Love and Marriage

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“Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You can’t have one without the other.”
~ The Chairman of the Board

Soon, we will be celebrating a big wedding in the family – Iulia and Mickey.
Marriage, like the birth of a child, is one of God’s way of speaking to us.
It is His way of telling us:
That love is stranger than our fears, loneliness or anger.
That life is stronger than death and it will not be denied.
That caring and sharing makes more sense that selfishness and greed.

Marriage and parenting are relationships that do not make sense financially.
Subjecting them to a cost/benefit analysis, they are often a losing proposition.
But people plunge into them anyway – madly, with faith, in love.
Two persons come together and love happens
as their hearts start beating as one in sympathetic vibration.
Their love and fidelity find concrete expression in their offsprings
who, like an harmonic tremor, are but the indication
of their deep longing and deeper love for each other.
I pray for the marriage of Iulia and Mix
and for all the brave couples who have sanctified marriage
with their love and in the process have had love sanctify their marriage,
making this world a better and happier place to live in.

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Heroes

 

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Age quod agis.” (Do what you are doing.)
This was the advice drilled into us by Fr. Basilio David
during our formative years in the seminary.
These are perilous times we live in and we need heores.
But not everyone can be a Superhero that can save the world.
In fact, Superheroes who save the world single-handedly do not exist.
Yet, the wonder of being human is that everyone can be a hero
simply by doing what is at hand to be done and doing it well.
Minima maxime.
To do even the smallest things in the best possible way.
The poet Milton, on his blindness, wrote, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Saint Therese of Lisieux is the Patron Saint of the Missions
even though she never went out to one.
She did what she could do and did it exceptionally well – pray.
Mother Theresa helped millions of the poor and destitute
but she did it one person at a time.
The heroic moment is now, for life itself is one epic happening.
I will bloom and grow where I am planted.
I will not and should not miss it.

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My Heart

An Amazing Beating Heart (from Wikipedia)

My heart beats about 80 times a minute. That is 115,200 a day. 42,048,000 time a year!
My heart is made up of entirely cardiac muscles and some cartilage. No bones.
It is about the size of my fist and weighs some 300 grams.
Through my heart’s rhythmic beating,
about five liters of blood is circulated throughout my body.
The blood brings nutrients and oxygen to cells and organs;
and also flushes out the toxins and waste materials from the body.
This fistful of flesh and blood keeps me alive.

But my heart is more than flesh, muscles and bones.
When I am happy, my heart beats in a joyful syncopation.
When I am sad, I feel the beats slowing down in sorrow.
And when the sorrow is severe, it feels like my heart would break to pieces.
When I am in love, my heart would often skip a beat
and sometimes totally lose its rhythm.
When the love is intense, it feels like my heart would want to burst out of my chest.
Then, in times of peace and serenity, my heart falls into a cadence
that is both reassuring and grateful that I am alive.
When there are reason to be grateful, my heart seems to sing.
When there are times I disappoint myself or others, I can hear my heart cry.

Often, I would quiet myself
and let my breathing fall in rhythm with the beating of my heart.
I feel and relish the air coming into my lungs
and have the heart deliver life-nourishing oxygen to the rest of my body.
And as I breathe out, I consciously expel the toxins out of my system.
I am grateful for my body and my heart.
But I also realize that I am more than the flesh and bones that make up my body.
My heart tells me so.
I am a spirit that lives in a body but not a prisoner therein.

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No Masks Needed When Being Generous

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There is none so blind as one who refuses to see;
nor one harder to wake up than one who pretends to sleep.
Often, I live my life with different masks on and with a lot of pretensions.
Like, I sometimes show people a happy face when deep inside I am hurting.
I can mistake form for substance like doing prayers regularly
but not changing what ought to be changed in me.
I am grateful for the many blessings I have received.
It is with humility that I acknowledge these,
not because I have deserved them for the good I might have good
but because life itself is generous,
because there is a God who has created a giving rather than a taking universe.
The sun tirelessly gives off light.
So, should I be giving in generosity.
The stars constantly emit their energy.
So, should my giving be constant and consistent.
Even plants and trees continuously give us their oxygen to breathe.
So, thus should my love and service to others.

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What If

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No one is to be feared more than one who speaks with absolute certainty.
I am wary of people who speak out of their power,
be it political, financial or even intellectual power.
Often, people with power think that might is right
and that is an fearsome thought
that have driven people to war and violence against the weak.
My faith tells me there is power outside myself
that eschews violence and oppression,
who would have us live in freedom and love.
But my faith is not an absolute certain.
I work on it in “fear and trembling”.
I am often beset by “What ifs”
even in the face of all the beauty and affirmations around me.
I pray that I am not numbered among the “hypocrites”.

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I believe . . . .

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In this weary world we live in, full of restless lives, unfulfilled hopes and broken dreams,
I need to constantly affirm what I believe in.

I believe that light is stronger than darkness,
that love is mightier than anger and hate,
that life is more powerful than death.

Through my dark moments, I struggle towards the light.
In the face of fear, anger and hatred, I walk and work in love.
In death, I see the rebirth of all that I hold dear and long for.

I believe that light is but the reflection of the divine presence that energizes us all.
I believe that love is alive in my relationships with other,
without whom my own life and continuing existence would not be possible.
I believe there is more to life than what I can immediately see or perceive
and that there is a lot more about it I need to know, learn and understand.
I believe these moments are the promptings of the power
that has culled me out of non-being into existence, from darkness into light
and from insignificance to a life of meaning and relationships.

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Love Not Possible Without Faith

Four years ago taday, I wrote . . . .

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Awe, Wonders and Questions

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I am always awed by the beauty and grandeur of the universe.
Like, I am amazed that there are more stars in the universe
than there are grains of sand in all the world’s deserts and beaches.
And what is even more astonishing is that Earth’s 3 trillion trees
far outnumber our Milky Way’s 100 billion stars.

Man’s innate curiosity is the root of wonderment and awe.
I have so many questions and I seek to find out the answers.
Life seems to me all about seeking and finding the answers to our questions.
It starts when we are children with our interminable ‘whys’.
It continues as we grow up and our questions become more complex
and the desire to find the answers more urgent.
Some questions are meant to be answered.
And there are questions we have no answers for.
These unanswerable questions make us truly wise and deeply human.

I love stories and I would love to find out how my own life story will end.
In prayer, I seek to find my God
and in the process, I also get to find myself.

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Thankful for Roots

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I have always found inspiration and consolation in my Catholic faith.
I try everyday to reflect on and live by the words and deeds of Christ.
He went about preaching the Kingdom of God, not building a Church.
He welcomed everyone, specially the marginalized, the broken, the rejects of society.
That is what being ‘catholic’ is all about.
He called out in love and forgiveness and people responded to his call.
Those who responded to the call, these were the original ‘church’.
I pray for my Church that it remains true and faithful to the Christ of the Gospels.

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Three Levels Of Relationships

 

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Life is all about relationships.
I have learned that there can be three levels of defining
our relationship with others and the world.
There is ownership: I have possessions, I can even have a family and children. Ownership is good but it can give way to selfishness and acquisitiveness.
Then there is stewardship: I cannot own the earth nor other people but I have been given responsibility for them and expected to make them grow, become more and better.
And then there is kinship: we are one with everything that exists.
The earth, and people for that matter, do not belong to me
but I belong to the earth and to other people.
We are fruits of the earth and sons and daughters of the land.
We all belong to one another: dust from dust, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh.
This is the strongest and most intimate of relationships.

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