“I Don’t Know How to Love Him” (1971) by Yvonne Elliman

Lord My Chef Sunday Music by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 06 April 2025

This is the second time we have featured Ms. Yvonne Elliman’s I Don’t Know How to Love Him in our Sunday Music at this time of the year when the Sunday gospel is about the woman caught committing adultery.

Every time that story comes up, my mind automatically links it with this song sang by Ms. Elliman in both the Broadway and movie versions of the rock-opera Jesus Christ, Superstar where she played the role as Mary Magdalene who was believed for a long time as the woman caught committing adultery. Modern biblical scholarships have long debunked that belief but that song by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice plus Elliman’s amazing interpretation has given us with so many perspectives about the gospel itself.

One thing we realized this year is how we – like the woman caught committing adultery meet Jesus Christ face-to-face to experience his immense love and mercy and forgiveness.

We encounter Jesus when we disarm ourselves of our false securities and pretenses, masks and camouflages that all cover our sins. It is when we come face-to-face with our sinful self when we eventually meet Jesus face-to-face too because that is when we surrender in silence like the woman caught in adultery and the mob to some degree because all the charges against us are true.

See also that it is only the fourth gospel that Jesus is portrayed “bending” low – first here before the woman caught committing adultery and secondly at the washing of the feet of his Apostles at their Last Supper. How lovely is that sight to behold, dear friends! Imagine God bending before us, giving us like the sinful woman and the mob that space for us to confront our true self, to realize and accept the whole realities we are all interconnected in love.

Only the woman remained – like the eleven Apostles at the Last Supper – because she was the only one willing to change, probably sorrowful and contrite for her sins. Contrary to our fears, Jesus has only love and mercy, kindness and forgiveness to anyone contrite and sorrowful of one’s sin that so unlike with the people’s wrath and anger, judgment and condemnation. St. Augustine perfectly described that moment in today’s gospel, Relicti sunt duo; misera et miserecordia (Two were left; misery and mercy). https://lordmychef.com/2025/04/05/lent-is-encountering-jesus/

Now, look at the first two stanzas of I Don’t Know How to Love Him:

I don't know how to love him
What to do, how to move him
I've been changed, yes really changed
In these past few days
When I've seen myself
I seem like someone else

I don't know how to take this
I don't see why he moves me
He's a man
He's just a man
And I've had so many
Men before
In very many ways
He's just one more

See the conversion and transformation of the woman caught in adultery expressed by Ms. Elliman in the song: I’ve been changed, yes really changed/ In these past few days/ When I’ve seen myself/ I seem like someone else. It is one of the great ironies in life: when we are most vulnerable and weakest, that is when we are also most truest to our self, that is when we truly grow and mature in life!

And this was all possible because of the gift of love and mercy of Jesus Christ, of encountering the Lord and Savior Himself in our own brokenness which the song and the singer captured so perfectly, He’s just a man/ And I’ve had so many men before/ In very many ways/ He’s just one more.

How amazing that the lyrics and the rendition blended perfectly, making us realize how Jesus is just like any other man but not just another additional man; Jesus is MORE than any one because He is the only who truly loves us most, offering us forgiveness once we strip ourselves naked before Him of all our sins and pride and pretensions. God’s love in Jesus Christ is beyond imagining. This we have seen in the parable of the prodigal son and now in the story of the woman caught committing adultery. Do not let your past sins prevent you from meeting Jesus face-to-face to finally experience that inner peace and joy you have been missing and searching for so long.

We are now in the final Sunday in Lent, next week is Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week. We can never experience the joy of Easter unless we join Christ’s Passion of emptying ourselves of sins and pride to be filled with His humility, justice and love.

Here is the lovely Ms. Elliman with her superb singing of I Don’t Know How to Love Him, hoping this helps you prepare in this final week of Lent.

From YouTube.com.

Words, words, words…

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Friday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, Year II, 12 July 2024
Hosea 14:2-10 <*[[[[><< + >><]]]]*> Matthew 10:16-23

Thus says the Lord: Return, O Israel, to the Lord, your God; you have collapsed through your guilt. Take with you words, and return to then Lord; Say to him, “Forgive all iniquity, and receive what is good, that we may render as offerings the bullocks from our stalls” (Hosea 24:2-3).

Loving Father,
let us "take words" with us
this Friday,
words of contrition for our sins,
words of true repentance,
words begging your mercy,
words that are sincere
not empty words;
many times in this world
of social media,
we multiply words,
we shout words,
we alter words
to give new meanings
that suit us;
many times our words
are mere words,
never bearing fruit,
could not even stand
because they are not true;
like Jesus your Son,
teach us to "enflesh"
our words,
let our words to You be
translated into realities of
conversion and loving service 
for one another.

When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:20).

Let us heed your words,
Lord Jesus Christ,
for us to be "shrewd as serpents
and simple as doves"
by learning to be silent
to let the Holy Spirit speak
through us;
in this noisy world
with so many competing 
words and sounds,
it has become indeed 
a persecution to be silent;
it is more difficult to be silent
to await your words, Lord;
it is always easier to speak
and add to the cacophony of
deafening and hurtful words
against each other
than to just listen to
our hearts,
to listen to your words
of love and mercy;
like the psalmist,
let my mouth
declare your praise
by awaiting your words
first, not mine.
Amen.

Lent is contrition with consistency

40 Shades of Lent by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent, 05 March 2024
Daniel 3:25, 34-43     <*((((>< + ><))))*>     Matthew 18:21-35

In this season of Lent,
teach us, Lord, to be
consistent in our contrition;
let us realize that true 
contrition for our sins is
not only when we have cried,
nor when we have beaten 
our breasts with mea culpa,
mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,
nor when we say sorry to
everyone we have sinned.

Being sorry for our sins
before you, God our Father,
is being consistent -
when our contrition leads us
to change our evil ways
and most of all, when we 
become consistent in our 
prayer and lives
that we stop with our
sins and evil ways.

Azariah stood up in the fire and prayed aloud: “For we are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation, brought low everywhere in the world this day because of our sins. But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received; as though it were burnt offerings of rams and bullocks, or thousands of fat lambs, so let our sacrifice be inn your presence today as we follow you unreservedly; for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame.
Daniel 3:25, 37, 39

Most of all,
O God,
to be contrite for our sins
is being consistent also
in being forgiving
with our fellow sinners;
every day, we call you
God "Our Father", 
asking you to forgive us 
our sins as we forgive
those who sin against us
but so often,
we just say these words
without really acting on them,
fulfilling them by forgiving
our fellow sinners;
to be sorry for our own sins
is to see also the pure
heart of another sinner
asking for forgiveness
of sins.

To be contrite
is to be consistent
in forgiving others
from one's heart
because a truly contrite heart
sees and feels
a fellow contrite heart too!
Amen.

Walking our talk

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Friday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, 08 July 2022
Hosea 14:2-10 ><]]]'> + ><]]]'> + ><]]]'> Matthew 10:16-23

*Photo by Dr. Mylene A. Santos, MD in France, March 2022.*

Another week is closing,
another brand new week coming
but here I am, O God, still undecided,
dilly-dallying when to follow you,
when to change my ways,
when will I ever be true
in walking my talk; this time,
may I take with me my words
of contrition, of decision to turn
away from sin and follow your path
in Jesus Christ your Son.

Thus says the Lord: Return, O Israel, to the Lord, your God; you have collapsed through your guilt. Take with you words, and return to the Lord, say to him, “Forgive all iniquity, and receive what is good, that we may render as offerings the bullocks from our stalls.”
Hosea 14:2-3

Grant me, O Lord, 
the courage to be wise as the serpent 
and gentle as the dove in this world 
so filled with wolves and other
predators out for a kill with 
their seductive temptations
to rule and dominate; may I always
have the presence of mind to think
what is fair and just, true and good
that I may not be tempted to take 
shortcuts in life; inspire me to innovate
and be creative in proclaiming 
and living out the gospel of Jesus 
in this highly modern and complex
world; most of all, keep me faithful
to you, to always walk your path
for you are the way, the truth and 
the life.

Let him who is wise understand these things; let him who is prudent know them. Straight are the paths of the Lord, in them the just walk, but sinners stumble in them.
Hosea 14:10

There is no other way
to life, Lord, except you 
and this is the reason why
so many want to remove you,
to delete you from life, from
the world so that they can do
what is most pleasing to themselves
without realizing nor admitting
the collapse and slow death
they are experiencing.
Amen.

Lent is restoring our relationships

40 Shades of Lent by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent, 22 March 2022
Daniel 3:25, 34-43   <*[[[[>< + ><]]]]*>   Matthew 18:21-35

Like your servant Azariah,
I praise and thank you today,
dear God our loving Father,
for delivering us always from many
dangers and trials, enabling us 
to make it through many fires -
still whole, still sane, still blessed.

Yes, like Azariah and his fellow Jews
exiled in Babylon at that time, we have
turned away from you with our many
sins and transgressions:

But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received; as though it were burnt offerings of rams and bullocks, or thousands of fat lambs, so let our sacrifice be in your presence today as we follow you unreservedly; for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame. And now we follow you with our whole heart, we fear you you and we pray to you. Do not let us be put to shame, but deal with us in your kindness and great mercy.
Daniel 3:39-42

It is not enough, O God, 
that we be sorry for our sins;
like in the parable and the very
example of your Son Jesus Christ
our Lord, penance and contrition are 
meant to fix and restore our many
broken relationships with you and with
one another, especially those dearest
to us, those closest to us we have hurt or
have hurt us with words and/or deeds.

Like you dear Father,
may we realize that forgiveness is
more than deletion of sins but
most of all, about reconciliation, 
of being one again as brothers and
sisters in Christ.  Amen.