How to fail in marriage

The Lord Is My Chef Wedding Recipe by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Homily at the Wedding of Ms. Gracie Rivas & Mr. Chino Orig, 08 February 2023
Don Bosco Chapel on the Hill, Bgy. Cahil, Calaca, Batangas
Tobit 8:4b-8 ><}}}}*> + ><}}}}*> + ><}}}}*> John 15:12-16

*Photo by author, Don Bosco Chapel on the Hill, Bgy. Cahil, Calaca, Batangas, 03 January 2023.*

My dearest Gracie and Chino:

Congratulations on this most joyous day of your lives. Finally, after much prayers and waiting, following so many detours in your lives, you are now before the altar of the Lord to exchange vows in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

I am sure you must have heard so many things on being successful and fruitful in marriage. In fact while praying over this homily since last year (yes, believe me), a lot of things have also come to my mind that I felt very important so you may grow and mature in your married life. But, as I prayed more, I realized lately that while there are many ways to be successful and fruitful in marriage, there is only one sure way in order to fail as husband and wife.

Disregard God.

Stop believing in God.

Live as if there is no God.

Do not pray. Do not celebrate the Sunday Mass.

Forget God. And you will surely fail in marriage.

Without God, Gracie and Chino, you cannot truly love each other because the only true love we must all imitate despite our weaknesses and imperfections is the love of Jesus Christ poured out on us there on the Cross. He said it so clearly today in our gospel, “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than to offer one’s life for a friend.”

Remember, Gracie and Chino, human love is always imperfect; only God can love us perfectly.

Here lies the great mystery and joy of human love, of marriage: God willed from the very start that man and woman be united in marriage. When his Son Jesus Christ came to the world, he not only reminded us of this wonderful plan of the Father for us but also elevated marriage into a sacrament, a sign of the saving presence of God.

In sharing his life with us, we are able to love like Jesus that is why he tells us too that it was him who chose and called you, Gracie and Chino, not you who chose him. God willed that on this day, Gracie and Chino that you get married. It was also part of his plan that you met during the COVID pandemic when we were locked down and when many weddings were either postponed or cancelled.

Very clear, Gracie and Chino, it was God who designed your marriage! Do not disregard him. Invite him daily into your lives in the same manner you invited him on this day of your wedding.

*Photo by author, Don Bosco Chapel On The Hill, Bgy. Cahil, Calaca, Batangas, 08 February 2023.*

Let me warn and remind you, Gracie and Chino, that a wedding nor a sacrament is not everything. Love is difficult because love is not just a feeling but a decision we renew daily. You must have heard how some couples ran out of love that eventually, they split up and separated and failed. When we have that deep faith, fervent hope and unceasing charity and love of God, you will never ran out of love, Gracie and Chino, because God is love.

Keep that in mind. If you want to remain in love, love God. That is what marriage is all about: in loving your wife, your husband, you are actually expressing your love to God who is after all our very first love. That’s what Tobias realized when he married Sarah in our first reading. Tobias went to a far away land not only to look for a wife and a cure for his father Tobit’s blindness but also for God! When he found Sarah, he also found God.

Is it not the same thing happened with you, Chino. upon meeting Gracie? It was not love at first sight but more like the experience of Tobias when God revealed by silently speaking into your heart Gracie is the woman whom you shall marry. In a flash, you felt so certain about it, Chino, and despite your distance from each other, you felt this love growing deeper every day.

There is no perfect marriage, Gracie and Chino, but every couple is surely blessed by God. Cooperate with him, do whatever he tells you as the Blessed Mother told the waiters in the wedding at Cana where Jesus transformed water into wine. Imagine, the first miracle by Jesus Christ was in a wedding just like this!

You know why? Because love is most truest when there is forgiveness and mercy. As I have told you, human love is imperfect, only God can love us perfectly. Without God, it is impossible for us to forgive and move on with life. Without God, it is impossible for us to say sorry and ask forgiveness too. It is God who gives us the grace to be sorry and to be merciful and forgiving like him.

When couples become hardened in their hearts as they keep tabs of each other’s sins and mistakes and misgivings, they get tired and fed up with each other and then separate.

With God, we are able to clean our slate, delete our memories and restart/refresh our programs like the computer to begin anew each day.

Without God, the festering anger within us gets worst and soon, everything crashes. That is when we fail because we do not have God as our foundation and root.

If ever you quarrel, Gracie and Chino, remember that whoever has more love to give, that one should be the one to make the first move for reconciliation. That is a grace God gives every couple to be like his Son Jesus Christ, empty of self to be able to love without measure. When we are filled with ourselves, with our pride and ego, we cannot have that space for others and for God too to work in us.

Try seeing it this way: human relationships are like two hands together.

Without God, they are like interlocking fingers where the partners are both so good, so bilib in themselves, filling each other’s needs that soon, they get filled with themselves. Like interlocking fingers that get painful, they eventually breakaway or separate from each other because love has become a demand than a gift, sex an obligation than an offering, with each one becoming more an object to be possessed than a person to be loved.

With God, human relationships are like two praying hands. Very flexible. You keep your identities and personalities intact, growing together, maturing together in love as you both create an empty space for each one’s shortcomings and most especially for God to have a place in your lives.

Like Tobit and Sarah in our first reading, pray always. Handle your lives with prayer, Gracie and Chino. The more you pray and believe in God, the more you will love him, and the more you will believe each other too and hence, love more each other too! Keep God in your life as husband and wife. Whatever you do to each other, that you do first to Jesus who is always between you.

You see, Gracie and Chino, there are so many ways to be fruitful in marriage for as long as you are rooted in God. Take away God and you will surely fail as an individual and as a couple.

My prayer for you, Gracie and Chino is that today may be the least joyful day of your lives. Live in God through Jesus Christ with Mary our Mother. Amen.

Praying for courage

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Thursday, Memorial of Sts. Timothy and Titus, Bishops, 26 January 2023
2 Timothy 1:1-8 ><]]]'> + <'[[[>< = ><]]]'> + <'[[[>< Luke 10:1-9

*Photo by author, 23 January 2023, at OLFU-Quezon City*, *Hilltop Mansion Heights.*

Dearest Lord Jesus Christ,
grant us courage,
vanish our cowardice
to fill us with "power and love
and self-control" (cf. 2Tim.1:6).

If courage is having that
strength coming from the heart,
cowardice is losing one's heart,
of not having the heart to stand
and fight for what is true and good;
more tragic than physical cowardice
of being afraid of heights or the dark
are intellectual, emotional, and
spiritual cowardice.

In this age when everything
has become relative in the name of
pluralism and "respect" for everyone,
many Christians are afflicted with
spiritual cowardice,
so afraid to uphold your teachings
and examples, Lord, that in the process
have succumbed too to intellectual
cowardice, so afraid in discussing and
dissecting the many issues being raised
against our stand for life and decency,
truth and sanity.

Pray for us, 
Saints Timothy and Titus,
"to stir into flame the gift of God"
we have received in Baptism
so that we may "not be ashamed 
of our testimony" to Jesus
"but bear our share in the hardship
for the Gospel with the strength that 
comes from God" (1Tim.1:6, 8).
Amen.

The human child, mystery of God’s love

The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Sunday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, Cycle A, 15 January 2023
Isaiah 9:1-6 ><]]]]'> Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-18 ><]]]]'> Matthew 18:1-5, 10

The photo above is a sculpture called “Love” by Ukrainian artist Alexander Milov he created in 2015. I have kept the photo as a bookmark in one of the books I have read and saw it recently. Milov rightly called it “Love” because it shows how that mystery of love expressed to us by God in Christ’s coming continues if we could only be like a child!

See how the sculpture depicts two adults after a disagreement sitting with their back to each other while their inner child in both of them wanting to connect. What a beautiful expression of our condition when despite our vast learning and knowledge, we seem to can’t live without ego and pride, hatred and grudges that prevent us from forgiving and moving on in life. The free spirit exhibited by children in this sculpture shows our true nature which is the very core of Jesus Christ’s teaching, of being a child always.

At that time 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… See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”
Matthew 18:1-3, 10

On this Sunday of the second week in Ordinary Time, we extend our Christmas celebration for a day with the Feast of Sto. Niño or Child Jesus in honor of the crucial role of that image gifted by Magellan to Queen Juana of Cebu 500 years ago. It was the Sto. Niño who actually conquered our country to become the only Christian nation in this part of the world – proof enough of Christ’s teaching about being a child so powerful in God’s eyes!

This Feast is a very timely for us too as we go into the busyness of our lives to be reminded anew even for a day of the meaning of Christmas, of Jesus Christ’s coming in love. He came because of love, coming as love himself by being a child, an infant.

It was only recently as a chaplain in the hospital have I felt and realized why a baby is called a “bundle of joy” – my heart melts whenever I visit mothers with their newborn babies especially twins. It is said that even the most hardened criminals are softened upon seeing babies and children. And that is because of what Jesus told us today in the gospel,

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”
Matthew 16:10

What is there with children and the face of God?

I think that is God’s gift of love in each of us, so innately in us right during our moment of conception when life begins as the Church rightly insists based on Sacred Scriptures. It is nurtured and cared for first by the mother that even after we have matured, we call on our mother when surprised or shocked as in “Inang ko po!” or “Nanay ko po!”. See how those approaching death would always speak of seeing their departed mother, coming and visiting them.

This shows and proves to us the deep impact of a mother’s love to each of us because she is always the first to make us experience God’s love in her womb that even long after our umbilical cords have been cut off at birth, there remains an invisible line always between us and our mothers.

It is not only with our mother but also with everyone. This love innately gifted upon each of us by God who is our very first love remains in us through our family and friends and later the people we meet in life as living representatives of that invisible love of God in us. This is what Jesus meant when he warned his disciples in the gospel today,

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”
Matthew 18:10

How sad when this love that has always been in us and in the world suddenly becomes unrecognizable – even unrealistic – because of the darkness of sins and evil. When the child is born and begins to see, experience and realize the absence of love in the family, of a lack of that love between the child’s mother and father who quarrel or separate, or when the child himself/herself is threatened or hurt by anyone he/she looks up to, then trouble happens.

Children can only grasp the gift of life and of their existence when they experience the concreteness, the reality of love first right in their homes. One thing we adults always forget which I insist on every man and woman entering marriage that it is always the children who bear all the pains and sufferings when they separate. Experts claim that criminals mostly come from families where children witness domestic violence, especially when the husband beats the wife.

It is unfortunate that today’s gospel did not include Jesus Christ’s most terrible curse against those inflicting harm on children when he said in the same scene that “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and drowned in the depths of the sea” (Mt. 16:6).

As chaplain of a university, I have been hearing the confessions of our students, recently from junior and senior high school. After listening to their stories and woes, I tell them point blank about their parents and family, of the love among them and they start crying. I do not blame parents for their apparent lack of love for their children nor for their separation nor for their need to work abroad; I stress to young people human love is always imperfect. Only God can love us perfectly.

When the world and the people around us miserably fail in showing us the face of our loving God, that is when all the more we have to be like children anew as Jesus tells us today. It is is in going inside our inner child within, in becoming like a child trusting in the great love of God in us like when we were in our mother’s womb can we grasp again this invisible love poured upon us in Jesus Christ.

This is the challenge for us of the Sto. Niño: let us keep the face of God aglow in us, on our face and in our lives like the light Isaiah spoke of in the first reading when the Messiah comes. Anyone who lives in the gospel of Jesus Christ, even amid all pains and sufferings, would always be aglow with that radiant face of God filled with love and mercy, kindness and compassion despite our many imperfections. The beloved disciple said it so well, “No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us” (1 Jn. 4:12). Simply love, love, and love. No ifs nor buts. Just love.

Let us remain children of God most especially in our adulthood like Jesus Christ who upon his death on the Cross called God Abba – Father – because he has always been the Son, the Child of God. Remember how at the Last Supper when he gave the new commandment of loving one another as he loves us: it is “new” because unlike the love the world knows which is all feelings and self-centered, Christ’s love is rooted in God through him, in him, and with him.

Let us pray:

Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ
every spiritual blessing in the heavens (Eph. 1:3),
as he chose us to be born
and be filled with his love as 
icons and representatives of his love;
enlighten the eyes of our hearts, Father,
so we may always answer your call
in your Son Jesus Christ for us to follow
him in being like a child
manifesting your face full of
warmth and love,
kindness and care
especially to those 
feeling unloved.
Amen.

Maturing in Christ

The Lord Is My Chef Christmas Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Monday, Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 09 January 2023
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 ><}}}}*> Acts 10:34-38 ><}}}}*> Matthew 3:13-17

God our loving Father,
thank you for this most wonderful 
Monday when we close 
the Christmas Season 
with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 
we also celebrate the feast 
of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo 
which is the most popular
devotion in our predominantly
Catholic nation.

As you opened the heavens
with your outpouring of love
and life upon us today like
what happened at the baptism in Jordan,
open our minds and our hearts, Father,
to recognize Jesus as your Anointed One;
most of all, may our double celebrations
this Monday remind us of the need for us to mature
in our faith in you.

*Photo from flickr.com by Mark S. Abeln, Resurrection Cemetery in Affton, Missouri, USA, 16 November 2010.*

Fix our eyes on your Chosen One,
Jesus Christ, upon whom you have 
put your Spirit who brought forth
salvation to us all,
not crying out,
not shouting,
not breaking a bruised reed
nor quenching a smoldering wick;
let us imitate the gentle humility
of your Servant, our Lord Jesus Christ
in whose person you have made your
covenant, a light for the nations,
healing us of our infirmities of 
body and most especially of soul,
not yielding to anyone nor anything
because you and him are one
(cf. Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7).
Let us continue the teaching of Peter
in the house of Cornelius with our own
experiences and meditations, with our
own witnessing "of how God anointed 
Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. 
He went about doing good 
and healing all those oppressed
by the devil, for God was with him"
(Acts 10:38).

*Photo by Mr. Jay Javier, Quiapo, 09 January 2020.*

God our loving and merciful Father,
let us see Christ's presence and
coming in our lives daily,
his coming out of Jordan
with your mission to save us,
to journey with us in this life;
most of all, let us heed your voice,
Father, to be one in Jesus in all
sufferings and trials, standing 
and fighting for truth and justice
even to the point of death on the 
Cross because he is your beloved Son
with whom you are well pleased
(Matthew 3:16, 17).

Lord Jesus Christ,
our Nuestro Padre Nazareno,
make us realize that more than
the devotions and panata,
more than that lovely robe of your
royalty as King of kings,
help us penetrate your dark skin
in Quiapo to realize your being
called "Nazarene" does not only mean
your origin, Nazareth, but most of all,
from the Hebrew word "nezer" or shoot -
that you are, O Lord Jesus is the "shoot
from the stump of Jesse" (Is.11:1),
the one completely consecrated
to God from your mother's womb
until your death on the Cross.
Make us realize this, Jesus Nazareno,
that we too, in our baptism, are 
consecrated to God:  let us manifest
your love,
your justice,
your humility,
your healing,
your mercy
in our lives.
Amen.

Christmas is family

The Lord Is My Chef Christmas Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Friday in the Octave of Christmas, Feast of the Holy Family, 30 December 2022
Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 ><}}}}*> Colossians 3:12-21 ><}}}}*> Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

*Photo by Ms. Janine Lloren (2015), Duomo Cathedral in Florence, Italy depicting the harsh conditions the Holy Family faced in Egypt while escaping Herod.*

God our loving Father,
thank you for sending us
your Son Jesus through the
husband and wife of 
Joseph and Mary;
as we celebrate today
the feast of the Holy Family
of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
you remind us too that
Christmas is a living story
that happens daily when you
come first in every family.

Help us imitate the Holy Family
in getting closer with you
and with one another in their
flight to Egypt when they faced
so much sufferings and hardships;
how sad that as families face
so many attacks these days from 
within and from the outside,
family members have failed to 
realize that our flights to Egypt 
when we have to go through trials
and difficulties are occasions 
to get closer to Jesus and one another; 
teach us to go back to you in prayer as
a family, to bring back our altars
of sacred images and icons now 
replaced by the giant flatscreen TV;
enable us to reach out more to one
another, to hug more, to converse more
than to spend the whole day before the
computer screen and cellphone
or with business partners and colleagues
or friends and classmates.

Most of all,
as Ben Sirach and St. Paul
reminded us in our first two readings
today, make us realize that our
relationships in the family 
mirror our relationship 
with you, O God, our Father;
let all our love and charity,
kindness and care begin at home
because that is where Christ
comes first to us!  Amen.

Christmas is when God’s love came down so that our love may rise in him

The Lord Is My Chef Christmas Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Tuesday in the Octave of Christmas, Feast of St. John Evangelist, 27 December 2022
1 John 1:1-4 ><000'> + ><000'> + ><000'> John 20:1, 2-8

God our loving Father,
we thank and praise you in 
giving us a great saint in
John the Evangelist, 
the beloved disciple of your Son Jesus Christ
whose feast we celebrate in this
Octave of Christmas;
it was John who declared that
"God is love" (1 Jn. 4:8, 16),
the most sublime assertion about God
not found in any other religion!
John did not merely said "God loves"
nor "love is God"; instead, John expressed
that you, O God, is love, your essence is love
that is why everything you say and do is love!

In his gospel and letters,
John showed us how your love, O God,
came down on us so that our love
may go up in you, with you, through you
in Christ Jesus who is the expression of your
love himself when you sent him to us this Christmas
for "God so loved the world that he gave us
his only Son" (Jn. 3:16);
when Jesus Christ was about to offer himself
on the Cross, his lowest point in life when he
suffered and died, he gave us his new commandment,
"that you love one another; even as I have loved you,
that you also love one another" (Jn.13:34).

How beautiful that John,
the only Apostle to have grown old
without tasting death as a martyr
unlike the others and remained standing
at the foot of the Cross to whom Jesus 
entrusted his Mother,
was able to contemplate all these
wondrous movements of your love, O God,
so that our joy may be complete in Christ.

Open our eyes and our hearts of faith, 
Lord Jesus Christ like John the Beloved
so that we may always believe even when
the tomb is empty, when you seem to be missing
and absent; teach us to love you more dearly
so that we may be true in our love in
loving our brothers and sisters whom we can see
as expression of our love to God whom we cannot see; 
let us keep on loving so that love may be perfected in us
so we may see God in others
and God may be seen in us always.
Amen.

Advent is putting on love

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Wednesday, Memorial of St. John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church, 14 December 2022
Isaiah 45:6-8, 18, 21-25 ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> Luke 7:18-23

Glory and praise to you,
God our Father, for this lovely Wednesday!
We have Isaiah with all your wonderful words
of love and assurance from whom 
all good things come from
for there is no other God but you 
who "form light and create darkness...
designing earth to be lived in" (Is. 45:7, 18);
wherever there is a healing of the sick,
when "the blind regain their sight, 
the lame walk, lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
the poor have good news 
proclaimed to them" (Lk.7:22),
then, indeed, you are there!

Where there is love and everything that
is good, sincere and true, 
like saints and holy people,
then it must be only, YOU, God
who had come to us;
like St. John of the Cross,
inflame us with your love
move us with your love
let us live in your love!

Let us never get tired walking in your love,
Lord, as expressed to us by St. John of the Cross:
"El alma que anda en amor, 
ni cansa ni se cansa"
(The soul that walks in love 
neither tires nor gets tired);
and if there is no love,
let us therefore put love
in order to find love.
Amen.

Praying to bring back love

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Monday in the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time, Year II, 14 November 2022
Revelation 1:1-4; 2:1-5 ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> Luke 18:35-43

Your words today, O dear Jesus,
to your servant John 
in writing the Book of Revelation
speak also directly to me:

“I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate the wicked… Moreover, you have endurance and have suffered for my name, and you have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first. Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and the works you did at first.
Revelation 2:2, 3-5

Thank you, dear Jesus, for reminding me
of how I have lost that love for you
when I have stopped loving others too;
help me find my way back to you.
Like the blind Bartimaeus in today's gospel,
I have been blinded too by so many
other things like wealth and power and fame;
help me see again your face in the persons
closest to me, those I encounter each day;
let me see beyond the ordinary
and temporary things so I may be more 
loving, looking beyond outer appearances
but more into the worth and dignity of
everyone bearing your identity which is also
LOVE,

Why is it, O Lord, that as we grow old, 
when we mature,
when we are supposed to be
more knowledgeable and more intelligent
when we become less loving?

Why is it, O Lord, as we become
more blessed in you in so many things
when we turn away from you,
when we love less
and think more,
desire more,
count more?

Lord Jesus,
like Bartimaeus,
please let me see:
let me see again myself so loved
and forgiven by you;
let me see again one another as
my brother and sister in you,
a companion in this journey of life;
let me see the way back home
to you in the Father
and start loving again!
Amen.

Walking in love, walking in truth

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Friday, Memorial of St. Martin of Tours, Bishop, 11 November 2022
2 John 4-9 ><000'> + <'000>< --- ><000'> + <'000>< Luke 17:26-37

*St. Martin of Tours, Patron of our hometown Bocaue in Bulacan.*

Lord Jesus Christ,
today you confront us with
the two contrasting attitudes
we disciples should have,
walking in love and 
walking in truth.

To walk in love is to live in love
which is to love one another
as you have loved us, Lord Jesus,
even to the point of giving our very selves
in love for another just like you.
Of course, we know it so well
and we have said so much about it
but have miserably failed in truly loving
like you because, O Lord, we have failed
to walk in truth; love and truth
always go together!
We cannot truly love when 
we live in lies and falsehoods,
when we are not sincere and faithful;
most of all, when we choose to be
blind and deaf 
to what is true and good.

For this is love that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, as you heard from the beginning, in which you should walk. Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh; such is the deceitful one and the antichrist. Anyone who is “progressive” as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.
2 John6-7, 9

Grant us, Jesus, the grace of walking in love
and walking in truth like St. Martin of Tours,
a great Saint who taught us in his life
how these two contrasting attitudes
perfectly go together in witnessing your gospel.

Upon seeing a beggar on a cold winter night,
he cut his cape into two without hesitation
to share it with the beggar freezing in cold;
he was not yet baptized at that time that
you appreciated it Lord by appearing to him
in a dream with the other half of his cape.

After he was baptized, as a soldier of
the Roman army, he realized that war
and the gospel are incompatible that he
refused to fight in a battle by declaring
"I am a soldier of Christ; I cannot fight."
Threatened to be jailed for cowardice,
St. Martin volunteered to be sent unarmed
to the frontline when just before his
commanders challenged his offer,
their opponents sued for peace,
preventing any battle.

After his discharge from the Roman army,
St. Martin founded monasteries
and soon his holiness became known that
he was elected Bishop of Tours in France,
faithfully serving you Jesus by
walking in love,
walking in truth.
After his death,
 his cult spread and was so popular
in Europe, proof that indeed,
"whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it"
(Luke 17:33).

St. Martin of Tours,
Pray for us!
Amen.

*An icon of St. Martin giving the other half of his cape to a beggar; photo from blog.obitel-minsk.com.*

Prayer against complacency

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Tuesday in the Thirty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, Year II, 08 November 2022
Titus 2:1-8, 11-14 ><]]]'> + <'[[[>< === ><]]]'> + <'[[[>< Luke 17:7-10

Lord Jesus Christ,
as we approach the end of the year
before we get carried away
with the excitement of your birthday
that is Christmas, help me focus on you
more earnestly these days.
Do not let me be complacent.

Jesus said to the Apostles: “Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table?’ When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'”
Luke 17:7, 10

Forgive me, Jesus
when there are times I feel so entitled
to you after I have done your assigned
task and mission;
let me keep in my mind always
that more than fulfilling the will of the Father,
what matters most is our relationship with God.

Do not let me be complacent in being good,
in being faithful,
in being a good example to others
as St. Paul instructed Titus
to remind everyone,
both the elder men and women,
 and younger men and women too!

For the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.
Titus 2:11-14

Keep me temperate,
dignified, self-controlled,
sound in faith, love and endurance,
showing myself as a model of good deeds
in every respect, with integrity in teaching,
dignity, and sound speech 
that cannot be
criticized.
Amen.