Badaliyya-Philippines Opening Session for SY 2014-2015

Dear Friends,

Badaliyya - Cotabato joins the Holy Father in his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  Duirng this journey, we pray for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East and especially in the Holy Land.

I am happy to announce the beginning of our Badaliyya Prayer Session beginning June 2014. We shall be meeting every last Thursday of the month from 4 pm to 5:30 pm at the Conference Hall of the IAG, 2^nd Floor of  the NDU Canteen as you enter the campus.  

Continuing to reflect on the call to “substitutionary prayer” we can follow Louis Massignon’s own suggestion to turn to Charles de Foucauld and Saint Francis for inspiration and enlightenment. At Tamanrasset in the southern Algerian desert Charles de Foucauld realized that he needed to know and understand theTouareg people in order to truly live with them. He wrote. “It isn’t enough to pray for the salvation of others, nor even to lovingly give oneself to them, but to offer oneself body and soul for their souls”.

“This is how Foucauld saw the sacrifice of Jesus at Golgotha; Christ so loved humanity that he offered himself as a voluntary victim for the expiation of the sin of the world. “There is no greater proof of love than to give one’s life for those we love”, He told the apostles at the Last Supper. Substituting himself for humanity, past, present and future, He had reconciled them to God for eternity. Yet the Passion of Christ, the mystery of the economy of Salvation, consumed and carried out once and for all, will last until the end of human history. Thus, if we truly love, only one way offers itself to us: to participate in His redemptive work and accept the sacrifice of ourselves”.

It is clear that those who enter into the Badaliyya prayer will be challenged by Brother Charles’ life and witness, and in creating this prayer in 1934 Louis Massignon was presenting a way to rise to that challenge. Our time and our world is both radically different and yet sadly the same. May these reflections serve to aid our prayer together and help us to open our hearts and minds to truly understand those of other faiths, traditions and cultures…  May we be guided in planting our own seeds of hope in the Southern Philippines…

Paz y Bien!
Bapa Jun
28 May 2014