Kunin Mo Oh Diyos (Take oh Lord)
A Catholic blogger in an un-catholic environment.
I ask the question: Will you portray your mother like this?
Or worse, this?
Our Lady in Fatima insisted the devotion to the Five First Saturdays for this purpose: To pay reparation for the five blasphemies against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
1. Against her Immaculate Conception
2. Against her Perpetual Virginity
3. Against her Divine Maternity of God and the Mankind
4. Involving instilling into the hearts of children indifference, contempt and hate against the Immaculate Mother
5. Against her sacred images.
And specifically, we pay reparation for portraying Our Mother with such atrocity.
Jesus Said:
“Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Her at every moment, without there being anyone to make an act of reparation in order to take them away.”
Then Mary held out her thorn-wreathed Heart and said,
“See, my daughter, my heart, surrounded by thorns with which ungrateful men wound it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me.
“Say to all who, for 5 months, on the first Saturdays, confess, receive Holy Communion, recite the Rosary, and keep Me company during 15 minutes while meditating on the 15 mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to my Immaculate Heart, I promise to assist them at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their souls.”
-Our Lady to Sister Lucy
On February 15, 1926 the Jesus as a Child appeared to Lucy at her convent garden saying,
“It is true, My daughter, that many souls begin, but few persevere to the very end, and those who persevere do it to receive the graces promised. The souls who make the five first Saturdays with fervor, and to make reparation to the Heart of your Heavenly Mother, please Me more than those who make fifteen, but are lukewarm and indifferent.”
On June 13, 1929 Lucia saw Mary holding Her Immaculate Heart with swords piercing it.
“There are so many souls whom the Justice of God condemns for sins committed against me, that I have come to ask reparation. Sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.”
These are the words expressed by Jesus and Mary in their expressed desire to reparation against the blasphemies to the Heart of Jesus.
“He who desires”, says St. Bonaventure, “to go on advancing from virtue to virtue, from grace to grace, should meditate continually on the Passion of Jesus.” And he adds that “there is no practice more profitable for the entire sanctification of the soul than the frequent meditation of the sufferings of Jesus Christ.”
St. Augustine also said that a single tear shed at the remembrance of the Passion of Jesus is worth more than a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or a year of fasting on bread and water.
Saint Alphonsus de Liguori,
MEDITATIONS ON THE PASSION OF JESUS CHRIST,
Introduction.
Another classic:
HOW MANY DOMINICANS DO YOU NEED TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?
Three of course. One is for preaching to the lightbulb, one is for praising the Lord with the lightbulb, and one is for blessing the good lightbulb.
The classic: “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Let’s find out from some personalities in the Church:
The Benedictines: So it may correct an erring monk.
The Augustinians: So that it may find God.
The Franciscans: Praise the Lord for Brother Chicken, for in crossing the road, you have used the legs God gave you!
The Dominicans: In the first place, what is the purpose of asking WHY it is crossing the road??
The Jesuits: to go to a university!
The Carmelites: To go to higher perfection…
The Salesians: To gather as many young people as possible!
The Foreign Mission Society: So that it may be sent forth to all the nations of the world!
The Piarists: So that a good Catholic Education can be achieved.
The Lazarists: So it may help the poor and the marginalized.
The Redemptorists: I’ll tell you when I get to heaven and asked the Chicken (???)
The Society of St. Pius X: It is running away from the errors of the Conciliar Church!
The ultra-liberal: God will answer that.
The ultra-feminists: Is the chicken a womyn?
H.H. Benedict XVI: It is crossing because God is Love and His Love allowed the chicken to cross.
Archbishop Annibale Bugnini: So it will be less Catholic.
Mother Angelica: I dunno, I just like fried chicken!
Me: To get to the other side. ;)
I suppose you guys remember that I’m looking for a name for my new blog featuring the secular side of myself (commentaries on issues, literary artwork and other what-not). I have found one: UNDER THE FIG TREE.
Why UNDER THE FIG TREE? You see, it has it’s symbolism in Biblical as well as in ancient literature that if you are under a tree (a fig particularly), you gesture something that has to do with wisdom and learning. When you go to the shade of a tree, you study.
So technically, my blog would be following a structure of scholarly and intellectual commentaries in the light of the teachings of the Catholic church (does not necessarily mean I’ll be biased with Church teachings).
Do wait for the first installment of my blogs: UNDER THE FIG TREE.
UPDATE! Do visit the new blog here: underthefigtreepilipinas.blogspot.com
Inside a religious community, bretheren usually has some specific roles to fulfill inside the circles of religious life. There are some who are tasked to form and lead the young aspirants, or those tasked to lead the community in praising God by singing the psalms and canticles, or those brilliant-minded bretheren whose task is to teach the community the things that are of God. There are also those who are considered the caretakers of the bretheren in their temporal needs. And of course, there are also the dissident brothers in need of fraternal care and correction.
I see myself as the lowliest of all bretheren: the dull-minded friar already content with cleaning the floors of the cloister and washing the feet of the fellow bretheren before meals. I see myself as a lowliest of bretheren because I feel the true meaning of brotherhood in serving my brothers.
I also see that being the humble friar as I am, I get to mirror the humility of the Holy Virgin during the time that she served her family in Nazareth. Her silence and her humble submission to the Son of God and to her chaste spouse is one of her attributes as the Queen and Mother of all peoples.
Will be releasing two blogs this year, both in Tumblr. I was quite inspired to further open my literary skills — both in journalism and artistic — so I came up with two Tumblr blogs for this purpose:
1. THE SENSE OF THE SACRED - This used to be the name of my column in the College Newspaper of the College of the Holy Spirit of Manila. I decided to put some commentaries on both church and social issues surrounding our country today, in the hopes of giving a new perspective on some things, if not similar perspective at par with the teachings of the Church and the moral law.
2. (Haven’t got a name for this blog yet) - This blog will feature artistic literature (prose and poetry, a little bit artwork and music) and will cater to a more secular side of my life.
I will give updates on these two endeavors as time goes by.
Tonight was somewhat not that ordinary. A rainy evening, dim and wet with the raindrops making small taps on the window. It’s like this the whole day. The air, cold and wet, blows through my window with the rain water that seems to fluter away with the wind as it splashes its tiny drops into the back of my neck.
Tonight is somewhat not that ordinary.
The faint strains of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” lingers in my mind as I think of this girl that captured a splinter of the moment in my rather insignificant life. Flats and sharps make its way to the piano keys like men rushing from the jampacked train that stopped at the central station on a monday morning.
tonight is somewhat not that ordinary.
Is it not that I said that the girl of my dreams lingered within the shadows of my faint memory? The face that launched a thousand ships, launched mine into the sea of pure bliss. The waves splashing in the oar of this ship reminds me of the times I beheld her face away from the scrutiny of my peers who would as beasts in the forests seeing the poor hare trapped in a branch and getting ready to devour the poor thing, jeer and laugh at someone who would sing praises just to see the face of the princess that caught his heart in a momentous gaze that can stop time and space altogether.
tonight is somewhat not that ordinary.
But ah, life as it is, is somewhat a tragedy, singing its arias and marches to ridicule my fantasies. I later realize of the luxury of being with her the whole time, she, laying her head in my bosom, as if to tell me that she desire nothing more to be in union with me until time and space falls apart. It seems unimaginable that someone like me tend to give myself this luxury. Life is a troublesome youngster who would make folly out of fooling those who worked seriously.
tonight is somewhat not that ordinary.
The rain droplets touched the back of my neck. Ah, life, you treacherous old bloke. Using the raindrops to bring me back to the reality of it all — your irony of everything. Quite cleaver of you. For you to come at such an unlikely hour, I cannot further imagine you doing things to me for such a luxury of keeping myself occupied by this girl who is my reason to live.
tonight is somewhat not that ordinary.
But I neither lost hope nor give in to thy treacheries. Give me a penny’s worth that I could say to her “I desire to be with you for I love you so”, and I give everything to you, traitor of lovers. Let me suffer no longer within your clutches and let me be with her. I tell her at last my hear’s greatest longing and let me be, oh reality.
tonight is somewhat not that ordinary.
As i get back to my senses, I realized that reality is a fact of my existence. It cannot change nor amended. Hoping to console myself, I stare that the picture of the girl of my dreams and I say:
“tonight is somewhat not that ordinary.”
****************************************
I really don’t know what type of literary piece is this. But do bear with me. This is a deviation from the usual religious postings.
Thomasians are now harkened for a suggestion on the name to be given to the new UST Sports Center. There were many suggestions given by Thomasians in the UST QUADRI fan page and I was blessed enough to stumble upon this call form the university.
If my opinion is to be taken, I would humbly suggest that this center be dedicated to the Youth Dominican Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati.
Since all buildings in the university are named after our Dominican bretheren in heaven, I think it would be very much appropriate that we name this center for the holistic growth of the young people to this great young man who was, also like the youth, were holistically trained in the Dominican Spirituality and in his recreational activities such as mountain-hiking and other sports.
Also, I can see a relationship with Pier Giorgio’s life with the lifestyle of the youth of today. Through the life of Bl. Pier Giorgio, they young people of today are called by God to live a simple and modest life of holiness and profound joy.
