The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Friday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, Year II, 14 June 2024 1 Kings 19:9, 11-16 <*((((>< + ><))))*> Matthew 5:27-32
Photo by Mr. Vigie Ongleo, Sagada, Mt. Province, 2014.
O God, dear Father, how I have loved so much ever since today's story of Elijah fleeing from death at the hands of Jezebel's army; so many times I have felt like Elijah, so tired, fed up fighting, hoping for death when the going gets tough and rough; and so many times too, You have never forsaken me, Father like Elijah, asking me many times that question, "Why are you here?" (1 Kings 19:9, 13).
Very often, I get confused, Father,
if I am that zealous for You
like Elijah or just me so insistent
with what I believe,
with what I know,
with what I hold so dear
in You and for You;
many times I do not know
if I am still doing your will
especially when it is so difficult,
so uncomfortable and,
yes, I have asked You many times
why not just make me
an ordinary man,
instead of being your prophet....
Photo by Mr. Vigie Ongleo, Sagada, Mt. Province, 2014.
But your question remains, Lord, that I rarely face nor answer squarely: "Why are you here?"
You know me so well, Lord: like Simon Peter in Capernaum after your discourse on the bread of life, my favorite response to You is "Master, 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" (John 6:68-69).
But most of all, I am here because like the psalmist, "I long to see your face, O Lord" (Psalm 27:7-8); and for me to see your face means to love more until it hurts me; to see your face, Lord, is to be still and silent amid the noise of this world for you are always there in our midst among the weak and voiceless, among those in the margins and underneath the heaps of scraps and garbage; to see your face, O Lord, is to remember always it is your work, not mine that I must accomplish.
Why am I here, Lord? Because You told me so. Thank you so much in bringing me here this far, no matter what for as long I feel getting closer with You. In that case, I shall always be here for You! Amen.
Photo by Mr. Vigie Ongleo, Sagada, Mt. Province, 2014.
Lord My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Friday, Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus-B, 07 June 2024 Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8-9 ><}}}*> Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19 ><}}}*> John 19:31-37
Being tender and caring are essentially your works, O God, made known to us by your Son Jesus Christ in His Most Sacred Heart where there is enough room for each one of us wounded and hurting to find healing; bitter and disgusted to have rest and solace; lost to find way back home.
Thus says the Lord: When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet. though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.
Hosea 11:1, 3-4
I must admit, O God, that I have not yet really known You that until now, I lack your tenderness and care for others; to have tenderness like You, Lord, is first of all for me to be intimate with You, my Father, my Life, my Mission; You have nurtured me as your son but I never recognized You fully that is why many times I followed my doubts and negative thoughts than You. So many times I pray yet still so far from You, O God!
Lord Jesus Christ, "dwell in my heart through faith so that I may be rooted and grounded in love" (Ephesians 3:17) because when my love with God is superficial, all my relationships are also skin-deep that make me forget my love experiences, giving more emphasis on others' shortcomings, expectations, and returns; tenderness is being like You, O God, of having a big heart able to accommodate those suffering because You know and realize the gravity of what others are going through; more than a feeling, tenderness is love and mercy in action because it is to feel what others are going through.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like Thine, close to the Father, close to His children. Amen.
Photo by author, Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, QC, 20 March 2024.
The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Friday, Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus-B, 07 June 2024 Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8-9 ><}}}*> Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19 ><}}}*> John 19:31-37
You must be wondering why this photo of a quote from Tom Hanks’ 1994 character Forrest Gump on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. What’s with shoes and the Sacred Heart of Jesus? Let me explain…
Last Tuesday while checking on my Facebook, I saw the post of a former seminarian who said, “Buying us shoes has been the love language of my parents to us… It will not change.” Posted below were photos of him buying two kids with new pairs of shoes.
How I admired him for being a father to those less fortunate kids! And that’s why I remembered Forrest Gump too who said how his mother used to tell him that shoes tell a lot about people, “Where they are going. Where they been.”
There’s something special with our feet, with the shoes we wear. Or do not wear. One is clear, though: our feet being at the lowest part of our body are most cared when we are growing up but later forgotten though overworked. That is why, it is so wonderful to go back to those days of childhood when our parents used to buy us with new pair of shoes, of how they would stoop down to help us fit the right ones for us. Just like God who is a Father to each one of us!
Thus says the Lord: when Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.
That’s the tenderness of God, so Fatherly to us in taking care of us, teaching us to walk, taking us to his arms, lovingly raising us to his cheeks while we burst in laughter. Try reading that whole quotation to include the second verse skipped by our lectionary today, the more you can feel God’s tenderness. And our sinfulness.
Thus says the Lord: When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the farther they went away from me.
Hosea 11:1-2
Is it not this is how our love relationship is with our parents and family including God?
When we were kids, we loved running to our parents, taking pride for being their son or daughter, always clinging to their big hands. Or, like couples at their early years in marriage who seem to be inseparable and always together. Then, as years passed by as we find new friends and new relationships, we drift apart from our parents or spouse, including God. And worst, we drive them away, even feeling ashamed of them especially when they come near us with their gestures of love and concern. But, when problems arise like betrayal and infidelity, failures and losses, we return to our parents or to our original spouse or family, and most especially to God, rediscovering their genuine love that is so tender and very comforting again: “I took you in my arms, drew you with human cords with bands of love. I fostered you like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; yet, though I stooped to feed you my child, you did not know I am your healer” (Hos.11:3-7).
From GettyImages.com.
That “stooping down” by God He had spoken to Hosea hundreds of years earlier took its deepest plunge when He sent us Jesus Christ His Son as our Savior by dying on the Cross. In fact, Jesus literally “stooped down” on the night He was betrayed when He washed the feet of His disciples to portray to them the depth of His love for us all.
From His birth to His passion and death, Jesus Christ, therefore, is the Father’s love language.
This was very evident on Good Friday as John narrated how the soldiers broke the legs of the other two thieves crucified with Jesus to hasten their death; but, when they saw Jesus “already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out. For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled: Not a bone of it will be broken. And again another passage says: They will look upon him whom they have pierced” (Jn.19:33-34, 36-37).
Jesus Christ is the Father’s love language to us all because His death on the Cross is the most tender moment of love in history when our God who personally loves us by becoming like us in everything except sin loved us until the last drop of His blood because we are His beloved brothers and sisters in His loving and faithful Father in heaven we have always deserted in our many sins.
Photo by author, Baguio City, 2023.
Indeed, when blood and water flowed out from His pierced side on the Cross, the ocean of Divine Mercy flowed out for us, forgiving our most grievous sins, regardless of our many weaknesses.
In His Most Sacred heart, Jesus is inviting us to have tender moments with Him, to have the same “love language” of sacrifice and giving of self for others so that “He may dwell also in our hearts through faith so that once we are rooted and grounded in His love, we may have the strength to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of His love that surpasses knowledge and be filled with the fullness of God”(Eph.3:17-19).
Unlike us humans, God makes no mistakes in loving. He remains faithful to us with His love, even “allowing” us often to sin and commit mistakes so that eventually, when we hit rock bottom, we rediscover Him and His love that is so real and so personal.
That is why we must heed St. Paul’s admonition in the second reading to be “rooted and grounded in His love” because human love is always imperfect. Only God can love us perfectly in Christ Jesus who offered Himself on the Cross to fulfill what we have failed since the beginning – that is, to love God and others.
Photo by author, Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, QC, 20 March 2024.
Today we complete the series of three Solemnities in Ordinary Time right after the great season of Easter: Trinity, Body and Blood of Christ, and now, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. All three Solemnities tell us how great is this God we believe in, someone so immense and powerful, yet so loving and so gentle; most of all, a God so personal that He is much like us but at the same time so different from us.
This Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is an occasion for us to meditate deeply on how God touches us in the most intimate manner when He stooped down in Christ through the Cross to experience His love and mercy so that we could make others feel that too.
Like John who witnessed everything on the Cross, we need to see more with the eyes of faith the realities of God’s immense love for us who gave His Son Jesus as the new Lamb offered for our many sins and that is why, in accordance with the Jewish law and with the Old Testament, not one of His bones were broken on the Cross. May we learn to stoop down like God in Jesus by looking down to our feet by first examining our hearts as we pray, Jesus meek and humble heart make my heart like thine! Amen.
Photo by author, Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, QC, 20 March 2024.
Here is our second instalment of our contribution in reflecting why divorce should not be allowed because it is against the plan of God and therefore, a sin. Please, we are not judging anyone here.
It is the simple truth that for the longest time people have refused to accept in their hearts that they have continuously sought ways of justifying divorce because right in their hearts, they are the first ones bothered. They had their chance to confront Jesus Christ about it 2000 years ago but the Lord minced no words when He declared the painful truth any pro-divorce would not discuss, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt.19:8).
How sad when articles come out trying so hard to dilute this truth by deliberately interpreting it in their own terms especially the many statements by Pope Francis which he had repeatedly clarified including that of the same sex union.
Most sad is when a news report supposed to present all sides chooses to cite only the questionable teachings of some experts in religion or theology without citing the Sacred Scriptures, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Church documents for official teachings on marriage. Worst, the same report highlighted views of Catholic theologians silenced long ago (may they rest in peace) by the Church for their misleading views on morality!
Divorce is against God’s plan. Marriage is only between a man and a woman as created by God, not invented by any one that is subject to changes or whims. Jesus explained this clearly in the same gospel scene which we shall echo today and forever: “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and he said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Mt.19:4-6).
As a creation of God, marriage is a sacrament, a sign of His saving presence in this world in Jesus Christ who had come to reassert this truth. The problem remains the hardness of the hearts of people, especially of those getting married who are so preoccupied with the accidentals of marriage without realizing that they are an icon of Jesus.
Photo by author, 2019.
My first assignment after ordination in 1998 was to teach at the Immaculate Conception School for Boys (ICSB) in Malolos City. We also run an all-girls high school and an elementary school for boys and girls.
Marian was my student from elementary to high school whom I have known so well including her parents. We call our students ICONS, from the initials of our school name. Here are parts of my homily to Marian’s wedding last June 29, 2019 at the Malolos Cathedral.
Congratulations to you, my dearest Marian and Matt!
God willed that you get married today on the Solemnity of St. Peter and St. Paul, the two pillars of the Church established by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Like you, Marian and Matt, St. Peter and St. Paul are two people of opposite personalities, of different social and cultural backgrounds but were able to overcome these to work together for Jesus Christ. We celebrate their feast together because despite their many differences, they were united in their love for Jesus Christ. It was Christ who brought them together and kept them together so his Church would grow and be what it is today.
The same is true with you, Marian and Matt: Jesus Christ brought you together in spite of your many differences to be united in his love. Most of all, Marian and Matt, Jesus wants you to be his ICONS or images in the world today that has become individualistic.
An icon or image of Jesus like St. Peter and St. Paul is to be one in the Lord. A man and woman get married to become disciples of Christ, to become one in Christ, to look like Christ. That is the meaning of the word sacrament, visible sign of the saving presence of Jesus in the world.
And that is why the gospel you have chosen for your wedding day is so perfect, the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus gave us his Beatitudes that are actually directions for discipleship… let us reflect on the sixth Beatitude of Jesus: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt.5:8).
Remember the Little Prince where the fox told him that “What is essential is invisible to the eye; it is only with the heart one can truly see”?
We can only see God with our hearts. The intellect alone is never enough.
And so it is with any person.
We can learn and know so many things about another person with our intellect but nothing will be enough for us to truly love him or her unless we let our hearts see the real him or her.
The heart is the wholeness of the person. Yesterday we celebrated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sometimes, when we use our minds, we see the world as so dark and so evil. But, if we have hearts that can see, we will be more surprised that there are more goodness, more beauty in this world than what we hear and see in the news and around us.
Marian and Matt, always have a clean heart to see each one’s goodness and beauty.
Always go back to those early days when you first saw each other with your hearts. Aside from the kilig factor, you felt and realized something deeper with each other. The beloved disciple, St. John, wrote in our first reading, “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. 4:11-12).
And that is how we see God and others: always with our hearts when we love.
To have a clean heart, Marian and Matt, is to enter into the mind of Jesus Christ and that is to embrace his Cross. Having a clean heart is becoming one with Jesus Christ, especially in his love and fidelity.
A clean heart is a loving heart that always gives life, other-centered, veritable and enduring. Always in communion with Jesus Christ who gave us the new commandment to love like him by being rooted in the Father.
The love of Christ is the fire that purifies and cleanses our hearts, unifying our intellect, will and emotion that enables us to see oneness in ourselves before God. We see not only the good and the bad sides in ourselves but also among those around us, especially those we love.
Look back at your many experiences, Marian and Matt. Look at your past lives, your struggles, your mistakes and sins. Despite all these, you have also seen and experienced God’s loving presence in you in spite of your many darkness and divisions within.
That is why you are so “blessed”, Marian and Matt, because today on your wedding day, you enter God himself and you are able to “see” him with your loving hearts despite your pains and hurt, failures and shortcomings. Keep your hearts clean in Jesus Christ so you may always see God in each other. Amen.
My dearest married couples, please do not forget that fact, that reality: you are an image, an icon of Jesus Christ. And what a great honor!
That is why Jesus made His first miracle in a wedding at Cana to show your special place in God’s plan. You have chosen a most difficult kind of life but that is why you chose to get married in the Church – to be blessed by God.
God keeps His promise. Keep yours too! Praying for all couples especially those going through difficulties these days.
The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Friday, Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 31 May 2024 Romans 12:9-16 ><]]]]'> + >>]]]]'> + >>>]]]]'> Luke 1:39-56
Photo by author, statues of Mary and Elizabeth at the Church of the Visitation in ein-Karem, the Holy Land, May 2017.
What a lovely way to end the month with this feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Visitation of her cousin Elizabeth after starting off May on its very first day with another feast, St. Joseph the Worker that remind us of God’s coming to us in Jesus Christ.
Visit and visitation may seem to be one and the same, sharing the common Latin root word of the verb vide, videre “to see” from which came the word video.
But, a visit is more casual and informal without intimacy at all. We say it so well in Filipino, napadaan lang or just passing by which is more concerned with the place or location and site, not the person there. Napadaan lang ako kaya dinalaw na rin kita (I was just passing by and decided to see you). There was really no intention in seeing the other person there.
Photo by author, Church of the Visitation, Ein-Karem, Holy land, May 2017.
Visitation is more intentional. Mr. Webster described it as a more formal visit commonly used in church language like when bishop and priests come to see their parishioners. This explains why we refer to a chapel as a visita which is actually a small church in remote places that missionaries used to visit for the sacraments. Likewise, visitas became venues too for catechism classes and other religious even social gatherings in places far from the town itself where the parish is usually situated too.
Thus, visitation connotes a deeper meaning because there is an expression or implication at least of care and concern among the people, a kind of love shared by the visitor like Mary to the one visited, Elizabeth.
Visitation is more of entering into someone’s life and personhood as reported by Luke in Mary’s visitation of Elizabeth when “Mary entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth” (Lk.1:40). There was a communion and sharing of their common experience of being blessed with the presence of God in their wombs.
Visitation is a sharing, a oneness in the joys and pains of those dear to us. The word becomes more meaningful when we examine its Filipino equivalent pagdalaw from the root word dala or something you bring like food or any gift when visiting relatives and friends. What you bring or dala is called pasalubong from the root salubong that literally means “meeting” or “encounter”. When the visitor and ones visited meet, they salubong.
Here it becomes more colorful and meaningful because more than the gifts we bring or dala in our visitations, we bring our very selves as a gift of presence. In every visitation, it is our very selves we gift, we share with those we visit, offering them our time and talent, joys and sadness and ears and heart to listen to their stories and absorb their woes and whatever they may have to unload upon us.
Photo by author, 2019.
That was what Mary did exactly in her visitation of Elizabeth with an extra gift, the most precious pasalubong to share with everyone, Jesus Christ in her womb, right in her very self and body!
We too are invited every day to be like Mary, a bringer or taga-dala of Jesus Christ to everyone we meet, the best pasalubong we can share with everyone. If we can only be like Mary in our dealings with others, trying to make every encounter a visitation that is a willful bringing and sharing of Christ with others, then we also bring with us God’s tenderness and mercy for this dark world that admires toughness and roughness.
How sad are those news of daily road rages happening almost everywhere, many times resulting in the loss of lives like the recent fatal shooting of a family driver in Makati.
Through the Blessed Mother’s humility and obedience before God, Christ came into the world to make us experience the Father’s tenderness in the many healings and miracles He performed. This tenderness of God in Jesus we saw too in Mary His Mother in the Visitation: Mary visited Elizabeth because she knew and felt her many wounds who for a long time bore no child, living in “disgrace before others” as she had claimed (Lk.1:25). A tender person like Jesus and Mary is one who comes to comfort and heal the wounds of those hurt in life, trying to lullaby the restless and sleepless, never adding insult to injuries.
Photo by author, Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, QC, 20 March 2024.
One last thing about the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. One of the best things we can experience from visitations and visits of family and friends like during wakes and funerals is that quality of sweetness.
Sweetness always goes with tenderness. It is the essence of God who is love. Anyone who loves is always sweet that always comes naturally from within, bringing out good vibes. It is never artificial like Splenda, always flowing freely and naturally that leaves a good taste and feeling to anyone.
In the Hail Holy Queen, Mary is portrayed as “O clement, O sweet Virgin Mary” to show her sweetness as a Mother. Recently I have seen some posts making a meme (?) of the Hail Holy Queen’s part that says “to you do we cry poor banished children of Eve”. I have not really dealt it with much attention because too often, there are a lot of generation gaps in many posts in social media; I really cannot relate much to the young perhaps due to my age. I just hope that post on the Hail Holy Queen is not derogatory. Back to our reflection…
Tenderness and sweetness are the most God-like qualities we all have but have unconsciously buried deep in our innermost selves, refusing them to surface because of our refusal to love for fears of getting hurt and left behind or lost. When Mary heard Elizabeth’s pregnancy, she simply followed her human and motherly instincts that in fact so Godly that she went in haste to hill country of Judah. How lovely!
Tomorrow it is already June, reminding us all we are halfway through the year. And it would be surprisingly quick that soon, it is already Christmas again! This feast of the Visitation reminds us of Mary’s great role in making Christmas a reality when God almighty became human, little and vulnerable like us to experience His sweetness and tenderness in Jesus Christ. Through Mary.
Let us pray:
God our loving Father, thank for coming to us, for staying with us, not just visiting us; help us imitate Your Son Jesus Christ's Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary whose "love is so sincere", loving one another like Elizabeth with "mutual affection, showing honor, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; help us imitate Mary to always rejoice in hope, endure afflictions and most of all, persevere in prayer" (cf. Romans 12:9-12) so we may always bring Jesus Christ with everyone we meet. Amen.
From cbcpnews.net, 13 May 2022, at the Parish of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, Valenzuela City.
The Lord Is My Chef Easter Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter before the Pentecost, 17 May 2024 Acts 25:13-21 ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> John 21:15-19
Photo by Mr. Gelo Carpio, 2020.
Today, O Lord Jesus, You asked me the loveliest yet most dreaded question of all: "Do you love me?"
And You know very well my answer, "Yes, Lord! I love You!" even if most often my yes to You does not flow to my works and actions: You know so well, dear Jesus, how my yes to You remains only in my lips and in my heart because more often I turn away from Your love to commit sins; yet, despite these, You still love me very much, Jesus.
Yes, I love You, Jesus! Please help me to pray always to You, to center my life in You, to be close and intimate with You, to be one in You because love first of all means being one with the beloved, making time, not finding time.
Yes, I love You, Jesus! Help me to appreciate myself more, to find You in myself despite my sinfulness and weaknesses like Peter whom You have called in his original name, Simon because loving You and others begins in loving myself, being grateful to You that I am alive and most of all, loved.
Yes, I love You, Jesus! Let me love You with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my very self; let me love You first so that I may truly love everyone, especially the poor and the needy You have entrusted to me; let me love You first, Jesus, so that I may love deeply the Church; O my Jesus, let me love You first so I can truly love because without You as basis and foundation of my love, that love could be self-serving, momentary and merely an altruism without meaning and depth that truly liberates the beloved. Amen.
Photo by author, Chapel of St. Francis Xavier, Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, QC, 20 March 2024.
The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 12 May 2024
With my sisters Bing and Meg in Egypt, part of our Holy Land pilgrimage in 2019.
Since it is a Mother’s Day this Sunday, we are featuring my late mom’s favorite music as far as I can remember, Jo Stafford’s You Belong To Me that was released in 1952. I am not really sure if it was her favorite music in fact or simply one of the few old records (78 RPM) of my dad she kept playing in our Radiowealth phonograph.
I remembered the song very well because of its opening line “See the pyramids along the Nile” she would sing to my dad. Sometimes they would duet as they danced in our large sala. Truth is, it was only recently when I learned its title You Belong To Me courtesy of YouTube.
I was four years old in 1969 and we have moved to a spacious, two storey apartment of Aling Metring in Alibangbang Street, Project 7 when mommy finally had dad’s old stereo phonograph brought to QC from Bulacan along with albums of 45 rpm records with some LP’s and those rare 78’s. That was how I got hooked with music and radio early in childhood. Through my parents.
It was mommy who made an important impact on my tastes for music. During that time, there was record peddler who came to our apartment once a month offering the latest records. Mommy was so kind to have allowed me to choose and buy a record album I was so fascinated with the jacket design and music. She never said anything negative about my choice, that it was the music of the devil. From Santana, I came to love Led Zep, Steely Dan and the rest. Of course, Beatles was a staple during that time at home and in my elder cousins.
Back to her favorite… You Belong To Me.
Early this morning in my room, I saw the many posts of relatives and friends about Mother’s Day. I cried and remembered mommy. My first motherless Mother’s Day. But, I realized, even after mothers have died, we never become motherless. Mothers are like God: they are always present everywhere!
And that is the meaning of Ascension: Jesus did not go to any place but leveled up in His relationships with the Father and us. Ascension is Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father to assert we all belong to Him. That is what Ascension is, our belonging to God and with each other as Jo Stafford said so well:
See the pyramids along the Nile Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle Just remember, darling, all the while You belong to me
See the marketplace in old Algiers Send me photographs and souvenirs Just remember when a dream appears You belong to me
I’ll be so alone without you Maybe you’ll be lonesome too, and blue
See how every stanza is closed with the line You belong to me, reminding her beloved that no matter wherever he may go, she would still be loving him. So motherly!
Her chorus line speaks well of the Ascension: we’ll be so alone without Jesus who came here to bring us all back to God the Father. Like God, mothers love us her family so much that even in heaven, we still have that invisible umbilical cord connecting us to them.
Blessed happy mother’s day, Mommy and my others moms! This is for you.
The Lord Is My Chef Easter Recipe by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Sixth Sunday in the Easter Season, Cycle B, 05 May 2024 Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48 ><}}}*> 1 John 4:7-10 ><}}}*> John 15:9-17
Photo by author, Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, QC, 22 March 2023.
Imagine that beautiful imagery of Jesus last Sunday, of Him saying “I am the true vine… you are the branches” calling us to remain in Him to be fruitful (Jn.15:1, 5, 8). What a lovely sight to behold are the vines, climbing and winding up or creeping on the ground with its vast network of leaves and stems, tiny tendrils and shoots, flowers and fruits.
Jesus identified Himself with the vine to show us the immensity and profundity of His love for us as this plant species sprawls widely with its strong roots and stem system extending to its branches that reach out to its flowers and clusters of fruits like grapes. It is as if in every turn of the vine, there is so much life, full of love like God who is both Life and Love Himself.
Photo by Dra. Carol Reyes-Santos, MD at Napa Valley in California, September 2023.
And that is the essence of Jesus as He had explained during their Last Supper, showing its meaning on Good Friday when He died on the Cross, summarizing everything on Easter when He rose again and appeared later to His disciples.
It is love, love, and still, love in every turn just like the vine.
In being the true vine, we find God’s immense love for us expressed in His Son Jesus Christ who now tells us clearly to love one another shortly before He showed and proved that love for us on Good Friday at the Cross.
Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. This I command you: love one another.”
John 15:9, 12, 17
See how Jesus speaks of and lives in love in every turn in this gospel scene this Sunday which is a continuation of His discourse last week during their Last Supper. Nine times Jesus used the word “love” in nine verses.
He began his discourse by laying down the foundation of this love which is the Father’s love in verse 9: it is in “remaining” in His love that we truly have joy which is more than happiness but firm assurance that no matter what happens to us even in the worst situations including death as Jesus went through, there is always God loving us to the end and beyond.
After that, Jesus twice mentioned love as His commandment to us. Actually, Christ’s command to love one another seems pretty simple, and easy if you say so; but, what He added makes it so difficult – “love one another as I love you.”
That part “as I love you” is the challenge of Jesus to each one of us every day because He loved even unto death, literally and figuratively speaking. We do not need to die literally as martyrs but even dying figuratively speaking is already so difficult when we have to make many sacrifices, when we have to love somebody else more than our very selves!
Loving one another like Christ is more than to “feeling good” because…
To love like Jesus is to forget ourselves, to think less of our own good and comfort like a mother despite her being sick would still rise early to prepare her family to school and work or a dad going abroad in order to have food, clothing and shelter for his family.
Loving like Christ is giving up our wants and needs, including our dreams sometimes like the many Ate and Kuya who remain single in order to send their younger siblings to school until they graduate and be able to stand on their own.
To love like Jesus is to die in our own POV (point-of-view) and other long held beliefs in order to find Christ in everyone especially those different from us or from those who hurt us.
Loving one another like Jesus Christ is choosing the Father above all every day.
Admittedly, to love like Jesus is very difficult indeed but, the good news this Sunday is that it is doable as the beloved disciple explains in the second reading, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins” (1Jn.4:10).
And the best part of this Sunday’s gospel is when Jesus declared twice He loves us, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you… This is my commandment: love one another as I love you” (Jn. 15:9,12).
Wow! Everyone knows so well the deep joy one feels in hearing someone say “I love you”. For as long as it is the true kind of love, these words of “I love you” are not only transformative but also performative because they are powerful, filled with the powers of God that can change us, heal us and inspire us.
The words “I love you” are the nicest and most life-changing things one can always hear but unfortunately we rarely say these words to others because we are afraid of running out of love. The truth is, the more love we give, the more we share love in words and in deeds like Jesus, the more we are filled with His love but by those around us too!
Never say nor claim we cannot love like Christ because we are humans like that cheesy Filipino love song of yore, sapagkat ako’y tao lamang. That ability to love like Jesus is already here in our hearts, in our being, in us because He had lavishly loved us first so that we too can love. Every day Jesus repeats those words of the Last Supper whenever we wake up, telling us, “I love you”.
It was the same experience Peter and later the household of Cornelius have experienced in our first reading when the Holy Spirit came down upon them to fill them with the love of God that prompted Peter to realize earlier how “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34), meaning, God loves everyone lavishly regardless of color, gender, and creed. The problem is with us when we love only those “like us”; hence, the need to remain in Christ to be able to find Him in everyone.
Let us immerse ourselves into that amazing reality that we are personally loved by Jesus as we pray:
Dearest Jesus: let me remain in Your love so I may learn to forget myself, set aside my plans and agenda so that I may love like You by keeping Your commandments, laying down my life for others, echoing Your very words of "I love you" to those who hardly know You because they have never felt being loved as they suffer alone in diseases, poverty, and injustice; let me bask in Your love, Lord to lead others back to You in my loving service and kindness especially those who have lost faith in You and humanity. Amen.
Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 03 May 2024
Photo by author, Anvaya Cove in Morong, Bataan, 15 April 2024.
How I wish I could strum and sing like Simon and Garfunkel saying hello and listening to the sound of silence that nobody hears, nobody cares; what a lovely commodity now a rarity in the time of Siri, everybody is so afraid of silence when its loudest sound is less than a breath, feebler than a whisper.
How foolish have we become to disregard silence when it is the only sound before we have all become that is why when death comes, in silence we shall return; woe the Walkman that pushed us back to the caves of our own world enslaved by gadgets that muffle our ears and head from the warmth of another soul speaking in silence.
Let us touch and be disturbed by the sound of silence! Listen to its wisdom and truth for it is not emptiness but fullness; embrace silence, feel its warmth to see life's vibrance in its natural sound telling us to trust again so we can love anew that is most true when words are few because the heart is empty, silently awaiting YOU!
Photo by author, Anvaya Cove in Morong, Bataan, 15 April 2024.
The Lord Is My Chef Easter Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Thursday, Memorial of St. Athanasius, Bishop & Doctor of the Church, 02 May 2024 Acts 15:7-21 ><}}}}*> Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 10 ><}}}}*> John 15:9-11
Your words today, Lord Jesus, are so dramatic like in the movies when Your disciples twice went silent: "The whole assembly fell silent, and they listened while Paul and Barnabas described the signs and wonders God worked among the gentiles through them. After they had fallen silent, James responded, 'My brothers, listen to me...'" (Acts 15:12-13).
Teach me to be silent, Lord, so that I may listen and hear what others are saying, what You are telling me through others; let me be silent, Jesus, to listen more to You, to experience Your presence, Your love and care, Your mercy and forgiveness, and Your wisdom and direction I must take in this life harassed by so many noises and competing voices to follow.
How interesting that Your great servant and theologian St. Athanasius whose Memorial we celebrate today, the first of the Doctors of the Church who fought the heretics to insist on Your being true God and true man was forced into exile so many times defending You and Your truth as the Christ; how lovely to reflect in those repeated exiles of St. Athanasius he fell silent not because of fear but because of courage by continuing to pray and reflect on Your Person as the Son of God.
Lord Jesus Christ, silence is the domain of trust; hence, teach me most especially to be silent like the saints in order to trust You more so that I can love more like You by remaining close with You, in You always (John 15:9). Amen.
lordmychef.com 