More Than These

This weekend was our Upper Core Retreat Evaluation and Planning for SFC Vancouver. The last session invited us to look at the CFC Theme for 2015: Love More. We looked at the life of Peter, a fisherman, an older gentleman, always so protective of our Lord, just as much as he is so gung ho about everything Jesus teaches, and just as much as he makes a fool of himself in every instance. Think about it – the one who wanted not just his feet washed but also his hands and his head, the one who calls Jesus the Messiah yet to who Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan,” the one who cuts off the ear of the slave of a centurion when they make their way to arrest Jesus, the one who before the cock crows denies Jesus three times. 
 
Imagine how this man was renamed by Jesus to Peter, the rock on which I will build my Church. How could Jesus leave the keys to the kingdom to such a man as Peter? Was Jesus crazy or out of His mind?
We conducted a Lectio Divina session on the passage, Love More, was based on:
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to Him, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to Him, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said the third time, “ Do you love me?” and he said to Him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” – John 21: 15-17
 
The phrase that kept striking at me was “more than these.” Notice how Jesus only asks this part of the question once in the beginning but leaves these out the second and third time. This struck home to me because I can only imagine how Peter must have felt when Jesus asked him this question. “More than these.” Despite how Peter is and how he denied Him, Jesus boldly asked Peter to state his love for Him in front of all these who to Peter seemed more worthy to claim this kind of love.
Peter’s answer to this question is a simple yet humble, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” However, he doesn’t necessarily answer the second part of that question. Jesus asks the second question without the second half and Peter answers the same as before. Finally, when Jesus asks him the third time, it seems as if Peter answers the first question Jesus asks:
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
 
Peter is absolutely shaken at the fact that Jesus asks him these questions simply because he feels terrible about denying Him. But I think that by the time he answers the third time, he answers the first question truthfully. Peter is humble and dedicated to Jesus. Peter knows that he will do anything and everything for the Lord. Peter is also ashamed for his actions and feels in the beginning that he is not worthy of love. However, Jesus chooses to love more. And it is because of this love that Peter has for the Lord that moves him to answer the way he answers.
We are all worthy of the Lord’s love in our lives. The love of the Lord is freely given to us. When we decide that our love is not enough, that we cannot love enough, the Lord continues to love more. That though Peter denies him three times, Jesus resolves this denial by affirming Peter’s love for him. So we need to do the same. When someone wrongs us in the most unimaginable way, we are called to love more. When someone refuses to forgive us, we are called to love more. When we feel like we deserve nothing and that we have lost the Lord’s trust in us, we are called to love more.

Presentation to the Present

PresentMary

On Friday, November 21, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first reading that day, from the Book of Revelations, spoke of John eating the scroll given by the Angel. He ate it and and described it as “sweet as honey” in his mouth but then was made bitter in his stomach, just as the angel said it would. After the first reading, the responsorial Psalm was “How sweet to my taste is your promise!” How truly sweet are the promises of God—how beautiful, true, and good they are. I hear His words with great affection and allow it to enter my life so sweetly, but the bitterness is not in His promises, it’s my stomach. It’s in my heart and my stubbornness to truly allow His words to take root and change me.

However, there is hope for me because Jesus is at work in me just how He was at work at the temple when He drove out the bitter money changers and all those who turned the house prayer into a den of thieves (Gospel reading). By my own sinfulness, disobedience, selfishness, and pride, I have turned by body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, into a den of thieves. Because of this, what should be a house of sweet prayer and worship of God, has been turned into the worship of so many other things. Despite my sinfulness, my Lord Jesus heroically and fearlessly drives out from my heart what should not be there each time I present myself to Him.

The Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary reminded me that my posture should be like Her’s, that is, one of presentation to the Lord, Who is the gift—the present. To present myself to the Present is to allow Him to do what He wants to me, with me, and in me. It’s to allow Him to drive out the things that are hindering me from true worship of the one true God. It’s about being obedient to the Church and His Mother which He has given me, to make me pure and holy, without blemish. It’s to allow Him, by His workings through the Sacraments and every grace, to make me a saint.

May Your Word, O LORD, be sweet as honey in my mouth, and most especially in my heart. May I not be bitter in receiving Your Love and allowing it to transform me. Prune me, blot out my transgressions, and make me white as snow. Amen.

Hurts Like

If hell is total separation from God and “the gates of hell are locked from the inside” (-C.S. Lewis) then it occurred to me that Hell then would be as though the prodigal son never went back. To have taken his inheritance, squandered it off on a foolish life of sin and vice, then to be lying there in the mud so hungry that he was even willing to eat the feed of the pigs… what if he still chose never to go back home? To deny his father’s love and mercy out of pride… perhaps that is what hell is. (The Parable of the Prodigal son from Luke 15: 11-32) To live a life away from His love… indeed that must be hell.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Hell
1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murdered and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” Our lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”

1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

The Catechism seems to agree.. Hell is, to some extent, a choice.

There is always that argument, one that some of the children during the Confirmation Retreats had asked a few times: If God loves all His children, then why does he send some of them to hell? I understood this, but sometimes I find myself face-to-face with this question again. Yesterday, I had brought the question out once more and really tried to ponder and understand what the answer meant.

Another C.S. Lewis quote that stuck with me goes like this: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ ”

A father, all powerful and loving… perhaps it’s our final “no” to Him that make His arms drop to His side in helpless defeat. If we don’t allow Him to love us, then how can we possibly live in His love?

 

Thank You Lord

I was away on a work trip for a week up in Kelowna, B.C. and it was such a blessing.

I’m starting to see the small things that matter…I don’t know how to really put it…but upon being away, every night I had the opportunity to just sit and listen, to whatever it is the Lord wanted me to be sensitive to..

So I reflected on my years as being a mission volunteer. Funny because in our monthly MV meeting, we shared on our reflection this year. I can honestly just put it into a big,

“Thank You Lord”

I can look back this year…think about every mistake, victory, correction, argument, fellowship, events, purchases, detachments etc etc…and just to look at where I am now..just simply being able to live with a freedom where I am free because I am consistently trying to allow the Lord to consume my heart..oh man..I’m so blessed.

And I’m sure you are too. All the times this year where our hearts were stretched, tested, put into fire, drowning in water…it never comes with out something the Lord wants to see, hear, or how ever it is He was present in those times.

So I wonder, why have I ever doubted You?

You’ve worked in everything. You’ve constantly reminded me that You love me every single starving second that I hunger or thirst for something…

Yeah. I’m so excited for the theme of next year. I’m so thankful for the Marian themes of the past. I’m very humbled by the experiences the Lord has allowed me to experience to the places He’s brought me in the last 2 years…

I’ve always had an itinerary that I could see, but I’m happy to say that even if I am walking in the unknown in the soon future, I trust You.

You can trust Him too. He loves You!

Deo Gloria

 

Come and See

Over the weekend I was able and blessed to goto the “Come and See” that my Archdiocese held. I was coming in with opened heart and being so opening to anything the Lord has for me for my future vocation. I would never have thought the Lord would lead me to the something else. I was opened if the Lord called me to priesthood. But on the first day he really pulled my heart towards the vocation of marriage. But the crazy thing is he left it as that and did not tell me anything after.

For the rest of the weekend he started to affirm me of why I am in the Mission Volunteer and how I should be discerning about Full Time Pastoral Worker. Last 8 months has been the hardest for me to discern. And my future in the program was truly affected and was thinking of leaving many times. But you know what I have learn from the Come and See is… Sacrifice/Sorrow is the only way we learn and find joy in the Lord and for myself to go through that just means he is making me a better version of me.

 

Let’s say I am more focused on what the Lord is calling me to do now. And that is…

Discernment of Full Time Pastoral Work.

Praying about the Vocation of Marriage.

 

 

 

shower

“When God wants to teach divine lessons to a soul & speaks to her heart He leads her into the desert”
– Imitation of Mary

May (First month in British Columbia.)
“ My Lord, My God may you make me an instrument by anointing me with the wisdom that I may need in the places that you are leading me to.”

Late have I acknowledged you
Now that I’ve let you
Always have you known me

I felt a drop.

June
“ My Lord, My God unworthy as I, fill me with your Spirit and if you will…allow me to understand though I am just a mere servant.”

Late have I seeked you
Now that I’ve allowed you
Always have you loved and guided me

Or two.

July
“ My Lord, My God though I desire to know, I come before you humbled…knowing nothing. Only through You will I be able to gain a fraction of the insight and the knowledge that You may desire for me. May I know only what you maybe desire for me to know.”

Late have I turned to you
Now that you’ve revealed to me
Always have I pushed you away

Then it started to drizzle.

August
“ My Lord, My God you continue to seek me, you continue to fill me, and you continue to use me. May you grant me the sensitivity to seek counsel from you so your Spirit may enable me to see and choose justly the direction that will most glorify You.”

Late have I asked you
Now that I’m here
Always have you known

It started to rain.

September
“ My Lord, My God you know me, I am weak. Grant me the strength and the fortitude to endure and persevere despite the heavy cross.”

Late have I known
Now that it’s your birthday
Always did we share this month

And it continues to rain.

October

“My Lord, My God you fill be with joy, only because I have allowed you to and only because I have realized that you are the source of every joy that I have experienced thus far. May you install in me the piety that I may need so that every inch of me will desire to worship you completely…nothing less”

Late have I prayed this
Now with sincere love
Always was I skeptical

It pours.

November (My seventh month in British Columbia.)
“ My Lord, My God you have brought me here. Just a year ago, I would not have known that I would be where I am now. I lift up all my worries and anxieties to you from the fear of the unknown. May I be able to embrace the unknown, not with fear…but instead with fear of the Lord. Allow me Lord to grow in the virtue of hope and to continue to be confident in You.”

Late have I found you
Now that I love you
Always have you been with me

Mama

And I am soaked by His Grace that continues to pour through our Mother and which overflows unto me.

 

“When God wants to bless a soul & speaks to her heart He showers her with grace after leading her to the desert.”

🙂

Passion

Since the beginning of September, I have been blessed with many moments in my livelihood as a teacher. I think yesterday topped them all.

I was called in to substitute a Christian Education 8 class and I had to continue with the lesson on Noah and the Flood. These students were very hesitant and I could tell they did not like talking in front of the class which is often expected of Grade 8s. The teacher left me with a question to help lead a class discussion. The first one asked the students, “When have their been times in your life in which you wanted to do something but you didn’t because you were afraid of what others would think of you?” I had them discuss in groups of 3 or 4 first before bringing the class together. The typical responses came about – avoiding the girl eating lunch by herself, afraid of wearing her unique style, not playing their favourite sport because a certain other sport was more favourable among his friends. I asked what do all of these stories have in common and the answer simply was fear and judgment.

I then asked them to think about a time in their life where God was telling them to do something but were afraid to do it because of the ridicule and mockery they would get from their friends and family. Many students became totally open, talking about their love for God and their hesitancy to go to mass by themselves or to ask their family to go with them. And then all of a sudden it started to click for them. To help them out, I asked how many of them watched the movie “Evan Almighty” and you could tell from their faces that they started to really enjoy the lesson I was delivering and we talked about Evan’s life before the call, during the call, and after the call. They were getting so excited at this point. See, people though that Noah and Evan were completely mental – receiving a message from God to build an ark in preparation for the flood. They were ridiculed and mocked because of their faith in believing that this message was true. Their families must have thought they were crazy as well!

One student in particular got my thinking gears going even more. She shared about how she loved reading stories from the Bible, she loved praying, she totally and completely loved God and was proud that she could remember the stories from the Bible so well. Then she started to forget because she knew that her friends didn’t care for that stuff, thought of her as weird and a Jesus-lover. I asked how she felt because of these judgements and she told me that she was really sad.

And so I asked this question, “How many of you have a favourite sport you play or thing you do?” And everyone’s hands shot up. I had examples of playing basketball, singing, dancing, performing, everything and anything. I asked why they loved doing these things and they said because they were totally passionate for it. I asked do they love playing with others and performing in front of others and sharing what they love with others and they said yes, yes, yes!

And so, (the build up, because teaching is a performative art), I finally said, “If we are so keen, so passionate, so willing to share something we love to and with others, why is it that we are so hesitant and afraid to share to others about someone we love?”

I received a round of applause after I said this and I could tell that they understood where I was getting at. They left the classroom saying bye to me and that this was their favourite Christian Ed class yet.

Why is it though when we are faced with issues of faith we shrivel up and keep to ourselves? Why is it that we are afraid to go as the Spirit leads us with the gifts we are given to bring the kingdom of God here on Earth? Why do we hesitate to invite our friend and family members to CLPs and camps so that they can grow in their relationship with Christ?

So today, think about situations where you can defend your faith, to share the love you have for the Lord to others through random acts of kindness. And if you can’t share, then ask yourselves how you can grow in the Spirit and grow in your relationship with Him by getting to know Him more through the Sacraments or learning more about him by reading the Bible or the Catechism.

What is your passion? How can you use this to bring the love of God to others in your life?