Monday, April 30, 2012

The Search is Over: Love is Here!

The desire for joy, peace and love is deep within the human heart. Most of us have sought it. And most of us are left frustrated.

Many think that joy can be found in the ungodly. And so we try all the ungodly stuffs thinking it would make us happy. We commit one sin to the next hopping the next one would bring us happiness. In our search for joy, we have left ourselves miserable.

Many of us also believe that the world can give us peace. We presume that material wealth will automatically bring peace in our lives. We think that temporal security is the key to peace. But our effort in accumulating and preserving material wealth has only made us more anxious and fearful (of losing them.)

And our search of love, we have jumped from one wrong person to the next. Our desire for perfect and lasting love has only caused us to be heartbroken, again and again. We have sought the perfect in frail and weak creatures.

We have sought the divine in the human and in the world.

And we are disappointed.

Real lasting joy, peace and love can only be found in its Author.

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”  John 15:11

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” John 14:27

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  John 3:16

They can only be found in Him who is joy, peace and love Himself… Jesus.

"The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator."
(#27 Catechism of the Catholic Church)




Thursday, April 26, 2012

"Rise Up" - Matt Maher



"Rise Up"

When you see the road ahead
That you've been down before
When you're halfway to nowhere
And you can't pay the toll

You're hanging onto mercy
Withered on the vine
With your feet on the ground, your head in the clouds
And your heart on the line

Open up your eyes…

You've got to rise up, rise up
When this life has got you down
You've got to look up, look up
When you search and nothing's found
My eyes have seen the glory of the love that's here and now
It's coming down
So rise up now.

When you're told that day is over
Long after the sun goes down
And your mind it keeps on racing
At the dreams that don't come 'round

When you don't know how to surrender
Cause your whole life's been a fight
When the dark holds you and you can't break through
Cause you haven't seen the light.

Open up your eyes…

You've got to rise up, rise up
When this life has got you down
You've got to look up, look up
When you search and nothing's found
My eyes have seen the glory of the love that's here and now
It's coming down
So rise up now.
Yeah rise up now,
Oh rise up now.

And all the lambs roar like lions
And all the prisoners breaking their chains
And all the poor find their treasure
Cause heaven is coming this way.
[x2]

Rise up, rise up
When this life has got you down
You've got to look up, look up
When you search and nothing's found
My eyes have seen the glory of the love that's here and now
It's coming down
So rise up now.
Yeah rise up now,
Oh rise up now.




Wednesday, April 25, 2012

What is the Life of Man?

Almost all of us search for what life is all about. What is its meaning? What is my meaning? Sadly, most of us define it by our own terms, or worst, by what the media and society dictate to us.

Man made definitions of the meaning of life will always be faulty. Why? Because man did not create himself. We are not the designer of our lives. We did not come to existence because we decided to, Someone else decided we should exist. Only that Someone can reveal to us what life is all about.

That Someone is “The” One. God.

Only in God can we find what life is all about because He is Life itself.
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” – John 14:6
To find meaning outside God is to live a life prone to error and pain. Our human efforts will always fall short for we do not know who we really are. We do not know our fulfillment. And most of all, we cannot reach the fulfillment of our humanity by our own effort (that is why the New Age movement is a heresy.) Only God’s grace can do that.

Only God through Jesus can we truly live. Only in Jesus can we find life’s meaning. For Jesus is God’s revelation made flesh. In Jesus, God did not only reveal Himself to us, but revealed ourselves to us.

And what did Jesus revealed?

We were created to know and love God. And we cannot find life’s meaning outside of it.
God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.(#1 of Catechism of the Catholic Church)

Friday, April 20, 2012

Let Your Beauty Shine

We live in times were everything can be artificial. And thanks to Adobe Photoshop, even beauty can now be reproduced artificially.

Since have somewhat got addicted to everything artificial, human beauty has also fallen to artificiality. Beauty is now what we see in the Media. Beauty that is been fabricated by the almighty Photoshop. Natural beauty, specially, the beauty from within is now being set aside on the shelf like an old picture.

Everybody wants to be beautiful. But we have pursued it outside the nature, our human nature. So our artificial beauty is also superficial beauty.

True beauty can only be found within our human nature. The beauty that God gave us when He created us in His Own Image. And God is beauty Himself.

So how do we find this beauty within?

We have to find the Person within, Jesus.

Only in Jesus can our true beauty shine. To shine like the Light of the World.

The more we let Jesus live in us, the more we become human. The more we are like Jesus, the more our human nature is restored to the beauty of its original creation.  Jesus is the most beautiful person in existence. It will be His beauty that will be shining through us.

To live without Jesus is to live without the Light. It is to live in darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. Darkness is also the absence of beauty. In the darkness there is only ugliness, for we were created to live in the Light of Heaven.

There is no real and lasting beauty apart from Jesus. Everything in this world passes, what is real today may be gone tomorrow.

Only the Eternal can give and preserve our beauty.

There is no beauty without Christ.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Spiritual Canticle


By St. John of the Cross

Dialogue between the soul (Bride) and Jesus (Bridegroom)

Bride
1. Where have you hidden,
Beloved, and left me moaning?
You fled like the stag
after wounding me;
I went out calling you, but you were gone.
2. Shepherds, you who go
up through the sheepfolds to the hill,
if by chance you see
him I love most,
tell him I am sick, I suffer, and I die.

3. Seeking my Love
I will head for the mountains and for watersides,
I will not gather flowers,
nor fear wild beasts;
I will go beyond strong men and frontiers.

4. O woods and thickets,
planted by the hand of my Beloved!
O green meadow,
coated, bright, with flowers,
tell me, has he passed by you?

5. Pouring out a thousand graces,
he passed these groves in haste;
and having looked at them,
with his image alone,
clothed them in beauty.

6. Ah, who has the power to heal me?
now wholly surrender yourself!
Do not send me
any more messengers,
they cannot tell me what I must hear.

7. All who are free
tell me a thousand graceful things of you;
all wound me more
and leave me dying
of, ah, I-don't-know-what behind their stammering.

8. How do you endure
O life, not living where you live,
and being brought near death
by the arrows you receive
from that which you conceive of your Beloved?

9. Why, since you wounded
this heart, don't you heal it?
And why, since you stole it from me,
do you leave it so,
and fail to carry off what you have stolen?

10. Extinguish these miseries,
since no one else can stamp them out;
and may my eyes behold you,
because you are their light,
and I would open them to you alone.

11. Reveal your presence,
and may the vision of your beauty be my death;
for the sickness of love
is not cured
except by your very presence and image.

12. O spring like crystal!
If only, on your silvered-over faces,
you would suddenly form
the eyes I have desired,
which I bear sketched deep within my heart.

13. Withdraw them, Beloved,
I am taking flight!

Bridegroom

Return, dove,
the wounded stag
is in sight on the hill,
cooled by the breeze of your flight.

Bride

14. My Beloved, the mountains,
and lonely wooded valleys,
strange islands,
and resounding rivers,
the whistling of love-stirring breezes,

15. the tranquil night
at the time of the rising dawn,
silent music,
sounding solitude,
the supper that refreshes, and deepens love.

16. Catch us the foxes,
for our vineyard is now in flower,
while we fashion a cone of roses
intricate as the pine's;
and let no one appear on the hill.

17. Be still, deadening north wind;
south wind, come, you that waken love,
breathe through my garden,
let its fragrance flow,
and the Beloved will feed amid the flowers.

18. You girls of Judea,
while among flowers and roses
the amber spreads its perfume,
stay away, there on the outskirts:
do not so much as seek to touch our thresholds.

19. Hide yourself, my love;
turn your face toward the mountains,
and do not speak;
but look at those companions
going with her through strange islands.

Bridegroom

20. Swift-winged birds,
lions, stags, and leaping roes,
mountains, lowlands, and river banks,
waters, winds, and ardors,
watching fears of night:

21. By the pleasant lyres
and the siren's song, I conjure you
to cease your anger
and not touch the wall,
that the bride may sleep in deeper peace.

22. The bride has entered
the sweet garden of her desire,
and she rests in delight,
laying her neck
on the gentle arms of her Beloved.

23. Beneath the apple tree:
there I took you for my own,
there I offered you my hand,
and restored you,
where your mother was corrupted.

Bride

24. Our bed is in flower,
bound round with linking dens of lions,
hung with purple,
built up in peace,
and crowned with a thousand shields of gold.

25. Following your footprints
maidens run along the way;
the touch of a spark,
the spiced wine,
cause flowings in them from the balsam of God.

26. In the inner wine cellar
I drank of my Beloved, and, when I went abroad
through all this valley
I no longer knew anything,
and lost the herd that I was following.

27. There he gave me his breast;
there he taught me a sweet and living knowledge;
and I gave myself to him,
keeping nothing back;
there I promised to be his bride.

28. Now I occupy my soul
and all my energy in his service;
I no longer tend the herd,
nor have I any other work
now that my every act is love.

29. If, then, I am no longer
seen or found on the common,
you will say that I am lost;
that, stricken by love,
I lost myself, and was found.

30. With flowers and emeralds
chosen on cool mornings
we shall weave garlands
flowering in your love,
and bound with one hair of mine.

31. You considered
that one hair fluttering at my neck;
you gazed at it upon my neck
and it captivated you;
and one of my eyes wounded you.

32. When you looked at me
your eyes imprinted your grace in me;
for this you loved me ardently;
and thus my eyes deserved
to adore what they beheld in you.

33. Do not despise me;
for if, before, you found me dark,
now truly you can look at me
since you have looked
and left in me grace and beauty.

Bridegroom

34. The small white dove
has returned to the ark with an olive branch;
and now the turtledove
has found its longed-for mate
by the green river banks.

35. She lived in solitude,
and now in solitude has built her nest;
and in solitude he guides her,
he alone, who also bears
in solitude the wound of love.

Bride

36. Let us rejoice, Beloved,
and let us go forth to behold ourselves in your beauty,
to the mountain and to the hill,
to where the pure water flows,
and further, deep into the thicket.

37. And then we will go on
to the high caverns in the rock
which are so well concealed;
there we shall enter
and taste the fresh juice of the pomegranates.

38. There you will show me
what my soul has been seeking,
and then you will give me,
you, my life, will give me there
what you gave me on that other day:

39. the breathing of the air,
the song of the sweet nightingale,
the grove and its living beauty
in the serene night,
with a flame that is consuming and painless.

40. No one looked at her,
nor did Aminadab appear;
the siege was still;
and the cavalry,
at the sight of the waters, descended.

Teen Sex Linked to Higher Divorce Rates

The Power of a Humble Prayer

I often feel that a lot of my prayers were unanswered or took some time before they were answered by God. There are times that I think that my prayers are answered with the silence of Heaven. But maybe my prayers seem to fall on deaf ears because there is something wrong with the way I pray.

If we feel far away from God, guess who moved?

We.

God is love. God is generosity Himself. He exists to give Himself.

Aid is always available to those who want it.

If feel Divine Aid is not coming, could it be possible that I am not really sincerely asking for it?

Could it be that my prayers are still filled with pride and self-reliance?

Could it be that I am asking God’s help, yet at the back of my mind, I still believe I can do it on my own if God does not help? Do I still rely too much on myself and not to God?

I think when we ask God for assistance, we unconsciously ask God to be our Assistant. He is there for the assist and not to be the Problem Solver Himself. We want God to help us in our own terms, not on His. I think this is where the problem starts, when we think that our will is better than His.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” - Matthew 5:1-13

Why do the poor in spirit have the Kingdom? Because they sought it with all their hearts and it was given to them.

Those who seek shall find.

The poor in spirit are those people who know that they are helpless apart from God. Their very being relies on God. They know they cannot do anything in this world without God’s grace. They are beggars before God. And these beggars have always won God’s favor. Jesus healed a lot of beggars when He walked among us.

The poor in spirit are also those who have a child like trust in the Father. A child’s survival depends on their parents. Without any parent, the child will die. They have total reliance to their parents.

I think that is why God permits crisis in our lives. That it may draw us back to Him.

When we have reached rock bottom, lying on the ground and does not even have the strength to stand up that is when we realize the reality of our helplessness. It is when we cry out to God in these times that we really open ourselves to His Aid, to His Grace. When we cannot help ourselves, that’s when we find help from others. And God is the Great Other.

When we have tried everything we can do, and still things falls apart, that is when we really surrender to God. When we realize the futility of our plans and efforts that is when we really consider God’s plans for us.

Why do we have to wait for a crisis to learn to really pray and seek God’s help?

Because we are stubborn fools. We always want an easier way. We want to prove to ourselves we can do it without God. And we are always disproved in the end.

It is in times of helplessness can we really experience God’s Aid. His Love.

Why?

Because the more helpless we are, the more we empty ourselves of the pride of self-reliance. And now God has the opportunity to fill that emptiness with His love.

“He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” – Luke 1: 52-53