Catholic Understanding of Marriage

In the Catholic Church, there is a specific way of understanding marriage. The sacrament of holy matrimony is about the union of a man and a woman and how this union mirrors the eternal love, forgiveness and understanding that exist between God and Humanity.

A Christmas Homily

The spirit of Christmas is more than the festivities, the rejoicing and the laughter. The spirit of Christmas is the arrival of hope, that there is reason to hope. Christ wasn't just born in a manger. We are the ones who are born, raised and live in a manger... Christ only decided to be born there---just to be with us and give us hope. That's why he is called Emmanuel... God-is-with-us.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

God prepares us before he tests us

People often complain that God treats them unfairly in sending sending them trials, sometimes even regardless of how huge or small such trials may be. They often say that God's sends them "suprise quizes" likes the ones we have at school where, without previous notice the teacher would announce at the start of the class that there's an exam for his or her subject and that we need to immediately put aside our books and notebooks and get a pen and a sheet of paper and answer the following questions. We complain that it's unfair, that we should be forewarned, that we may be prepared for these "surprise" testings.

What I say is that God is definitely more sensible than that. For reasons beyond my comprehension, God does send crises, trials, testings in our life and quite often, they do come as a "surprise." But is such really the case?

The feast of the Transfiguration offers us so many themes to reflect, themes that abound in the general topic of Christian Life. One of the central concerns of this event in the life of the early Christians is that Jesus was preparing his disciples for that "great trial of Faith" that they will encounter in the Cross. After having revealed his eventual tragic death to his disciples, he called some of them to be witnesses of his true destiny: the Glory of the Resurrection. His message was clear, the gathering darkness of the Night is only a prelude to the grandeur of Daylight.

Unfortunately, even this simple preparations sessions weren't enough, or perhaps they weren't so clear to Jesus' disciples. This is obvious in Peter's remark of staying in the mountain and building three tents. The fact that Peter misunderstood the whole scence was evident in the gospel observation that while Peter was still speaking a voice was heard from the clouds saying "This is my beloved Son.... listen to him."

The question is: did Peter listen? Was he attentive? No! This is obvious because on the next occasion wherein Jesus revealed to his disciples that he shall be handed over to the enemies and shall be tortured, will suffer and eventually die, Peter was the first to say that he shall not allow this to happen. To which Jesus retorted, "Get behind me Satan!" Yes, Peter's stubbornness to insist on what he thinks, rather than pay attention to how Jesus was preparing them for the Crisis of the Cross was crystal clear.

But before we eventually have this totally bad image of Peter, the point for reflection is this: aren't we all like Peter? Do we not share in the same predicament, or condition of stubbornness before the formative hand of God? God will never test us beyond our capacity. He prepares us for the day of test; it is us who couldn't pay attention to how he is preparing us.

INTRODUCING SANTA GIANNA

THE STORY
It was April 20, 1962, on a Good Friday, a pregnant lady in full term was admitted to Monza Maternity Hospital in Italy. Unlike other pregnancies, the pregnancy of Gianna Beretta Molla was critical. She was suffering from a painful uterine tumor or fibroma diagnosed during the second month of her pregnancy. It was a critical pregnancy because it was a choice between the life of the mother or the child. During that time, she and her husband Pietro, both Italians, were given the choice to either terminate the pregnancy and save the mother’s life or carry the pregnancy to full term and endanger the mother’s life. Gianna told her husband to save their baby.

Gianna Beretta Molla was a medical doctor specializing in Pediatrics who came from a large Italian family of deep religious upbringing: she has two brother priests, and a religious sister. She herself during her early life was contemplating of becoming a nun after receiving her medical degree with honors. However, after a Marian pilgrimage, she discerned that God was calling her for the married state. Immediately upon returning home from the pilgrimage, she met Pietro. Both Pietro and Gianna were of deep religious convictions, having high regard for marriage and the sanctity of family life. The marriage bore them four children, the last of which endangered Gianna’s life.

Black Saturday, April 21, 1962, a day after Gianna’s confinement, she gave birth to their daughter Gianna Emanuela. After which, Gianna suffered excruciating pain for six days refusing pain medication so that she may suffer more like Jesus. On the seventh day, Saturday within the octave of Easter, Gianna died of septic peritonitis in their home. It was April 28, 1962. She was 39 years old. Because of her love for life and for her children, she surrendered her own life to give life for her unborn child. Knowing that she would have to give a part of her own life to extend the gift of life given to her child, she willingly consented. She bore concrete witness to the passage: “No one has a greater love than the one who lays down his life for another” (Jn 15:13).

On April 24, 1994, Year of the Family, Pope John Paul II beatified Gianna Beretta Molla at St. Peter’s Square in the presence of her husband, children, and her brothers and sisters. During one of the International Celebrations of the Family attended by John Paul II, Gianna Emanuela, the last that Gianna gave birth, who is now a medical doctor like her mother, gave a testimony that made the pope shed tears: “Dear mom, thank you for having given me life two times: when you conceived me and when you permitted me to be born, protecting my life.... And so my life seeks to be the natural continuation of your life, of your joy of living, of your enthusiasm, and it finds its full meaning in the engagement and in the dedication to whoever lives in suffering.” On May 16, 2004 Gianna was canonized a saint of the Catholic Church by Pope John Paul II who, during his homily, gave recognition to this married woman as a “a simple, but more than ever, significant messenger of divine love.” She was a first among women saints of the Church who was recognized precisely because of her own motherhood. Her feast is celebrated on April 28.

THE MESSAGE
In the Gospel according to Saint John we hear of the great love the Father has for all of us, for all of his creation, such that he sent us his only Son that all of us dead to sin, may be reborn in grace and attain salvation (Jn 3:16). For the person who has come to grasp the full meaning, the depth, and the immensity of this love of God, everything becomes relative. The only absolute is love, love in the way that God has loved us. We hear in the writing of Saint Paul how “God who is rich in mercy, revealed his immense love” (Eph 2:4) He sent us his Son to deliver us from death to sin, to life in grace. And in all things that God has done to us, we deserve nothing. Everything is grace, an undeserved, unmerited favor of God given freely to humanity because of his love. This is the “good news” that we hear proclaimed in the gospel each day. Jesus himself gave concrete expression of that love that the Father has for us. As a God, he doesn’t have to undergo all the troubles of suffering, dying and rising again. Yet, he willing surrendered himself, even his life. Jesus grasped the depth of the Father’s love, and hence, everything becomes relative. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14).

THE CHALLENGE
Today, the Church challenges us to immerse ourselves in that love of the Father, to grasp the full meaning, the depth, and the immensity of his love. And from there, give it concrete expression in our life, in our ministry in the Church, and service to the society. We will never run out of people to love, persons to give concrete expression of this love. This is each person’s vocation, the the daily incarnation of our call to holiness. We need only to forget ourselves a little more, set aside our prejudices and hurt feelings, be convinced that only love is absolute, and then surrender ourselves to the Father’s love that lies hidden in our hearts. Love is at the heart of human nature. God created us in love. The most spontaneous thing that a person does is to love. And others have witnessed to this, even at great cost. If we only look around ourselves and look closely at one another, one may find many instances also of love concretely and daily lived. The life of Santa Gianna is only one shining example of to what extent a mother can love her child. Normally the Church would counsel that the life of the mother be given priority. But Santa Gianna’s love went beyond. She had lived her life to the full and she freely surrendered the rest in order to give a second life to her unborn child. May each one of us shine forth the very same love that nailed Christ to the cross, the very same love that brought about humanity’s salvation.

Setting our Eyes on the Ideal

Reflection: 27th Sunday in OT

We find ourselves living in a time where societies and communities become fragmented, where institutions become divided, where relationships are broken up. We say that the family is the basic unit of a society, and within that basic unit, there we find the paradoxical unity of husband and wife; two persons united in matrimony, united in life, and united in their aspirations for their children. However, nowadays, we are noticing certain trends in thinking that break up the very core, the very identity of what we take as the basic unit of society. There is the growing phenomenon of single-parenthood; the phenomenon of co-habitation especially among the young adults; the dwindling population of the younger generation; the so-called “gay rights movement” that demand for equal opportunity in the society, not just in the work place, but also in the institution of married life. And what’s going to be next? Gay couples seeking adoption of children to somehow realize in their partnership the least semblance of a family.

The gospel and the first reading point directly to the issue of marriage and divorce, a thorny issue both at the time of Jesus and even in our times. Decisions have been made, compromises have been upheld, and sometimes made standard. In effect, the face of the reality of married life has been a sea of change, yet despite the makeovers to please a certain segment of the society, if not conform to prevailing ideologies, the ideals remain the same. This is the point of Jesus’ discourse. The Pharisees were intent to pit the teachings of Jesus against the prescriptions handed down by Moses. They raised a prickly question, and Christ responded. Not to contradict the Mosaic prescription, but to point to the Pharisees where their eyes should be gazing: the ideal to which rules and codes of conduct are mere humble stewards that accomplish and err at the same time.

We no longer live in a society where the teachings of the Church hold certain predominance, particularly those that fall short of the immediate concerns of religion. Despite this shortfall, one can still aim at what is morally good, if not religiously good. We need to be conscious of the law of gradation. The prescription of divorce by Moses was good considering the circumstances of the people themselves: it was because of their “hardness of heart” that such a prescription was made. That was a good solution, perhaps even the best considering the characters of the persons involved during that time. However, such a prescription remains a servant to the ideal to which we need to set our eyes on. The Pharisees erred not because they were obedient to the precepts of Moses. Being leaders of their religion, their error was the failure to point to people, to lay bare to the people the ideals which are God’s ordinances. They have fallen into the pitfall of lazy contentment, the entropy of idealism, the sedimentation of aspirations. Christ wasn’t happy with the realities that confronted him during his time, nor should we be content with the compromises of own time. Following Christ, we need to lay bare to other people the divine destiny that God has personally shaped for each of us; we need point to them the ideals that nudge us continuously lest we fall into the lethargy of contentment. We have to help others set their eyes on the ideals, at least from time to time.

Prayer Reflection: Fidelity is Fecundity

Today in Rome, we are celebrating the beatification of Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916). A solitary man who sought God, replied to the voice of God calling him to be in the wilderness. His life was transformed by His grace. My Jesus, allow me your grace to transform my life also. Let me hear your voice more clearly amidst the noises I hear, day in and day out. Just a while ago, before I went here in the chapel of St. Emerentienne, as I was leaving my room, I noticed that the lights in the toilet were turned on. I felt that pull in me that, to conserve energy I should turn them off, but this bad habit of rationalizing to excuse myself started again. I started thinking that probably someone was inside. But your voice told me to better check it because if there's no one, it's a huge waste of electricity. Plus, it definitely won't cost me much time to check. And so I did. I checked and found that none was there. Lord Jesus, even in small things I see clearly how you always make an effort to guide me. If such be your designs in small things, there is nothing by which I could even think that in big responsibilities, you do not guide my life. The problem really is that I fail to turn an attentive ear to your voice. And even if sometimes I hear your voice, this habitual mechanism of rationalizing to excuse myself commences. And so, another opportunity to conform my will to yours passes unproductively. Allow me not only the grace to hear your voice, but likewise, transform my heart so that it will only seek that which you wish. Allow my pleasure to be your pleasure. Transform me inwardly, from within, by your presence within me.

Today's gospel reading (Mt 25, 14-30) is about the time of reckoning, that at the close of the day, we present ourselves before our friend Jesus and offer to him the fruits of our labors. And he desires that at the end of the day, we have become productive. Not simply for the sake of being productive, but that whatever God had given us, we have made good use of them, and everything put to good use multiplies abundantly. God calls us to be faithful to him, be vigilant for his coming, but it is not a passive vigilance, or a barren fidelity. To be attached to Jesus is to be attached to a trunk of profound productivity; that as a branch to this tree, we cannot but bear fruit, for this trunk is teeming with the natality of grace that exceeds passivity and inaction. Fidelity is fecundity. We cannot remain barren in Jesus who is life. Blessed Charles de Foucauld stove to remain faithful to God, and behold, we are reaping the bountiful fruit of his fidelity--by the hundred fold.

Universal Need for Solitude

I've just started with this blog to start sharing reflections on contemporary people's increasing need for solitude. It is not so much a form of simply being alone from the sometimes imposing and constricting presence of other people, be they be friends or foe, but something much deeper than a simple sense of wanting to be a alone. The solitude of which Bethel speaks is not an escape, but a response to a singular call to be with someone--God. The solitude that Christian tradition speaks of is precisely this, that God lovingly calls us to be with him, to be alone with him.

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. And he said to them, "Come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while" (Mk. 6: 30-31a).

The practice of spending moments of prayer and silence has been part of the tradition in the Church since her very beginning. From the time when Jesus welcomed back his disciples after sending them on a mission; to the time when St. Anthony of Egypt (c. 251- 356 AD) received the divine call to go to the desert, initiating the hermitic tradition in Christianity; to the formation of monasteries and secluded convents (c. 6th century); up to the present generation, solitude has been the backbone of the spiritual legacy of the Church. The Old Testament narrates of countless instances of “going to the desert” to pray and encounter Yahweh. But the singular model for us remains the solitary figure of Jesus who goes “to the mountain to pray, spending the night in communion with God” (Lk. 6: 12).

To enter into solitude is not a thing that we make when we are already tired and we wish only to rest and be left alone. To enter into solitude is to respond to a call of God who loves us and wants to be with us: “I will lead her into the wilderness: and I will speak to her heart” (Hosea 2: 14).