen.
The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe, Easter Week III-C, 05 May 2019
Of all the great things one can truly experience in a Holy Land pilgrimage, it is the gift of “internal recognition” of the Risen Jesus Christ that must be most touching, most wonderful because it always brings peace and joy within.
Like the beloved disciple in our gospel this Sunday, it is when we recognize Jesus internally that we “softly exclaim” deep within “It is the Lord!” (Jn.21:7).
It is the ordinary moment that happens so sudden during prayer, in the Mass, or simply being at a holy site or seeing a beautiful sight when tears suddenly roll in our eyes, something cold or warm envelops you, or your hair rising because you remember and feel the Lord coming to you. According to our guide here, the 153 large fish caught by the apostles in that third appearance of the Risen Lord at Tiberias is significant: 153 in the Hebrew alphabet means “I Am GOD.”
And that’s what we feel not only in a pilgrimage but in ordinary life when we remember God filling you like a net with large fish like in Tiberias. In an instant even very fleeting, we realize we have been so blessed even if we have sinned and failed to recognize Jesus by the shore.
Here at the Holy Land, whether it is your first or second or third pilgrimage, there is always something new to discover, to realize, to experience, and to see. It is like that experience at the shore of Tiberias when Jesus appeared for the third time to his apostles after Easter where he awaits you for breakfast, with “a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread” (Jn.21:9). Here it is beyond doubt our God is a God of surprises.
Yesterday we had our Mass at the Chapel of Flagellation at 130pm at the Via Dolorosa. Immediately after that, we had via crucis or station of the cross. By 330pm we were already inside the Holy Sepulchre Church climbing towards Golgotha, the Crucifixion site. Exactly while lining up, the church was closed and we were told there would be no veneration because the Patriarch was coming for incensing the whole church.
Everything stopped and I felt a bit sad for my group. But lo and behold! What a beautiful experience not only to witness an Orthodox ceremony! While resting outside the only Roman Catholic chapel, I asked the Franciscan if we can pray inside. He asked me to wait and after 20 minutes, he let us in. I celebrated Mass there in 2005 with 14 other priests and two bishops from the Philippines. I could not recall the name of the chapel so I asked the Franciscan. He told me it is the chapel of the Easter meeting of Jesus and his Mother – the Salubong or Encounter we celebrate early morning of Easter Sunday. It was a new discovery for me!
In the gospels, Jesus first met Mary Magdalene but according to St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, it was Mary his mother whom the Risen Lord first met because she was the first to try believe Jesus is the Christ! Most of all, Mary is the first to truly love Jesus most. And that is why we have the Salubong.
Today in the gospel Jesus asked Simon thrice, “do you love me more than this?”
It is the same question Jesus is asking us this Sunday. We have to first love him in order to follow him. We have to first love him in order to meet and see him, even with our imperfect love like Simon Peter.
You are loved and you are prayed for always. Have a blessed Sunday and week ahead! Amen.
