The Holy Family

Short Reflection for the Feast of the Holy Family (C) 2: 41-52

Readings: 1 Samuel 1: 20-22. 24-28; 1 John 3: 1-2. 21-24; Luke 2: 41-52

Selected Passage:  “But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced (in) wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” (Luke 2: 50-52)

Meditation:  There are many things in life that we do not understand.  We believe and like Mary and Joseph we treasure them in our hearts.  What is beautiful in the gospel is the fact that Jesus was obedient to his parents and he advanced in wisdom and favor before God and man. In a Christian family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are the exemplars of love, caring, and obedience to God.

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

God is with Us...

INCARNATION – GOD IS WITH US

Christmas celebrates Christ’s birth into these things, not his removal of them. Christ redeems limit, evil, sin and pain, but they are not abolished. Given that truth, we can celebrate at Christ’s birth without in any way denying or trivializing the real evil in our world and the real pain in our lives. Christmas is a challenge to celebrate while still in pain.

The incarnate God is called Emmanuel, a name which means God-is-with-us. That fact does not mean immediate festive joy. Our world remains wounded, and wars, selfishness, and bitterness linger. Our hearts too remain wounded. Pain lingers.

For a Christian, just as for everyone else, there will be incompleteness, illness, death, senseless hurt, broken dreams, cold, hungry, lonely days of bitterness and a lifetime of inconsummation.

Reality can be harsh and Christmas does not ask us to make make-believe. The incarnation does not promise heaven on earth. It promises heaven in heaven. Here, on earth, it promises us something else – God’s presence in our lives. This presence redeems because knowing that God is with us is what ultimately empowers us to give up bitterness, to forgive, and to move beyond cynicism and bitterness. When God is with us then pain and happiness are not mutually exclusive, and the agonies and riddles of life do not exclude deep meaning and deep joy.

However, we need to celebrate Christmas heartily. Maybe we won’t feel the same excitement we once felt as children when we were excited about tinsel, lights, Christmas carols, and special gifts and special food. Some of that excitement isn’t available to us anymore.  But something more important is still available, namely, the sense that God is with us in our lives, in our joys as well as in our shortcomings.

The word was made flesh. That’s an incredible thing, something that should be celebrated with tinsel, lights, and songs of joy. If we understand Christmas, the carols will still flow naturally from our lips.

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The Proclamation of the Saviour's Birth

The Proclamation of the Saviour's Birth...

"Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields

and keeping the night watch over their flock.

The angel of the Lord appeared to them

and the glory of the Lord shone around them,

and they were struck with great fear.

The angel said to them,

"Do not be afraid;

for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy

that will be for all the people.

For today in the city of David

a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.

And this will be a sign for you:

you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes

and lying in a manger."

And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:

"Glory to God in the highest

and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests."

(Luke 2: 8-14)

A BLESSED CHRISTMAS TO ONE AND ALL!

Fr. Jun Mercado, OMI

Reasons to Celebrate Christmas

REASONS TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS

There is a God-given pressure inside of us that pushes us to celebrate and instills in us an irrepressible sense that we are not meant for poverty, gloom, and carefully measured-out relationships, but that we are meant ultimately for the feast, the dance, the place of lights and music, and the place where we don’t measure out our pennies and our hearts on the basis of having to survive and pay mortgages. The celebration of festival and carnival, even with their excesses, help teach us that.

Christmas is such a festival. In the end, its celebration is a lesson in faith and hope, even when it isn’t as strong a lesson in prudence.

To make a festival of Christmas, to surround Jesus’ birthday with all the joy, light, music, gift-giving, energy, and warmth we can muster is, strange as this may sound, a prophetic act. It is, or at least it can be, an expression of faith and hope. It’s not the person who says: “It’s rotten, let’s cancel it!” who radiates hope. That can easily be despair masquerading as faith. No. It is the man or woman who, despite the world’s misuse and abuse of these, still strings up the Christmas lights, trims the tree and the turkey, turns up the carols, passes gifts to loved ones, sits down at table with family and friends, and flashes a grin to the world, who is radiating faith, who is saying that we are meant for more than gloom, who is celebrating Jesus’ birth.

Merry Christmas!

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4th Sunday of Advent (C)

Short Reflection for the 4^th Sunday of Advent (C)

Readings: Micah 5,1-4a; Hebrews 10,5-10; Luke 1,39-45

Selected Gospel Passage:  “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’”  (Luke 1: 41 - 43)

Reflection:  The visitation of Mary to Elizabeth is part of the series of joyful events that lead to the joyful birth of Christ. Christmas is the celebration of the coming of the Lord into the world and in into our lives.  Yes, the Lord comes to us and meets us wherever we are. We do nlot merit the Lord’s visitation. It is a GIFT to us and to the world. We can only respond: Marana tha that means “COME, LORD JESUS, COME.

www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...

1^st step: Write the Dhikr in your heart.

2^nd step: Let the Dhikr remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the dihkr silently as often as possible...

3^rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the Dhikr in your life.

Our God is NOT a tribal god...

THE STRUGGLE TO NOT MAKE GOD OUR OWN TRIBAL DEITY

That’s a dangerously false and unchristian notion, directly contrary to the Judeo-Christian scriptures. God doesn’t value some races and some countries more than others.

We aren’t special as a nation, at least no more special than any other nation.  Our dreams, our heartaches, our headaches, our joys, our pains, our deaths, do not count more before God than those of persons in other places in the world, perhaps even less, since God has a preferential option for the poor.

The lives of the hundreds of thousands of present-day refugees, so easy to lump into one mass of anonymity to which we can accord abstract sympathy, are just as precious as those of our own children; perhaps more so, given the truth of our scriptures about God taking flesh in the excluded ones. Today they may be the people of manifest destiny, the ones carrying God’s special blessing.

The God whom Jesus revealed and incarnated may never be turned into a God of our own, a God who considers us more precious and gifted than other peoples, a God who blesses us specially above others.

Sadly, we are perennially prone to turn God into our own tribal deity, in the name of family, blood, church, and country. God too easily becomes our God. But true faith doesn’t allow for that. Rather a healthy and orthodox Christian theology teaches that God is especially present in the other, in the poor and in the stranger. God’s revelation comes to us most clearly through the outsider, through what’s foreign to us, through what stretches us beyond our comfort zone and our expectations, particularly our expectations regarding God.

God is everyone’s God equally, not especially ours, and God is too great to be reduced to serving the interests of family, ethnicity, church, and patriotism.

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La Noche Oscura

Sts. John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila - 2 Spanish Mystics have almost the SAME language and Treatise as the famous Spanish Muslim Mystic, Ibn 'Arabi, on the Journey of the Soul towards UNION with God.

Among the spiritual circle, people have noticed that Theology divides; spirituality, particularly MYSTICISM, unites. yes, people find unity and fellowship and unity in UNION WITH THE ONE GOD.

The dark nights in John of the Cross as well as in Theresa of Avila and Ibn 'Arabi that the soul experiences are the necessary purification/cleansing on the path to union with God.

The first dark night is the dark night of the SENSES. It is the purification/cleansing of the senses or detachment from ALL that is the sensory or senses. The senses in the journey towards union with God lead to CRISES or dark night!

The second dark night is the dark night of the soul. When one is freed from the crises of the senses, the soul is ready for a spiritual journey of mystical union. In Theresa of Avila, this journey is called the Ascent of Mount Carmel, which John of the Cross also named.

The dark night comprises of the three stages of the mystical journey,and followed by illumination (akin to AHA expertience) and then union.

St. John does not actually use the term "dark night of the soul", but only "dark night" ("noche oscura").

The only light in this dark night is that which burns in the soul. And that is a guide more certain than the mid-day sun.

"Aquésta me guiaba, más cierto que la luz del mediodía."

(from a Reader of John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila and 'Ibn 'Arabi)

Dark Night of the Soul

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

(La noche oscura del alma)

1. One dark night,

fired with love's urgent longings

- ah, the sheer grace! -

I went out unseen,

my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,

by the secret ladder, disguised,

- ah, the sheer grace! -

in darkness and concealment,

my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,

in secret, for no one saw me,

nor did I look at anything,

with no other light or guide

than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me

more surely than the light of noon

to where he was awaiting me

- him I knew so well -

there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!

O night more lovely than the dawn!

O night that has united

the Lover with his beloved,

transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast

which I kept wholly for him alone,

there he lay sleeping,

and I caressing him

there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,

as I parted his hair,

it wounded my neck

with its gentle hand,

suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,

laying my face on my Beloved;

all things ceased; I went out from myself,

leaving my cares

forgotten among the lilies.

(ST JOHN OF THE CROSS - MYSTIC)

3rd Sunday of Advent (C)

Short Reflection for the 3^rd Sunday of Advent (C)

Readings: Zephaniah 3,14-18a; Philippians 4,4-7; Luke 3,10-18

Selected Gospel Passage:  “And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’  He said to them in reply, ‘Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.’  Even tax collectors came to be baptized and they said to him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’  He answered them, ‘Stop collecting more than what is prescribed.’  Soldiers also asked him, ‘And what is it that we should do?’ He told them, ‘Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.’” (Luke 3: 10-14)

Reflection:  St. John the Baptist tells us what to do in order to recognize the Lord’s visitation. We need to examine our lives and our deeds. Do we share our blessing with those who have none? Do we give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty?  Do we reject bribes and corruption? Do we extort from people and spread fake news?

Our lives and deeds prepare the way for the true visitation of the Lord into our lives and community. We turn away from our evil deeds means “make straight the winding roads in our lives and make smooth our rough ways”. Do this and the Lord  comes to us this Christmas time. www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...

1^st step: Write the Dhikr in your heart.

2^nd step: Let the Dhikr remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the dihkr silently as often as possible...

3^rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the Dhikr in your life.