Category: Presence of God

Presence in Absence

The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe for the Soul, Easter Wk. VI, Yr. C, 26 May 2019
Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 >< }}}*> Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23 >< }}}*> John 14:23-29
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.

Where is God?

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.

The way of God

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Monday, Easter Week V, 20 May 2019
Acts 14:5-18 ><)))*><*(((>< John 14:21-26
Dusk at the Sinai desert in Egypt, 06 May 2019.

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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Coming and coming

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.

Sharing Jesus, Our Bread

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.

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.

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.

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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Lent is home.

40 Shades of Lent, Saturday, Week-V, 13 April 2019
Ezekiel 37:21-28///John 11:45-56
From Google.

After forty days, we are finally home in you, God our Father. Finally. But, are we really home? Are we ready for the holiest of all your days, Lord, set to begin tonight with the Palm Sunday of your Passion?

Continue to cleanse our hearts and our souls, Lord.

Continue to guide us into your direction, not like some of the people of your time.

Many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what Jesus had done began to believe in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

John 11:45-46

Lead us home into the Father, Lord Jesus.

Fulfill in us Ezekiel’s prophecy:

My dwelling shall be with them; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Thus the nations shall know that it is I, the Lord, who makes Israel holy, when my sanctuary shall be set up among them forever.

Thank you Lord for Lent, for the 40 days of journey. May each day be always a journey with you and in you always. Amen.

From Google.

Lent is embracing God’s truth

40 Shades of Lent, Wednesday, Week-IV, 03 April 2019
Isaiah 49:8-15///John 5:17-30

How lovely are your words for us today, O God our loving Father! So refreshing, so reassuring especially at times when dark clouds loom above us, when we are in deep turmoils or when our pains hurt so much.

Thus says the Lord: In a time of favor I answer you, on the day of salvation I help you, and I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to restore the land and allot the desolate heritages, saying to prisoners: Come out! To those in darkness, Show yourselves! Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.

Isaiah 49:8-9, 15

What an amazing God indeed! So close, so personal like anyone.

Yet, O God, how unfortunate that so often we are tempted to doubt your love, your truth, your presence! So often we choose not to believe that we are loved by you or by those closest to us.

We keep on denying you have chosen to love us, preferring to live trapped in the many worries of this life.

Give us the grace of faith to embrace your truth, your love, especially Jesus Christ your Son who had come to make you closest to us as our breath. Let us see your work continuing in Christ that may eventually continue them in us and among us. Amen.

A snapshot from the painting exhibit we viewed at the Davao City Museum, August 2018. Too bad never had the chance to get artists and title of artworks.