The God of Love and Peace

God is Love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Jesus, I trust in you!

It is disturbing to know that many acts of terrorism today are done in the name of God. Apparently, terrorists think that if they burn churches and kill unbelievers, they are doing the will of God. But this deception comes from a false notion of who God is. On this Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, the word of God proclaims to us that the one true God is the God of love. On Mt. Sinai, God revealed himself to Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” This revelation runs contrary to our common perception of a God who is always angry and relentless in his cruelty. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that God is the “God of love and peace” who commands us to “encourage one another, agree with one another, and live in peace.” God does not hate the earth. He does not want it condemned nor destroyed. Instead, “God so loved the world that he gave his Only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Take note that he does not threaten: “Believe or be killed.” Rather, the peril of death is already present on account of our sin. “This is indeed a stiff-necked people.” Our stubbornness in sin is the real culprit…it is the reason we die. Violence does not come from God. Hatred does not come from God. Terrorism does not come from God. War does not come from God. It comes from sin. Our Lady said at Fatima: “War is a punishment for sins.” Contrary to what pagans believe, there is no god of war. The only true God is the God of love and peace.

God does not want us to perish. He wants us to have eternal life because he loves us. This is why he sent his Son. He did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. God sent his Son to offer us a way out of the condemnation that the world has brought upon itself. All we have to do is to believe in his Son so that we may not be condemned. He who does not believe in Jesus remains in his sins. He remains condemned.

There will be war as long as people do not know the Blessed Trinity. Violence and hatred will remain so long as the world does not know the God of love and peace. The God of love is the Blessed Trinity. “God is Love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (CCC, 257.) In the inner life of God is a great mystery of communion in love: the Father loves the Son in that Fount of Love who is the Holy Spirit. And this Love is so great and powerful that the Blessed Trinity reveals himself wherever there is love. St. Augustine said: “Where there is love, there is a Trinity: a Lover, a Beloved, and a Fountain of Love.” St. Francis of Assisi used to lament: “Love is not known. Love is not loved.” The world continues to live under the threat of violence because Love is not known and loved. The world will not be at peace until it knows and loves the Blessed Trinity. Therefore, let us make Love known. “Mend your ways, encourage one another, live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you…The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!  

Held by Bands of Love

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

The feast of the Sacred Heart this year coincides with the celebration of the Philippines Independence day. As usual, this day glorifies the most valued of all modern day values…which is human freedom. Our present concept of freedoms means unbridled liberty from any control or authority. Thus, we value our right to self-determination because the only authority which most of us are willing to recognize would be our own selves. Nobody tells me what to do. Anyone who attempts to control me is understood to be an oppressor. I decide to what I want.

But the prophet Hosea tells us today: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love…” The Lord today spoke of “bands of love”. In tagalog. A band is “tali” or “pamigkis” which is easily interpreted as a restraint to freedom. Ang nakatali ay tila hindi malaya dahil napipigil o nasusupil ang kalayaang gumalaw. And yet, it is by means of a band or restraint that a child is taught to walk. The father holds the child up through such bands in order to train his legs for walking. In the beginning, the child’s movements seem restrained, but the bands keep the child from falling and support the child until his legs are able to hold up his entire weight. The Lord draws us with human cords, with bands of love. It is when we allow ourselves to be supported by such bands of love, it is then that we are most free to walk.  

God’s bands of love keep us truly free. When we free ourselves of any attachment to God, it is then that we become slaves…slaves to ourselves, slaves to the world, slaves to Satan himself. It is Christ who sets us free from the greatest oppression of all, and that oppression is called sin. By freely accepting suffering and death on the Cross, the Lord Jesus has overcome for us our greatest slavery: the slavery to the devil…the slavery to sin. By the Blood and Water which flowed from his wounded Heart, the Lord Jesus has ransomed us from the devil. He has redeemed us by his Blood. “If the Son has freed you, then you are truly free.”

When we allow ourselves to be bound to the Lord by his bands of love, we become free to be who we were created to be: we begin to possess the freedom of the children of God. This is what it means to be consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: we bind ourselves to him. We declare that we desire to belong to him. We declare that we choose to conform our lives to his will. Just as a wife binds herself to her husband in love, so do we bind ourselves to Christ whom we know loves us. And we can entrust ourselves to his love which is always reliable. We know fully well that those who trust the Lord will never be abandoned and will never perish. Christ draws us to himself with human cords…with the cords of his Sacred Heart. Let us confidently abandon ourselves to him. Let us choose to belong to him and say: Sweetly we’ll rest on thy Sacred Heart. Never from thee, oh let us part. Hear then thy loving children’s pray’r: O Heart of Jesus, Heart of Jesus hear!

Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

No Longer a Commandment but our Response

Charity at the Main Building of the University of Santo Tomas, Manila

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

The Lord Jesus was asked: Which commandment in the law is the greatest? He was asked for a commandment but the Lord responded with two: the commandment to love God with all one’s being and the commandment to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. In this way, the Lord tells us in very clear terms what charity or love really is. In a world where love is a much abused word, the teaching of the Lord on the two greatest commandments is very important.

First of all, we have to say that the commandments to love God and neighbor are based on the reality that God is love. It is God who can reveal to us what love is because He is love. We learn how to love because God loved us first. Love is authentic only if it imitates the love of God for us. How does God love us? He loves us by giving us himself: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…True love is self-giving. It is self sacrificing. ”Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1.)

Love is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us. God loved us first. We did not love him so that we may be loved by him. He loved us first and because of this, we learn to love him in return. He loved us by giving himself to us. Thus, we can only love him by giving ourselves to him: all our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. Everything we have and everything we are comes from him. Therefore, we love him with everything we have and everything we are.

Because of this, it is only God whom we should love above all. It is only God whom we should love for his own sake. All other loves are motivated by this response to God’s love for us. I am able to love my neighbor because God loves him in the way he loves me. I love myself because God loves me: “It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend.” (Deus Caritas Est, 8.)

My relationship with God enables me to see others in the way God sees them. My relationship with Him helps me see the image of God in every man. On the other hand, my love for God becomes real when I love my neighbor. For how can I love the God whom I do not see if I do not love the neighbor I see? “Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its realism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a ‘commandment’ imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is ‘divine’ because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a ‘we’ which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28).” (Deus Caritas Est, 8.) 

Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

The Greatest Commandment

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

People oftentimes accept Whitney Houston’s song as Gospel truth: “I found the greatest love of all inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve…learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.” Of course, our time greatly values self-esteem, which is basically founded on self love. There is much emphasis on the self to the point that we have become narcissistic.

There is no question that the Lord commanded us to love our own selves. If it were not so, then how could he command: “Love your neighbor as yourself”? It seems that for a healthy relationship with others to take place, you must first have a healthy relationship with yourself. In other words, self-acceptance is the pre requisite to accepting and loving others.

But saying this is to miss the whole point of today’s reading. Remember that “Love your neighbor as yourself” is only the second commandment. The first is this: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The Lord shows us the primacy of love for God. This is the first and the greatest of all commandments. Learning to love yourself is not the greatest love of all. Before we can learn to love our neighbor or even love ourselves, we have to love God with the totality of our being – with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. Why is this so? It is because I am not the center of the universe – God is! “The Lord our God is Lord alone!” God does not owe me anything but I owe Him everything. Everything I have and everything I am comes from Him. Why do I have to love Him with all my heart, my soul, my mind, and my strength? It is because of all me came from Him and belongs to Him. “In Him we live, in Him we move, in Him we have our being” (Acts 17: 28). Without Him, I am nothing.

Because God is the origin, the first, the center, and the end of everything, He is the only one I must love for His own sake. This means that I should love God for the simple reason that He is who He is: God. Everything else and everyone else I should love only in reference to God…only for the sake of God. This is the essence of Charity as a theological virtue. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (CCC, 1822). Charity, according to St. Paul, is the greatest virtue of all (1 Cor. 13:13). “The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (Col 3:14); it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love” (CCC, 1827).

Let us love with the right priorities. Let us allow Charity to purify our ability to love. The Christian “no longer stands before God as a slave in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him who ‘first loved us’” (CCC, 1828). St. Basil said: “If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages…we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands…we are in the position of children.” (Ibid.)

Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Give God What Is Right

PRAISED BE JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH!

The Lord should have been impressed by the large sums of money given by rich people to the Temple treasury. After all, we ourselves are immediately (and gladly) impressed by huge donations. But such is not the case with the Lord. Sitting by the treasury of the temple, our Lord praised the poor widow over the rich donors on account of the fact that the rich, in spite of the huge donations, gave only from their surplus wealth while the widow, from her poverty, contributed all she had – her whole livelihood.

An important point to consider would be the first and the greatest commandment which was taught to us by the Lord in last Sunday’s gospel: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord your God is Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength!” God first of all, God above all – this is the gist of the greatest commandment. Everything I am and everything I have comes from Him and belongs to Him. Therefore, I must love the Lord with everything that I am and everything that I have. This high ideal inspired our famous offertory song: “Lahat ng hawak ko, lahat ng loob ko, lahat ay aking alay sa Iyo. Mula sa iyo ang lahat ng ito, muli kong handog sa iyo…” Very ideal, is it not? But do we really mean what we say? The truth comes out in the value of our offering. Do we give in proportion to what we have received from the Lord…or do we give only from our surplus? Can I really say that my offering is indeed “lahat ng hawak ko”? Do we imitate the poor widow who, even in her poverty, contributed all she had? Or do we follow the steps of the rich who gave only from their surplus wealth?

The quality of our offering manifests how we look at God. If it is true that we say that God is everything to us, then we should put our money where our mouth is! No, I am not telling you to give more at offertory. I am simply asking you to give God what he rightfully deserves! Give God what rightfully belongs to Him. We do not give to the Lord in order to receive blessings later on. We give to the Lord because we have already received from Him. Our offering is our act of gratitude to the Lord because he has always been kind to us. Therefore, our offering should be proportionate to the blessings that we have received from Him. To give God from our surplus, to give God what we no longer need, is to treat Him as a beggar because in effect, we give Him our loose change. Let us not treat God like a beggar for the simple reason that He is not one – the Lord our God is Lord alone. He is Lord! He is Sovereign! Let us treat God as Lord and Sovereign. Let us offer to Him the best of what we can give, whether it be our time, or our talent, or our wealth and resources. Let us give God what is right and not what is left.

Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Widow's Mite

In the tagalog translation of the story of the widow's mite, the 2 coins donated by the widow into the temple treasury is translated as "dalawang kusing na halaga ng isang pera." I always wondered how much a "kusing" is. Looking for answers, I found out that "kusing" refers to the smallest denominated Philippine coin, which today would probably be five Philippine centavos. When the Central Bank minted one centavo coins, "kusing" used to refer to this amount. And so, the widow donated ten centavos to the temple treasury and she was lauded by the Lord for doing so because the rich gave from their surplus wealth but the poor widow gave everything she lived on. She was the one who truly loved the Lord with all her heart, her soul, her mind, and her strength.

For more information about "Kusing", follow the link: “Kusing”