Finishing Strong!

My son Sev and I joined the CFC Ancop Global Walk to sponsor scholars. It was participated by about 80,000 people. It was a 5km distance and Sev was on his bike. At first I doubted if Sev could finish the whole stretch. But my son was determined. It also helped that I was encouraging him. We took it slow, enjoying every bit of the scenery and the people until we finished the race. We were not ahead of the rest but I could say that we finished strong!
In our walk with the Lord, we can easily have doubts along the way. Some of us start strong with our relationship with Him, only to give it up later in life. Somehow we get tired and succumb to the weaknesses of our humanity. But the Lord is there to encourage us and to show us how to enjoy our journey with Him until we reach the end. So how do we finish strong? We must have...

1. Faith that God wants the best for our lives. The Lord wants us to reach heaven and he'll do everything to help us get there. We go through trials to strengthen our faith and practice humility, so we may fully embrace the cross. We have to keep on believing in him in both good and bad times to reach heaven, our finish line. We have to...

2. Invite the Lord daily to walk with us. Prayer and Scripture is key. The Lord encourages us through His Word. But if we don't invite Him and take time to listen, we might just miss out His message that will give us hope and determination. We have to seek...

3. Nourishment to gain strength. Attending Mass regularly is the ultimate nourishment. The Eucharist gives us the grace to partake in the body and blood of Christ that will quench our thirst and hunger. We are also nourished through the relationships in the community of believers. We must gain...

4. Inspiration from those who successfully finished. One of my inspirations is a video in You Tube about a father who entered an Iron Man race with his son who could not walk and speak. They called their team "My Redeemer lives." Despite the odds, the father pressed on and finished the race. I was inspired to tears. We also know of countless saints who like us, humans with weaknesses, have kept the faith and finished strong in life. We can draw inspiration from them.

5. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God. And yes, all these things shall be added unto you. What slows us down are the many distractions along the race. We get sidetracked by our own greed and selfish ambitions. We must remember that if God comes first, everything else will be put in order.

6. Help others along the way. God calls us to evangelize and bring glad tidings to the poor. In fact the only way to reach the finish line, heaven, is if we have helped the poor around us.
Let us strive to finish strong by being faithful to the end. His grace will give us strength to endure and reach the finish line.

I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus. Phil. 3:14

Our Hearts as Mangers

Inside the Church of the Nativity. The star represents the spot where Christ was born

We were able to visit the birthplace of Jesus Christ, Bethlehem.  I was in awe of being able to touch the place where Christ's manger was standing.  One has to kneel and reach in to be able to kiss the area. There are latin inscriptions on the star saying, ”Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est” (Here the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ”).  I felt like one of the shepherds who witnessed the new born Christ.

Here are some of my reflections regarding this experience:

1. You cannot save someone without being there for them. Jesus, Son of God, out of His love for us came down to earth, became flesh, to save us from our sins.  We long to help others, but they need us to be present in their lives.  We want to help and save the poor, but we are only content with our donations.  We want to help our own family, but we do not give time to talk and heal.  The only way for Christ to save us was to be there for us by becoming human, so we can be brought to heaven with him through the saving power of His death and resurrection.

2. If we are to be like Christ, we are to be born out of humility.  My 4 year old son, Sev, can already narrate the nativity story in his own words.  He would stress that the place where Christ was born did not smell nice because there were animals around.  Following Christ is a nativity experience.  We will always be humbled and put in a "manger" instead of a comfortable or pleasant position. Truly the Lord blesses us in abundance. But without the experience of being humbled, we will never be genuinely grateful for what we have.

3. We kneel before the King to also be reminded of who we are.  We often kneel in prayer for reverence to God, but kneeling is also to remind us about ourselves and that we cannot be above our King.  When pride comes into our hearts, it is often difficult to kneel.  Although Jesus was just a baby, both shepherds and earthly kings knelt before Him.  They understood who they were in the presence of the One. Therefore the best way to know ourselves is not to psycho-analyze but to be in God's presence.  If we were to realize our purpose, we can only discover it from the reference point of God.

Experiencing Bethlehem made this year's Christmas extra meaningful for me.  I believe that what is important is that we are able to transform our hearts into humble mangers so that Christ will be born in us.  Have a meaningful Christmas season!

Be a Community Helper

Today, my 4 year-old son had an assignment to go to school dressed up as a Community Helper.  We thought of many things; doctor, fireman, police among others. We ended up with...musician. So Sev brought to school all his musical instruments; a flute, a ukulele, a toy xylophone, and a small bongo. Although being a musician is not the typical concept of a community helper, but then i thought that if no one actually wrote songs or played music for the community, then we would be like robots without artistry, expression, and emotion. Without musicians, then we would have not much entertainment (clean entertainment, that is) that can relax us from a hectic day and refresh us for the next. So we figured, a musician is a community helper.

Are you a community helper? How is the product you are selling or your field of study benefiting the society? More so, are you helping build a Christ-centered society?  I believe that whatever profession or business we are in, we can all be community helpers.

But then, let us not also be blind if we know what we are doing destroys community.  There might be things we are involved in that are environmental hazards and yet we are more concerned of profit.  What are the values that our work or product promote?  Are these products helping others become better people?  Are we justly compensating workers?

As community helpers, we are concerned with justice, love, and peace. 

Justice according to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 201 (CSDC) states, "According to its most classical formulation, it consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor ." As a community helper, we give what is due.

When we do things out of love for neighbor, we are building a "civilization of love." Again, from the Church's Social Doctrine (580), "Christians must be deeply convinced witnesses of this, and they are to show by their lives how love is the only force that can lead to personal and social perfection, allowing society to make progress towards the good."  Are we helping the community out of love or out of mere duty?

Peace is the fruit of justice and love (CSDC, 494).  Without justice and love, there will surely be crime, violence, and the failure of peace which is war.  Therefore, as Community Helpers who work towards a Christ-centered society, we carry justice and love as our virtue and our posture.  May our day-to-day work lead us to God's will for our society.