Palm Sunday 2014

Good evening, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus the Lord:

I hope everybody had a blessed Palm Sunday! I know I certainly did.

I and my family have decided to make the most of Holy Week 2014. Indeed, I pray we all will.

As a matter of fact, my family and I have already worked out a daily schedule of activities. This is apart from my official schedule with my brother EMHCs at our Shrine.

It is a joy to discover what one can do with Jesus. Let me witness to each of you that in spite of my sins and despite of my weaknesses, our blessed Savior has never once failed me nor my family. Nada. Not a one.

Trouble with me always begins 100% - when I fail in my duties - communal or personal - to our God.

The health of my spiritual life is always a good indicator of the well being of my whole soul - this means my prayer life is always where I draw the line. And as regards my prayer life, my Queen is our Lady.

If prayer to a Catholic is battle, our Lady is warrior-in-chief. And Mary always leads to The Victory so we have to be sharp.

So there - most of our Holy Week activities are designed to sharpen our attitudes toward prayer. We have to be in love with the act of praying. Because prayer is an attitude of the heart. This is #1.

Because we seek God in prayer - if we are to know how to deepen our prayer life, we should learn to relate with God on a more intimate basis. We have to know the Father and there is no better way of knowing the Father than through the Son.

And so this is the reason for the season - everything that leads up to Easter, Jesus the Lord, designed for us, even here - in our own times, so we could maximize on knowing Who it is we have come to see, and Whose voice it is that constantly calls out to us, "Come and see".

That we may together discover that as Christians, our Lent is truly never without an Easter. And that this Longest Night shall not be without a Morning.
---<--@

We, of the Laity, have a duty to initiate in ourselves the Spirit of the New Evangelization.

We, of the Laity, who Jesus Christ sent forth into deep water have a duty to honor and to make His peace more and more known in our present time, that His Kingdom may be in us and His good will among the Nations prevail for all Mankind.

We have something to give to our world. It is Love - the perfecting Covenant.

We are the children because we are the most vulnerable.
We are the children because we are also the most precious.

Palm Sunday 2014 in Pakistan. You are such a beautiful people, don't you know? May Peace be in Pakistan, India, and throughout South Asia. God bless us all.

We awaken to a calling

Change, they say, is the only constant in this life. This is true for me. Life is a constant change. As in the beautiful song by Jose Marie Chan.

But within all that change, I have found, lies a common thread hidden in the everyday lives of all people. It pulls us invisibly towards something. And it pulls at us at different times of our life.

We do not end up all the same in life.

But all the same, the experience of life in this world leaves us all changed. The seasons themselves say it by their cycles. The Liturgy of Mother Church also, as the seasons of Earth and Sky, speak of change in their great and mysterious rounds. Life is a constant change.

And it pulls us all towards a spiritual transformation.

The ends by which we live our lives as a means is this change.

The presence of death in this world not only prepares us for the crossing of a Greater Sea but is the Angel that is to also guide us through and comfort us when the time comes for us to "pass over" from temporality into immortality.

For death is but a passage by which we are come to another experience of change. Yea, in this life - before the hour of our passing away - we die a little each moment, each day.

It pulls at us to remind us to be watchful of the living moment. Not to be afraid of it. But to learn from it. And to learn from the living of this life. And to start thinking about the deeper questions of life. Not to fear the changing. But to live as we must. To gather up those changes into a bouquet that we may offer up to our Lord and Lady each day. To love.

And to realize in the end that it is but our Lord Jesus pulling at the thread of our lives, that it is but He Who is with us and Who loves us so much Who is tugging at our weary, wandering hearts - "come to Me, and I will give you rest".

And that that is the answer we've been looking for - the Change to master change!

When we come awake to our calling, we soon realize the Voice Who calls us to our greatest freedoms - and to the Christian, as it is for me - Jesus Christ is the Change to master change...

Only Him can set me free.
---<--@

 

Today we had our EMHC Lenten Recollection.

I am proud to be with my brother lay ministers from our Shrine. Apart from preparing my soul for the last stretch of our Easter journey this year, I also learned so much today.

We tackled core concepts from  the Exhortation of Pope Francis, "Evangelii Gaudium", about the New Evangelization. It is a very relevant theme in today's world indeed. And many are the things the Laity may expound from it.

But the central spirit, in my own opinion, is that the Church needs to transform - not with the world - but against it. That we may as Nations be helped to persevere, overcome and together prevail against the challenges of this new age. And the joy of knowing we have...

Finally, let me share here what a brother EMHC today shared: To be a Christian without "Christ" is to be just an "ian"; an "i am nothing".

True indeed, Christ is the Vine and we are from among all the Nations, the branches - intended by God the Father to bear for each other, human fruit - edible and good everlasting.

Let us know that this world is diverse and that our Catholicity understands implicitly that the world is such a place - that we may not all be Catholics or Christians in our own places in time - but the most important thing these days is not that we are all the same - but that we flourish in our distinctions!

So let the past be the past.

Mabuhay, I love you all.