The Mystery of the Visitation

The closing of the Marian month of May is highlighted by today’s Feast of the Visitation of our Lady to her cousin Elizabeth. I made my contemplation of this mystery today quite real by literally visiting some of my sisters whom I have not seen for some time. Our “exchange of joy” has really energized me.
Another aspect of today’s feast which kept “re-playing” in my heart is a particular prayer for expectant mothers, remembering the protagonists in today’s Gospel, Mary and Elizabeth, and their respective sons, of course.
And as I was rushing home this afternoon, I was graced with a live-scene of two women by the roadside. Both of them wore lovely smiles, as one showed her full belly to the other, who in turn, touched it lovingly. How beautiful and how rare indeed, especially in this country! Here, by the way, is a website that has taken the inspiration from the Visitation Mystery and adapted it to our modern world.
To close my prayer today, I tried to look for two things from the internet: an inspiring painting on the Visitation and I found this very interesting modern painting with its creative interpretation.
The second thing I looked for was a poem on the Visitation and I was gifted with this Russian Orthodox prayer, an excerpt from the Akathistos.
Having received God into Her womb, the Virgin hastened to Elizabeth whose unborn babe at once recognized Her embrace, rejoiced, and with leaps of joy as songs, cried to the Theotokos:
Rejoice, branch of an Unfading Sprout:
Rejoice, acquisition of Immortal Fruit!
Rejoice, laborer that laborest for the Lover of mankind:
Rejoice, Thou Who givest birth to the Planter of our life!
Rejoice, cornland yielding a rich crop of mercies:
Rejoice, table bearing a wealth of forgiveness!
Rejoice, Thou Who makest to bloom the garden of delight:
Rejoice, Thou Who preparest a haven for souls!
Rejoice, acceptable incense of intercession:
Rejoice, propitiation of all the world!
Rejoice, good will of God to mortals:
Rejoice, boldness of mortals before God!
Rejoice, O Bride Unwedded!
If you want to see the full version of Akathistos, you can click here.

Grappling with God

As I read this article today on “grappling with God” I remembered my experience of protesting against God and refusing to pray with my community. The only problem was as I protested and recited my litany of God’s seeming unfairness in regard to my people, I realized that I was already talking to him (her) and that there was really no way I could escape from his (her) grasp.
A hug or a stranglehold – such indeed is prayer and often if not always, the only response is “sweet (at times bittersweet) surrender!”

Pinoy (Pinay) wit

Hello everyone! I just got back from a busy 2-week international meeting. Here's an article about Filipino wit and humor which you might enjoy!

FILIPINO SIGNS OF WIT by Nury Vittachi - THE FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW
This week, we shall take a "reading tour" of one of the most spirited communities in Asia . The Philippines is full of word play. The local accent among many Filipinos, in which English words with "F" are spelled and pronounced with the sound of "P" and V is pronounced as "B" (because the Philippine alphabet has no letters F or V), is often used very cleverly, such as, the sign in a flower shop in Diliman called Petal Attraction.
Much of the word play in the Philippines is deliberate with retailers and various businesses favouring a play on names of Western establishments and celebrities (Americans, in particular--movie stars and entertainment personalities, especially). For example, there is a 24-hour restaurant called Doris Day and Night, a garment shop called Elizabeth Tailoring, and a barber shop called Felix The Cut. Reader Robert Harland also spotted a bakery named Bread Pitt, and a Makati fast-food place selling "maruya" (banana fritters) called Maruya Carey. Then, there are Christopher Plumbing, and a boutique called The Way We Wear ; a video rental shop called Leon King Video Rental; a restaurant in the Cainta district of Rizal called Caintacky Fried Chicken, a local burger restaurant called Mang Donald's, a doughnut shop called MacDonuts, a shop selling "lumpia" (egg roll) in Makati called Wrap and Roll, and two butcher shops called Meating Place and Meatropolis.
Smart travellers can decipher what may look like baffling signs to unaccustomed foreigners by simply sounding out the "Taglish" (the Philippine version of English words spelled and pronounced with a heavy Filipino accent), such as, at a restaurant menu in Cebu : "We hab sopdrink in can an in batol" [translation: We have soft drinks in can and in bottle]. Then, there is a sewing accessories shop called Bids And Pises [translation: Beads and Pieces --or-- Bits and Pieces].
There are also many signs with either badly chosen or misspelled words, but they are usually so entertaining that it would be a mistake to "correct" them. A reader named Antonio "Tonyboy" Ramon T. Ongsiako, (now there's a truly Filipino name), contributed the following interesting Philippine signs and advertisements:
In a restaurant in Baguio City (the "summer capital" of the Philippines): "Wanted: Boy Waitress";
on a highway in Pampanga: "We Make Modern Antique Furniture;"
on the window of a photography shop in Cabanatuan : "We Shoot You While You Wait;"
and on the glass front of a cafe in Panay Avenue in Manila : "Wanted: Waiter, Cashier, Washier."
Some of the notices can even give a wrong impression, such as, a shoe store in Pangasinan which has a sign saying: "We Sell Imported Robber Shoes" (these could be the "sneakiest" sneakers);
and a rental property sign in Jaro, Iloilo reads: "House For Rent, Fully Furnaced" (it must really be hot inside)!
Occasionally, one could come across signs that are truly unique--if not altogether odd. Reader Gunilla Edlund submitted a sign that she saw at the ticket booth in the ferry pier in Davao City in southern Philippines, which said: Adults: 1 peso; Child: 50 centavos; Cadavers: fare subject to negotiation.
European tourists may also be intrigued to discover two competing shops selling hopia (a Chinese pastry) called Holland Hopia and Poland Hopia, which are owned and operated by two local Chinese entrepreneurs, Mr. Ho and Mr. Po respectively- -(believe it or not)!

According to Manila businessman, Tonyboy Ongsiako, there is so much wit in the Philippines because ". . .we are a country where a good sense of humour is needed to survive. We have a 24-hour comedy show here called the government and a huge reserve of comedians made up mostly of politicians and retiring actors."

Mary's month

Hello everyone! I'll be "out of circulation" till the end of the month.
Here's a substitute site which you could visit for inspiration!
Happy continuation of the month of Mary!
With her, we wait and pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

More on Mom's Day

Here’s another “creative reflection” which I received today. The message also highly recommends: Lift up a mother's spirit, send this to every mother you know (no matter how old her child is).

A newborn's conversation with God:
A baby asked God, "They tell me you are sending me to earth tomorrow, but how am I going to live there being so small and helpless?"
God said, "Your angel will be waiting for you and will take care of you." The child further inquired, "But tell me, here in heaven I don't have to do anything but sing and smile to be happy."
God said, "Your angel will sing for you and will also smile for you. And you will feel your angel's love and be very happy."
Again the child asked, "And how am I going to be able to understand when people talk to me if I don't know the language?"
God said, "Your angel will tell you the most beautiful and sweet words you will ever hear, and with much patience and care, your angel will teach you how to speak."
"And what am I going to do when I want to talk to you ?"
God said, "Your angel will place your hands together and will teach you how to pray."
"Who will protect me?"
God said, "Your angel will defend you even if it means risking its life."
"But I will always be sad because I will not see you anymore."
God said, "Your angel will always talk to you about Me and will teach you the way to come back to Me, even though I will always be next to you."

At that moment there was much peace in Heaven, but voices from Earth could be heard and the child hurriedly asked, "God, if I am to leave now, please tell me my angel's name."

God said, "You will simply call her, "Mom."

Pray for the Pope

I got this "cute joke" among my mails today. It could help us remember to pray for Pope Benedict XVI as he prepares to travel to Brazil on Wednesday... that he "behave" himself!

After getting all of Pope Benedict's luggage loaded into the limo, (and he doesn't travel light), the driver notices the Pope is still standing on the curb.
- "Excuse me, Your Holiness," says the driver, "Would you please take your seat so we can leave?"
- "Well, to tell you the truth," says the Pope, "they never let me drive at the Vatican when I was a cardinal, and I'd really like to drive today."
- "I'm sorry, Your Holiness, but I cannot let you do that. I'd lose my job! What if something should happen?" protests the driver, wishing he'd never gone to work that morning.
- "Who's going to tell?" says the Pope with a smile?
Reluctantly, the driver gets in the back as the Pope climbs in behind the wheel. The driver quickly regrets his decision when, after exiting the airport, the Pontiff floors it, accelerating the limo to 205 kph. (Remember, the Pope is German.)
- "Please slow down, Your Holiness!" pleads the worried driver, but the Pope keeps the pedal to the metal until they hear sirens.
- "Oh, dear God, I'm going to lose my license -- and my job!" moans the driver.
The Pope pulls over and rolls down the window as the cop approaches, but the cop takes one look at him, goes back to his motorcycle, and gets on the radio.
- "I need to talk to the Chief," he says to the dispatcher.
The Chief gets on the radio and the cop tells him that he's stopped a limo going 205 kph.
- "So bust him," says the Chief.
- "I don't think we want to do that, he's really important," said the cop.
The Chief exclaimed," All the more reason!"
- "No, I mean really important," said the cop with a bit of persistence.
The Chief then asked, "Who do you have there, the mayor?"
Cop: "Bigger."
Chief: " A senator?"
Cop: "Bigger."
Chief: "The Prime Minister?"
Cop: "Bigger."
- Well," said the Chief, "Who is it?"
Cop: "I think it's God!"
The Chief is even more puzzled and curious, "What makes you think it's God?"
Cop: "His chauffeur is the Pope!"

Resurrecting the Child

For the past 3 years now, I’ve been holding on to a book which I borrowed from my brother. It’s Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore. The author is a former Catholic monk turned psychotherapist. I’ve read the book several times, but I still return to some pages now and then, especially when I am in search of connections between creativity, spirituality and emotional struggles.
One part I love re-reading when I tend to take myself too seriously is “Resurrecting the Child.” Moore asserts that “many people live in emotional darkness because they have never fully enjoyed a child spirit in their overly serious lives. The child wanders homeless in the lives of many adults….” And yet, this “child” is a clear source of energy and creativity. Moore’s formula for finding our way to childhood is by doing something quite simple and meaningful for us personally, for instance, making an old family recipe for soup. Others, he says, resurrect the child in allowing themselves to be irresponsible in certain areas of their lives, such as “stealing” time for themselves, eating “forbidden” foods and reading for the fun of it.
I guess that one way of putting into action today’s Gospel of love could also be this: helping each other “resurrect” the child in a way that it is fully compatible with a mature, adult life, like feasting, celebrating, playing. Indeed, part of Moore’s protest against our adult, sophisticated modern society is that “instead of playing actively and seriously, we let other people entertain us, and instead of enjoying a strong feeling of community, we are highly dependent on our electronic connections.”

On Eros and Agape

One of the central themes of this Sunday’s Gospel is love. Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." The complete text is Jn 13:31-33a.34-35; but you might be interested to see also this interesting commentary.

While trying to go deeper into the theme, I got an article from Zenit.org which I think is worth sharing today. This is an excerpt from the address of Mons. J. Augustine Di Noia, delivered during the XIII Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences last 27 April 2007. In this excerpt, he gives an excellent summary of the first part of Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est. He expounds:
“As everyone who has read the encyclical will know, in his discussion of eros and agape, Pope Benedict insists on the unity of these two forms of love, as well as the continuity between them. He is particularly concerned to refute the widespread notion that the Christian faith separates these two loves, and even suppresses the one -- eros -- in favor of the other -- agape. On the contrary, asserts the encyclical, eros is ever reaching out towards its fulfillment in agape. The powerful dynamism of desire is itself a sign that human persons are made for and directed toward a love that never ends. In order to clarify this immensely significant first point, allow me to turn for help to one of Pope Benedict's favorite authors, St. Augustine. In his writings, and especially in his "Confessions," St. Augustine frequently invites his readers to consider the things that they have desired and the things that they desire now -- to consider, in effect, the experience of desire. When we have thought about things that we have desired very badly, and have worked very hard to possess, St. Augustine asks us to acknowledge that, in the end, we have often lost interest and become bored with these very things, and that we then move on to seeking other things. For St. Augustine, this is most definitely not a cause for lament. On the contrary. In pondering the experience of desire, we learn something very important about ourselves: No good thing that we have wanted and even possessed can finally quench desire itself, because we are made for the uncreated Good which is God himself. This means that the good things of this world -- and all the more so, the good of other persons -- far from being obstacles in our quest for ultimate happiness, point us to the Good itself which is their source and in which they share. If we do not love the good things of this world, how shall we be able to love their Maker? The triune God, who made us for himself and who wants to share the communion of trinitarian love with us, uses the good things of this world to lead us to him who is, we could say, Goodness itself. The challenge -- and, sometimes, the tragedy -- of human existence is to desire and love the created good as if it were divine, to invest an absolute value in what cannot finally satisfy the human heart. That is what sin is. But rightly ordered desire and love of the good things of this world and the good of other persons is already a participation in the Good which is God himself. These lessons from St. Augustine help us to grasp the point the Holy Father is making in the first part of Deus Caritas Est -- that eros is meant to lead us to agape, to the love of God and to the love of one another in God. Pope Benedict resists absolutely the misreading, sometimes perverse, that claims to see in Christian faith the suppression of the ordinary fulfillments of human earthly life, particularly human intimacy and love, in favor of a good beyond life. On the contrary, for Christian faith the whole range of human desire -- or, to use more technical language, the inclination to the good embedded in the very structure of human existence -- finds its complete fulfillment in the love of the triune God, and nothing less. Although Pope Benedict does not use this expression in the encyclical, we might call this unity of and continuity between eros and agape "the sanctification of desire."

For One More Day

I just finished reading For One More Day by Mitch Albom. If you’d like to prepare conscientiously for the coming celebration of Mother’s Day, then this is the book to read. With a tightly woven plot, this fiction carries you through tales of childhood, growing up, hitting rock bottom and then experiencing grace! And “grace” here is personified by the protagonist’s mother. If you want to know more, click here…
One of the best parts of the book is the recurring comparative “account” interspersed in the narrative– Times My Mother Stood Up for Me versus Times I did Not Stand Up for My Mother. I thought, it would be good to make this exercise myself before I call up my Mom.
But also more importantly, I felt it would be better if I reflect even deeper and see how much of “my mother” has already been incarnate in me. My vocation to “motherhood” has taken a different turn than my Mom’s – quality wise, quantity wise. But it is present nonetheless, in my desire to see life grow and blossom. Reflecting on it now, I guess it was just “oozing out of my veins”: in fact, three months after my first profession in 1983, my Superiors sent me back to the novitiate to be assistant to the Novice Directress. After perpetual profession in 1989, coming to Rome for the first time, I was again asked by my Superiors to join the novitiate community even as I was doing my specialization. After two years, I was back in the Philippines, that time as formator of the aspirants and postulants.
These are probably weak comparisons or even sheer justification. On the other hand, these are real experiences which allowed me to help “bring forth” life-in- God. And I’m sure that this has its own value in the overall plan of our loving God for all of us.

Saints Philip and James

May 3 is the Feast of two apostles - St. Philip and St. James.
From reading the Gospels, we could get the impression that Philip was an enthusiastic and friendly person. He was the one who brought his friend Nathanael to Jesus (Jn 1:43-50). It was also Philip who made arrangements with the help of Andrew, to have a group of Greek gentiles meet Jesus (Jn 12:20-23). Philip also had a practical mind. He was the apostle who commented that it would take a considerable amount of money to feed a crowd (Jn 6:1-15). It was Philip who asked to see the Father when Jesus spoke about Him at the Last Supper (Jn 14:1-11).
James, on the other hand, has to be distinguished from the other apostle James, brother of John, sons of Zebedee. James, the less, son of Alphaeus, was also called "the brother of the Lord" and was believed to be the writer of the Letter of James. Tradition has it that he became the first Bishop of Jerusalem and was martyred in that city at around year 62.
An interesting catechetical book makes this suggestion on how to imitate these saints in a school setting: “Have the students name persons for whom Philip or James could be patron saints. For example, St. James could be the patron saint of the person who toils quietly behind the scenes to make a project a success; St. Philip could be the patron saint of the friendly person who likes to share his or her friends with other people.”

Slow Down Culture

I usually receive several forwarded messages everyday. Some are not just educational but really insightful. I want to share one which came in today. It talks of “Slow Down Culture.” The writer recounts and reflects:
“It's been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It's a rule. (…)
Nowadays, there's a movement in Europe named Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food! is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week.
Basically, the movement questions the sense of "hurry" and "craziness" generated by globalization, fuelled by the desire of "having in quantity" (life status) versus "having with quality", "life quality" or the "quality of being". French people, even though they work 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 28.8 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity driven up by 20%.
This no-rush attitude doesn't represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress. It means re-establishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the "now", present and concrete, versus the "global", undefined and anonymous. It means taking humans' essential values, the simplicity of living.
It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do. It's time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.
In the movie, Scent of a Woman, there's a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, "I can't, my boyfriend will be here any minute now". To which Al responds, "A life is lived in an instant". Then they dance to a tango.
Many of us live our lives running behind time, but we only reach it when we die of a heart attack or in a car accident rushing to be on time. Others are so anxious of living the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists. We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment. As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". Congratulations for reading till the end of this message. There are many who will have stopped in the middle so as not to waste time in this globalized world.