Truth – Page 2 – True North Missionaries Journal

Home.

With the amount of times that I’ve had to travel within an eighteen month time frame, most people would assume that I no longer suffer from homesickness. The past three trips (2009, 2012, 2013a) have been by myself; the shortest trip lasting 8 weeks and the longest lasting 6 months. Most people base their judgement on my social media posts and are probably thinking, “Dang, she is living the life.”

Well, reality check: I still suffer from homesickness. I still feel somewhat lost even though I’ve revisited Place A, B and C more than a handful of times. I still feel out of place in a room full of old friends and the nausea that accompanies displacement is very much real.

All those things still exist. Even now. Even when my family is here with me. We all haven’t been together in a very, very long time. Dad’s had to work out of town for the past 2 years and my brother’s had to live away at Waterloo ever since he started his Undergrad. And me, well…..I’ve been traveling to PH.

A few days into our family trip here, I was still feeling so bothered. My temper kept getting the best of me. I grew impatient and volatile. I couldn’t understand it. Shouldn’t my family have cushioned the hypothetical “emotional blow” that always hit me during my trips? Shouldn’t the weird jumble of emotions have stopped because I was with my loved ones? The anger and frustration drained me so much that one night, I decided to just leave the group. The innermost depths of me was craving for something. I didn’t know what that something was, but what I did know was that going to God wouldn’t leave me any more desolate than I already was. So I looked for a church.

I ended up at Sto. Rosario. I got through confession. I kneeled at the Adoration Chapel. I sat through Mass and received Holy Eucharist. And you know what? For the first time I felt good. Not just ice-cream-on-a-hot-sunny-day good, but ‘passing my final exam with flying colours and making the honour roll’ kinda good. I was a fish out of water that suddenly found my way back to the water. I could breathe again.

As I contemplated at the Adoration Chapel I was reminded of a promise I made to Him during the SFC precon praisefest. It just so happened to my birthday too. I told God that I was willing to finally give Him the one part of me that I hadn’t let go of yet- a very specific piece of my heart that was put on reserve. I didn’t have the strength to fight that fourteen year battle any more. It took me that long to surrender. That day He said to me, “Exodus 14:14, my beloved. Do not forget. I will fight for you, you need only to be still.

In the presence of the Eucharist and in front of the altar, I felt God whisper me to me, “Therese, my dearest Therese. You silly stubborn girl. Remember what you offered at the foot of my cross weeks ago? Remember that you promised me you’d finally give that last piece to me? Home is where the heart is and yours just so happens to be with me. It’s safe. It’s in my hands now. I’m happy that you finally found your back. My child, right now at this very moment …you are home. I’ve been waiting.”

All the puzzle pieces fit.
It all made sense.
I felt this sudden rush of peace, of final certainty.

Everything in this world is temporary. Even my family. But God, God is infinite. God is timeless, boundless and endless. I am made to stand in His presence, to bask in the love that is always present in His house.

Father, I’m coming home.
Amen.

The Zombie In Us

I have a thing for zombies! And that would still be an understatement.

I love watching zombie movies (I am Legend, Night of the Living Dead, Zombie Land, etc). Watching zombie series (The Walking Dead). Reading zombie comics (The Walking Dead). Playing zombie related games like Plant Vs. Zombies and Left For Dead. I actually bought Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 because of the zombie game.

I am fascinated by them. In fact, if the world ended, I’d prefer a zombie apocalypse more than anything.

So when Tito Melo Villaroman, one of my favorite speakers of all time, shared to us in our FTPW Trainee SHOUT that Warm Bodies was a good movie, I was intrigued to say the least. Since that time however, I never really had the chance to watch the movie until now.

If you haven’t watched the movie, go and watch it before you read this. I’m not sure how this will go but I may write some spoilers. I might. Don’t say I did not warn you.

In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a zombie world. People are so engrossed in their busy day-to-day lives that they go through life as – your guess is correct – zombies. We go from one place to the next, looking for something that we think may bring us life, money, fame, power, women, pleasure, etc – in zombie terms – brainz. Only to find out that our consumption of brainz follows the Law of Marginal Utility.

The Law of Marginal Utility states that the pleasure we derive from our consumption of a certain product (in this case: money, fame, power, glory, pleasure (drinking, drugs, and sex…etc)) is on a constant and significant decline. The cycle then becomes vicious, we consume more looking for that initial high, only to find out that it’s no longer there, so we consume it more. Hence the zombies, or in the movie’s term – turn from corpses to boneys.

The world likes to present to us that we are zombies that in fact we live only for the brainz. That without it we would die. Eventually we reach a point that it strips us of what we were meant to be – alive. We then become a legit boney.

Spoiler Alert – No seriously, this is not only a movie spoiler alert but a real life legit spoiler alert as well. In a good way!

But the movie, as it is in real life, shows us a beautiful inexplicable reality. That it is not about the brainz, that the world would like you to believe. There is something more. And that more is love.

The main character, R, yes it’s R, finds himself in the midst of his brains-eating-activity – love. He did not understand it at first, but he went through with it. Why, because he found something that did not make sense but it brought him true satisfaction – his restlessness of being a zombie for years found solace in something beyond him, something beyond his zombie-fied self. And that something was someone and that someone was love. That love eventually changed him enough to bring him back to life.

R’s insatiable hunger for brainz was made full by love. Real love. In the movies it was Julie. In real life it is Him.

The truth is, love, meets us right where we are, while we are eating brainz. When we are busy in our drunkenness, in the midst of our use of drugs, in our use of women (or men) for our sexual “needs”, in our hunger for power in the workplace, fame in our talents, our strategies of making money at the expense of others and the other countless “necessities” that we deem as brainz to keeps us alive.

Love meets us in the moment when somebody gently taps us and reminds us to go back to Church. Love meets us in the moment when somebody does a random act of kindness to us even if it was inconvenient for that person. Love meets us when at the times we are low and spends time with us. Love meets us and shakes us to wake us up from our brainz binge.

The world will tell you otherwise. It will say go back to whatever that made you “happy”. Go back to eating brainz. It will get angry and tell you you are wrong. That you need to ascribe to their standards. That you belong to them and they to you. That you are one with them. And it will be an uphill battle!

Sometimes it may seem that all is lost. But it’s not. Why, because love fights for us. Love, in fact, will journey with us until we are truly and fully converted back to who we are really meant to be! Alive! Love has triumphed and it will always triumph! So don’t be afraid to take the plunge, we are meant to live for so much more than brainz, we are meant to live for, in, and with love! We are meant to live! We are meant to love!

So for those who are actually already living, don’t be afraid to journey with us who are still trying to find love. Meet us where we are. Journey with us. Enflesh the Love that is Him, and incarnate what is true. Bring us back to life.

For those of us who have found love but is still leagues away from being truly alive, don’t worry. Like R, our journey with love will be an instrument for change in others like us. Our journey with love will become an invitation for others to journey with love as well. Our yes to the invitation to love becomes an act of witnessing. To be and bring love wherever we are.

May the lives of Saints Peter and Paul inspire us to say yes to love and be fully consumed by it. May their conversion to being fully alive from the death of Peter’s denial and Paul’s persecution give us hope that nothing and no one is truly far enough from love that they are lost forever. May the Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on us. Amen.

The original cast of warm bodies. Saints Peter and Paul. — The original cast of warm bodies

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Wanderlust

I have this unfathomable love for airports and for traveling. I love looking at maps and globes. I get giddy over every customs stamp that gets added to my passport. I love stamps. I adore airplanes (hence my alias paperairplanedreams). Within the past 24 months I have been to more cities and countries than I could care to count. I suffer from wanderlust.

I was “planted” and rooted in PH, but cultivated in Toronto. That really pushed me to have this hardly home but always reppin‘ mentality. We moved quite a lot growing up so I could never really appreciate where I was. Even though we’ve rooted ourselves in Mississauga for a while now, the child in me was so used to relocating that I never realized how hard it was for me to be present in the here and now. It was so easy for me to love every other destination, yet so challenging for me to see the beauty in where I already was.

It affected the way I approached my spiritual life. It became some sort of hide & seek game; God was at my next travel destination. God was two plane rides away. God was five cities to the south and ten cities to the north. God was a twenty-six hour bus ride or a five hour drive. God was in the middle of the ocean, on top of a mountain, or beneath at the caves. God was everywhere to me but here. At home.

Then he slapped my hand, figuratively of course. He used the same voice I use when I reprimand my kindergarten students- firm but loving.

There is no need to search for God because He meets us right where we are. God doesn’t meet us halfway, He meets us right where we are. God is in the people I interact with everyday. God is in the youth I serve with and serve for. God is with the students I teach. God is with my family. God is with my friends. God is in the air I breathe, the sky that embraces me outside, the sun that illuminates my path, the rain that touches my skin, and the ground that catches my feet every, single, morning. God is in me.

You cannot search for what has already been found.

His lesson: it is not in the changing of locations that you will come to know me and my works. Rather it is in the changing of your hearts and its posture that you will be oriented back to me. That you will come to see my love, to know my love and be my love.

I will meet you right where you are.
I will love you where you are.

Remain in me, just as I remain in you.

The Truth about TRUTH

I went adoration yesterday and for 45 minutes of sitting there I could not see myself in communion with the Lord. I asked the Lord why I feel so distant. I waited and then He said:

Speak the Truth.
Speak about Jesus. Let Jesus manifest in your life.
You don’t have to convince the non-believers or even the ordinary people.
What is important is that as you speak the truth, they will feel the Truth – They will experience the Truth.
Jesus is the Truth. Speak of Him and about Him. Let them experience Him.
You can only do this with the power of the Holy Spirit, there’s no other way.
The Holy Spirit who is in the Father and in the Son will consume you so when you speak of the Truth you will highly speak about the Father and the son.
Don’t forget to pray to the Holy Spirit.
Ask for the Holy Spirit.
Invoke the Holy Spirit.

The light that leads

“If you haven’t surrendered it to God, then you’ve surrendered it to someone else.”

I recently attended the GTA Area Core SHouT this past weekend and there are not enough words in the dictionary to describe the plethora of events that happened within those 5 days. So I’ll just use one: enlightened.

You know when you’re at a sleepover and everyone’s already passed out cold on the beds and floors. The morning after is hard to get through. You’re tired and exhausted. You have some sort of consciousness- awake but not really. It’s not until someone draws the blinds or curtains to expose the harsh sunlight rays that you feel the urgency to get up. It’s already half past noon and you’ve just wasted half the day away.

That’s how my recent experience with Christ was at SHouT. He turned on the lights. The light allowed me to see everything that was in that room, rather…my life. Enlightened- one’s ability to be spiritually aware. The Lord allowed me to see His plans for me that much clearer.

But see, when you turn on the lights EVERYTHING gets exposed, not just the good stuff. You don’t have a choice. But God is a god of light and peace- The truth, His truth is exposed in all its glory.

I’m facing the skeletons in my closet right now, some I thought I buried a long time ago but really just put a drape over. God’s light drew me to these areas, the crevices and corners, the edges and cracks. The small things count, because to God everything matters. As much as it hurts me to pull out long overdue band aids, I know that with His love I’ll finally be able to heal properly.

“Ate, it’s like when you make a paper boat and then you put it in the water. That’s how you’ll know if your boat is good or not. It might start to sink because of a hole, but all you have to do is just take it out and then patch up whatever holes exist.”

It had to happen this way for me. This was God’s way of telling me to patch up those holes so that my boat could float. How else can I be a better person or leader if I don’t allow God to shine His light on every single area of my life, even the dark sides- the ones I don’t want to look at. In this way, I can confidently go out and allow the God in me to shine.

Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me.- Psalm 43:3

Is that what you really want?

When you spend every waking hour with 20+ other CFC-Youth members for a three- week period the normal conference high quadruples. You never really come off the mountain experience you’re feeding off of each other’s vibes. We all came with different service backgrounds but what we shared was this search for God in a land foreign to us. Our pathways all merged into some sort of Lord of the Rings quest thus making the journey less tiring. So when the time came that I had to leave my tightly sealed and sheltered CFC-Youth pack to transition back to my regular Philippines environment, I really felt displaced.

Right after the two week World Great Adventure Tour, I went on a five day excursion with my childhood friends to Iloilo, Guimaras and Boracay. Halfway through our trip we stopped by this Trappist monastery. It was part of the day tour and to be honest with all the changes that kept happening I really needed to find myself in something familiar. A church seemed like the best option. Now I’ve entered dozens of churches here in the Philippines and the beauty each one holds always takes my breath away. But there was something different about this one.

As soon as I entered through the gates, my tear ducts hit some sort of overdrive. Something caught my throat and my chest tightened up. Something was tugging at my heartstrings, and it wasn’t being very gentle. All throughout the year I’ve felt God playing hide and seek with me. The moments that He decides to make His presence felt always catch me off guard and I can’t help but feel as if some hypothetical suckerpunch comes flying at me. Ultimate silence filled my head while my heart was being flooded with a million and one different emotions spurred by nothing.

Then out of nowhere, I felt God asking me in the most casual tone:

“What do you really want? I’m not asking you what you think I think you want. I’m asking you to tell me what the desires in your heart are. Of course I know them. I know what will bring you happiness, but I need you to vocalize what YOU want…what you FEEL you deserve to have in your life.”

It was probably one of the most humbling moments throughout this trip. There’s a difference between giving an answer because you know it’s the textbook sample, and giving an authentic, sincere heartfelt reply. He knows what I want, of course he does. Some of the things I’ve been asking for are more than a decade old. But there I was being asked to take centre stage. Would I ask for the same thing knowing that this time He was initiating instead? Was I really sure about what I wanted? I just pictured God smiling down at me, encouraging me to ask for my desires with full confidence.

Before walking back to join my friends for the rest of the tour, I walked over to where the candles for petition were. I took five candles and as I lit one for every prayer I felt myself getting lighter. It was an act of unpacking my emotional luggage. I realized that gaining peace through God would happen as a culmination of reaching different checkpoints. This was one of them. I looked at my five candles, let out an exasperated sigh and confidently muttered Psalm 37:4……

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Let It Be Done

During adoration today at St. Bonaventure Church, I was meditating on the gospel for today and the Lord revealed to me, through the example of Mother Mary, a lesson on discernment and service.

Mary did not ask to be the Mother of God, God chose her. Same goes for service, we do not choose our anointing, God is the one who chooses and anoints us. The message came from the Angel Gabriel, and for us, the message comes from the Holy Spirit working through our leaders. Like Mary in the Gospel, we too are usually initially troubled with the annunciation of what the Lord has told us. However, the Lord always seeks to console us with His words “do not be afraid”, just as He consoled Mary. He knows how weak we are, that is why He is always quick to minister to our frailty, especially when our hearts our troubled. The Angel then explained to Mary what the Lord has planned for her. In our case in the community, we are asked to serve in one way or another.

Like Mother Mary, our humanity asks the question “how can this be?” Naturally, we think the task the Lord is giving is impossible. Of course it’s impossible if we only rely on human strength and understanding. However, with God, nothing is impossible if we rely and lean on Him. Leaning means to not stand on our own but to be held up and rely on the strength and power of God. The Holy Spirit truly comes upon us just as He did Mother Mary, and makes all things possible. When we allow the Holy Spirit to come upon and overshadow us, Jesus Christ truly dwells within, and the fruit of whatever we do in the Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ.

When we say “yes” to God, we are formed and become a little bit more like Jesus. When we say “yes”, we allow the power of the Holy Spirit take over our weaknesses. When we say “yes,” God’s will, will be done.

The experience of saying yes to God might be a very dramatic one and we might feel the presence of God very profoundly in that moment. That is a grace from God to strengthen our faith and resolve to do His will. However, do not forget that “the angel departed from her” (Luke 1:38) after all was said and done. After saying yes to the Lord, those sentimental feelings and emotions, that feeling of God speaking to us might depart as well. It is important to not rely on feelings and emotions when following through with God’s calling, but solely on Truth and Love. When it comes to Charity and Truth, it does not rely on feelings and emotions but on our commitment and our act of will.

Imagine, we discern whether to be a Program, Cluster, or Advocacy Head. Also, we discern things like whether to do a sharing or a talk, and we are given many days to do this. Mary had to discern whether or not she would be the Mother of God and she was given but a few moments to discern and ask questions. Mary was full of faith, her heart was in the right place, she asked the right questions and was obedient to the message of the Lord. In the end, she said “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:31) No more questions. Just yes. She did not question if she was capable but simply found assurance in that God is able.

My brothers and sisters, when we discern let us ask the right questions—questions that will point us to God and not to ourselves. Let us listen with an open mind and heart to what God is trying to tell us. As much as discernment has to do with our lives, it has everything to do with God. We are not building our kingdom but His, so let’s always make it all about Him and His kingdom. We are merely instruments, handmaids, of His glorious plan.

We don’t only discern for big things but even the smaller things. Thus, whatever we are asked to do no matter how small or menial the task, let us always praise our God and do it with joy because we do it for love of Him. That is serving with a servant’s heart.

Heavenly Father, we praise You. Please help us in our constant discernment to do Your Will. Purify our hearts so that we may see You, and help us not to linger on a decision you might have already affirmed us of. Help us to courageously answer Your call, no matter the call. May You be glorified and loved always. Amen.