Tag: music

Every Kinda People

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The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Prayer-Recipe, Tuesday
10 July 2018, Week-14/Year-2 Ordinary Time
Hosea 8:4-7, 11-13///Matthew 9:32-38 

            How easy for us Lord to always pray like the psalmist that we trust in You but, in reality we rely more with our very selves and with material things!  Like what You told Hosea in the first reading, “we make kings not by Your authority and we make princes without Your approval (Hos.8:4)” for we are so self-centered.

            Most of the time, we forget that what we really need here on earth are people – persons like each one of us with equal dignity created in Your image and likeness who must be respected regardless of creed and color.  Whenever something good happens with our brethren like when Jesus healed a demoniac in today’s gospel, we are like those people of His time who were either struck in awe or doubtful and suspicious without realizing that You come to us with every person who loves and cares for the sick and the poor.

            Move and stir our hearts, let us be merciful like Jesus Christ who said “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”(Mt.9:37-38)  Teach us to stop praying for more things and start praying for brothers and sisters capable of loving and caring for one another.  AMEN. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II,Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria,Bulacan 3022.  Photo from Google.

Pray this with the late Robert Palmer’s “Every Kinda People”, have breakfast and be kind with everyone you meet today.

“You Are Everything” by Marvin Gaye with Diana Ross (1973)

seeinglove
Photo from Google.
The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music
Week XIV-B, 08 July 2018
Recognizing Jesus

            In my homily today I have mentioned that “people took offense at Jesus for they lacked faith because they do not love Him…  To believe in Jesus, like with any person, demands love.  When we truly love a person including Jesus, our eyes are always opened, recognizing them even in their shadows or footsteps.  When we truly love anyone, there is no need to see because in our hearts, that person is already present in us.”

            In fact, we would never even see the one we truly love because they are already in eternity like Jesus and our dearly departed.  But even if we do not see them, we truly recognize them because we love.  That explains why so often, we thought we “see” the ones we love.  Loving, believing, seeing and recognizing are all interconnected; when there is a breakdown in our love, we stop believing, we become unfaithful as we fail to recognize our beloved.  That is when we also sin.  And that is the pain of not being seen and recognized by those closest to us like our family and friends because they refuse to love us in return.  But even if it happens, just keep on loving and believing because in Jesus, we are His everything.  Miracles can only happen and joy would start to overflow when we love, believe, and recognize Jesus in Himself and in others.

Today I saw somebody
Who looked just like you
He walked like you do
I thought it was you
As he turned the corner
I called out your name
I felt so ashamed
When it wasn’t you
Wasn’t you.
 
You are everything
And everything is you
Oh you are everything
And everything is you
‘Cause you are everything
And everything is you.
 
How can I forget
When each face that I see
Brings back memories
Of being with you
I just can’t go on
Living life as I do
Comparing each girl with you
Knowing they just won’t do
They’re not you.

“He Touches Me” by Lisa Stansfield (2004)

touchedbyjesus
Photo from Google.
The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music
Week XIII-B, 01 July 2018

            When I was still teaching at our diocesan school for girls in Malolos City (ICSM-Metropolis), one of the things I used to tell my students was to never be fooled by a man’s looks and “porma”.  Always look for a man who would truly love you, respect you, care and protect you.  Find a man who really touches you as a person, as a woman.          

He don’t bring me anything but love
He don’t bring me anything but love
If you offered me the stars I would decline
I don’t need ’em I got mine
I don’t know where to start
But I know what’s in my heart
So keep your silver and your gold ’cause I got my man to have and hold

            For this Sunday Music by Lisa Stansfield, imagine that man is Jesus touching you, touching each one of us.  Touching Jesus and being touched by Jesus is always a step into an intimate relationship with Him that calls for faith in us.  But we should not stop at simply touching Jesus – let us be touched by Jesus too!  When we allow Jesus to touch us, then we get in touch also with our true selves.  And when we are in touch with God and with our self, we get in touch with life’s realities and most especially in touch with others.  That is when we are transformed because Jesus had touched us.

No poetry, no diamond ring
No song to sing
He don’t bring me flowers, oh no
But he touches me, he touches me
No crazy dreams, no limousines
He makes me feel I can do anything
And that’s power, oh yeah
When he touches me, he touches me

             In this age when our communications and interactions are always mediated by gadgets and things, we have forgotten the power and impact of personal touch.  What really matters in this life are not only what we can touch like things but those who touch us like family and friends, persons who love and care for us, persons who make us whole. Enjoy Sunday!
I know they’ll say I’m crazy letting you go
Of a man like you
Who seems to have it all
But they don’t see what I see
No, they don’t feel like me
And even…
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“Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell (1968)

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The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music
Week XI-B, 17 June 2018
Father’s Day

            I know.  Our LordMyChefSundayRecipe for today is titled “Sowing the Seeds of Love” from the 1989 hit by Tears for Fears.  But even before I have written that, I already had “Wichita Lineman” in my head as our Sunday Music on this Father’s Day because it best describes every father including me.  Even in this age of wireless communications, people are still essential to enable the proper function of technology that connects people with one another.  There would always be a “lineman” to ensure connectivity.

I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin’ in the wire, I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line.
 
            Every dad, every priest is a lineman, trying to connect people with others and with God.  One of the earliest seeds of my vocation was actually planted by my father without him knowing it.  Even I did not realize it only later in life.  Every morning before leaving for office, I always woke up seeing him in front of our “Cristo Rey” praying.  Upon arrival from work before we would pray the Angelus in front of our grotto, dad would be in front of Cristo Rey again praying.  Until his retirement, he never failed to pray in front of our altar at home.  And now he is gone, I could still feel him praying for me and the family.  Maybe, that is the reason why most fathers die ahead of mothers:  they are the first to go beyond life, to link us with this world and the next world.  They never stop connecting us because a father is always a “lineman”.
I know I need a small vacation but it don’t look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south won’t ever stand the strain
And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line.
 
            Real fatherhood is 24/7, thinking more of the children than one’s self.  Above all, it is keeping the lifeline open, near or far, all the time because of love.  Hail to all the dads and Rev. Fathers here and above us in heaven.  Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan 3022
Photo from Google.

 

The Tenderness of God

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The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe, Sacred Heart-B, 08 June 2018
Hosea 11:1,3-4,8-9///Ephesians 3:8-12,14-9///John 19:31-37 

One of my all-time favorite love songs is Billy Joel’s “Leave a Tender Moment Alone.” (https://youtu.be/JHpIC4Kk0MU)  The poetry of its lyrics and its lovely melody introduced by a stirring harmonica always bring the “kilig moments” of every man’s love experience:

Even though I’m in love
Sometimes I get so afraid
I’ll say something so wrong
Just to have something to say

I know the moment isn’t right
To tell the girl a comical line
To keep the conversation light
I guess I’m just frightened out of my mind

But if that’s how I feel
Then it’s the best feeling I’ve even known
It’s undeniably real
Leave a tender moment alone

While praying over the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I kept on hearing this song playing in my mind because our celebration today is actually about the tenderness of God.  See how He had spoken through the prophet Hosea in the first reading like a Father to us.  Let us personalize His words and be immersed in His tenderness: “As a child I loved you, I called you my son.  The more I called you, the farther you went away from me.”(Hos.11:1-2)

             Is it not this is how our love relationship is with our parents and family including God? When we were kids, we loved running to our dad, taking pride for being his son or daughter, always clinging to his big hands?  During the early years of marriage, couples seem to be so inseparable.  But as we mature and find new friends and new relationships, we drift apart from our parents or spouse, including God.  And worst, we drive them away, even feeling ashamed of them especially when they come near us with their gestures of love and concern.  But, when problems arise in our new relationships like betrayal and infidelity, we go back to them, most especially to God, rediscovering their genuine love that is so tender and very comforting:  “I took you in my arms, drew you with human cords with bands of love. I fostered you like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; yet, though I stooped to feed you my child, you did not know I am your healer.”(Hos.11:3-7)

             Unlike Billy Joel in his song “Leave A Tender Moment Alone,” God makes no mistakes in loving us.  He remains faithful to us with His love, even “allowing” us often to sin and commit mistakes so that eventually, when we hit rock bottom, we rediscover Him and His love that is so real and so personal.  This “stooping down” by God that He had spoken to Hosea hundreds of years earlier took its deepest plunge when He sent us Jesus Christ His Son as our Savior by dying on the Cross.  St. John tells us how on that Good Friday soldiers broke the legs of the other two thieves crucified with Jesus to hasten their death; but, when they saw Jesus “already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.” (Jn.19:33-34)

According to St. John, this fulfilled the Old Testament that “Not a bone of it will be broken” and that “They will look upon him whom they have pierced”(Jn.19:36), thus identifying Jesus Christ as the new lamb offered once and for all to God for the forgiveness of our sins.  It verified the words of John the Baptist also found in the fourth gospel describing Jesus as “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”, the perfect offering on the Cross and expression of God’s immense love for each of us.  His death on the Cross is the most tender moment of love in history when our God who personally loves us by becoming like us in everything except sin loved us until the last drop of His blood because we are His beloved brothers and sisters in His loving and faithful Father in heaven we have always deserted in our many sins.  Indeed, when blood and water flowed out from His pierced side on the Cross, the ocean of Divine Mercy flowed out for us, forgiving our most grievous sins, regardless of our many weaknesses.  In His Most Sacred heart, Jesus is inviting us to always leave some tender moments alone with Him so that “He may dwell also in our hearts through faith so that once we are rooted and grounded in His love, we may have the strength to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of His love that surpasses knowledge and be filled with the fullness of God.”(cf. Eph.3:17-19)

It is an imperative for us all to be “rooted and grounded in His love” because human love is always imperfect.  Only God can love us perfectly in Christ Jesus who offered Himself on the Cross to fulfill what we have failed since the beginning – that is, to love God and others. Oh what a loving God we have in Him as we pray, Jesus meek and humble heart make my heart like thine!  Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.

Photo from Google.