Category: Prayer/Spirituality

Jesus our life

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Receipe for the Soul, Tuesday Easter Wk. III, 07 May

The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?” (Jn.6:30)

Thank you Lord Jesus in bringing us here to your Holy Land, for seeing the places you have visited to preach and to heal. Most of all in being one of us to bring the Father closest to us.

Long before we have come – and douted God – you have been here. Everything was created in you, with you.

When I look at the barren desert and wilderness with old cities and oases still there, the more I see your signs of presence.

You are life, Lord.

Problem is when we destroy nature rather than enhance it like the farmlands here in the Dead Sea area.

Worst of all Lord when we hide you from the people because of the elaborate designs of our churches that have become so kitschy or baduy.

Teach us to appreciate your noble simplicity and beauty like the many churches here in the Holy Land.

Teach us priests especially to keep in mind your church is your house of prayer and encounter, not of show and comfort.

Let us decrease so that you will increase! Amen.

The problem of peace

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe, Monday, Easter Wk. III, 06 May 2019

Praise and glory to you O Lord Jesus Christ!

Thank you for this gift of Monday. Thank you for bringing us here in your birthplace and place of death as well.

How ironic and tragic, Lord.

As we arrived here in Bethlehem, fighting erupted anew at Gaza Strip, with rocket attacks reportedly killing and injuring undetermined people yet.

Fightings continue to this very moment and thank you for being far from it.

Lord, it is the most baffling mystery in life: your land is the land where peace remains elusive. And maybe because our hearts have always been far from you.

Like the people who spread lies against Stephen and the people who came looking for you for more food.

We always have our hearts filled with our very selves but never with you.

Let us be your John the Baptist in this time, one who prepares your coming by preaching and living peace. Amen.

Jesus lord of the sea and darkness

Happy birthday, Lord Jesus!

Happy birthday to us all too!

Every year we await our birthdate to celebrate life. But more than that we await most Christmas without really realizing why.

Yesterday afternoon at five we entered your Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. After more than three hours waiting in line, we reached your birthplace.

Thank so much for the grace to touch your birth site. We were so touched because we touched base with our very selves too. We felt your love for us, the joy of being alive,

Most of all, like the joy of being born, of being brought forth into the world that is dark and very cold – hostile like the apostles crossing Tiberias in today’s gospel without you in sight – your still come.

You actually stay in us, among us, and with us.

Teach us like the Eleven apostles to concentrate praying your word as we serve the needy. Let us stay in you, stay with you. Amen.

Love Jesus first

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Friday, 03 May 2019 Feast of Sts. Philip and James, Apostles

Praise and glory to you O Lord Jesus Christ for this first Friday in your Holy Land!

Yesterday we visited and prayed at the various sites of your ministry around the shores of the beautiful Lake of Galilee.

Here you called your first Apostles and later nearby the others who followed you like Philip and James whose feast we celebrate today.

Like us, they were seeking direction in life. That, they found in you alone, Lord Jesus – something we are rediscovering in a wonderful way these days during our pilgrimage.

So many times due to many concerns in life, we forget you are the Gospel – the Good News – who saved us all (1Cor.15:1).

So many times we forget like Philip that you and the Father are one, that whoever had seen you has seen the Father too (Jn.14:9).

Lord Jesus Christ, visiting “mensa Christi“, your table where you had breakfast with your apostles after Easter, we realized the most important thing of all of being a Christian – to be in love with your first and above all Lord!

Let us love you more deeply Lord Jesus as you well know how weak we are. Amen.

Photos by the author: above is the shore at the back of Capernaum where Jesus preached and last photo is back of church near shore where the Lord asked Simon thrice, “Do you love me?”.

Obeying God than men

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Thursday, Easter Week II, 02 May 2019

O Lord Jesus Christ, grant us the courage you gave Peter before the Sanhedrin to boldly proclaim “We must obey God than men.”

So often in this modern world, modernity masked in relativism has become our new religion. We are more concerned with what people would say or think about us if we stand by your truth respecting life.

In the name of political correctness and human rights, we choose to be silent or tolerable with so many thoughts that run contradictory to the values of family, sanctity of marriage, sexuality, identity, and life itself.

Let us reflect on your words to Nicodemus “The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things. But the one who comes from heaven is above all” (Jn.3:31).

The beautiful churches and rich culture of Madaba and Mt. Nebo in Jordan reflect these things “of the above”. Let us always look up to you and be healed and saved. Amen.

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Pilgrimage of Love

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe
Feast of St. Joseph the Worker
01 May 2019 in Amman, Jordan

Dearest God our loving Father:

Thank you very much for the wonderful experience yesterday at Petra. Thank you in giving us a glimpse of your majesty, of the spectacular work of your hands.

Thank you for taking care of us here in Jordan. Continue to guide us, keep us and protect us as we head for your Holy Land.

So nice of you that as we celebrate today the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, we head for his native town of Bethlehem in two days. And his workshop in Nazareth.

Cleanse us and purify our hearts that everything we say and do may be all out of love.

You called us into this pilgrimage.

Like the ancient people of Petra, though they did not know you or recognized you, they believed in eternal life with their great burial sites.

Like them, may we do things always in love, “the bond of perfection” (Col.3:19).

May “the peace of Jesus Christ control our hearts, the peace into which we were called in one Body. And be thankful” (Col.3:15). Amen.


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We are all pilgrims

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul

Tuesday, Easter Week II, 30 April 2019, Amman, Jordan

We are all pilgrims on this earth, Lord God Almighty.

May we be like the early followers of Christ, “one heart and mind” in you. Let us keep in our hearts and minds that everything here on earth is yours to be shared with one another.

Let us seek more of the things of the above like Nicodemus.

Let us follow your directions in Christ through the Holy Spirit like the wind that blows.

Bind us all your children – fellow pilgrims -that we may care for this beautiful planet earth as we walk home to you O God our Father. Amen.

Photos on our way to Petra this morning via the King’s Highway or the ancient desert way.

Pilgrimage prayer

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Monday, Easter Week II, 29 April 2019
Acts 4:23-31///John 3:1-8
A view from the Jerusalem Wall, April 2017.

Lord Jesus Christ, today we leave for a pilgrimage to your Holy Land. Your people there claim it is also our land, everybody’s land. Thank you very much for coming to us, walking on earth, being like us in everything except sin.

Most of all, thank you very much in bringing us not only closer to the Father through you but most of all, making us experience you in the Holy Land.

Today’s first reading tells us how you have sent the Holy Spirit upon your Apostles and followers after Peter and John were released from prison in Jerusalem.

As they prayed, the place where they were gathered shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

Acts 4:31

Our group of pilgrims are not that many to shake the Holy Land, Lord; but, we pray that in our prayers and sacrifices during these days especially in your holy sites, shake our hearts, shake our inner selves, move us closer to you and with one another in faith, hope and love.

Some of us are coming with some darkness within us, but most of us shall be praying for loved ones going through so many trials and difficulties, so fearful like Nicodemus who came to visit you at night.

Bless us going on a pilgrimage and those everyone on a journey with you in their work and studies, at home, in their sickbeds, everywhere… that we may experience to be born from above, to be filled with the Holy Spirit to become new persons in you. Amen.

A view outside the western gate of Old Jerusalem, April 2017.

The problem with believing

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul

Saturday of the Easter Octave, 27 April 2019

Acts 4:13-21///Mark 16:9-15

From Google.

While praying your words today O Lord Jesus Christ, I remembered your servant Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI who explained the great importance of professing “I believe in God”.

It is a fundamental affirmation, seemingly simple in its essence, but it opens on to the infinite world of the relationship with the Lord and with his mystery. Believing in God entails adherence to him, the acceptance of his word and joyful obedience to his revelation… The ability to say one believes in God is therefore both a gift — God reveals himself, he comes to meet us — and a commitment, it is divine grace and human responsibility in an experience of conversation with God who… speaks to us, so that, in faith and with faith, we are able to enter into communion with him.

General Audience, 23 January 2013

Since then until now, believing in you Jesus to have risen from the dead, to be from God the Father has always been a problem because we have always refused to accept your opening to us. We always want to manipulate everything, especially God.

The problem with believing is we have refused to live by God, always leaving him behind because we feel he is outdated, old-fashioned and too conservative for our modern thoughts and perceptions of how life should be lived.

The problem with believing God then and now is we have stopped recognizing God as the foundation of our lives that like the chief priests and elders in the Acts of the Apostles, we would rather be blind from the glaring truth of your loving presence before us. Like the Apostles too during Easter, we have refused to believe others in proclaiming your rising from the dead because of many reasons and one of these is the hardness of our hearts.

Lord Jesus Christ, take away our stony hearts and give us with a natural heart that beats with firm faith in you, fervent hope and unceasing charity and love. Amen.

Choir loft of Parish Church of the Holy Family in Taipeh. Photo by author, January 2019.

All Good Gifts

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Friday of Easter Octave, 26 April 2019
Acts 4:1-12///John 21:1-14
From Google.

Today O Lord I wish to offer to you my favorite morning prayer hymn we sing during Ordinary Time called “We plough the fields and scatter” (Wir Pflugen):

All good gifts around us
Are sent from heav'n above,
Then thank the Lord, 
O thank the Lord for all his love.

You are “the author of life” indeed Lord Jesus Christ because all good gifts around us can only come from you!

When your Apostles were arrested and questioned by the priests and elders of Jerusalem “by what power or by what name” did they heal the crippled man since birth, Peter boldly answered them it was “in your name, Lord Jesus Christ!” (Acts 4:7-10)

When your Apostles caught so much fish after following your instruction to cast their net over the right side of the boat without really knowing it was you who gave the instruction from the shore, it was the beloved disciple who right away recognized you, “It is the Lord.” (Jn.21:7)

Lord Jesus, teach us to be humble always, to recognize YOU alone as the source of every good thing in life. So many times Lord, we always grab the honor in doing many great things in this life that we unconsciously divert people away from you and more closer to us.

O Lord…we priests are very notorious in doing that, grabbing all the credits for everything that is achieved as if we are the gods! Forgive us Lord. And let us proclaim always your goodness and your greatness. Amen.

“The Apparition at Tiberias after Easter” by Italian painter Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1318). Photo from Google.