Nation at Prayer

My brothers and sisters of the Promise, today at 5:00 pm, our Nation will pray. We shall pray for those who were lost to us from natural and man-made disasters last year - for indeed there were too many.

They were
our fellow men and women;
fellow citizens the LORD intended
for the great labor of this Country
- human beings not unlike ourselves -

who, male and female, young and old, 

dreamt with us a common Dream 

of a better Republic for all Filipinos.  

Living souls whose fruits we shall never now know or taste  -
Promised lives whose fruition we shall never now see or hear -
whose fullness of good renown this world shall never now enjoy.

All of them we shall now commit to the one God of all Nations - each of them by their name - ever by a space in the heart we shall solemnly recall them - and resolve before the LORD as one Nation that their loss shall not have been in vain.

And as we remember them now, let us be sure to remember them as they were - always. So full of the things we shall today - in prayer before God - commit to the memory of our common humanity - so full of the things of life - so certain of the promise of the Peace which is our Nation's original birthright.

For indeed we shall remember them - we shall ensure their hopes do not remain unheard and their lives do not remain fallen. For we shall indeed bury with the past - the evil of those days.

None shall remain behind us but the dust.

For every thing that is to us everything we shall carry with us - in our hearts - into 2014; and the rest we shall commit before God unto tomorrows we shall as one Nation in Peace continue to reach for - together this time.

We thank you LORD God for this time to pray unto Thee!

We thank you God for the lineage, instrumentality and the unique person of our 15th President Noynoy, we thank you God for our Nation and for our Nation's Republic, we thank you God for family and friends, and for this Family of Friends - united in thy Peace - upon a journey of greater belonging and of learning to know each other in Thee.



Salaam. Shalom. Peace. For Thou art God, above and beyond all things, and there is no other, AMEN.
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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!

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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.

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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.

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Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Hope Taking Wing

An Act of Unity