Thank you very much, O God, in giving us this weekend to examine and test our hearts about our relationships and friendships.
How nice of you to speak about “tests” in our Mass readings today:
In the first reading, you ask us to “first test a friend and be not too ready to trust him” (Sir. 6:7).
It is sad, O Lord, that in this age of Facebook and social media, friends have become numbers and status symbol for our popularity than persons to be loved and cherished as gifts from you. To test a friend means to see to it that in our relationships, we do not regard each other as objects to be possessed like things.
Too often, this happens when we disguise as testing you like the Pharisees in the gospel who asked you, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” (Mk.10:2)
How funny, O Lord, that in testing you, we end up being tested about the friendships and relationships we keep!
And so many times, we fail because we have removed you from the many ties that bind us.
Teach us, O Lord, today to always see you in every person we meet, in every relationship we keep. Guide us in the way of your commands that we live together in love and unity as brothers and sisters, never allowing our selfish interests to separate us from one another. Amen.
Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Your Mass readings today complement the disturbing and shocking news headlines of sex abuse in the Church festering for the last 30 years or so.
What is so shameful and disgusting with this news is the fact you have never failed in warning us against hurting the little children including women and the poor who have nothing in life except you.
Those sins are so grave that moved you to harshly declare that “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea” (Mk.9:42).
We make no excuses O Lord for these grave sins against children. No words, no programs and no compensation could ever bring back their lost innocence and dignity from the hands of your priests and servants. It is a betrayal of the highest degree like what Judas Iscariot did to you.
We are angered by their sins, Lord; but, worst of all, we are deeply angered by our inaction that allowed them to continue with their evil deeds in the guise of mercy and compassion.
But, Lord, there is also something sickening than this news when our brother priests are falsely accused of sexual misconduct. We pray you keep and protect them. We pray for faithful priests to be spared of these false accusations.
You know very well O Lord you have more faithful and celibate priests working in silence and hiddenness than the unfaithful ones. Yet, we still pray that you continue to help us heed your words of wisdom through Ben Sirach (Sir. 5:1-10):
“Let us stop relying on our wealth, power, and strength in following the desires of our hearts.
Let us stop being so sure that no one could prevail against us or subdue us for God will surely exact punishment against us.
Most of all, let us not delay our conversion and stop being overconfident with your forgiveness, adding sin upon sin, for your wrath alights with the wicked.”
Have mercy on us all your priests, dear Jesus, keep us faithful to you our Lord and our God. Amen.
Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
“Wisdom breathes life into her children and admonishes those who seek her. He who loves her loves life; those who seek her will be embraced by the Lord” (Sir.4:11-12).
Forgive us, Lord Jesus, when there are times we think more about our various affiliations like religion that we forget the need for communion of minds and hearts in you.
Like John in the gospel, there are times we feel so entitled in life simply because we are with you, believing that we have the monopoly of doing what is right and what is good.
Instead of building bridges so we could be linked together as one, we put up walls that confine us with our own group but apart from others.
Enlighten us O Lord with your wisdom, finding the great truth that God dwells within each one of us despite our many differences in color and creed.
Give us your grace of wisdom and truth, fill us with your life so we may share your life freely with one another.
May God our Father embrace us with His great love and wisdom to drive away the demons and evil within us that keep us apart. Amen.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Last Wednesday evening I visited to anoint with oil one of your beloved poor patients in the government hospital. She died eventually two days after.
But what remained etched in my memory was the sight of some children crying in pain at the emergency room.
I have always wondered how difficult it must be for children to be sick when they cannot speak of what they feel that they simply cry and hold on to their mother and maybe trust her and the doctors attending.
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me” (Mk.9:37).
Give me O Lord that same grace of children to suffer and bear all pains.
Teach me O Lord “to trust God and wait for His mercy, hope in Him and love in Him so my heart may be enlightened” (Sir.2:6-9).Amen.
Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Life, sometimes, is a series of “good news-bad news” situation like the Beatitudes preached by Jesus during His sermon on the plain last week: the blessings are the good news while the woes are the bad news.
But, wait…! Such a view is the way of the world, not of Christ’s disciples!
As we have reflected last Sunday, the Beatitudes are the paradoxical happiness of the disciples of Christ because they all run directly against the ways of the world. Today we hear more paradoxical teachings from Jesus that are actually His “win-win” solution for our many problems like wars and other forms of enmities. Unfortunately, we have never given them a try because we always complain the ways of the Lord as being far from realities of life, impossible to imitate because He is God and we are not.
Today let us set aside all these reservations and arguments to reflect on this new set of paradoxical teachings by the Lord: Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies.od to those who hate you, bless those who curse, pray for those who mistreat you… But rather, love your enemies and do good to them. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you” (Lk.6:27-28, 35, 36, 38).
It is very striking that Jesus repeated twice His call to “love your enemies”.
Does He not care about us who have to bear with the sins of evil people? What a good news to those who hate us, curse us, and mistreat us! Suwerte sila! We would surely say they must be so lucky, even blessed with us who strive to heed the calls of Jesus to love them our enemies.
But, on deeper reflections, we are actually more blessed when we try to love our enemies because that is when we elevate – or “level up” as kids would say – our hearts to be merciful like God. Experts claim that the best way to exact revenge against people who have hurt us is to shower them with good deeds and kindness from us they have offended. According to these experts in counselling and psychology, evil people get disappointed and angrier with themselves when their evil plots fail especially when their targets do not react negatively. They sound understandable because evil people derive joy in making people miserable. So, why be miserable?
Far from being their “punching bag”, the Lord simply wants us to teach our enemies to respect us, to be kind to us by not being like themselves. In loving our enemies, we teach evil people that more powerful than sin is the power of love. Sin and evil consume a person while love and kindness make a person grow and mature and bloom to fullness.
Far from being passive, to love our enemies by returning evil with good is always the most active method in fighting sins. When Jesus asked us to offer the other side of our cheeks to those who slap our face or when we give them our tunic when they demand our cloak, we are showing these evil people that love is never exhausted unlike evil. Love is boundless and the more we love, the more we have it, the more we keep on doing it. Evil, on the other hand, reaches a saturation point that we get fed up with it, then we we stop doing it because it is exhausting and worst, consumes us within that in the
process destroys us. Think of the most evil person you have known and surely, you find that person so ugly, so zapped of life and energy, eaten up from within by a festering wound. Evil people will never have peace and joy within, glow on their face and skin because they are rotting inside like zombies.
In the first reading we heard how David as a type of Christ foregoing vengeance by holding on to God, trusting Him completely that he chose not to strike King Saul who was then trying to kill him out of jealousy. As disciples of the Lord, we have to trust in the Word of God that can transform our hearts of stone into natural hearts filled with love and mercy like Him. This is the point being explained by St. Paul in the second reading wherein Christ as the “second Adam from heaven” had made us bear the “heavenly image”despite our “earthly image” that is weak and sinful having come from the “first Adam from earth”. Through Baptism, we have been endowed with all the necessary grace from God, transforming us into better persons of heaven.
One of my favorite sayings came from the desk of a friend of mine I used to visit in their office that says “If you have love in your heart, you have been blessed by God; if you have been loved, you have been touched by God.”
See how God has loved us so immensely without measure! Remember that scene two Sundays ago when Jesus borrowed the boat of Simon as He would do with our voice, with our hands, with our total selves? Who are we or what do we really have and own that the almighty God would borrow from us? Nothing! Yet, Jesus comes to us daily with all His love without measure to bless us with everything we need. So, who are we now to love by measuring everything, loving only those who love us, lending only to those who could repay us?
Imagine how astonishingly disproportionate is the love of God with our kind of love. It is in this light must we see the meaning of Christ’s final lesson this Sunday: “For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you.” So paradoxical and provocative yet so true! This Sunday, may we share God’s love in our hearts with others, especially with our enemies so they may also experience the loving and merciful touch of God. Then we begin to realize too the “win-win” solution of Christ to humanity. Amen.Have a blessed week!Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Side garden of the Church of the Beatitudes with the Lake of Galilee at the background. Photo by the author, April 2017.
During His Last Supper, Jesus rose from His seat to wash the feet of His apostles to show them what position is all about: loving service to one another. See in this icon from Google there are only 11 apostles present; Judas left the Last Supper to “unseat” the Lord. Above is the word “mandatum”, Latin for “command”, Christ’s command for us to love by leaving our seats of power and comfort to stand with Him at His Cross.
Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 22 February 2019
If you are a Catholic and a regular Mass-goer, most likely you always follow the “Roman seating position” – that is, you always sit at the back, avoiding the front seats even in other gatherings outside the church.
According to Msgr. Gerry Santos who used to give us retreats and recollections while we were seminarians, the “Roman seating position” is a carry-over from the martyrdom of the early Christians who were always seated at the front rows of the Colosseum in Rome who were forcibly pushed to be devoured by hungry lions and beasts below.
Of course it is a joke but it holds so much grain of truth because we often refuse to take the front row seats for fears of being put on the spot, of making a stand. How ironic that in this age when seating positions matter so much for us, we have forgotten that more important than the position and prestige that come with the seats we occupy – literally and figuratively speaking – is the stand we take in every issue we face. Protocols dictate in so many occasions how seats indicate power and authority; the throne is always reserved to the highest in rank like kings and presidents. And the closer one is seated to the one in command, the wider is one’s sphere of power and influence too. Unfortunately, this is not everything because every seat of power and authority is always a call to serve, to make a stand for what is true and what is good.
Jesus Christ showed us the true meaning of our seating positions during the Last Supper on Holy Thursday evening when He rose to remove His outer garments to wash the feet of His apostles (Jn.13:1-15). It was a task left for slaves only but Jesus used it as a gospel parable in action to show us that what matters most in life is not where we are seated with Him but where we stand with Him. It was exactly what He meant when He said that anyone who wishes to be the greatest must be the least and the servant of all.
Recall my dear readers how during that evening of the Holy Thursday when John the beloved disciple sat not only beside Jesus but even rested his head on His chest to signify their intimacy as friends (Jn. 13:23). That touching gesture of friendship and love took its summit the following Good Friday when John the beloved was the only one of the Twelve who remained standing with the Lord at the foot of His Cross with the Blessed Mother Mary. In that scene we see how John literally stood his ground as the beloved disciple by remaining faithful and loving with the Lord from His Last Supper to His Crucifixion. Peter, the prince of the Apostles, was nowhere to be found on Good Friday after denying Jesus thrice during His trial before the Sanhedrin the night of His arrest. Very interesting was Judas Iscariot who committed suicide after realizing his grave sin in betraying the Lord. See how he had left the Lord’s Supper to deal with His enemies for His arrest. What an image of the traitor who could not stay on his seat during the Lord’s Supper was the same one who could not stand to face Him again at the foot of the Cross. See how those people who refuse to sit with us are also the ones who never stand with us, stand for us like Judas, a traitor!
I tell you these things even if Holy Week is still more than six weeks from now but in the light of the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter which is about the Primacy of Rome or the Pope as Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter. We celebrate this Feast to remember St. Peter and his successors love and service to the Church as examples we must all emulate. In 110 AD, St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote the Christians in Rome to describe to them the Church of Rome as the “primacy of love” and the “primacy of faith”. Every power and every authority signified by the chair or cathedra in the Church as well as in the world when we speak of “seat of power” must always be seen in the light of Jesus Christ’s example of loving service at His Last Supper. This is especially true for us priests who are united in Christ and with Christ in the Eucharist.
This festering problem of sexual abuse in the Church is largely due to our deviation from this primacy in love for Jesus as priests. We have been so focused with our seats – positions and titles – that we have forgotten to stand with Christ at the foot of His cross, standing for what is good and true, just and right. We have been so focused with the “party” of the Supper of the Lord and have forgotten Jesus Himself. Seminarians have been so focused with the vocation and the call, with ordination, forgetting the more essential, the Caller Jesus Himself! And that explains why some in the clergy and those in the hierarchy come up with so many excuses and alibis for the many things we do in our ministry, in our churches, in our parishes, and in our lives because we are only concerned with our office and position but never the Master.
When we love Jesus or any other person, we do not have to justify our actions. Love that is true and pure does not need justifications. But the moment we start making justifications, something is wrong like when we justify our special relationships, no matter how deep or shallow it may be for clearly, there is no primacy in love for Jesus and the Church.
When we justify our vices, our lifestyles, our business endeavors that Canon Law prohibits, clearly there is no primacy in love for we cannot be poor for Christ.
There is no problem with having advocacies as priests but when we are aligned with ideologies contrary to Christ, or when we play in partisan politics, there is neither primacy of faith nor primacy of love. It is the Lord who changes the world, not us, not our programs, not our ideas.
It is our duty as priests to love like Christ but to adopt children and raise them as our own children using our names, there is no celibacy, only stupidity.
Like Jesus, we need money to get our programs going but when we lack transparency and accountability, that is stealing and banditry.
When all we have is the ministry, the priesthood without prayer periods, without the Eucharist, we only have the call but not the Caller Jesus Christ Himself.
More than ever, today Jesus Christ is asking us all His priests to make a stand for Him, to stand with Him, to suffer with Him and to die with Him by leaving our seats of comfort and seats of power.
The Chair of St. Peter at the high altar of the Basilica of St. Peter at the Vatican flanked below by the two teachers of the East, St. John Chrysostom and St. Athanasius with the two Latin Fathers of the Church St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. All four saints showed us how love stands on faith; that, without both love and faith, everything falls apart in the Church. Photo from Bing.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Friday, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, 22 February 2019
1Peter 5:1-4///Matthew 16:13-19
Glory and praise to you, O Lord Jesus Christ as we celebrate today a most unique feast, the Chair of St. Peter!
It is so unique O Lord especially in this age when the world is so concerned with seating arrangement whether at home, in school, in offices, in buses… everywhere seats matter these days because every seat is about position, rank, power and convenience.
And we have forgotten that more important than our seating position is where we stand.
On this Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, remind us Lord especially your priests of that beautiful example you have shown at the Last Supper when you left your seat to wash the feet of the Apostles.
How sad and shameful, O Lord, when we your priests fail to realize that the throne of the Eucharist is not a seat of power or prestige but a seat of loving service to everyone.
So true were the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch in his Letter to the Romans in the year 110 that the Primacy of Rome is the Primacy of Love because primacy in faith is always primacy in love, two things we can never separate.
May we your priests heed the call of St. Peter, the designated “owner” of that Chair, that we “Tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly, as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly. Do not lord it over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock” (1Pt.5:2-3). Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
My dearest God and Father, today you remind me of the beautiful story of Noah, of how you had promised through him never again to destroy earth.
What a joy always to my eyes to see your rainbow, its beautiful colors without any definitive origin nor end, reminding me of how you have given us more than a promise but a covenant.
When I was a child, I always heard that at the end of every rainbow is a pot of gold that would make anyone who would find it very wealthy. As I matured, I realized O God that the pot of gold of your rainbow is your Son Jesus Christ our Lord: whoever finds Him becomes wealthy indeed!
Like the song of the psalmist today, “From heaven the Lord looks down on the earth”, Jesus became your rainbow, your new covenant who stretched His arms on the Cross to save us.
Give me the grace O God to think like Jesus as the Christ who willed to suffer and die for us in accordance with your Holy Will.
Give me the grace O God to think like Jesus as the Christ so that my life and those around me are enriched in your love and mercy. Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
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