The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Thursday, Easter Week II, 02 May 2019
O Lord Jesus Christ, grant us the courage you gave Peter before the Sanhedrin to boldly proclaim “We must obey God than men.”
So often in this modern world, modernity masked in relativism has become our new religion. We are more concerned with what people would say or think about us if we stand by your truth respecting life.
In the name of political correctness and human rights, we choose to be silent or tolerable with so many thoughts that run contradictory to the values of family, sanctity of marriage, sexuality, identity, and life itself.
Let us reflect on your words to Nicodemus “The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things. But the one who comes from heaven is above all” (Jn.3:31).
The beautiful churches and rich culture of Madaba and Mt. Nebo in Jordan reflect these things “of the above”. Let us always look up to you and be healed and saved. Amen.
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Tag: prayer
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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We are all pilgrims
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Tuesday, Easter Week II, 30 April 2019, Amman, Jordan
We are all pilgrims on this earth, Lord God Almighty.
May we be like the early followers of Christ, “one heart and mind” in you. Let us keep in our hearts and minds that everything here on earth is yours to be shared with one another.
Let us seek more of the things of the above like Nicodemus.
Let us follow your directions in Christ through the Holy Spirit like the wind that blows.
Bind us all your children – fellow pilgrims -that we may care for this beautiful planet earth as we walk home to you O God our Father. Amen.
Photos on our way to Petra this morning via the King’s Highway or the ancient desert way.
Pilgrimage prayer
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Monday, Easter Week II, 29 April 2019
Acts 4:23-31///John 3:1-8
Lord Jesus Christ, today we leave for a pilgrimage to your Holy Land. Your people there claim it is also our land, everybody’s land. Thank you very much for coming to us, walking on earth, being like us in everything except sin.
Most of all, thank you very much in bringing us not only closer to the Father through you but most of all, making us experience you in the Holy Land.
Today’s first reading tells us how you have sent the Holy Spirit upon your Apostles and followers after Peter and John were released from prison in Jerusalem.
As they prayed, the place where they were gathered shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
Acts 4:31
Our group of pilgrims are not that many to shake the Holy Land, Lord; but, we pray that in our prayers and sacrifices during these days especially in your holy sites, shake our hearts, shake our inner selves, move us closer to you and with one another in faith, hope and love.
Some of us are coming with some darkness within us, but most of us shall be praying for loved ones going through so many trials and difficulties, so fearful like Nicodemus who came to visit you at night.
Bless us going on a pilgrimage and those everyone on a journey with you in their work and studies, at home, in their sickbeds, everywhere… that we may experience to be born from above, to be filled with the Holy Spirit to become new persons in you. Amen.
The problem with believing
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Saturday of the Easter Octave, 27 April 2019
Acts 4:13-21///Mark 16:9-15
While praying your words today O Lord Jesus Christ, I remembered your servant Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI who explained the great importance of professing “I believe in God”.
It is a fundamental affirmation, seemingly simple in its essence, but it opens on to the infinite world of the relationship with the Lord and with his mystery. Believing in God entails adherence to him, the acceptance of his word and joyful obedience to his revelation… The ability to say one believes in God is therefore both a gift — God reveals himself, he comes to meet us — and a commitment, it is divine grace and human responsibility in an experience of conversation with God who… speaks to us, so that, in faith and with faith, we are able to enter into communion with him.
General Audience, 23 January 2013
Since then until now, believing in you Jesus to have risen from the dead, to be from God the Father has always been a problem because we have always refused to accept your opening to us. We always want to manipulate everything, especially God.
The problem with believing is we have refused to live by God, always leaving him behind because we feel he is outdated, old-fashioned and too conservative for our modern thoughts and perceptions of how life should be lived.
The problem with believing God then and now is we have stopped recognizing God as the foundation of our lives that like the chief priests and elders in the Acts of the Apostles, we would rather be blind from the glaring truth of your loving presence before us. Like the Apostles too during Easter, we have refused to believe others in proclaiming your rising from the dead because of many reasons and one of these is the hardness of our hearts.
Lord Jesus Christ, take away our stony hearts and give us with a natural heart that beats with firm faith in you, fervent hope and unceasing charity and love. Amen.
All Good Gifts
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Friday of Easter Octave, 26 April 2019
Acts 4:1-12///John 21:1-14
Today O Lord I wish to offer to you my favorite morning prayer hymn we sing during Ordinary Time called “We plough the fields and scatter” (Wir Pflugen):
All good gifts around us
Are sent from heav'n above,
Then thank the Lord,
O thank the Lord for all his love.
You are “the author of life” indeed Lord Jesus Christ because all good gifts around us can only come from you!
When your Apostles were arrested and questioned by the priests and elders of Jerusalem “by what power or by what name” did they heal the crippled man since birth, Peter boldly answered them it was “in your name, Lord Jesus Christ!” (Acts 4:7-10)
When your Apostles caught so much fish after following your instruction to cast their net over the right side of the boat without really knowing it was you who gave the instruction from the shore, it was the beloved disciple who right away recognized you, “It is the Lord.” (Jn.21:7)
Lord Jesus, teach us to be humble always, to recognize YOU alone as the source of every good thing in life. So many times Lord, we always grab the honor in doing many great things in this life that we unconsciously divert people away from you and more closer to us.
O Lord…we priests are very notorious in doing that, grabbing all the credits for everything that is achieved as if we are the gods! Forgive us Lord. And let us proclaim always your goodness and your greatness. Amen.
Jesus, author of life
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe, Thursday, Easter Octave, 25 April 2019
Acts 3:11-26///Luke 24:35-48
Today O dear Jesus Christ, St. Peter called you as “the author of life” in our first reading — a very beautiful and unique way of describing you who had resurrected from death.
From you alone, Lord, comes life indeed. Most of all, only you can restore and bring back life in case we lose it for you are indeed the author of life. St. Mark the Evangelist whose feast we celebrate today perfectly said it at the start of his gospel account:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ (the Son of God).
Mark 1:1
You O Lord Jesus is the good news yourself because you are life, the author of life. Whoever believes in you, accepts you has life, regains life.
Sometimes we are like your disciples in our gospel today who doubted you when you suddenly appeared to them in their room. Sometimes we are overwhelmed with your presence. And most of the time, we think you might be a ghost or an imagination.
But the moment we try to feel you and experience your saving power, then we realize how scary it can be sometimes to believe you than to believe in ghosts because you are REAL, ghosts are not.
Help us to be like St. Mark the Evangelist who wrote the first gospel ever written now bearing his name and symbol of a lion. May we have the courage to write with our very lives your good news of salvation whose only author is you alone. Amen.
Slow of heart
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe, Wednesday, Easter Octave, 24 April 2019
Acts 3:1-10///Luke 24:13-35
How interesting is Easter becoming, O Lord! Yesterday, Peter’s listeners were “cut to the heart” upon hearing your good news of salvation. Today, as you walked along with two disciples going to Emmaus feeling so sad with your death and news of missing body, you expressed great surprise at their being “slow of heart to believe”.
And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.
Luke 24:25-27
So many times Lord, we are slow of heart to believe because we refuse to see the bigger picture in life when setbacks and failures can be staging points for greater growth and maturity. We choose to be mediocre and be contented with whatever is before us, refusing to strive and rise.
So many times Lord, we feel like that man crippled from birth at the Beautiful Gate of the temple contented in begging alms without realizing that negative things in our lives can enable us to receive the gift of life.
Like that crippled man from birth at the Beautiful Gate, let us seize every moment of meeting you, having you in our lives. Amen.
Cut to the heart
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul, Tuesday, Easter Octave, 23 April 2019
Acts 2:36-41///John 20:11-18
Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they asked Peter and the other Apostles, “What are we to do, my brothers?”
Acts 2:37
What a powerful expression, O Lord Jesus Christ: “they were cut to the heart” upon hearing the preaching by St. Peter about you on Pentecost day, on how the people have killed you, on how they failed to recognize you as the Christ.
They were cut to the heart, they were so moved.
Yesterday O Lord, many of us were also cut to the heart with the powerful earthquake that rocked us hard late afternoon. Many prayed, many wondered what’s going to happen next. And many asked what are we to do?
Suddenly, people remembered you and called on you. That is always the case when calamities strike us, when problems arise in our families. We are cut to the heart. Our faith is awakened, we become conscious not only of you but of others we used to take for granted.
But there is something more wonderful in being cut to the heart, O Lord.
Mary Magdalene was also cut in the heart upon discovering your empty tomb that Easter morning. Give us that same grace of always seeking you, looking for you whenever we feel we have lost you.
So often, you come to us, calling us with our name but we never listen to you, always forgetting how much you love us, how much you have forgiven us with our many sins, how you have changed us.
Remind us like Mary not to touch you because from now on, we must relate with you in a higher level, that the most important thing to do is to proclaim to others most especially with our lives that we have seen you, that you are risen.
That is the most kindest and wonderful kind of cut of all, Jesus. Amen.
Worst thing to happen with us at Easter
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for Monday, Easter Octave, 22 april 2019
Acts 2:14, 22-23///Matthew 28:8-15
Glory and praise to you, O Lord Jesus Christ! Thank you very much for the gift of Easter, the gifts of new life, of hope, and most of all, of love. Thank you very much for sharing with us your glory of rising from death.
But what is worst that could happen with us this Easter is when we choose to remain in the darkness of ignorance and sin, of not truly believing you are risen. And leading others away from you like those terrorists in Sri Lanka yesterday.
The chief priests assembled with the elders and took counsel; then they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.’ And if this gets to the ears of the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.'” The soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.
Matthew 28:12-15
Until now, O Lord, there is still that spirit of your enemies living in us, of those soldiers bribed who chose to disregard what they have experienced, to lie of your Resurrection. Until now, we continue to betray you, replacing you with people and things we find more valuable to us. And worst is when we mislead others away from you.
Let us go to meet you, “fearful yet overjoyed” like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to announce your rising from the dead. Let us accept the truth of what Peter boldly proclaimed after Pentecost in Jerusalem that indeed, we have “killed” you now risen from the dead.
Let our ignorance of you, Jesus, be an opening for our faith in you so we may grow in intimacy with you. Amen.
