20110828

Sunday Evenings

Good evening, Philippines - mabuhay!

The Roman Catholic faith, for it to catch on, must be experienced -

Christ must be experienced!

As I share this faith with many of my fellow Filipinos who are all of us, along with all others in this nation we call home, brothers and sisters of the Promise, it would be lacking of me if I do not exhort you, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, not only to keep our Christian faith but also to revel in it and prosper in its embrace.

From now on, I am reserving Sunday evenings to have a casual conversation with you regarding our Roman Catholic faith.

And I shall be doing this in the context of the peace of the times. We shall relate our faith to our own experience of Country.

If you have been following our conversation, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus the Lord, you will know what to expect.

The past has been terrible. Our world is devastated. Every one of our nations is broken. As a result, many hearts are left empty and desolate. There is as much loneliness out there in our world as there is darkness in our midst.

Our work here, under this season of heaven, is not to put and end to war or the spirit of War but to reverse the tide of this darkness and revive the strength of the human spirit.

The everlasting Peace is the prerogative of God alone.

Our labor as nations has always been to give shelter to the strength of human community and to prosper the peace of Man on earth as an extension of the governance of God's Providence in all visible creation.

This shall also be the work of our one Filipino nation.

It shall not be as the past: We will make the transition from age to age.

Therefore, I will not be encouraging in any of you, division in the one Filipino heart.

You yourselves should know by now - by weight of history and by strength of destiny - that this division, this War in the heart, is an abomination before God in the heart of any nation. What this sin in the heart of our nations produces upon our earth should be clear to us now.

Our Roman Catholic faith is integral to the peace of our Philippines. But like I said, a Catholic who does not experience his or her own faith and does not come alive to it is really, really missing out big time. Why?

Look around you. God is calling us all to Himself - if there is any time to encounter Jesus Christ in your life, it is now.

I tell you, show a sincere interest in matters of the faith and manifest an open heart and the Holy Spirit will surely fill your life with good things.

So this Sunday Evening, my beloved brothers and sisters, I bid us all to return to Holy Mass and to understand it with heart and faith.

Prayer is the first thing and the last thing. And the best prayer of all is Holy Mass.

- selah -

Remember, brothers and sisters, we are transitioning from age to age - from old to new - from Night to Day - from War to Peace - from forgetfulness to remembrance. Put this in mind when the darkness of the past shall tempt you with bitterness and despair about things regarding our Roman Catholic religion, our Christianity as a whole, all honorable religions especially Islam and Judaism, and our nations.

May the Peace of Jesus Christ which is beyond all understanding sustain our desire to make this Republic of ours more perfect.

Glory to God and peace to our one Filipino nation!

---<--@

Prayer requests -

Let us pray for the people along the East Coast of America - may Hurricane Irene be broken by the power of God through our good will as nations prevailing upon the earth and through our love for our fellow human beings in this world so full of loneliness and trouble.

Let us also pray thanks to the LORD in behalf of our own Country for seeing us through Typhoon Mina and ask His consolation and help for those who have been directly affected by its evil.

May this need in our nation help to temper all of God's instruments among us that we may be led to become a more loving and compassionate people.

Everybody have a great working week!

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Ita Missa Est

Common Ground

20110827

Salutation #47

A DEAF PERSON who goes through life learning to listen soon becomes wiser than a person who hears but never learns to listen.

While it is entirely possible - even desirable - to overcome this world without much speaking, without listening we are utterly ruined.

(The Wisdom of Listening)

If we are to proceed in the way of our learning,

from God to the communities embraced by His Providence,

we must learn to listen attentively to the reality

of the instruments of Providence.

It is always better to learn from persons

by our trust in the inherent good of others

- than to seek to unlearn -

the sincerity native to our good will

by nurturing any bitterness stemming from hurt

or from any perceived lack of good in the person of others.

This is always true with regard to those

whose littleness and difficulties conceal from many

the true value of their instruction

- all who are the least among others -

whom the darkness of this world blindly rejects.

For this must always come by way of false comparisons

that rob ourselves and others of our particular sense of uniqueness

and removes us further from the truth.

Therefore,

let us make it a rule of our everyday living

that it is always better to listen first than to ask first.

We must be listeners first and speakers last.

For much listening shall often reveal to us the answers

where much speaking give rise only to questions.

And counsel that is well-received

is worth more than a thousand questions.

But if we must know how to listen to the counsel of others,

we must also learn how ably we must bend - against our own will -

and this bending is the bending of obedience.

All our hearing amounts to nothing

if our listening does not lead to discernment.

For all our listening is a form of obedience.

It is wise only inasmuch as it leads us to the truth.

We must understand - first - that obedience merits much

only when we are taught in the way of mutual trust and respect,

in an atmosphere of understanding, and in the freedom of the truth.

When obedience fails,

it fails because it is given blindly

or when it is a choice wrongly taken away

or as a bondage that is forced against the will.

This is ignorance, timidity and oppression - respectively -

and it avails evil people much but then again,

by token of these same things,

it can also be said if we know how to listen to Providence

- that their evil is but a thing permitted -

by each and every one of us

who by token of their same evil,

are led to the leadings of the good.

For all tyranny that matures,

matures only because it is an evil allowed by the people.

Obedience - in a nation -

is neither servility nor weakness.

It is the strength to know the truth

as well as the resilience to uphold it,

in sacred remembrance of each other;

it is as the bending of a bow - aimed towards the infinite -

we let fly not because we are hurt,

we let fly because we have finally found

our peace with each other.

To not be ignorant, we must know to ask.

To not be timid, we must learn to know to ask.

To not be oppressed, we must learn to know

to always ask without fail.

---<--@

Most of the things that love says is never said at all.

---<--@

The Question -

An angel asked me, "...and what do I love, O heart?" For I longed to know.

It led me to a shop and showed me a thing I desired for myself but could not yet afford. Something I knew I knew but did not really think about that much.

"I love all these things that you love, O heart, that leads you to be good", the angel said to me.

"I love all the good clothes that was made for you, I love the cell phone that you'd so wished for so much, oh and that laptop - I love that as well - for you, O heart."

"So how do you love me in return?" The angel's question seem to echo from deep into my being for the lesson has now penetrated me indelibly right into my heart.

There was silence:

"You shall love the LORD thy God as one LORD alone".

"Make peace with the all of creation. Divide it not. Say peace to the river, to the sky, to the earth, to the animals (and the trees) of the earth and the fishes of the seas, to thy nations good will and to all thy fellow human beings, life and abundance. Do this if you love me."
---<--@

Our Land of Promise -

The nationhood that is our Promise shall not be as a house of cards, empty of substance, propped up by countless divisions, inspired by diverse and manifold hatreds;selfish, evil, reckless, irresponsible, and adulterous in the sight of God, Angels and Man.

We shall not be as a house in constant rebellion against its own lineages of truth - we shall not be this way.

We shall be the meaning that lives inside of our words, my beloved brothers and sisters of the Promise - the citizenship inside of ourselves - for ours is a spiritual renaissance.

---<--@

National Heroes Day and Eid al-Fitr 2011 -

This last Monday of August is National Heroes Day (August 29).

The following day, August 30, is Eid al-Fitr which is the event that marks the completion of the cycle of Ramadan for our Muslim brothers and sisters of the Promise.

Both of these days are legally recognized as public holidays in our Philippines.

In this pivotal year, my honorable Filipino compatriots, I bid us to welcome these commemorations as one nation and to honor these days, as citizens to each other, with remembrances proper to the peace of our Philippines.

Let us reflect upon this peace.

May we learn to keep it, one to another, as keeper and friend.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! Peace. Salaam. Shalom. God bless us all.

Ignite

Starshine,
your addiction is to life.

There is nothing worthy
about things that cause harm -
Destruction is only good
if it brings about growth and transformation.

So remember this
when you shall desire to find yourself
when you shall seek to one day be
as stars looking out from yourself
possessed by your own light,
being by the one Beautiful beheld
seeing far into the darkness
of our needful world:
Make no provision in your heart
for evil things: Here, Now.

For there will come a time in your life
when you shall be confused
when you shall cross an imperceptible threshold
into an in-between world -
By the ebb and flow tides of shadow and light,
you shall wander alone with the Alone
and you will be compelled to look for those things
that are meant to be yours
as well as forced to shed away all other things
that should no-wise belong to you.

So listen to good counsel, Beloved of God,
for it is better not to begin weeping
than to weep until the tears that was begun
are all shed away by our weeping together
for before you can shed your own starlight,
our most precious Starshine,
before the love in your heart ignites,
you must first shed away all your tears.
---<--@

Salutation #46

(The Wisdom of Learning)

We are - because -

we have come to know who we are not.

This is why we must ask our questions

sincerely seeking for answers.

For when we learn any truth,

we do not learn to use it - unless -

we are led by an understanding

of our need of it.

We become wise

not by the conception of what we know how to do

- but by the sheer weight -

of what we know we ought not to do.

Wisdom never applies where danger is absent.

We become wise - only -

when we become broken enough

by the wrong things to ask ourselves why.

Fear of the LORD must lead to a reverence of Him.

For the safety of God is the beginning of wisdom.

Or we could learn to listen, to ponder and to observe -

To be able to surrender a measure

of our own freedom to the ennobling of others,

submit our independence to their discipline

and strive to remain in the humility of our youth

- the agelessness of little children -

to be able to absorb their constant teaching.

Fear of the instruments of the LORD

must also lead to a reverence of Him.

For wisdom that is learned

and wisdom that is transmitted

are one and the same thing.

In the former,

we expose ourselves to the presence of things

we must learn to never trust.

And in the latter,

we expose ourselves to the presence of things

we must learn to trust.

Both of these - being those things -

that we should never expose ourselves to in the first place.

Such is the condition of our exile!

For if our bliss is to never know danger,

to never know wisdom, makes it perfect.

The safety of God is the beginning of all learning.

And a knowledge of the truth is its own lineage.

For all true things ascend to God - just as surely -

as all our learning must eventually disappear

from the confines of both mind and heart

to return again to the infinite depths of the Divine.

All knowledge is a giving that begins with God

and a receiving that must end forever in God.

All our learning is nothing we can possess.

All our knowledge may only be kept in trust.

We possess it for a while as a means to find our way

and then we must return it - again and again -

to the LORD Who possesses all means.

Indeed,

learning that does not lead to wisdom

is like water that never flows - without purpose -

and like a river with neither beginning nor end - meaningless.

All learning that is kept like a treasure rots.

For every knowledge that must remain - as truth in the heart -

must be something we forever give away.

---<--@

20110821

The National Salutation

ALL SALUTATIONS are meant to invoke into our collective memory the reality of something good.

Evil being devoid of the excellence we tend to honor and admire is not something we commonly salute as individual human beings and as human nations together we do not openly invoke them in our salutations.

Therefore, we may safely exclude from this particular reflection anything else but the good in things.

"Mabuhay" is the salutation commonly associated with the Philippines. As such, it is something quite familiar to all of us Filipinos and even to other nations.

It is not a salutation of individuals.

Therefore, it can never be something meant to refer to any individual or anything about the life of an individual or about his or her virtues no matter how excellent.

So what does it mean when we Filipinos say "mabuhay"?

And when we Filipinos say "mabuhay" to whom or to what in particular do we tend to commonly - or even unconsciously - address it to?

Mabuhay simply means "to bring to life". It is a salutation that invokes "life" or the quality of it.

Now, the life of any nation is the product of the quality of the communities that exists within itself. It is therefore, a measure of the sum of all its relationships.

This sum is always positive no matter how deteriorated any nation becomes. There are no last peoples only disappeared cultures. There will always be remnant nations for as long as there are nations upon our world.

Because just as there are no such things as false hopes, only real ones; there are no such things as false relationships, only real ones.

But the quality of these relationships within the nation is a product of the quality of the national remembrance. For it is remembrance that dictates the quality of the national peace.

- selah -

Mabuhay is the salutation of our nation in its entirely and so must refer to the quality of the life of the nationhood in each ourselves as well as the completeness of the sacred remembrances we must keep through all our generations as a nation upon this earth.

It intends to invoke in the Filipino heart, a memory of itself.

It is a salutation addressed directly and simultaneously to all Filipinos from everywhere and from every time and is meant to return our every present generation to the timeless memory of our people.

It reminds us of the reality of our nationhood; its duties and responsibilities, its mission, promise and destiny. It says to every Filipino heart, "long may our remembrances serve us".

So when we Filipinos say "mabuhay" it should mean that we do love the Philippines as citizens to each other, and that we do understand it as truth in our hearts.

When we say it with substance, this truth empowers us.

It must elicit in our hearts a love that is not distant or abstract.

It must remind us of something real to our common hopes as a nation, something we can all meaningfully understand.

It must continuously rekindle in ourselves as citizens to each other a kind of ownership proper to our national trust and empower us with a love of Country that reaches right down to the ground of our national communities enabling every Filipino to freely bring the blessings of our peace into lives of the very least of our brothers and sister, the littlest Filipinos.

- selah -

The life of every nation is derived from its particular sense of unity and this particular sense of unity is derived from the strength of its peace.

Upon this peace (and the abundance or the lack of it) is established the order and the cohesion of all its national community.

A nation's life therefore, is measured by the sum of all the relationships within itself.

Mabuhay is meant to recall us to a memory of all of these relationships and in particular, to the poor and needy, not to remind us of what we lack but to return us to what we all must be, to the labor that our nation is purposed for by God, the trust that bind together all our generations, and the remembrance of the peace that must constantly live in each of us as citizens, one to another, equally engaged in our one Republic undertaking of Country - mabuhay!

---<--@

Salutation #46

(The Wisdom of Learning)

We are - because -

we have come to know who we are not.

This is why we must ask our questions

sincerely seeking for answers.

For when we learn any truth,

we do not learn to use it - unless -

we are led by an understanding

of our need of it.

We become wise

not by the conception of what we know how to do

- but by the sheer weight -

of what we know we ought not to do.

Wisdom never applies where danger is absent.

We become wise - only -

when we become broken enough

by the wrong things to ask ourselves why.

Fear of the LORD must lead to a reverence of Him.

For the safety of God is the beginning of wisdom.

Or we could learn to listen, to ponder and to observe -

To be able to surrender a measure

of our own freedom to the ennobling of others,

submit our independence to their discipline

and strive to remain in the humility of our youth

- the agelessness of little children -

to be able to absorb their constant teaching.

Fear of the instruments of the LORD

must also lead to a reverence of Him.

For wisdom that is learned

and wisdom that is transmitted

are one and the same thing.

In the former,

we expose ourselves to the presence of things

we must learn to never trust.

And in the latter,

we expose ourselves to the presence of things

we must learn to trust.

Both of these - being those things -

that we should never expose ourselves to in the first place.

Such is the condition of our exile!

For if our bliss is to never know danger,

to never know wisdom, makes it perfect.

The safety of God is the beginning of all learning.

And a knowledge of the truth is its own lineage.

For all true things ascend to God - just as surely -

as all our learning must eventually disappear

from the confines of both mind and heart

to return again to the infinite depths of the Divine.

All knowledge is a giving that begins with God

and a receiving that must end forever in God.

All our learning is nothing we can possess.

All our knowledge may only be kept in trust.

We possess it for a while as a means to find our way

and then we must return it - again and again -

to the LORD Who possesses all means.

Indeed,

learning that does not lead to wisdom

is like water that never flows - without purpose -

and like a river with neither beginning nor end - meaningless.

All learning that is kept like a treasure rots.

For every knowledge that must remain - as truth in the heart -

must be something we forever give away.

---<--@

A Filipino is a kind of love and this love binds us all together as one nation.

---<--@

Today, we remember Ninoy - his life, his loves, his hopes, his labors, his sacrifice.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

One Nation

20110815

The Greatest of Marian Knights

Yesterday was the feast day of one of the principal Saints in my life, Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe.

You will notice that I take my name from Saint Maximilian.

This is so because I have a great devotion to this Saint of God. To Saint Maximilian, I owe much of my Roman Catholic formation.

In many ways, he is to me the greatest of all Marian Knights.

He and my darling Annelies Marie share a connection in my life that have proven to be more than mere coincidence.

He is the patron Saint of the suffering addict and refuge of the recovering addict.

My own Marian character was taught to me by Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe.

Glorified be God forever in all His Angels and in all His Saints!

---<--@

The Feast of the Assumption

Today is the feast day of the Assumption of our Lady.

It is the focal Marian feast that reveals through the life of our Lady the immense joy of our Christian faith.

It is equivalent to the Transfiguration in the life of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in that both of these are a preparatory experience in the Christian life.

Simply put, a Marian character in a Roman Catholic soul multiplies joy.

This Marian joy lends its strength to Christian endurance. It prepares our hearts to live the hope of ordinary time.

- selah -

Now, if there is anything our Lady desires of thee, O my Philippines - it is thy own heart at prayer.

You know this in your own hearts, my fellow Filipino compatriots, that God has set a labor before our hearts and a challenge for all the world to repent unto Peace and forsake War.

For these are defining times indeed, we are living in a transition from age to age.

Prayer is a battle we can not refuse to fight.

But our prayers can not ascend to the unity of the LORD, O my nation, if War is in our heart.

- selah -

We have to learn to pray as a nation:

We have to learn to desire what a nation desires.

We have to forsake the divisions that have prevented our unity.

We have to let go of the bitterness that have fed these animosities.

We have to stand up against the despair that have shackled our dreaming.

We have to see our generations through this midnight darkness

ever by the light of our faith in God and in each other as citizens together.

We have to understand -

A nation that prays as one, stays as one.

And a nation at one with its own truth is a nation at peace.

Verily, as a nation, we can not be anything else but one.

So let us pray to God for the gift of prayer for our nation. Let us desire it from God as our Lady desires it from us now so that in time we may all profess to the LORD as one the truth that the prayer of the Philippines is Peace.

---<--@

Closing Reflection -

The common religion of every Man is peace - it is that mysterious desire dwelling deep within all of us to be able to somehow return to the happiness and perfection of that one common belonging written in each our heart; the Peace of the LORD, the one God of All creation.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Hope Taking Wing

An Act of Unity

20110809

The Controversial CCP Exhibit: Freedom of Expression?

I'm not going to post a picture of the controversial exhibition at the CCP because it is offensive to my Roman Catholic religion.

Here is what I think of the matter -

If the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) were a private venue, it would have been fine. But since the CCP is a public venue, the argument stands - in this particular instance, this is not freedom of expression.

I am not arguing absolutely here. This exhibition is not something proper to our individual right to freedom of expression, in this particular instance, not because the artist is not free to express his or her creativity, in whatever craft or medium he or she chooses. Indeed any artist should be absolutely free to convey to our general appreciation whatever message, offensive or otherwise, is being carried by his or her artwork.

It is not proper to our individual right to freedom of expression not in the sense that the artist is not free to practice.

- selah -

We should as a society be free to be able to appreciate even the most provocative forms of art.

It is not proper not in the manner that it was expressed (though it is completely offensive to my religious sensibilities) but because it is not an expression that is relevant to the place where the exhibition is taking place.

The limited welcome of this form of art in Filipino society is hugely disproportionate to the scope and prestige of its actual venue, the CCP. Therefore, it is a freedom irresponsibly exercised.

To claim freedom of expression here - as is - without due respect to the freedom of others is to misconstrue the fundamental nature of human freedom.

All our freedoms have responsibilities attached to them. Every individual right is protected by a corresponding universal civic duty. In this instance, the freedom being expressed is irresponsible and therefore, an anathema to itself.

The artist is free to express his or her art form but in a venue more in keeping to that particular form of art (if he or she can find one) and this in order to preserve the public good which in this case is the general morality of the Filipino public (i.e. that prevailing sense of sanity that makes possible the flourishing of our wonderfully distinct Filipino culture).

It is this very morality that compels me to respect the artist's own individual freedom, at least in my own judgment about the matter, while preserving also the good of the Filipino public at large; a morality I draw from the strength of my Roman Catholic faith out of the love I have in God and in Jesus Christ; a morality I am sure I share in common with all our fellow citizens who like me, also find strength in the practice of any honorable human religion.

It could have been the right exhibit at the right venue. But it is the wrong exhibit in the wrong venue. It should be removed.

Finally, all passions aside, we should use this opportunity to learn from the matter and transform this untoward incident into a winning instance for our culture (in the strengthening of individual rights) and for our Republic (in the bettering of our common freedoms).

---<--@

The Chicken and the Egg

"What came first the chicken or the egg?"

This very old trick question we can reframe in the context of this particular post as -

"What came first the freedom or the responsibility?"

Ok so, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

None. Since both the chicken and the egg represents a cycle of life where each one guarantees the existence of the other. This cycle is established on a timeless truth - a first principle.

The trick is to stop asking the question and start understanding the truth that exists in principle outside of the question.

Life can never be inimical to life.

Our freedom (like our life) is by nature, a human good. So we human beings insticntively reach out for it. Because it is a good, it is vulnerable to become corrupted.

Herein lies the conundrum. Because our freedom when it is corrupted stops the cycle.

Like the chicken and the egg question, freedom as a common human need is the safeguard of human responsibility.

In a society that is just, human freedom is understood to be authentic.

To live with false freedoms is to live the trick in the question instead of the truth that exists outside of it; the truth we must constantly strive to reach every moment, every day, despite of our constant asking; the truth seems to hide in plain sight.

Freedom without responsibility becomes an anathema to itself.

It leads to action without accountability, destroys the progress of liberty in any society, and uproots the moral foundations of any economy.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Freedom that is free is free indeed.

Common Human Needs

20110808

Good morning Philippines!

And a very good Monday start of the working week to all.

It's a humid, overcast day out there, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, all my fellow Filipinos of every stripe, almost gloomy - but weather IS a relative thing - especially the weather we choose to live inside of ourselves.

"Establish within thy soul

an unyielding firmament of Day"

- Salutation #9, Perseverance

Keeping a perspective on things is important, O my nation, especially during these days of unprecedented change.

Truly we are a people guided much more by the steps of our hearts than by the fickle fashions of the spirit of the world.

The world outside of ourselves is undergoing so much change - in more ways than one, even the climate of space is shifting. Indeed there is much cause out there for needless worry.

But if we willingly place ourselves as a people together upon the original peace of our foundation, we shall not be harried so much by the storm that must pass us by, O my people, if only through sheer grit and conviction that we are one nation entire.

If we know who we are, no external weather system is going to cause our nation to derail itself from its long march eastward to destiny. Because this is the way back to our Eden rebuilt, O my beloved people, the way God has established for all human nations.

This is our return to promise.

- selah -

Unity is important to any emerging undertaking of Country.

Let us be encouraged by the recent dialogue between the GRP and the MILF.

Let us be mindful as well of the willingness of each our kindred nations across our needful world to provide us assistance - let us remember their kindness always.

This kind of remembrance will go a long way towards preserving our own sense of a prevailing national good will. Let us refuse to become evil-inspired and pawns to the relentless hatred of the enemy of all human nations.

Let us learn to keep our liberty, preserve its value, know its cost, and use it well.

Let us work to become individually informed as well as better involved in the vital processes that shall help to actualize the dream of unity for our Republic and peace for our nation.

And let us be altogether convinced that this peace is our only way forward into the miracle of national development; a miracle our people have deserved for so long.

Let us be vigilant about this peace, my honorable compatriots, bearing in mind and heart how easy it is to become sleepy and complacent about it. Few to none of us have ever known it in our lives to be empirically convinced of its merit.

Generally speaking, it is very easy to be lulled back into the deadly embrace of 2000 years of division in the human heart.

We must never allow War back into the abode of our souls with the LORD.

Indeed, all of us are now coming to perceive the void that is staring our failing world in the face to realize the existence of a better way, a road less traveled, as it were, an eastward way back to an Eden rebuilt; a way of return for our one family of the nations of Mankind.

This eastward way is guarded by an angel. And this angel shall require each of us to complete each our own remembrances as a nation distinct but not apart from our one family of nations. This angel shall query each of our hearts for the quality of our belonging as a people upon the earth; a nation under the LORD; a Republic with a soul of submission and a heart of peace.

My fellow Filipino compatriots, this is our road back to promise.

---<--@

The Twilight of Choices - The Milky Way Road

You can see how our other nations suffer from diverse things. We ourselves know some of their suffering. If we, as a nation, better ourselves - if we defy the sins that have defied our society in the past - we acquire from God the timeless lessons that shall help to heal our other kindred nations. In this way, we help our region, our continent, and our world - indirectly at first.

Look up at the night sky outside of your souls, my honorable compatriots, you know it in your own love that if we help ourselves, as we are doing now under President Noynoy and under this season of the Sky, we add to the strength of our one family of nations.

We no longer live in a void. We have chosen to be as the numberless stars. Indeed, if we shine all the more harder together, the nearer we get to the Light, the more we add to the strength of our one whole Sky.

---<--@

Your Prayers Here Please -

To all my brothers and sisters in the Promise - all the numberless stars of our Father Abraham, guided by the Light of the unity of the LORD and empowered by the one Peace of God - Let us pray for Syria - for an end to the spiral of violence, for Libya - for the protection of all its civilians from War, for Israel and Palestine like twins joined together in War or in Peace - may they both stand together in Peace rather than fall apart in War, for Egypt - for its own necessary searching for its soul of Country, for the United States - for the peace within her own self, may it prevail in the name of the common people, let us pray for the peace of all our nations.

To all my Brothers and Sisters in Christ and to my Holy Mother Church -

Let us put all these prayers in our hearts, in our rosary of hope, and above all, please take them all with you to Holy Mass as I will.

Finally, let us pray for the souls of Attorney Benjamin Pinpin of my home parish and for all the fallen warriors of our nation and of every nation in this crucial twilight of our nations awakening from the longest night of our needful world.

We will expedite his final hopes on earth.

"A Christian without prayer is like a soldier without a rifle."

Holy Father Dominic de Guzman, pray for us.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Healing Work

One Nation

War in the Heart

20110806

Awakening the Dream

IF WE ACHIEVE THE DREAM of peace in our times, my honorable compatriots, we shall unlock the true potential of our nation meaningfully engaged in realizing its promise as the one Republic of the Philippines - for all our people and for all our generations - a home away from Home for all Filipinos.

Achieve the political peace by or before the end of 2012. This is one of the conditions necessary for our nation to enter into the new age in peace with God and in harmony with the season that the LORD has set forth before all nations.

The political peace is the negotiated peace between the GRP and the MILF and represents the will of our leaderships to mend the internal disagreements that have led to the conflict.

This peace on paper is distinct from the national peace which is the actual work of mending our communities, of accommodating, reconciling and realizing our common hopes, one with another.

To set our own expectations aright, my fellow Filipino compatriots, the process of obtaining from the LORD, our national peace, is a distinct labor apart from the political peace process being undertaken by the GRP and the MILF and must be understood as such.

The national peace is the labor of our national whole.

Achieving the national peace (2012-2045) for our one Republic will take us much longer and will require a deeper conviction but is a labor which we can not begin nonetheless joined together as one Republic undertaking of Country without a prior peace on paper.

God shall bless our nation for being loyal to the mission He has invested in all human nations which is to give shelter to its communities against War and the darkness of exile as a particular endeavor of Country upon the earth and through these necessary graces, deepen our conviction to prosper the peace for ourselves and our posterity.

I should remind us now that most of us here today have never even known this peace.

Our leaderships at this point in time must also bear in mind and heart that peace in its general form is absolutely present in the greater will of the one Filipino nation from whom they all draw their sovereign authority and unto whom we all belong by birth, by common desire, and by the will of Divine Providence.

In this world caught adrift in the ebb and flow tides of exile time, my beloved brothers and sisters of the Promise, from the nation we all shall begin, from the nation we all shall return.

So let us take this truth to heart and put a paramount value on the peace of our national communities.

- selah -

Truly, my beloved people, there is a greater season at work here and we should be mindful of it because it involves matters much larger in their scope than our internal divisions. I hope all the recent goings-on in our world gives our own peace process a deeper perspective.

Having said this, I am encouraged by the recent meeting between President Noy and Chairman Murad in Tokyo - mabuhay po kayo!

I am also thankful for the government of Japan for getting better involved in this vital process for my Country reminding all concerned parties that achieving peace in our Philippines will also add to the greater good of our local region and of our home continent of Asia.

---<--@

A Word on Philippine Electoral Culture -

There are no losers in an honest election. But in a dishonest election, the whole nation is the loser.

---<--@

The Highest Office -

The highest Office in a Republic is the LORD's as the one Sovereign of all nations, God, our first defender and one Source of all our relationships.

All other Offices are established according to their nobility. Nobility, of course, being a substance of character that bears a quality of love for the common people.

Now, the noblest Office in a Republic is the Office of the President and forms at the center of the sheltering wings of government; wings that must fully embrace our one nation in the Peace of an undertaking of Country and this Country for us is the one Republic of the Philippines.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! Mabuhay ang Japan! God bless us all.

Being Present for Peace

20110805

Man is a creature of possibilities. Therefore, know your limits. But do not allow yourself to be defined by them.

Salutation #45

(The Gift)

You know in your heart, dear Starshine,

you belong to something greater than thee!

Now there is a dream that lives in thy every spirit

and this truth in thee gives thy soul its powers of flight.

It is present in all thy reaching out to both heaven and earth

for thy dream is an irreplaceable fragment of a greater dreaming.

You are a person called to the labor of the earth;

a citizen purposed by God for the peace of thy nations;

a promise born into the great dreaming of the exile children of Mankind;

thy soul summoned by Our Creator from the nothingness of the void;

a unique fragment of what once was now reside as a mystery in thy own self.

In thy every heart,

you long for thy own place in time,

in so many ways of expressions unique to each of thee

yet each equally true according to thy reaching out

for that same timeless seeking for answers

to the one question that lay at the very beginning of thy being

beckoning thee unto a memory exceedingly sublime

- neither past, present, nor future -

when the Heavens above thee were one,

and the Earth was at one with its own native Sky.

When the portals of Eternity were open and attentive to thy humanity

and the Throne of the LORD burst forth with a golden radiance

embracing all things everywhere with the splendor of the glory of God.

When the Presence of the LORD was upon the face of the Earth,

ministering freely to all thy worlds, within and without,

calling forth all creatures to God, and fruition, and constant felicity;

blessing all the realms of creation with every abundance and in all truth.

When the Light of the LORD filled thy Earth and Sky,

uniting all living beings, seen and unseen,

into the glorious Peace of the one great belonging of God.

Your happiness is a freedom to search for the answers

to that one longing that lives in thy every heart -

a longing that the LORD has for thee lovingly invested

born of a promise thy Creator has laid at the seat of thy own soul;

a freedom to give shape thy every life's purpose

and a hope to whet thy faith for the things of heaven

to stir thy heart unto a remembrance of God

and in God a remembrance of all things in each thy behalf.

For thy common salutation is Peace

so mean it well for this Peace is of a truth;

a good that is beyond all understanding.

---<--@

Mabuhay po tayong lahat! Peace. Salaam. Shalom. God bless all His nations of the one family of the nations of Mankind.

Everybody have a great weekend!

Heartsong

I AM the unsung song
that lives within a dream;
the seed within a soul.

Every infinite universe
embraced from within
the heart of God.

I am the road
not the destiny,
I am the journey
not the destination,
I am the dreaming
not the dream,
I am the becoming,
not the being,
I am the singing,
not the song,
I am the climb
not the peak,
I am what soars!

I begin with a praise -
I breathe the air,
and cry out loud:
Alleluia to the LORD!

I end with a praise -
I lift my head,
and bow my heart:
Alleluia to the LORD!

I am heartsong.

Virtue of Truthfulness

Now please, here is our challenge for this month - 201108

Defeating Homophobia

IGNORANCE breeds fear for lack of understanding. What's strange about it all is that people seem to fear the understanding more than the ignorance itself.

Now we come to a complex issue - gay rights.

Some people find this issue too difficult hence, homophobia. What is it?

ho·mo·pho·bi·a [hoh-muh-foh-bee-uh] –noun: unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality.

Take note, homophobia is an unreasoning fear or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality.

Like I said, it is a complex issue and herein lies its difficulties. It is simply too unreal to say one is pro-gay or anti-gay.

I myself consider my convictions about the issue to be centrist because I find myself advocating both liberal as well as conservative positions. My main argument though and one that I will not compromise with is the issue of human rights for gay people.

First of all, let me put this argument in the proper context -

The last great age of War thrives on a mindset of division. Where these mindsets have become firmly entrenched in the people, some cultures of persecution will persist.

Here in the Philippines, my honorable compatriots, we shall make every effort to successfully enter into the door that will lead our nation to promise in this new age.

We shall, as one nation, work to prosper our peace. This means we shall both clearly define and continually safeguard individual human rights as a vital element requisite to our integral sense of a national common good.

Because, honorable Filipino brothers and sisters of the Promise, without the real development of individuals there can be no true national development and there can be no real development of individuals without individual rights.

- selah -

In this sense, speaking for myself as a citizen, I am more concerned about the fear and ignorance that feed the phenomenon of homophobia than of homosexuals per se as a minority segment of our common humanity.

It is easier to reject than to respect and to forsake love rather than to embrace it. Hate blinds the faith that causes our reason to see further than it normally could, by the grace of God.

This is why in the case of minority human rights issues, above all other considerations, force of law is a requirement we can never do without.

This means that - especially in the case of the weaker segments of any society - the force of free human choice must be augmented by the prevailing law of the land.

But we can not have law without resort to reason and we can not use our reason (naked or otherwise illuminated by faith) without first accepting that homosexuality is not the problem, the phenomenon of homophobia is.

As a Roman Catholic Christian, though my stance on the matter is the traditional one and is well known to all, I am also additionally concerned about the abuse of my Christian faith by those who seek to use it to persecute my fellow human beings (homosexual or not) first of all, and the protection of my faith tradition from the excess of those who for selfish reasons, seek to make it more or less than what it should be (homosexual or not).

I do not believe in same-sex marriages. As far as I am concerned, we should just politely leave church weddings out of it.

But I do believe in the equality of homosexuals (and all human beings) before the law - specific civil contracts should be fine. And I mean this primarily to protect their property rights as fellow citizens equally engaged in our one Republic undertaking.

I believe in the dignity and the promise of the homosexual person as a fellow human being upon this earth but I will never endorse the homosexual act as a legitimate act of conjugal love.

I do not believe in legislating conformity as regards to anybody's private personal preferences as long as both the integrity of the human community and the common good of the nation are not threatened by it.

I am of the religious opinion that the homosexual state is a unique calling to serve in the chaste single state and must be explored in that context. Homosexuality is not a disease. It is a distinct calling to serve. That's my religious opinion.

Furthermore, I believe not in judging homosexuals but in helping them realize also their God-given right to be happy not by a false freedom that will consume them but by the freedom that will liberate them in the truth - that their lives too have purpose and meaning from God if only they shall seek to avoid conformity with the spirit of the world and fall in love with the Spirit of Jesus Christ the Lord.

Besides, how can one help those one has already, in his or her heart, condemned to be beyond help? And the homosexual person is never beyond help - no one is.

"Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins." (2 Peter 4: 8)

Absolutely speaking, I do not believe in using my religion as a weapon against other people.

My honorable compatriots, the future we are choosing to bring forward today belong to all Filipinos - it shall belong to all Filipinos or none at all.

---<--@

Within the week, I shall be issuing our next monthly challenge for this month of August 2011.

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. (Ayn Rand)

Others Like Yourself

A Just Equality

20110801

Our Philippine Marines is a vanguard force. It is their arms that protect the very limits of our sovereignty. It is their vigilance that preserve our one Republic at her frontiers. Go the Marines!

Let us call a spade a spade -

I will admit to you, my fellow Filipinos, I am personally grieved at the recent event in Jolo.

What the ASG did to our marines is utterly condemnable.

But I will not allow myself to become so blind as to become divided in my own heart about our nation. I see and I recognize the virtues of our Muslim compatriots apart from the darkness that is being wrought by those who seek the overthrow of our nationhood.

The President is pursuing an aggressive stance against the ASG. This is well and good. The ASG, as they themselves have so lucidly demonstrated, if they are not engaged in acts of terrorism is engaged in common banditry against our nation and other nations and have not impressed upon anyone any kind of ideal whatsoever worth considering besides force of arms.

My concern belongs entirely to my Muslim compatriots who are honest citizens of this Republic undertaking of Country, who are our fellow Filipinos, brothers and sisters of the Promise.

In this season of Ramadan, they together with the families of the fallen soldiers are the most vulnerable products of this untoward incident.

Indeed, they deserve our kindness, concern and assistance. It is only right.

And prayers for the souls of our fallen warriors.

I have no doubt the cause for which the ASG is now presently engaged is a doomed cause. Clearly, their fallen ideal have left them with no remaining excuse outside the criminal.

But if we forget ourselves, my brothers ans sisters of the Promise, if we shall neglect our peace as Filipinos, we undermine the proactive strength that will bring us closer and closer to the day when peace for our Republic is a greater, much binding force than conflict and division.

Let us today make the distinction.

Our one Country must become empowered by our our nation becoming enabled to embrace and protect - by the sheltering wings of our peace - all our decent citizenry from the scandal of those outlaws posing to act under the banner of any honorable religion - ASG or not.

My honorable compatriots, the future we are choosing to bring forward today belong to all Filipinos - it shall belong to all Filipinos or none at all.

Therefore, all our national communities across our one Republic whole must be able to condemn what is not permissible to our civic culture.

What offends the peace of our greater civic order as a nation must be deemed offensive to all Filipinos in all truth and without prejudice. And all Filipinos should be able to discern this for themselves individually, freely, and without fear.

So may the LORD bless us and favor our nation with His Peace.

Peace be to all Filipinos in this season of Ramadan - Ramadan Mubarak!

---<--@

Finally, let us say a prayer of peace for the soul of our own Corazon Aquino. Let us remember her gift with thanks to her and to our Creator as well as the hopes she has entrusted to our present care.

T

oday is the 2nd year anniversary of her passing away.

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Peace be upon you, O Man,

in this season of Ramadan.