Overheard During Simbang Gabi

"Simbang Gabi" is a beautiful Filipino Christmas tradition.  It is a novena made up of nine dawn masses from the 16th to the 24th of December.  As our parish priest noted, some people who do not go to mass for the rest of the year make their only  appearance at Church for these "misa de gallo" or "Simbang Gabi".  He said it had  magnetic powers he could not fathom.  Every year I have observed it drawing people from all walks of life, energizing people to get up really early and packing the church with so much anticipation.

But alas, it is hard to quiet down the Simbang Gabi crowd.  Teenagers show off their cellphones to one another.  Lovers cuddle due to the cold December mornings.  Little children run all over the place.  Vendors selling taho, rice cakes, and all sorts of food roam the parish grounds.

In an attempt to lessen the noise level and maintain the solemnity of the mass, our parish council flashed an announcement on the projector screen this morning, in Tagalog.  It said something to this effect:

"Pakiusap, tayo po ay magbigay-galang sa Banal na Eukaristiya.  

Atin pong iwasan ang magkwentuhan sa loob ng simbahan at 

ilagay po natin ang ating mga cellphone sa silent mode."

The minute the announcement was flashed on the screen, I overheard a row of teenagers sitting not far away from me saying loudly to one another:

"Ano raw?

Ano yung Eukaristiya?"

It was a few minutes before mass started and I could not believe my ears.  All along I thought that they were noisy during Simbang Gabi because they did not care what was going on at the altar, Who was being offered, and what the significance of the Sacrifice was.  It dawned on me that it was possible that they did not know.

That was a totally different problem, and I informed our parish priest about it.  He could only shake his head.  He said, "Imposibleng hindi nila alam iyon".  He has his job cut out for him, all right.

In addition, during the recitation of the Apostle's Creed, I heard someone saying, 

"Nang may ikalawang araw ay nabuhay mag-uli"

In English, this meant, "On the SECOND day he rose again"...

It was quite interesting.  Either her Tagalog was rusty, or something else was.  

The choir put up a commendable effort in singing so bright and early.  The people hardly joined them, due probably to lack of sleep.  Or so I thought.  Until...

While I was going back to my seat after receiving Communion, the choir sang "Christmas in Our Hearts" by Jose Mari Chan. It was a song I hardly thought would be appropriate for mass, but one well loved by Filipinos.

So much so that I heard the whole church singing along, like a public karaoke session, belting out at the top of their lungs,

"Let's sing Meri Krismas, and a happy holiday (sic)

This season may we never forget the love we have for Jesus

Let Him be the one to guide us as another New year starts

And may the Spirit of Christmas be always in our hearts!"

I looked up, at Jesus on the Cross, and felt a smile growing in my heart.  For all our flaws, Filipinos do love Jesus, and we love to sing.  Who was I to judge people's faith for their mistakes, when, of all races,  Filipinos truly have Christmas in our hearts?  I was just sharing with a balikbayan friend last night that she had been to the US and Canada, and there was no "spirit of Christmas" until December 24, whereas here we started putting up lanterns and lights as early as September.  I had spent Christmas in Sydney and it was really different. 

In our parish, they served salabat (fresh ginger tea), coffee, pan de sal, and lomi after the mass.  The world may be having a financial crisis, but for the Filipinos, Christmas will always be celebrated in our hearts.

Maligayang Pasko po sa inyong lahat!

Advent Recollection Reflections

Trust Ella to turn a blessing into a struggle. Just a year and a half ago, I was praying for God to lead me to a workplace where I could serve Him with my skills and talents, and which provided a Christian setting so I would not have too much difficulty adjusting after a year and a half of full-time mission work.

God's answer, as I have shared before, was two-fold. He said, "Do not worry, I will not bring you back to the world." I was relieved, for I knew that in a corporate setting I could lose myself again and become what I had fought tooth and nail against, which was to be a corporate (law firm) slave. "You will know when the job is from me", the Lord added during my discernment period. I held on to His promise and so I gave up some offers that did not sit well with me, and waited.

To make a long story short I was led to CD Asia, my present company. I celebrated my first year as a full-time employee last November. It was time to evaluate myself. I saw where I needed to grow and pushed myself to do better on my second year.

I started preparing for my 2009 department plans in September, thinking it would ease my load for December, the scheduled time for presenting the plans to the Board. I wanted perfect plans gathered from perfect data with guaranteed perfect results.

Given all that so-called preparation, I still found myself cramming, and requiring my staff to work doubly hard, by the first week of December. I also had a good problem - the provincial employees were flown to Manila for the first time and I, as one of the proponents of that move, had to come up with a proper Training Program for them to make it worth their while.

In short, for this past week, I had department evaluation, report preparation, Board presentation, and staff instruction. Include one morning of Simbang Gabi sponsored by our zone in the parish, endless Christmas parties, gifts to wrap, humongous traffic, outreach programs, family and friends to think about, and the result is exhaustion. I lost my voice, felt hunger like I had never had before (no time to eat), ignored text messages, had no online presence, and prayed for the grace to survive the week.

I took some measures to ensure my physical and spiritual health. I tried to keep my regular prayer time. I kept my RDL appointments with my SD. I drank 1000mg of Vitamin C. And I slept every moment I could, which included those precious minutes while stuck in traffic in a taxi, no matter how dangerous that was. Sadly, I could not keep my gym schedule, so guess what's definitely in my new year's resolutions list - a reconciliation with my personal trainer!

This morning, I had to wrap gifts for some friends I would be seeing, and was late for work (as usual). As I left our house hurriedly to hail a taxi, I almost slipped. It was a very minor misstep, and I did not lose my balance at all, but it was enough for me to hear a voice telling me, "Slow down, Ella. What's your hurry?"

I paused in the middle of the street and answered back, "Lord, You know me so well. Give me responsibilities and I will deliver. I long to spend more time with You. Show me how to do that amidst my busyness. I am at a loss how!"

Good thing that our office activity for today was an Advent Recollection given by Lampstand Inspirations, a ministry ran by brothers and a sister from the Ligaya ng Panginoon community. My good friend Atty. Bobby Quitain was a speaker. I was pleased to see Mandy, Bogart, and Nerren too.

The Lord immediately used Bobby to capture my attention. He asked us all to slow down. I was struck at the lengths I had gone to supposedly do God's work - in the parish, in the office, in my family, with my friends - and yet I had diminishing time spent in silence, in rest, and in prayer.

It was a Spirit-filled recollection. We were of different religions, but the same God. All of a sudden, our small office pantry was transformed into a foretaste of heaven. People started laughing at the jokes. Then they fidgeted during meditation time. They rejoiced at the games. But point by point, video by video, Scripture verse by Scripture verse, the CD Asians slowly felt God's invitation to claim Heaven in our Hearts. It was a sight to behold.

God asked me to put down my official hat and to just be a daughter to Him. I needed to worship. I needed to sing. I needed to tell Him that I loved Him, that despite my many activities and worries, He was and will always be the Center of my life. That I long for Heaven as an ultimate destination and as a possibility here on earth.

So yes, I am glad that my officemates had a wonderful day of recollection, but I was even happier that I too was able to set aside my many concerns and to experience God in the workplace. I did not realize how much I was thirsting, longing, yearning, and hungering for God until I sang "Our Hearts Will Rise", "Heaven is My Home", "I Give You My Heart", and "How Great is Your Love" again today. What used to be weekly prayer meeting songs became cries from my very tired heart.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job (now), I love my company, and I love my responsibilities. They are blessings and I am grateful for them. Not every company has an official advent recollection, charity event, Sportsfest, teambuilding, and company raffle this year. It's just that they are not enough to satisfy the hole in my heart.

I have to accept this: that, as St. Augustine said, my heart will not rest until it rests on God alone. Since I am still not in heaven where I can see Him face to face, I have to seek the glimpses of heaven here on earth, and to embrace them as they come.

With an Advent like this, Christ's coming has more meaning. He is coming in my heart. :)

The Katinas: A REAL Worship Experience!

I just attended an awesome worship concert at the Araneta Coliseum with my friends from the parish, and I was just floored with the music and the ministry of The Katinas!

I admit that I was not so excited to go.  I had been to previous worship concerts featuring Christian artists and they had seemed to be more focused on their performance rather than on prayer.  

As soon as The Katinas played their first song, I sensed something was wonderfully different with this group.  They were attuned to God, and it showed.  They were in harmony.  They were uber-talented, and it was inspiring to see them sharing their gifts to proclaim God's word.

I was probably the most jaded in our group, but I tried to hide it.  I had prepared myself to just enjoy the night and to participate in some songs.  I had just prayed the rosary with my parents before leaving for the concert, so I was at my most Catholic best and not really in the mood for a noisy concert that pretended to be about praising God.

I was mistaken.  Everything written about The Katinas was true, and they were even better in person.  Those five brothers who were born in Samoa, an island in the South Pacific, showed me once more how powerful music was in spreading the good news.  Almost everyone sang, danced, jumped, praised, and worshiped with them.  Their personal testimonies about how God had moved in their family's life were simply amazing.  Their music was what they called "rock and soul", which was rock with a little  bit (I'd say a lot) of soul.  They could dance, play musical instruments, and sing, sing, sing.

Their versions of popular worship songs got the crowd lifting their hands in praise.  The whole coliseum declared Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and we felt free to run and dance, to jump and clap, to sing and pray.  The quiet moments moved many to tears, as we listened to their short anecdotes about God's marvelous ways.  

What was a bonus was that they brought American Samoa with them, through videos and songs that gave the audience a feel of how their people worshipped God.  I liked their use of technology to maximize the worship experience.  They connected to the crowd instantly.  I had heard foreign artists attempt to say a few Tagalog words (I was a Menudo fan in my childhood), but it was the first time that I heard this said in a worship concert - "Astig kayo!"  When they announced that they were all married already, a chorus of sighs was loudly heard across the coliseum, mostly from the women.

My feet hurt from all that jumping and dancing, my voice cracked after all that screaming and singing, but it was worth it.  I felt one with other Christians.  I felt closer to my brothers and sisters from the parish.  They sang one Christmas song and I closed my eyes to their beautiful version of "Oh Holy Night".

Everyone in our group was happy after the concert, and it renewed our desire to proclaim God's word through music in our parish and in our community.  We felt so blessed to have been given free tickets to this wonderful concert.  It was a real worship experience for all of us.

Katinas, Astig kayo!

The Answer is Yes, Lord.

Another week passed in my retreat.  I was asked to contemplate on Jesus' invitation to follow Him.  Part of my meditation was the Nativity.  I also contemplated on the Hidden Life of Jesus and dwelt on the Incarnation.  

Those were very beautiful and deep passages, but I only had a few minutes a day for "formal" prayer.  As advised by my SD, I walked the rest of the day in prayer, continuing what I had started in the morning through the Scripture verse assigned.

I was grateful that this time, the invitation to follow Jesus did not elicit fear in me.  I just said "Yes, Lord, you know everything, and you know that I love you."  I received the grace to be open, to surrender, and to wait on what the Lord will reveal to me at this point in my life.  This Yes followed a series of responses I had made since I had given my life to the Lord in 1993, and even before that.

This grace enabled me to weather painful news that the younger brother of one of my closest friends was diagnosed with cancer.  I was shocked but gradually came to realize just how much the Lord had enabled my friend and her family to face this crisis.

My response to Jesus' invitation to follow Him also allowed me to choose to be where I am right now, and not to resent it.  I have heard Him calling me to stay and I have decided to willingly stay.  I am able to embrace it because I know Jesus asked it of me and that means He will be with me every step of the way.

All of a sudden, the restlessness building up inside me dissipated.  It might come back but I have this to hold on to - that I have accepted who and where I am, and given the option of leaving vs. staying, I was invited to stay, and I gladly said Yes.

This gives me the freedom now to look at my life with more hope and confidence.  I can take stock of my roles and take them on with renewed strength.  

Jesus truly meets us where we are.

An Invitation for All Catholics

I found a very beautiful and powerful commercial produced by CatholicsComeHome.Org for all Catholics.

It is an invitation to see our faith for all that it has contributed to the world. It is an invitation for all Catholics to come home.

For more details please visit www.catholicscomehome.org and go to the link to the Epic TV commercial.

Choices During This Retreat

This past two weeks of RDL have been the hardest as I saw the extent of my unbelief in God's love and mercy.  

My SD invited me to make certain choices, because we are all given the gift of choice.

1. I will choose to believe that God, in His infinite goodness, does not withhold anything good from me.  If he delays, or if he declines, after my prayer, it means that that is what's best for me.  Period.
   
2. I will choose to stay in my current situation and I will embrace it with acceptance.  Things are no longer thrust and forced onto me if I make a choice to stay and to accept.  
3. I will choose to be grateful for my many blessings and not resent them or take them for granted.
4. I will choose to love even if it hurts.
5. I will choose to obey because I trust Him and have seen His mighty saving power.
6. I will look more deeply into the life and teachings of Jesus, and this time when I follow it will be with a deeper knowledge of and intimacy with Him.
7. I will choose to understand where people are coming from and not blame them anymore.
8. I will choose to receive love.
9. I will choose to look at myself first, if I am still okay, before performing my duties and imposing new and impossible ones.
10. I will pray for the grace to patiently wait on the Lord.

Afterwards, I had dinner with a friend who brought a book for me to read, about Waiting.  The Season of Advent has started early for me.  

It is in the choosing that I respond to God's Love.  I choose Love above everything and everyone else.

Sunday Masses, Then and Now

Attending Holy Mass on Sundays in the Philippines has changed slowly but significantly since my childhood days.

I remember when I was a child, my parents would gather us five children, make us wear appropriate Sunday clothes, and take us to Church first thing in the morning, every single Sunday.  Whatever activities we had in mind, like going to our favorite restaurant, attending our classmates' birthday parties, or eating ice cream at home, would only come after the mass.

I was often told by my parents to stop fidgeting and fixing my dress during mass, and to learn the mass songs by heart.  They did not allow us to act up a storm at church, no matter how much we wanted to buy balloons or cotton candy from the vendors waiting outside.

That was when we lived in a small city within a province.  When we moved to Manila, we were shocked that masses were held inside shopping malls, children ran around the church throughout the Eucharistic celebration, and mass-goers wore anything from spaghetti-strapped tops to micro mini skirts.

I am not generalizing, in fact I have attended the most solemn masses in churches and communities within Metro Manila.  I am just thinking of ways how we could get our parishioners to participate more actively during mass in this day and age.  

Some people are in the habit of coming in late, and I know there are legitimate reasons for that, especially for big families, but some latecomers also choose to sit at the front pews, thus distracting the rest of the congregation and disrupting the solemnity of the mass.  I sit there thinking of how to share with them what we celebrate during mass, and who is in front - not the priest, but our Lord Jesus - but I know that is too self-righteous and holier-than-thou of me.  I pray that at the right time people would re-learn to genuflect when they enter the church, and to offer their hearts in gratitude and reverence to the Lord.  I cannot sit there and judge what is going on in people's hearts anyway.  But I wish they would show it with more zeal and passion.

Come offertory time, people who are seated in front do not even attempt to get the collection baskets, even if in our parish we do not have a ministry assigned to do this specifically, in order to encourage participation among the people.  If the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, I hope that we as his disciples and followers could imitate him.

We need to get our act together as we are a young parish.  We need to build the proper structures for all our ministries, and I do pray that the obstacles that hinder this would all disappear soon.  We need to set the tone during Charismatic Mass by preparing the choirs to lead the time of worship through music, and I have volunteered to help in this area.  We need to prepare the lyrics so that everyone can sing.  The parish pastoral council is doing a lot of marvelous work, and I am not complaining.

I pray that in our parish, we would all learn to pray together as a community, and to please God who deserves all our love and service.

 

Blessed are the Brokenhearted

I do not want to write when I am broken.  I want neat and happy endings to my entries.  Who would care to read about someone else's heartaches anyway?

I do not want to give in to my crying.  I suffer from migraine as a result, but I choose the pain rather than the tears.  Who would want to look at me when I am sad and lost?

I have an interior life which I try to face through a more intimate prayer time, and it's bringing me to a point of recognition of my brokenness.  It is so different from my physical world - of friends and family surrounding me everyday.  It doesn't show much, I hope, that I am walking through all my internal struggles, in search of a firmer relationship with God.  That is my ultimate goal that's why I'm enduring this retreat instead of quitting after it got too uncomfortable.  I'm keeping my daily routine.  I work, I relate, I chat, I eat.  I cannot sleep that much and I prefer long periods of silence.  

When alone, I talk to God and bring to Him all of my deeply-buried questions.  But the answers are too difficult.  I cannot cry even when I'm alone anymore.  It's as if I feel it is a waste, and a sign of weakness.  I used to be able to cry unabashedly before the small altar in my room.  These past few weeks of RDL, I have stopped myself after a few tears.

Is this normal?  Am I being too depressed by these reflections?  I should be lifted up and should experience peace and joy, right?  How come, even with all my efforts, I still feel the enormity of my discipleship, the loss of what I did not have, the challenge of my uncertain future?  The answer might be that I need not try too hard, I know.  But what I know and what I experience are two different things right now.

As an expression of faith I will declare here that I believe that God will lift me up at the right time, and that this journey through the dark valleys of my heart is just a part of it.  I will spread my wings, lift my head, and soar again someday.  

Tonight I will admit that I am ashamed of my own brokenness, and I depend on God to make me feel whole again.   

Tomorrow is one step closer to that day of flight, of freedom, of love.

Prayer for Reconciliation

This prayer was given to me for two consecutive weeks by Sr. Reylie for my RDL. I found it timely for my world, and the other parts of the world, this fresh morning. I am praying for all of us.

Prayer for Reconciliation

Lord Christ, help us to see what it is
that joins us together, not what separates us.
For when we see only what it is that makes us different,
we often become aware of what is wrong with others.
We see only their faults and weaknesses,
interpreting their actions as flowing from
malice or hatred rather than fear.
Even when confronted with evil, Lord,
you forgave and sacrificed yourself
rather than sought revenge.
Teach us to do the same by the power of your Spirit.
AMEN.

Resistance to Prayer

After I met with my Spiritual Directress last week, I began to feel the dread for the coming theme, "God is Faithful, but I am not Faithful".

This is an invitation to have a deep felt understanding of my sin and the disordered tendencies in my life, that I may feel shame and confusion, and so turn to Him for healing and forgiveness.

What disordered tendencies?

The week was to consist of reflections upon my sins, weaknesses, and failures. Not my favorite topic. Not the easiest, either. My natural reaction was to resist praying. To sit in front of my prayer corner and to tightly shut my heart, my mind, and my journal.

Then I read my spiritual article for the week, "Exploring Resistance". In it I learned that "resistance" is the spiritual term for "avoiding prayer". It is not bad and is often a sign that there's some growth, something new that wants to emerge in my life, some change coming on the horizon, and which I resist as a protection from the potential difficulty of change.

I prayed about how long I had been avoiding prayer. The answer was a surprise - for I had been doing it for almost two years now. I would go in and out of my prayer time and my prayer life, afraid to be too close to God, afraid to hear Him, afraid to respond to Him, afraid to face Him.

I tried to see what image I had on my resistance to prayer, and what surfaced was an image of an erupting volcano that I had been attempting to cover with my bare hands, to hide from God and from others. I could see that my hands were getting burned and sooner or later I would have to let my heart explode, and be exposed.

Deep inside, I was not seeing the good changes, only the bad. There were so many attachments, false treasures, areas of vulnerability, and sins that I had allowed to accumulate over those years of resistance. I saw this past week the patterns and dispositions of my heart.

My prayer guide invited me to shift the focus from my own sinfulness to my Heavenly Father's forgiving love. If only I could learn to see that despite all these imperfections, my God still loved me, in whole and not in parts.

I will see Sr. Reylie tonight. Sometimes the lessons just crystallize when I tell her about them. I tried, and I will share about the movements of the Spirit in my life. I cannot say that I enjoyed this week, but it is obviously necessary. RDL is supposed to bring out my issues and lead to my healing. I cannot resist that which I asked for.