Category: saints

Praying In Our Difficult Century

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul

Wednesday, Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, 14 August 2019

Deuteronomy 34:1-12 >< )))*> >< )))*> Matthew 18:15-20

From Google.

My dear Lord Jesus,

Is it part of your grand design that this August which the pagans consider as “ghost month” is when we also celebrate the feasts of two great saints martyred at Auschwitz?

At a time when people thought you where absent, Lord, there was St. Benedicta Teresa dela Cruz (Edith Stein) witnessing to your presence in her works and courage when she offered her life to the gas chambers on August 09, 1942.

Today we remember the Polish Catholic priest St. Maximilian Kolbe who also died at Auschwitz a year earlier than her in 1941 when he volunteered to replace a married man who was rounded up for execution following the escape of a prisoner.

Like Moses in the first reading, you filled St. Maximilian with your radiance that prisoners and guards alike were stunned when he offered himself for the painful punishment.

His great love for you Jesus and deep devotion to your Blessed Mother kept him busy praying and comforting his fellow prisoners despite his frail health proving your words that “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Mt.18:20).

After surviving two weeks of starvation and hard labor, St. Maximilian cheerfully offered the executioner his arm for the lethal injection of carbolic acid and died instantly in your bountiful grace, O Lord.

Your servant St. John Paul II declared in his 1982 canonization that St. Maximilian Kolbe as the Patron Saint of our “difficult century” where a culture of death continues to prevail in the name of economic progress and a wrong understanding of freedom.

Give us the courage and enthusiasm of St. Maximilian Kolbe to uphold the value of every person and to fight erroneous beliefs that disregard and remove God and morality from life.

We also pray on this day of his feast for the drug addicts and political prisoners who, because of their situation and beliefs, are taken for granted as lesser beings by some may still accorded with equal respect and dignity. Amen.

From Google.

A painting of St. Maximilian Kolbe with his prison jacket number “16670”, holding two crowns with the prison jacket of Francis Gajowniczek, the married man he volunteered to replace after being rounded up for execution following the escape of another prisoner.

In a vision when he was 13 years old, the Blessed Mother appeared to St. Maximilian asking him to choose a crown. He chose both, white and red crowns as he promised to enter the seminary to become a priest. Unknown to him, the crowns would symbolise later his martyrdom.

A day after his execution his body was cremated on 15 August 1941, a date that would later be declared as the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary whom St. Maximilian loved so dearly. Likewise, it fulfilled his desire to immolate himself completely when he wrote, “I would like to use myself completely up in the service of the Immaculate, and to disappear without leaving a trace, as the winds carry my ashes to the far corners of the world.”

True greatness

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Tuesday, Memorial of St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus, 13 August 2019
Deuteronomy 31:1-8 >< )))*> <*((( >< Matthew 18:1-5. 10. 12-14
Photo by Jim Marpa, 2018.

The disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18:1-4

I must confess to you, O Lord Jesus Christ, that so often I act and think like your disciples, asking you “who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?”

And it is not really to know who that person is or what kind of a person is that.

It is more about me – I want to be the greatest and be looked up to. Or, be affirmed and accepted. Especially by you.

When you called that child, you showed me how you have remained a Son of the Father, always humble and open to instructions from the Father above. Most of all, obedient to the Father’s will.

True greatness indeed is in becoming like a child, always young and willing to learn new things, raring to go and follow those above for new adventures in life like Moses and Joshua in the first reading and, St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus whose martyrdom we celebrate today.

As I prayed on that scene at Jordan where the Israelites prepared to enter the Promised Land, the imagery of Moses and Joshua came to me like children ready to take on new tasks and directions in their lives from God as Father.

The same imagery of little children submitting themselves to you, O Lord, despite their old age I have found in St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus who were both greatly at odds with each other at the beginning.

St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus. From Google.

As Pope, St. Pontian was lenient in readmitting Christians who have turned away from the faith during persecution; St. Hippolytus strongly opposed it that later he broke away from Rome to become an anti-pope as he refused to relax his rigid views of the faith.

But you found ways of bringing them together, Lord, as exiles at the island of Sardinia.

In the midst of harsh labor, the fatherly St. Pontian was able to bring back into the Church the rigorist St. Hippolytus.

Help us to keep in mind, Lord, that age is just a number, that we are forever young like children when we humbly abandon ourselves to you, holding on to these words by Moses:

It is the Lord who marches before you; he will be with you and will never fail you or forsake you. So do not fear or be dismayed.

Deuteronomy 31:8

Let me remain as your faithful and trusting child, O loving God our Father. Amen.

Decluttering our inner self

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Monday, Week XIX, Year I, 12 August 2019
Deuteronomy 10:12-22 >< }}}*> < *{{{>< Matthew 17:22-27
From Google.

Moses said to the people: “Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and be no longer stiff-necked.”

Deuteronomy 10:16

Your words, O Lord, today are so shocking. Even funny. And difficult to relate with.

But that is exactly what we need to hear and learn these days: your words that shake and jolt our inner selves that cleanse and lead us to a more genuine and intimate relationship with you.

Like those Israelites wandering at the desert, rebelling against you, we have become stiff-necked. We have refused to look up to you as well as look inside our hearts to see you and follow you.

Help us to circumcise our hearts – not physically but spiritually – like what Marie Kondo has been advocating of decluttering our spaces to experience inner joy. So often we refuse to admit how our outer selves and homes look like indicate our inner selves.

It is you, Lord Jesus, who probes our hearts and guide us like Marie Kondo, step by step, to declutter our hearts.

May your light enable us to see and remove the many stacks of materialism, compartments of insecurities, and drawers of pretensions and other lies that clutter our inner selves, our hearts that keep us away from you and from others.

Like what you did today in the gospel when you taught Peter a beautiful lesson of being nice among our enemies and detractors who try to destroy us always, may we look more often inside our hearts to see YOU as the most essential in life than simply following the ways of the world.

May the example of St. Jane Frances Chantal whose feast we celebrate today, help us to keep that inner glow of your love within us when facing difficult situations in life like problems with in-laws and being widowed.

Fill us with the same charity you have given her in helping the poor as well as the forgotten people of the society.

We pray through her intercession for parents and children separated from one another due to many reasons, either by choice or circumstances.

Bless also the members of the congregation she had founded, the Sisters of Visitation that they may continue her wonderful works of charity among the poor. Amen.

Making God present in a world where God is absent

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Friday, Memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, 09 August 2019
Deuteronomy 4:32-40 >< )))*> <*((( >< Matthew 16:24-28
A 1970 stained-glass window of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by German artist Alois Plum at the Herz Jesu Church in Kassel, Germany. She holds a book symbolising her learning, wears a Star of David as a sign of her Jewish roots, and is consumed by flames to refer to her martyrdom at the Nazi gas chambers of Auschwitz. Photo from Google.

Praise and glory to you O Lord our God! Indeed, there is no other God except you as Moses reminds us in today’s first reading:

“Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live? Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, with his strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors, all of which the Lord, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? All this you were allowed to see that you might know the Lord is God and there is no other.”

Deuteronomy 4:32-35

And yet, O Lord, still many refuse to believe in you especially when hard times come upon us like wars and persecution.

This month of August, you gifted us with two great saints martyred at the gas chambers of Auschwitz: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as St. Edith Stein whose memorial we celebrate today, and, St. Maximilian Kolbe whose feast is on the 14th.

Both are modern saints whose lives and times are very close and similar with our generation. Both saints have made you present, O God, at a time when many people thought and believed you were absent.

“Those who seek the truth seek God, whether they realize it or not.” St. Edith Stein.

Born from a devout Jewish family, you showed your presence in the life of St. Teresa Benedicta with your gift of superior intellect. Although she had openly declared her being an atheist at the young age of 13, you never stopped “seducing” her in searching you in her studies of philosophy, giving her a rare chance to work closely with the leading thinkers at that time.

Slowly, she found you in her studies and in the Church that she converted to Catholicism!

And when you have caught her, O Lord, the more you inflamed her heart to seek you and be one with you by becoming a Carmelite nun through the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

You have revealed so much truths to her, O God, reaching its highest point in giving her the grace to join your Son Jesus Christ in losing her life as his witness in the gas chambers in 1942.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Matthew 16:24-25

In our present age, so many people are also thinking that you do not exist, Lord; some have already stopped believing in you, having themselves as the measure and standard of what is true, moral, and decent.

How sad that in this modern age when we are supposed to have advanced in our knowledge and thinking, we have remained so inhuman in our dealing with one another: wars and genocides of peoples continue while the weakest members of the human race, those old and sick and those helpless in their mother’s wombs, are murdered for the sake of economic well-being. How wonderful in having a woman saint so accomplished in life like St. Edith Stein when until now women are disrespected and regarded inferior to men.

Give us, Lord, the same clarity of mind and firmness of will and heart in standing for what is true like St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross so that we may also make you present in this world. Amen.

Hound of God

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Thursday, Feast of St. Dominic de Guzman, 08 August 2019
Numbers 20:1-13 >< )))*> <*((( >< Matthew 16:13-23
From Google.

A blessed Thursday, O Lord, especially to the Dominicans spread across the globe proclaiming your good news of salvation in words and in deeds.

Thank you very much, Lord, for the gift of St. Dominic whose name – Domini canis – literally means “hound of the Lord” or “dog of the Lord” .

Teach us to be like St. Dominic who was faithful and true to you, Jesus.

May we be like him in that dog in his mother’s dream who brought the torch of truth to dispel the great darkness of sin and evil in the world.

Today, there is a great plague of darkness infecting the modern means of communications where trolls and cyberbullies spread lies and falsehoods like fake news and misinformation to manipulate and mislead the minds of some into taking violent and truncated views about life and persons.

Make us your modern St. Dominic – Domini canes – to bring that torch of reason and decency, charity and truth to dispel this darkness engulfing us and have actually led to many forms of violence and animosities among peoples here and abroad lately.

Help us contemplate your person, Lord Jesus Christ like St. Dominic so we would know you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more closely.

May we realise that whenever we fail to show who you really are, when we cannot personally confess like St. Peter that “you are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt.16: 16), troubles begin to happen not only in the Church but also in the world like racism, gender inequality, and many forms of injustice.

When we your followers do not truly know you as the Christ, then we cease to become Christians when we stop respecting others who are not like us in color, creed, and culture; when we disregard the value of life, and finally, when we stop seeing each other as brothers and sisters in you.

How sad that until now, many Christians say many different things about you, Jesus, because we have miserably failed in being your faithful witnesses.

Help us Lord to “think more as God does, not as human beings do” (Mt.16:23) by imitating St. Dominic who spent much time “at the foot of your Cross.” Amen.

According to tradition, when the mother of St. Dominic was pregnant with him, she dreamt of a dog running their dark streets at night with a torch in its mouth, foretelling his future mission of bringing the light of Christ through education by founding the Order of Preachers.

Our wishful thinking and God’s reality

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Thursday, Feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori, 01 August 2019
Exodus 40:16-21, 34-38 >< )))*> <*((( >< Matthew 13:47-53
Photo by Lorenzo Atienza, 12 June 2019, Malolos City.

You must have heard so many times, Lord, our many wishful thinking of being with you like in our bible readings today.

We always think – and believe – that if we were there with you in the wilderness with Moses or with Jesus in his time in Galilee, we would have obeyed and followed you.

So many times we waste our prayers with so many wishful thinking how you would just let your cloud appear like that in the wilderness so we would know if we must continue with our journey or stop for a rest.

We waste precious moments wishing we are face to face with Jesus inside the house, listening to him explain his parables as if we would understand it easily.

On this feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori, we pray to you O God that we may imitate him to be like “every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old” (Mt. 13:52).

Give us the grace like what you have given St. Alphonsus to continually seek you and your will at all time, in sickness and in health, especially in the most trying moments of life when we are old and sick, when those we have trusted betray us, relying solely in your fidelity and mercy and love.

Instead of entertaining flights of fancies about you, may we be like St. Alphonsus who was so open to your presence and reality especially among the poor and the suffering, the confused and the lost.

May we rediscover not only you, Lord, but through the intercession of St. Alphonsus Liguori, may we also rediscover the beauty and practicality of your morals so we may truly follow your ways of holiness in life.

Likewise, on this feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori, we pray in a special way those suffering various forms of arthritis that afflicted too our blessed saint today. Amen.

According to stories, St. Alphonsus Liguori’s arthritis was so severe that his head was bent down acutely that the pressure of his chin caused a wound on his chest.

A spiritual exercise

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Wednesday, Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, 31 July 2019
Exodus 34:29-35 >< )))*> <*((( >< Matthew 13:44-46
Lake Tiberias in Galilee, May 2017.

Dearest Lord:

Please teach us to be generous like your servant St. Ignatius of Loyola whose feast we celebrate today.

Teach us to be generous in examining our conscience so we may readily confess our sins to you each day.

Likewise, teach us Lord to be generous in examining our consciousness too so that we may gratefully acknowledge the good things we have done each day through you.

Most of all, teach us to be generous in being with you in prayers, in seeking your holy will so that like Moses in the first reading, your light may shine on us as we proclaim your greater glory with our words and works.

Let us zealously seek your kingdom like a buried treasure or a precious pearl that once found we may joyfully and lovingly share with others.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us! Amen.

Hirit ni Santa Marta…

Lawiswis ng Salita ni P. Nicanor F. Lalog II, ika-29 ng Hulyo 2019
Minsan sa aking pananalangin
Sa Panginoon ako'y dumaing
Ngunit ang sumagi sa akin
Yaring tagpo nang kanyang sabihin:
"Marta, Marta naliligalig ka
At abalang-abala sa maraming bagay
Ngunit iisa lamang ang talagang mahalaga."
Kaya naman naglaro sa aking isipan
Paano mangatwiran si Marta kung tayo sinabihan
At marahil ganito kanyang tinuran:
"Ako pa ba ngayon ang naliligalig
Gayong batid ninyo Panginoon 
Pandarambong at kasakiman ng karamihan
Pagkagahaman sa kayamanan ng ilan
Habang kaming maliliit ang labis nahihirapan?" 
At waring sumagi sa akin wika ng Panginoon,
"Marta, Marta iisa lang ang mahalaga:
Sa akin ay manalig ka sapagkat sinabi ko na,
Mapapalad ang mga aba at dukha
Na walang inaasahan kungdi ang Diyos."
Napahupa aking kalooban samandali
Ngunit muli nag-alimpuyo aking galit at ngitngit
Aking naisip isa pang hirit ni Marta 
Nang sa kanya'y nasambit:
"Ako pa ba ngayon Panginoon ang nababahala
At tila hindi mo alintana mga ginagawa ng masasama
Na parang sila pa yata ang pinagpapala
Pinapalakpakan, hinahangaan ng karamihan?"
At yaring sumagi muli ang wika ng Panginoon,
"Marta, Marta isa lang ang kailangan kaya matuwa ka
Kung dahil sa akin ika'y inaalimura, inuusig
Pinagwiwikaan ng mga kasinungalingan:  walang natatago 
Na di malalantad, walang lihim na hindi malalaman at mabubunyag."
Sa iyo ginigiliw kong kaibigan
Nabibigatan sa maraming pinapasan 
Nahihirapan sa mga pinagdaraanan
Laging tandaan si Kristo lamang ating kailangan.
Katulad ni Santa Martang uliran
Tanging si Hesus ang asahan at abangan
Ipagpatuloy gawang kabutihan
Iyong pangarap tiyak makakamtan!

Waiting and Believing

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Monday, Memorial of St. Martha, 29 July 2019
Exodus 32:15-24, 30-34 >< }}}*> <*{{{ >< John 11:19-27
Raising of Lazarus by Jesus with Martha and Mary from Hunterian Psalter via Google.

Praise and glory to you, O God our loving Father!

Thank you for the gift of St. Martha whose memorial we celebrate today.

St. Martha is a most beautiful image of somebody busy for the Lord, believing in him as the Christ, always waiting on him, waiting for him. She believed in you as the Christ that is why she waited on you during your visit to her home at Bethany. She also believed in you as the Christ when she awaited your coming on the death of her brother Lazarus, welcoming you on the road to express her grief and sadness.

There was no guile in St. Martha, Lord, as her feelings and words matched her actions.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

John 11:20-27

Grant us, O Lord, the same faith St. Martha had in you as the Christ, the “resurrection and the life” of every believer.

In this fast-paced world, faith in you has greatly eroded as most of us can no longer wait.

We have become impatient, believing less in you like the Israelites who turned to a golden calf because they could no longer wait for Moses who had stayed on top of Mt. Sinai conversing with you, God (Ex. 32:23).

Awaiting Christ’s coming and life eternal like St. Martha who actively waited and served on the Lord in her lifetime is faith in action.

Like St. Martha, help us to believe in you so we would wait on you, wait for you.

Like St. Martha, may we live in every here and now in your presence. Amen.

Our Parents and Grandparents, God’s Presence

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Friday, Feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne, 26 July 2019
Song of Songs 44:1, 10-15 >< }}}*><*{{{ >< Matthew 13:16-17
Photo by Jim Marpa. September 2018.

On this feast of the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joachim and St. Anne, we praise and thank you almighty Father for the gift of our dear parents as well as grandparents.

In your Ten Commandments, immediately after the first three laws pertaining to you, you commanded us to “honor our father and mother” to stress that “charity begins at home”, that before we can love anybody else in this world, it must first be our parents and grandparents.

Before we can love any other person, we must first love our parents and grandparents for they are the signs of your presence with us, O God. From them we receive our first religious instructions, and most of all, we experience first from them your love and mercy.

Bless us, O Lord, to respect and love them, especially when they are old.

Give us strong hands and arms always ready to reach out to them when they could no longer move well. Let us return that favor this time for us children to help them walk.

Give us more patience and understanding with a lot of kindness when our parents become forgetful and sometimes childish in their ways. Let us be loving to them in their old age and senior moments in the same way they were so fond of us when we were kids and knew nothing at all.

Give us also, O Lord, the eyes to see those white hair and wrinkles they have, including those sickness they now bear were all partly because of us when they have to suffer so much, work so hard to give us a brighter today.

Remind us always, Lord, that of your Ten Commandments, the fourth is the only one with a promise, “Honor your father and your mother and I shall bless you in your old age.”

Remind us, Lord, that even if we are older and wiser, or even if we are already parents too, we always remain children of our parents.

Likewise, we pray for those parents who refuse to take on their roles as mother or father to their children, for those who refuse to be responsible enough to be truly parents teaching their children what is true and good and right.

We pray for all parents that they may all bring you forth, Lord Jesus Christ, onto the world through their children and grandchildren. Amen.

From Google.