Author: Philip Isidro

The Burden of Business, the Response of Love

Apr 14, Toronto

One of the struggles I’ve been find in my life recently is that I always need to be productive or I’m doing something wrong. As a CFC-Youth Leader, I have just gotten use to always being pushed to my limits in terms of my patience, and energy. Most of the time I feel like I need to be pushed, that I’m not allowed to rest, lest I be wasting my time. I can fall into a trap if that I’m not incredibly tired, that if I’m not staying up until midnight, and waking up 4:30, then I’m not giving enough of myself. I do all this with the assumption that I have to do all this, and that this is part of my service to the Lord, that I have to do this, that I’m not allowed to enjoy my life. Saying it allowed I’ve realized how ridiculous that sounds, when I first started serving the Lord it was because it was a response to the joys of being loved by Him, but I’ve wrapped myself so much in the seemingly need to do things, that I’ve forgotten this. That the not only is my service a response to love, but that it is love itself that the Lord ask me to serve Him. I look at my calendar, and see how full it becomes, but as I remember that the Lord has blessed my life I see this hours as gifts from God, that the hours are ways in which He wants me to see how He wants to love me.

Friends, remember that in all things at all times it is by the design of God that you experience love

“Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” – JER 29:11

Millennial Saints

In my so far short lifetime, I’ve witnessed the canonization of a few “recent” people, which would include St. Pope John Paul II, and St. Theresa of Calcutta, both of whom I had to remember to add the “St” title to. I would say that I do know both of the saints to a decent extent, and St. Pope John Paul II was alive during my life, whoever considering I didn’t have my spiritual awakening until after they passed away, I wouldn’t have the confidence say I’ve gotten to witness their lives first hand. My ignorance of the Saints and other holy people, had left me considering them more as legends from stories than historical people that walked this earth. As I have come to recognize that holiness is a universal call for God’s people, my mind wanders to the saints that walk among us now. Those who’s stories are still in their infancy like Augustine in his life prior to conversion, or St. Francis Xavier as he began his mission to Asia. It’s incredible to know that the stories and epic tales of faith are being lived right now, that friendships that would go beyond this world are being forged around us. I’ve come to believe this more and more, as I witness the journeys of holiness all around me.

The desire for God is written in the hearts of all man, this is the universal call. We can only speculate the daily lives of the saints of antiquity, even that of their contemporaries. However we don’t need to worry ourselves with what a day in the life of St. Theresa of Liseaux was like because God has unique story, a story for us to experience first hand. The saints lived lives in experiencing the joy of the Lord, as so can we. Our “saint lives” don’t begin suddenly, they already begun, before we were born we were already consecrated (Jer 1:5). We have the daily opportunity to experience Christ, to live as saints do, in the fullness of life form God.   As an aside, I like to humour myself with the idea that a cell phone may end up becoming a second class relic of a millennial saint, and their biographies would included tweets, and facebook post.

Recommended Reading and inspiration for this reflection: GAUDETE ET EXSULTATE

Household Moments

Yesterday was my upper household for the area, and I had honestly forgotten what we look like as group, and was astounded at how many us there are. I looked at all us together, and was filled with pride for our Lord, I was looking at the area core of the GTA and could just see all of us as part of some kind of engine for God, all of us different parts, of one greater body. However as awe inspiring God is in showing me what my Household looks like together, He also inspires awe in what happens when we are apart. I’m writing this on the Saturday after my HH, I originally had plans to meet up with some of my Household again, but I ended up just staying in my local area, doing errands, and catching up on emails. While I was doing my own thing I also saw whatever one was up to in our group chat, as they were talking about their plans for chapter visits that they and the next. I am use to us serving together, especially at bigger events and conferences, but in this moment of just knowing that across the GTA my household was being an active, and living out our callings in service, I could feel the unity we have not just as members of the same HH, also the unifying nature of our service. As far as I can be from my household, I can always know that we are all in the same mission, and I as lonely as being on mission.
Lord God, I praise and proclaim your goodness, that you are so great and so too are your servants. Lord thank you for giving me my household, a group of soul who serve in your name, Lord thank you for calling me to be with them. 
Amen

A Break

Toronto, ON. These first weeks of February have been an odd change of pace for me. Even though it has only been one month into the year so far, anyone close to me would know how busy my life has been all of January, and I honestly it took that long it to end. That is not to suggest that I dreaded the month, what I mean to see is that this month, with how crazy and hectic it has been I’d really rather say that it, wasn’t busy, but concentrated. Concentrated to how much love I was able to experience through every minute of this month. I may look at calendar, and see how every single day (save for most Sundays) have been jam packed, but at the same time I look at every section on it, and would rather thank God for those moments than complain. As the month went through, and the month got busier I was thinking more about how God has been trying to squeeze every single minute of this month to show me how much He wants to love me.

How Am I Getting Home?

TORONTO, ON. It was as a Press Head for YCOM that I started developing a strong inclination for serving. During the first year of my first service, I had made it my responsibility to make sure that Pastoral Formation Track events were covered by Documentation, which ended up in myself going to events, a lot of them. At the time I was only 17-18, and I was traveling around the GTA for the first time usually to places and though transit systems I wasn’t familiar with, and all the while surviving without a job. Also cellular data also wasn’t something I started having until two years after, so I ended up having to save directions offline by screen capturing them from Google Maps with my bottom tier barely smart-phone, or going to a public wifi and using my laptop. I also don’t remember having a working music listening device at the time, (man, how did I survive). It was during this time that I think I first started becoming known for two things, one being the “YCOM Guy”, and two, inducing the phrase “how did Phil get there?”.
I bring all this up because I was reminded of what crazy and stupid lengths I would go to back then, when a few nights ago, when I was at a lonely bus stop, close to mid-night in the cold rain, half way home from Markham, where I just had a meeting. I was reminded of the being lonely, often times I was by myself for a majority of time I was traveling. I was reminded of the lack of agency I had back then. Even today, having a job, having travelled to the Philippines, and through Korea by myself, and through all preparations to be ‘mission ready’, I know there will be times in which I don’t have it all figured it out or I will not be fully capable of handling the situation at hand. Yet at the same time, I was filled with nostalgic joy, of being the YCOM kid that was just crazy for serving.
That was my life four years ago, and YCOM was was the service that brought out the dormant missionary spirit in me and gave me a tasted of what God had fully in store for me, and now with serving in a new way, as both Advocacy Head, and as an MV, I’m reminded of how I need a degree of reckless pursuit of God. Not wondering “How am I going to there?”, or fearing “How am I getting home?”, but having confidence in my God.
— Philip Isidro

Already Done

TORONTO, ON.

When I have to do anything along the lines of leading a worship or giving a talk, or just knowing that there is something to work on later, it usual occupies my mind while I work and commute. This was true for better part of this week. With having an RLR to prepare for as both part of secretariat and being a session leader, and seeing that I would be working nine hour days all the way up until the event itself, I already knew this was going to be a long week.

As the tiredness, caffeine and stress began to pile on there came I point when I was just burnt out from exhaustion. Even now, when I consider myself “done” with the week, I find myself struggling to finish this post. I laugh at myself now, because the session I was leading was about this very struggle I went through. Getting to a point where we are so worn out to the point where we can’t do anything, when we say “I can’t do it”, that God says “Let me”. I began this week and looked at my calendar, seeing how full it was and how much work I would have to do, while this whole time I was working on a session God was giving me the answer in my own life.

If there is anything I have learned from this week, and something I want to do moving on, is to pause and look around, not only when at times of rest when I am most at ease, but at times when it feels most chaotic. We are blessed to be living in the very moment in the we are. We don’t have to worry about the past because God already took care of it, the future we entrust in God, but here in the present, the Lord is actively working before our eyes. We become so preoccupied with what we have to do, that we forget to see what God has already done.

— Philip Isidro

 

No Time Like Part-Time

The ending of the first reading for the day that I’m writing this says “for I am with you, Yahweh declares, to rescue you.” Jer 17-19. I use to never expect much from God, I was always scared that if I prayed really hard for something, and I didn’t get it, I would break, and lose faith. Ultimately what happened is that I did break and it was faith that would get me not what I wanted but what I needed.

Well it’s official I’ve been at my job for one year now. By far the greatest experiences I’ve had in this first year that I’ve had a job was being able to travel to the Philippines (and Korea kind of) for the first time by myself to attend the ICON. Since I was in secondary school I have been on and off the job hunt with an online application here, job fair there, and the occasional interview that lead no where, and doing this over years I had become callus about job applications.

However in the month that I got hired was a lot different. I didn’t really know that I was claiming it or what “claiming it” even meant, but in the month or so before I got my job I knew I would go to ICON. Around this time it would have been the middle of summer, I had not payed my tuition for the previous school semester, so there was no way I could go to my second year, and I was surviving of the last of scraps of a freelance job I had been payed very late for, oh and of course my credit card was maxed out (as it always is in these kind of stories). In spite of all this, I said to myself “I am going to ICON”.

Now I didn’t have the same kind of confidence in the statement as it make it to seem, again, at the time I didn’t have a job and it didn’t look like I could be going back to school anytime soon. In a very desperate attempt to get my life back to together I applied for and got an interview for a job inside of a new warehouse, and I was prepared to take the job full time and not go back to school. After the interview I had a Leaders Assembly to attend right after so I went straight there from my interview. Before the assembly even began I actually got an email saying they would not be continuing with my application, I remember being really upset, that I actually left the room of the assembly to be alone in the church. I don’t remember what exactly my thoughts were, but I just kept thinking that nothing was going my way, I need this job so badly and I had no idea what I was going to do.

A week or two pass, and I end up applying for a job, for the second time actually at my second location of choice, and low and behold I actually got called in for an interview. I had known many other people who had also gotten the same job that I was interviewing for so I actually went into the interview felling more prepared than ever. I had gone to general area of the interview really early as I was compelled to go the parish nearby St. Patricks for a casual visit. What ended up becoming of it was that there was actually adoration occurring, so I ended up actually staying a good 30-40 minutes, and so I took a street car to the venue. After getting off however I realized I had gotten the address wrong, and that the interview was taking place 30 minutes away from where I was which was the same amount of time I had left before my interview. Right away I called an Uber (mind you I’m still barely surviving. I actually made my interview with good time, everything seemed fine, and I was ready to kill it at my interview, but the interview ended up being 5 minutes max, two questions and I request to smile for 30 seconds (I’m serious). I left the interview not feeling good about it. I ended up meeting with a friend who also had an interview for the same job afterwords, and we talked about it.

What came next is perhaps one of the greatest moments of grace in my recent life, because I actually got called saying I got the job, needless to say I was ecstatic. What I ended up coming away from this, over a year later has actually been a lesson that the Lord has been trying to teach me for this past year, and that is on desiring. I was always looking for a job, but I really only wanted it for a vague sentiment of “saving up”, and actually during this whole story wanting to go to ICON wasn’t even on my mind, I was actually just desperate, and at this point I wasn’t relying on myself anymore.