Tag: choosing God

Our dangerous God

The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe, Week XX-C, 18 August 2019

Jeremiah 38:4-6. 8-10 ><)))*> Hebrews 12:1-4 ><)))*> Luke 12:49-53

Batanes sunset after a storm, 2018. Photo by Mr. Raffy Tima of GMA-7 News.

Jesus continues with his “shock preaching” for the third consecutive Sunday today as “he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem” and face his death there.

And his preaching is getting more shocking.

Unlike the previous two Sundays, it was easier to see why Jesus had to shake us with his teachings as he wants us to seriously consider the reality of death that comes “like a thief at night” (Lk. 12:39, Aug. 11). Far from being morbid, Jesus is inviting us to be more concerned with things that last even after death because “life does not consist of possessions” (Lk. 12:15, Aug. 04).

This Sunday, Jesus gets bolder with his teaching of three provocative statements that challenge and motivate us in being like him who is “resolutely determined” in facing his passion and death by setting the world on fire, eagerly awaiting another baptism, and the most controversial, bringing division – not peace – among us his followers.

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptised, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”

Luke 12:49-50
Sunset in Athens, Greece by Dra. Mai B. Dela Pena, 2016.

These first two pronouncements by Jesus go together like our expression “baptism of fire” to mean an initiation into something very new and life-changing or, as we say these days, a “game changer”.

In St. Luke’s second book, the Acts of the Apostles, we find the Holy Spirit coming down as “tongues of fire” upon the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary on Pentecost, filling them with wisdom and courage to proclaim the Good News of salvation by Jesus Christ. For St. Luke, this imagery of the Holy Spirit like fire is very important.

Fire gives heat, symbolising life itself. Without heat, we become cold and die.

Fire also means energy that can move and propel anything including people, covering great distances.

Most of all, fire purifies, removing impurities in so many things including persons.

Since June 30, we have been following Jesus as “he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem” (Lk. 9:51). This is the baptism Jesus is so eager, his Passion and Death on the Cross that leads to Easter. It is a path characterized by fire that emboldens us, purifies us, and most of all, illumines us of the more essential things in life!

From Google.

When we recall those trying moments in our lives, those many “baptisms of fire” we have gone through, there is always that sense of inner joy and gratitude in “passing over” through our little deaths that have made us stronger today. Whether we have triumphed or failed in those many baptisms of fire, what matters most is we went through it, deepening our faith that made us more determined in life.

And one very difficult lesson we have also learned in our little deaths is the painful reality of divisions among us.

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”

Luke 12:51

In this age when sound reasoning is being pushed aside in making decisions on many issues and conflicts confronting us by following what is merely popular as “trending” and “viral” measured in the most number of “likes” or “followers”, we find ourselves plunging into more darkness than ever. What used to be not normal has become normal today like obscenity and profanity. Life is reduced to mere lifestyle with everybody insisting on one’s rights in total disregard of one’s responsibilities that anyone may use whichever toilet is preferred. Death in its many masks has become a solution to many problems that has spawned more serious problems. And worst, in the midst of these discussions that disregard morality, proponents of the Godless ways are the ones invoking the name of God!

Jesus tells us in the fourth gospel that “the peace I give you is not like the peace the world gives” (Jn.14:27) which is often more of appeasing one another, of compromises that eventually fails. Peace is more than the absence of war but is appropriately called the effect of righteousness, of love and justice (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, #78). And always, that path to peace is the Cross of Christ.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Jesus wants us his disciples going through our little passion and deaths to illumine the world with the Holy Spirit as it is slowly being engulfed in the darkness of sin and evil. And he knows it is not an easy task. Like him, we have to grow in faith completely relying on the Father who vindicated him as he died on the Cross.

Brothers and sisters: Let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. In you struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.

Hebrews 12:1-2, 4

In 1945, the late Fr. Hans Urs Von Balthasar titled a chapter of his book “God is dangerous”, writing that

“He presents his victory over death as an example to be imitated, he draws us beyond our limits, into his adventure, which is inevitable fatal.”

“Heart of the World” (Ignatius Press, 1980)

Yes, God is dangerous — too hot to handle and too difficult to resist. We have all felt like Jeremiah bearing all the pains and sufferings because we have allowed ourselves to be “seduced and duped by God’s irresistible charm” (Jer. 20:7). And despite this harsh reality, we choose to remain standing at the foot of our Master’s Cross because it is there we can see everything more clearly, where we experience real peace.

Would you rather be in grave danger with God on your side or be safe for now with no one and nothing to hold on in the end?

A blessed week ahead! Amen.

Accepting and Owning

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul

Friday, Wk. XIX, Yr. I, 16 August 2019

Joshua 24:1-13 >< )))*> <*((( >< Matthew 19:3-12

Bangui, Ilocos Norte, 09 March 2009.

Dear God:

Do we really have a choice with you? Of course, you are not forcing us to choose you because you gave us freedom, your most wonderful gift expressing your love for us. You never impose yourself on us and, we are always free to choose you or not!

But, how can we not choose you, O God? You are the only good, the ultimate good. And you never fail to give us the best, nothing less.

Joshua addressed all the people: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I gave you a land which you had not tilled and cities which you had not built, to dwell in; you have eaten of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.”

Joshua 24:2, 13

Problem with us, Lord, is our failure to accept and own your gifts. We keep on looking for something else when you are giving us the very best. We always insist on what we want, on our choices we think to be good but not really good. But, because we are free, you allow us to disregard your gifts and choose something else – and still bless us!

And so we pray today that you teach us to both accept and own your gifts to us, Lord.

It is not enough that we accept gifts but we must also own them to be truly a blessing that can be shared and given to others.

Material and spiritual blessings, life lessons and life-blows, and all the other good gifts from you Lord are easy to accept but unless we own them too as ours, they get wasted.

Anything received but not owned becomes useless because it does not prosper nor grow nor mature and bear fruits. Be it our very selves, our country, our jobs, our family and friends. Everything, especially you, Lord, whom we always receive but never shared because we never truly have you in us. Let us own you, Lord! Amen.

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.”

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.

Hallowed ground

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Wednesday, Wk. XVI, Yr. I, 24 July 2019
Exodus 16:1-5, 9-15 >< }}}*> <*{{{ >< Matthew 13:1-9
Clouds over the Egyptian desert, May 2019.

The Lord spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the grumbling of the children of Israel. Tell them: in the evening twilight you shall eat flesh and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, so that you may know that I, the Lord , am your God.” In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp. In the morning, a dew lay all about the camp, and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground.

Exodus 16:11-14

Like the psalmist, so often I wonder O God when I see the heavens the work of your hands, I ask what are we humans that you are mindful of us, mere mortals that you care for us (Ps. 8:4-5)?

You could have remained there in the heavens, O Lord, and yet you choose to stoop down upon us, listening to our voices, even to our cries and senseless grumblings.

Most wonderful of all, you have blessed us and our land when you decided to be one with us on the ground with the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us.

You have never stopped like the sower in the parable patiently sowing your seeds of love and mercy among us.

Open us, O Lord, and make us like the fertile ground so your word may grow and bear fruit abundantly in us with good works.

Make us fertile ground for your seed that we may become your presence and bring your healing and justice on your people who until now grumble, refusing to pause in silence to experience your presence on these hallowed grounds we have desecrated with wars and hate. Amen.

Choosing God

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Tuesday, Wk. XII, Yr.I, 25 June 2019
Genesis 13:2, 5-18 >< )))*> Matthew 7:6, 12-14
The picturesque Siq leading to Petra in Jordan. Photo by author 30 April 2019.

Every day, Lord God, you give us the wonderful gift of making choices, of deciding for ourselves to choose what is best for us. Unfortunately, we always forget the very essence of making every choice which is to always choose what is good, what is the best.

Very often, we make the wrong choices in life because we fail to consider in choosing you first, the highest good, the summum bonum.

Like Lot in the first reading, we are easily misled by beautiful sights, of abundance, of having everything as bases in choosing what is best for us.

We always forget that saying “not all that glitters is gold” as Lot would eventually found out later how sinful were the people living in those areas he had chosen where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah thrived.

Teach us to be like Abraham, to always trust in your wisdom, in your plans, and in your providence.

Teach us to choose you first of all above all.

And choosing you, Lord, means choosing the path of sacrifice and of giving of self.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”

Matthew 7:13-14

Bless, O Lord, those who have to make important decisions today, those discerning your will. Enlighten their minds and their hearts to choose you only and to stand firm on that choice. Amen.

The narrow door leading to the Nativity Church in Bethlehem that reminds us of the need to be small, to be humble to truly meet Jesus Christ. Photo by author, 04 May 2019.