Entering the second week of the Lenten Season, based on the readings, the Catholic Church reminded us the baptismal promise that opened the door to our sacramental journey for the glory of God and the sanctification of our souls.
On the first reading, it reminds us the calling of Abraham, and the reshaping of his future, his future mission and participation in the God's plan of salvation. And in fact, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, that he will be called as the father of all nations and his children and ancestors will be blessed. But it requires his full submission and hsi fiat to the Father.
Today's second reading, in the bookd of Timothy, God is reminding us that He called us to become holy. And it also reminding us that we received our life's immortality if we actively participate in the Gospel.
We have learned in our catechism classes way back from our elementary years that our sacramental journey begun when we received the Sacrament of Confirmation, that which we were having been perfectly bounded to the Church and enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit, as true witnesses, as we became more strictly obligated to spread and defend the Catholic faith by our words and deeds. And in fact it was strongly emphasized that we should suffer for the Gospel, as we are called to share in the sufferings of the Body of Christ, which is the Church.
In our sufferings, we are called to rely on the power of God. When St. Paul appealed to God about his suffering, the Lord answered: MY grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2Cor 12:9 Following the footsteps of St. Paul we could say: So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therfore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Cor. 12:9-10 In other words, through physical sufferings, we are spiritually strengthened in our daily communion with Christ.
God's calling for us to be holy is not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace. Sometimes, it will give us confusion and misleading point of view, which pushed us that salvation is not intertwined with good works, only by God's grace and faith. St. Paul's emphasis is that by God's grace we all be saved not in good works because, so that no one may boast to what he has done to the least of his brothers.
AS a member of the Singles for Christ and as being a herald of the Gospel of truth, today's three readings remind us that the Heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, so we may be saved through the grace and mercy of a loving God who never abandoned us to sin and death.
Instituted by Christ Himself, the Holy Catholic Church commands us to prepare ourselves for the great feast of Easter that approaches. So we may be holy on that day as Jesus is holy, we are called to repent of our sins and receive the Sacrament of Confession. Then, having been made righteous in Christ, the Lord God will no longer rmember our sins.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
When the Rooster Crows
Oftentimes we misundertood that who is a black sheep of the family is always be a blacksheep. We assumed that the imperfections of a son is always construed to his being self centered and self-righteous. And no room for a change. Who we are is always what we wanted to be. This narrow idea widened and became the stumbling block that hurdled man's growth- his spiritual growth and it became his own comfort zone and a home.
Is man's nature evil? Most often than not, man's wrongdoings are already geared towards the idea on his own imperfections. His being is enveloped with the vast ocean of imperfections, yet even bounded, still he has the prerogative, the prerogative that keeps him able and alive. And God plays a major role on this ultimate option.
Let's track the Parable of the Lost Son. As Jesus taught about changes and repentance, He told the story of a man who had two sons. the older son was obedient and faithful. The younger son asked for his share of his father's property and left home. He soon wasted all his money in sinful living, and he became very hungry. Realizing he had been wrong, the younger son decided to return home and beg forgiveness. As the son neared home, his father saw him coming and was overjoyed. The father celebrated his son's return with a feast. This made the older son angry. The father explained to the older son that he would be given all the father had but that it was right to rejoice over the younger son's repentance.
Because of his own wickedness, he is considered as a an outcast of the boundary of God's kingdom, yet he has the freedom to change and God is ready to accept. Repentance and faith are greatly intertwined and no one can separate it. Man needs to return to God in repentance and faith. God does not compel us, so it must be a personal decision.
God's forgiveness is not gained through high spiritual achievements, such as attaining merits through compassionate living or developing high skills in meditation, but only by repentance. The price for our reconciliation with God was paid by Jesus Christ, through his death on the cross. There is nothing more to add, but at the end, His death on the cross will not be meaningfully given or sacrificed without man's participation.
To continue heeding this call needs man's active participation by showing and living man's lives in values and teachings of Jesus Christ and by sharing the great love that Christ has manifested on the Cross. Thus thru man's active participation, he might somehow change for the better and there is always room for perfection.
Is man's nature evil? Most often than not, man's wrongdoings are already geared towards the idea on his own imperfections. His being is enveloped with the vast ocean of imperfections, yet even bounded, still he has the prerogative, the prerogative that keeps him able and alive. And God plays a major role on this ultimate option.
Let's track the Parable of the Lost Son. As Jesus taught about changes and repentance, He told the story of a man who had two sons. the older son was obedient and faithful. The younger son asked for his share of his father's property and left home. He soon wasted all his money in sinful living, and he became very hungry. Realizing he had been wrong, the younger son decided to return home and beg forgiveness. As the son neared home, his father saw him coming and was overjoyed. The father celebrated his son's return with a feast. This made the older son angry. The father explained to the older son that he would be given all the father had but that it was right to rejoice over the younger son's repentance.
Because of his own wickedness, he is considered as a an outcast of the boundary of God's kingdom, yet he has the freedom to change and God is ready to accept. Repentance and faith are greatly intertwined and no one can separate it. Man needs to return to God in repentance and faith. God does not compel us, so it must be a personal decision.
God's forgiveness is not gained through high spiritual achievements, such as attaining merits through compassionate living or developing high skills in meditation, but only by repentance. The price for our reconciliation with God was paid by Jesus Christ, through his death on the cross. There is nothing more to add, but at the end, His death on the cross will not be meaningfully given or sacrificed without man's participation.
To continue heeding this call needs man's active participation by showing and living man's lives in values and teachings of Jesus Christ and by sharing the great love that Christ has manifested on the Cross. Thus thru man's active participation, he might somehow change for the better and there is always room for perfection.
Friday, February 11, 2011
The morning ends... evening comes
It was a hard thing to accept the decision which is contrary to your ideology. But sometimes, we need to give up and to get out from the shell which i were keeping since the time being. Leaving my family is like tearing off my self into pieces. Most often than not, i always shared to them that, i have to go out from the place where i was born and I need to continue this life i have chosen, not only for my own benefit but also theirs. There are series of misfortunate events that i have encountered, and looking back where i started is like a misdemeanor and feeling like it is killing me. Never let go, never gives up.
Staying alive in the place where nobody believes that God is a merciful Being is the most important for an expat can do for the sake of his loved ones whose homes are across and miles away from the dessert and crossing our fingers that there is still hope out from this barren and dry land.
Working and tilling the land which i did not own and in this country which i have never been accepted is like a continuous pain that lingers me momentarily. Working and serving these people quite painfuf. I stayed here in the desert just because i need to tend my family's vineyard. And this is where God leads me to be near to my family and to Him. No other road in life that is sweet and encouraging than this road that leads me to where i am now.
Staying alive in the place where nobody believes that God is a merciful Being is the most important for an expat can do for the sake of his loved ones whose homes are across and miles away from the dessert and crossing our fingers that there is still hope out from this barren and dry land.
Working and tilling the land which i did not own and in this country which i have never been accepted is like a continuous pain that lingers me momentarily. Working and serving these people quite painfuf. I stayed here in the desert just because i need to tend my family's vineyard. And this is where God leads me to be near to my family and to Him. No other road in life that is sweet and encouraging than this road that leads me to where i am now.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
WHEN THE KNOT IS NOT
“I do....until death do us part.” These are the sweetest words which we always hear during the ceremony of marriage.
When man and woman exchange the "I do’s” to one another they are binding the knot of marriage. The covenant that seal the commitment of one another. One cannot say: “I do” if he or she doesn’t have a love to the recipient of his love. Love is always the medium of instruction why man and woman submerged into one during the Sacrament of Matrimony. A man cannot marry a girl without loving her and on the other hand she only marries a person if she has been committed and proven her love to the man of her life.
Marriage and love cannot be separated. They are greatly intertwined with one another. Marriage is dissolved when love emerged from its existence from both parties. Man and woman are enamored when they shared with one another the grace expressed on the Sacrament of Marriage. Thus, marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, dependent.
No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion and for the sake of publicity. It is very rare to have a couple who runs for their life and subdue the fruits of marriage and even death cannot separate the bond. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.
On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. Thus, it remains inside the cabinet that love could be taught. True love is proven after marriage. But it is always good and moral that prior to getting married love dwells and its existence proves no boundaries and limits. Man and woman become one because love eliminates alienation. There are rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be founded that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the “growing-used-to-each-other” is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man. And such time comes everything is annihilated and alienation is said to be ruled over within the framework of the marriage life. Thus, marriage knot which once knotted tightly is said to be loosened in order to have a better view on the panoramic view of marriage life, on the other hand one asks for a divorce and or annulment.
Divorce and annulment has its own different view. On the onset of the Christian teaching, marriage is held to be a sacrament, which vested by the church thru Jesus Christ , nevertheless, so there could be no divorce in the sense of a dissolution of marriage. I may say divorce is a merely separation from bed and board, and even this limited provision was possible only through the sentence of an ecclesiastical court. Nullification was possible for any cause which could be proven to have existed before the marriage, which in turn interfered with that marriage's validity as defined by Canon law. The Christian teaching regarded marriage as a lifelong and sacred union that could only be dissolved by the death of one of the spouses. This view of marriage conceived of husband and wife as made "one flesh" by the act of God; thus marriage was changed from a terminable civil contract under the old Roman law to a sacrament, a humanly indivisible union of souls and bodies. Nevertheless, there is no divorce in the Roman Catholic Church.
On the other hand, annulment is not the ecclesial equivalent of a divorce, rather it is a declaration of nullity, nevertheless not a dissolution of an existing marriage, but rather a determination that a marriage was never existed.
Friday, October 23, 2009
The Otherness of the Other
The question of the appropriate relation of the society to homosexuals and homosexuality has emerged as one of the major importance in the deliberations of denominational bodies. The ensuing debate too often takes the form of a contest between defenders of traditional morality on the one hand and apologists for homosexual life style on the other. What is too often lacking in this conservative-liberal confrontation is attention to pertinent theological reflection. In what follows my aim is not so much to provide as to provoke that kind of reflection.
From the outset I should indicate how I became interested in this subject and what my biases are. I have, over the past several years had a number of friends and associates who were quite self-consciously homosexual. Many of these have been related in significant ways to the church. Some are committed laymen and laywomen, some are active clergy, some are seminary students. Some of these friends are extraordinarily talented and powerful people. Others are haunted by self-doubt and self-loathing. All of them share a concern to understand themselves in the light of Christian faith. I know how difficult this is when the church, through its official pronouncements and its unofficial atmosphere, reinforces in them the impression that they are neither understood nor wanted, neither loved nor even to be “tolerated”. One of my biases is to want to defend these folk against the church. But I also have another biases namely, that heterosexuality is a fundamentally superior form of sexuality to homosexuality.
In the meantime the issue of homosexuals in the church has come to the fore in unexpected ways. I believe that the debate has both raised and obscured important issues, but it has seemed important to me that theologians address themselves to these issues in such a way as to help clarify them and to serve the church as it struggles to determine the appropriate stance.
I have remembered one of our lessons during my Masteral stints way back 2004, during my theology class on God’s grace vis-à-vis God’s judgment , the Christian faith we have to do with the gracious God whose one and supreme intention is to justify, save and redeem humanity not on the basis of a discrimination between better and worse persons but solely on the basis of God’s own gracious election. Followed through with consistency, this principle maintains that no human act or condition can of itself constitute an insuperable obstacle to God’s grace.
Thus, anybody attains his salvation through God’s grace accompanied by man’s participation through good works. With respect to the understanding of homosexuality, therefore, neither homosexual condition nor homosexual inclination nor specifically homosexual acts may be interpreted as excluding one from the domain of God’s gracious intention.
Is homosexual inclination an obstacle to be overcome -- a training ground for the will in the discipline of renunciation which prepares one for some further obedience? Placing homosexuality in this context calls into question behavioral modification schemes for remedying an unruly homosexual inclination. Vocation entails obedient freedom, not conditioned response.
Should a homosexual inclination be placed in an order similar to that of marriage? Here homosexuals may ask themselves whether their homosexuality is to be placed in the service of God through the establishment of a committed and enduring relationship. Such a relationship may then be understood as a witness in a world of broken and impersonal relationships to the God-given possibility of and provocation toward fidelity and trust among persons.
If we are persuaded that there may be a third category of sexual vocation, then the homosexual may further ask: How is my homosexuality to be acted out in such a way as to contribute to God’s purposes for me and my fellow human beings? What are the features of a homosexual pattern of relationships which point toward or bring to expression the lordship of Christ? Responses to such a question are possible only on the part of persons who understand themselves as claimed by Christ in their homosexuality.
The kinds of responses which are made to this question on the part of Christian homosexuals will have great importance for all of us. For these responses may help to illuminate also the situation of heterosexuals for whom neither marriage nor celibacy, as traditional categories of sexual vocation, function to clarify their situation of concrete obedience to Christ.
From the outset I should indicate how I became interested in this subject and what my biases are. I have, over the past several years had a number of friends and associates who were quite self-consciously homosexual. Many of these have been related in significant ways to the church. Some are committed laymen and laywomen, some are active clergy, some are seminary students. Some of these friends are extraordinarily talented and powerful people. Others are haunted by self-doubt and self-loathing. All of them share a concern to understand themselves in the light of Christian faith. I know how difficult this is when the church, through its official pronouncements and its unofficial atmosphere, reinforces in them the impression that they are neither understood nor wanted, neither loved nor even to be “tolerated”. One of my biases is to want to defend these folk against the church. But I also have another biases namely, that heterosexuality is a fundamentally superior form of sexuality to homosexuality.
In the meantime the issue of homosexuals in the church has come to the fore in unexpected ways. I believe that the debate has both raised and obscured important issues, but it has seemed important to me that theologians address themselves to these issues in such a way as to help clarify them and to serve the church as it struggles to determine the appropriate stance.
I have remembered one of our lessons during my Masteral stints way back 2004, during my theology class on God’s grace vis-à-vis God’s judgment , the Christian faith we have to do with the gracious God whose one and supreme intention is to justify, save and redeem humanity not on the basis of a discrimination between better and worse persons but solely on the basis of God’s own gracious election. Followed through with consistency, this principle maintains that no human act or condition can of itself constitute an insuperable obstacle to God’s grace.
Thus, anybody attains his salvation through God’s grace accompanied by man’s participation through good works. With respect to the understanding of homosexuality, therefore, neither homosexual condition nor homosexual inclination nor specifically homosexual acts may be interpreted as excluding one from the domain of God’s gracious intention.
Is homosexual inclination an obstacle to be overcome -- a training ground for the will in the discipline of renunciation which prepares one for some further obedience? Placing homosexuality in this context calls into question behavioral modification schemes for remedying an unruly homosexual inclination. Vocation entails obedient freedom, not conditioned response.
Should a homosexual inclination be placed in an order similar to that of marriage? Here homosexuals may ask themselves whether their homosexuality is to be placed in the service of God through the establishment of a committed and enduring relationship. Such a relationship may then be understood as a witness in a world of broken and impersonal relationships to the God-given possibility of and provocation toward fidelity and trust among persons.
If we are persuaded that there may be a third category of sexual vocation, then the homosexual may further ask: How is my homosexuality to be acted out in such a way as to contribute to God’s purposes for me and my fellow human beings? What are the features of a homosexual pattern of relationships which point toward or bring to expression the lordship of Christ? Responses to such a question are possible only on the part of persons who understand themselves as claimed by Christ in their homosexuality.
The kinds of responses which are made to this question on the part of Christian homosexuals will have great importance for all of us. For these responses may help to illuminate also the situation of heterosexuals for whom neither marriage nor celibacy, as traditional categories of sexual vocation, function to clarify their situation of concrete obedience to Christ.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
An Endless Point
Until you have vanished from my sight
and found yourself in the crowd
i keep on waving my hand
to be seen from the distancebut seems you don't ever notice it
and still wonder from afar
somebody handed you some comfort
for an exchange of our friendship
for an exchange of our friendship
Thus, gives you a change to doubt.
while am giving you some reasons
to know how much I love you.
I thought you had enough
but everything is just seem right
and planned to leave me aside
and planned to leave me aside
leaving you there with the comfort of life
while i am learning to let go and set you aside
for this heart of mine teaches me how to fly
there i learned to put an end
of this journey finding you that never end.
