Genesis 13:2, 5-18 >< )))*> >< )))*> Matthew 7:15-20
Petra in Jordan, 30 April 2019. Photo by author.
Almighty God, did you really appear to Abraham when you promised him to be the father of a great nation and made that covenant with him in the desert? What did he see in the desert that he put his faith in you so much, Lord?
The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision…
Abram put his faith in the Lord, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
Genesis 15:1, 6
To have faith in you, O God, like Abraham is to see more what our eyes can perceive. To have faith in you, O God, like Abraham is to see and experience the fruits of believing in you. To have faith in you, O God, like Abraham is to see nothing at all except you.
When I think of your Holy Land, O Lord, there is really nothing much to see around but its vast wilderness. Most likely during the time of Abraham, it must have been more barren than today. It was in that nothingness that he saw your greatness, O God, that he put his faith in you.
How ironic that it is only when there is nothing left with us that we can truly see your great gifts for us, Lord: our being special, our being loved and cherished by you, our being simply ourselves that we are alive that truly make us have more faith in you than all the things you can shower upon us.
It is in our nothingness, in our simplicity that we become fully aware of your abundance blessings that we start to have faith in you.
Open our eyes of faith to always look for your fruits of love and kindness, mercy and forgiveness, life and fulfillment in us. Amen.
The lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Thursday, Easter VII, 06 June 2019
Acts 22:30;23:6-11 >< )))*> >< )))*> >< )))*> John 17:20-26
Part of the Mt. Sinai mountain range in Egypt. Photo by author, 07 May 2019.
More than 1500 years before your coming Lord Jesus Christ, God called Moses in a burning bush, introducing himself as “I Am Who Am”. That “name” was more than a word. It was his very presence among the chosen people.
With a name, you enabled us to invoke you, to call you O God for you are always present in us and among us.
But now, your name, your presence gets a deeper meaning in Jesus when he said:
“Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”
John 17:25-26
So wonderful, O Lord, the in you, God is more than a mere presence but has become a loving presence among us and in us! In your great sacrifice for us, you did not introduce to us a new word for God’s name but a new mode of presence that anyone who encounters you Jesus encounters the Father too.
And it is always more than that, O God, for you are semper major, always greater.
In Christ Jesus, we encounter you Father as you approach us in him; then, you lead us out beyond our very selves into your infinite greatness and love for you are always more than a presence!
Exactly what you did to St. Paul during his trial in Jerusalem when the Pharisees and the Sadducees joined forces to pin him down eventually quarrelled when he spoke of Christ’s resurrection.
So many times in life when we feel like giving up, when we feel it is over, you suddenly surprise us with sudden turn of events that are so amazing, bringing joy into our hearts and most of all, reassuring us with your love and protection.
We pray for those hoping for miracles, whether big or small, that they may feel your loving presence to realize you are the “emmanu elohim” or Emmanuel for God-is-with-us. Amen.
Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches. Photo by author, July 2018.
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The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Tuesday, Easter Wk. VI, 28 May 2019
Acts 16:22-34 >< }}}*> John 16:5-11 >< }}}*>
Church of St. Peter Gallicantu (Rooster), Jerusalem, 05 May 2019.
Praise and glory to you, O God our loving Father! Thank you for the night, whether we were able to sleep soundly or not; thank you for the rains, for the sunrise, for the brand new day! Thank you for the internet, thank for the grace of prayer, thank you for the gift of life.
Thank you for your gift of presence in Jesus Christ!
Your readings for today remind us that every presence is always a gift. It is always best to have even a little of anything than nothing at all.
Some of us while reading this still have same problems that persist like a sickness not getting worse, bills to be paid, debts piling up, problems getting bigger. Sometimes for many of us, life is so dark that we cannot even feel you, Lord.
In moments we feel like giving up in life, giving up on you, Jesus, please send us a St. Paul who would shout in a loud voice to us like in the first reading, “Do no harm to yourself; we are all here” (Acts 16:28).
Give us the grace and courage to be present to anyone like St. Paul so we can uplift their sagging spirits and continue to find meaning in life in our simple presence.
Fill us with the Holy Spirit to bring joy and conviction to those who doubt you. May they believe in you and find your presence, find fulfillment to be reassured of the beauty of life. Amen.
Sunset in the desert of Jordan on our way to Amman, 01 May 2019.
Did our prayer touch you? Share us your thoughts and prayers. You are prayed for. Follow our blog for you daily recipe for the soul. God bless you! fr nick
A view from the entrance to the Temple Wall of Old Jerusalem, 04 May 2019.
Life is a series of coming and going where we never really leave at all.
I have been sharing you this quite often since Advent last year. We do not leave completely but simply come to new levels of relationships with our loved ones. When children grow up and go to college, they move into new environment, new stage in life. They never leave but come to new beginnings. Eventually, they leave home when they graduate in college and get married only to start their own family and home.
We call this series of coming and going in life as “presence in absence”. Sometimes it happens that it is after someone had left us, whether temporarily or permanently like death, that we even get closer with that person. Here we find the wonderful truth that if you want to be eternal, love. Then, a departure no longer becomes an exit but an entry to new mode of presence and relationships.
This is why Jesus commanded us last Sunday to love one another as he loved us, that is, to always love in his Father who is love himself. When we love in union with the Father, then our love is made perfect as it is God who eventually works in us.
The Lord deepens this teaching to us in our gospel today as he prepares us for the great celebration of his Ascension on Sunday, a kind of his own “leaving and coming”. Our gospel today is still part of his long discourse during his Last Supper when Thomas, Philip, and Jude asked him some questions about his impending departure that they could not really fully grasp at that time. Anyway, Jesus now answers the last question from Jude concerning his presence while at the same time prepares them for the inevitable when he has to “leave” them first for his Passion and Death and second, when he returns to the Father in heaven.
( Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”) Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name — will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
John 14:22-23, 25-26
Altar of the church Dominus Flevit (the Lord Wept) with the old Jerusalem as background, April 2017.
First thing we notice in the Lord’s statement is the great honor for each of us to be the dwelling place of him and the Father. Can you imagine the kind of intimacy that means we now have with both the Son and the Father dwelling in us? It is something beyond our expectations or hopes when all we want in life is to be with him in heaven after death. But we do not have to wait for our death because right now, right here, Jesus and the Father are dwelling in us. And because of this reality, we are able to find meaning and fulfillment in life despite its many trials and difficulties, pains and tears along the way.
We have experienced the Father’s presence through the words and teachings of Jesus passed on to us through the Sacred Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church. Jesus himself stressed that his words are not really his but the Father’s. Loving the Lord and keeping his words are the same because Jesus is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us according to St. John’s prologue to his gospel. It is for this reason that we are also able to call God “Abba” (Father) because we have that inner recognition of him deep within us in Jesus Christ.
Clouds over Sinai desert in Egypt, 07 May 2019.
Jesus continues his presence and teachings in us in our own time in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the second part of his discourse in our gospel today, his sending of the Holy Spirit upon his return to the Father to be his apostles’ and our Advocate or defender and inner guide to all the truths he had taught us.
Christ did not say everything to the apostles. Aside from the fact that the time of his “presence” on earth was limited (33 years), it was impossible for the evangelists to report everything he had said and done (Jn.21:25). But he knew the totally different situations his disciples would be into and that includes us in the present time. Jesus knew very well the shifts and upheavals coming but, as we have seen in the past 2000 years since he went back to the Father, his Church has continued to exist despite the many predictions of its end. And that is largely due to the work of the Holy Spirit as our Advocate or defender.
From Google.
As our Advocate, the Holy Spirit acts as the “memory” of the Church like in a computer that it “processes” us disciples to act according to the Scriptures and teachings of Jesus in our own time. The Spirit powers us like a dynamo to continue to be the living presence of Jesus in his “absence” in a world that tries to delete him. This was first experienced in the first Council meeting of the Church in Jerusalem in the year 50 AD (Jesus ascended to heaven 33 AD) when the first Christians were plunged into a controversy regarding the imposition of Judaic traditions on Gentile converts. The first reading from the Acts tells us how the Apostles were guided in their proceedings by the word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit continues to do the same in the Church when our Pope and bishops pray and reflect on the Scriptures in making its stand on the different issues now confronting us that were non-existent 100 years ago or 2000 years ago like the Internet or global warming. The Holy Spirit is the “heart and soul” of the Church’s living tradition that makes Jesus present in the world today through each one of us, its dwelling-place.
In the second reading, John tells us of the splendor of the heavenly Jerusalem where God is at the middle of everything. It is also the challenge of the gospel to us today, as the indwelling of the Father and of the Son, do we make God present in our family, in our places of work and study? Do we remain faithful to his word that we are not ashamed of praying even in a restaurant?
See that after explaining his mode of presence through us in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus spoke of the gift of peace. Peace is always the fruit of love when we have Jesus as basis within us in all of our undertakings. How sad that even in many families, couples and children plan on their own for their many projects and activities without including their spouses or children in the process. There is no internal unity that often leads to misunderstanding and divisions that make peace so elusive.
Last Wednesday night I was invited to guest in a radio talk show hosted by former colleagues in the news. They complained to me how the Mass is no longer holy and has become very showbiz. Lourd De Veyra complained of priests not prepared with their homily and so “in love” with their voice that they talk nonsense like TV hosts. Photojournalist Melvin Calderon formerly of TIME Magazine and Pulitzer Prize winner last year Manny Mogato of Reuters News lamented at how our churches have become to look like a studio or a stage with all the pomp and pageantry, empty of any sense of the Holy. Though their observations were painfully true, I still felt so glad for them because despite their being so immersed in the world, they all long for the peace of Jesus Christ they believe can be first found among us priests and in our churches! May we go back to the Father so we may be able to share Jesus, only Jesus, and always Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 23 May 2019
Our fellow pilgrims to the Holy Land who made it to the top of Mt. Sinai in Egypt, 06 May 2019. Photo by Atty. Grace Polaris Rivas-Beron.
A catechist asked her class, “where is God?”
A small boy right away raised his hand and boldly answered “God is in our toilet!”
The catechist was shocked with the boy’s answer but did not want to put him on the spot so she asked, “how did you know God is in your toilet?”
And he said, “every morning I see my dad knocking at our toilet door, asking, ‘my God, are you still there?'”
The shore of Lake of Galilee in Capernaum where Jesus used to visit the synagogue nearby. Photo by author, 02 May 2019.
Main reason I always encourage people to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is to experience God.
The Franciscans who safeguard the holy sites in Jordan, Israel, and Egypt teach that the Holy Land is the “fifth gospel” after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John found in our bible. In the Holy Land, one can surely experience God speaking and conversing with you in the very places where he had appeared to the great prophets or had come in Christ Jesus and did wondrous deeds to his people. There is a different level of understanding and appreciation of the many stories found in our bible when you go to the Holy Land that can really be life-changing depending on your personal disposition.
There are two instances where we experience God in the Holy Land: first in the country of Israel and second in the churches at the holy sites.
Israel, the Promised Land.
How could God call this country “the Promised Land” when it is so small and sits on a vast tract of limestone and desert? Technically speaking, a desert is an area that receives an average rainfall of 25 centimeters or ten inches annually. That is why it is barren and desolate.
But not Israel.
Once you see the greenery abounding at Israel’s desert, you immediately feel God’s presence there, fulfilling his promise of blessing the land “flowing with milk and honey” as the bible says. Aside from their local date and fig trees with so many other varieties that are the best in the world, plants and trees imported from abroad like bougainvillea and acacia thrive so well in the Israeli desert. From the Philippines, they have imported and improved our mango trees that bear more fruits, yielding higher income to their farmers. Interspersing the greenery on their desert are the colonies of greenhouses that shine in their silvery color during the day while producing many varieties of fruits and vegetables inside. Likewise, exports of Israeli wines and dairy products are steadily growing due to increasing demand from abroad.
All these produced at the desert!
Resort at the Dead Sea area, April 2017.
Like any Filipino pilgrim to the Holy Land, one then remembers what foreigners say that our country is literally a paradise with the right amount of rain and sunshine throughout the year with very fertile soil when we cannot even have enough rice to feed our people? How tragic that we have to import rice from Vietnam and Thailand, our two neighbors in Asia that sent their farmers to Los Banos 40 years ago to learn growing rice scientifically! And it is not only rice that we import but even other basic food stuffs like onions, garlic, and fruits that include cut flowers lately. Drive for two hours outside Manila and you find vast tracts of land with so much grass but we have to import beef, chicken and pork to satisfy our local cravings even for the simple chicharon (pork cracklings) because our local farmers cannot meet the demands.
Where is God?
God has blessed our country with wide arrays of flora and fauna, more amazing beaches and mountains, and friendlier climate and weather. But, God is nowhere to be found because we have lost him in ourselves. We have lost him in our hearts that we took our country for granted, molesting and abusing her like Boracay or the Manila Bay. God dwells among the people, not on the land. Pope Francis reminds us in his encyclical about the care for the environment “Laudato Si” that “we have only one heart and every act of cruelty against nature is contrary to human dignity.”
If we wish to find and experience God blessing our own land, we have to be like the people in Israel who kept him alive in their hearts by thinking bigger than themselves.
Our group posing with two 19-year old Israeli female soldiers at the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized. It used to be a part of Jordan that Israel had occupied after the 1967 Six-Day War.
God in the noble simplicity of a church.
For us Catholics, God is truly experienced present in the Holy Land through the many churches – all beautiful – spread out throughout Israel. But, what really makes the churches and chapels or oratories in the Holy Land so special and unique is not only the fact they are on the very sites or near the areas where Jesus had stood to preach or performed a miracle. Aside from the aesthetic factors that make these churches so beautiful and moving that you experience God inside is because of their “noble simplicity”.
The inside of the modern main chapel of Our Lady of the Milk Grotto in Bethlehem, 05 May 2019.
Unlike the churches here in our country that have become so kitschy that look like cheap cakes with too much decorations and scandalous colors, those in the Holy Land are definitely clean cut, no clutter whatsoever. There is always the sense of the holy right upon entering every church and chapel despite the great crowd present. Most of all, with the church’s noble simplicity, there is always that sacred space for God to be encountered.
When the church is so cluttered and so mixed up, signs that should point to God fail miserably, leaving the church banal and empty of any transcendence or sense of the holy. And I must confess we priests are so guilty of this liturgical abuses when we have made our churches the extensions of our very selves and eccentricities, totally disregarding Jesus Christ. We have evicted God from our church as we priests lorded it over among people with us becoming more known and popular than Jesus Christ.
Can you really feel God present in your parish with all the tarpaulins and giant flat screens around with matching giant fans above? What would Jesus do if he comes today in our churches and finds all kinds of stores, not only those selling religious articles that are sanctioned and even maintained by priests right inside our church premises?
Inside the beautiful Church of the Beatitudes, April 2017.
What a church looks like indicates the kind of pastor and parishioners it has. No matter how big or small a church is, its true beauty lies on the sense and feeling of sanctity or sacredness it creates, not popularity or mass appeal. And as always, like anywhere else, holiness comes only from God who dwells on his people who pray together, moving as one body in the Holy Spirit.
Recently I guested in a radio talk show hosted by some former colleagues in the news who lamented at how our churches have become very “showbiz” with all the pomp and pageantry of telenovelas. So true! It is a reality that unconsciously shows how we in the Church are slowly losing that touch with the holy when everything has gone down to human level despite our pretentious claims of artistic expressions.
When God appeared in a burning bush at the Sinai desert, he asked Moses to take off his sandals for he was standing on sacred ground.
The whole Earth is a sacred ground, a holy land created by God. The challenge is for us to let go of ourselves and let God. And that is when we discover where God is.
A blessed day to you!
Facade of the St. Katherine Monastery of the Greek Orthodox at the foot of Mt. Sinai, Egypt. Inside is a chapel built on the site of the burning bush of Moses. At the back is the staging point of pilgrims’ ascent to Mt. Sinai where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.
Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”
John 14:21-22
So often in life, Lord Jesus, we feel like St. Jude Thaddeus asking you the same question of why did you not reveal your self to more people, especially the unbelievers and your enemies so there would be no more questions about your Resurrection and most of all, of your existence.
Why did you not appear to powerful nations and not just Israel or to more people not just the few Apostles whose testimony about you we must now rely?
But, Lord, the more we wonder about your ways and compare it to our supposed to be bright ideas of making you known and accepted, the more we experience your presence and realize your goodness. Most of all, the more we appreciate and embrace your mystery.
You always act so gently in history, Lord, always waiting for the right time to come and reveal your self. You chose the more difficult way by becoming human, being born an infant subjected to so much dangers early in life and when you matured, you chose to suffer and die so that when you rose again, you came knocking into everyone’s heart inviting us all to have faith that you have risen.
For the world, your way is always laughed at because we always think we know better like the people at Lystra who insisted that Paul and Barnabas are gods, without us knowing that the more we insist on our ways, the more we get lost from what is really true.
Teach us today, Lord Jesus Christ, to learn from your divine way of revelations by choosing silence than noise, simplicity than complexity, hiddenness than spectacles.
Teach us today, Lord Jesus Christ, that your divine way of revelation is always the path of weakness and smallness that lead us to more freedom and more love. Amen.
Rock formations at Petra in Jordan that nature had carved slowly through time. Photo by author, 01 May 2019.
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The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe, Saturday Easter Wk. III, 11 May 2019
Thank you very much Lord for the gift of pilgrimage to your Holy Land. Thank you for the gift of experiencing you, meeting you not only at your holy sites but among our fellow pilgrims and the people we have met.
Most of all, thank you for a glimpse of you in our hearts, in our selves and being. There is something we cannot express or say for they are too deep for words.
Like Simon Peter, all we can say is, “Lord, to whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn.6:68-69).
Life is a series of coming and coming. Every time we leave, we also come. We leave the Holy Land to come home.
But home is where the heart is and where our heart is, there our treasure is.
May you remain in us Lord Jesus and let us come to you always. Amen.
Top photo mosaic of Joseph’s dream to bring Mary and child Jesus to Egypt outside Church of St. Sergius; above, the flight to Egypt of the Holy Family at entrance to the Cavern Church where they stayed. Both churches are Coptic Catholic.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Easter Wk. III, Wednesday, 08 May 2019
Praise and thanksgiving to you, O Lord Jesus Christ as we enter the final stretch of our Holy Land pilgrimage today.
It is very different experience to be in the wilderness of the Sinai desert – so cold, so barren, most of all, so isolated.
Lord, we are tired and longing for home. Now we can imagine the extreme difficulties and hardships of your people in the desert.
But you are so loving and merciful, so generous that you gave them bread from heaven, manna.
Now we have you Jesus as our bread, our life.
Like your first followers who were scattered following Saul’s persecution of the Church, they still went preaching the word – YOU.
We pray for more strength and courage to remain faithful to you, Lord, when we go through our desert in life. Let us share you as our bread to nourish the weak, gladden those who are sad and tired so that we may all persevere to meet you like Moses in the burning bush. Amen.
First photo is the Mt. Sinai mountain range at sunrise while the one above is the enclosed site of the burning bush Moses saw now under the care of Greek Orthodox monks at the St. Catherine Monastery.
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.
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.
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