tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40218912140224678072023-11-15T09:20:41.194-08:00Harvest of MiraclesLife with God on a moment-to-moment basis; transcription of daily blessings; journeying in SpiritUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4021891214022467807.post-59000788086324277792012-01-28T07:15:00.000-08:002012-01-28T07:57:20.857-08:00Bearing FruitThis is how God rewards--with people as His instruments. I felt the call to make a fried rice breakfast for the St. A's priests, which I did, in the middle of making squid and corn salad and egg custard for my in-laws. After Mass, they invited me to join them and I truly regretted not piling in more rice, or even meat, but as Fr. B said in his homily--as David realized his sin, boy did he not sin that way again. (How many times do we do repeat confession on the same sin, grievous or un-grievous? <b>Imagine just designing your life around such that you are not bound to repeat the same sin.</b> I realized that I should have done that same vigilance, even to the point of not seeing the person that prompts me to make numerous confession. Which had a side-blessing, though not the full-one, I am sure that I was able to love this sacrament and go to it frequently.) <br />
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During breakfast I was able to hear the <a href="http://thedivinemercy.org/events/event.php?id=227">Divine Mercy Conference</a> in NY on March with Abby Johnson formerly of Planned Parenthood, Scott Hahn among others giving a talk. Come to think of it, how Abby Johnson, <b>like many repentant among us is welcomed so well into the Catholic Church, no matter how badly we sinned, as long as we are contrite</b>. M was able to invite me to the First Small Catholic Community Confab with all other Northeast groups--hey I am a member then! I was able to realize that I missed <a href="http://www.spiritandtruthnj.org/page.php?pid=1">Spirit and Truth</a> prayers yesterday in St. John's in Linden and heard of a fiery Hispanic preacher named Jose. He runs a Bible Study class too. I wonder what his training was to be so confident to do so. <br />
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Fr. B mentions that priests are inviting him to start a congregation; Hispanics Charismatics are inviting him to start a conference. Meanwhile he was been given a 25-minute slot in the Men's Conference in the Archdiocese where he will do Baptism of the Holy Spirit. I regretted not being a man, now and hoped that the Women's conference will be as rich. He tells me that I should make it to Bible study more because I was not there Tuesday, which I was pointing out my seatmates and joked that perhaps it was because I arrived promptly this time. I realized it was still a valid call as I missed Wednesday prayer night where perhaps I missed a fabulous talk. He is inexhaustible. That is truly Holy Spirit work!<br />
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I was able to get a word in Mass (indeed as he had advised, don't leave Mass or Prayer Group without a word) and that is to <b>be more careful with my time,</b> make it count, as I have no stressful or forced responsibility that I had to do, I have to work for the Lord in all various opportunities and avenues. I just found out that he has run a 2-3 year teaching of the <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm">Cathechism</a> during Sundays and will be starting a Sunday morning class on the <a href="http://www.papalencyclicals.net/">Papal Encyclical</a>s. And this he does before the two hour Sunday Mass! When there is more to give, you give! <br />
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So to bear fruit, I <b>reflect on the cross-points of the clock </b>(9-12-3-6) and write a little paper column for each of my spheres (GRAPHED--God, writing, arts, public health, forensics, E (hubby and etc) and diary/examen) and blog it, why not? So here goes. May the Lord find favor on this and keep me safe and holy and extraordinarily fruitful like my favorite priest.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4021891214022467807.post-72772632240387422572010-06-21T01:46:00.000-07:002010-06-21T01:48:33.286-07:00One more Father's Day tributeIf we must carry our cross, we have to accept that sometimes it can be in the form of family...<br />
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Also, I feel that when you desire to do good and bad consequences follow, it seems that God is giving you opportunities to score more brownie points for heaven. (Samples: Oprah getting sued on behalf of her school administrators after she opened her free girl's school in Africa, this story below.<br />
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<blockquote></blockquote>For Mayor Socrates Fernandez, official “Father of Talisay City”, no other child has given him as much heartache as his adopted son Joavan, who’s been in and out of jail for various offenses. Well known for his Catholic piety, the mayor, who is called “Brod Soc”, has patiently endured the trials of raising a young man, who has often been described as a prodigal son. “It’s normal to get hurt by criticism. But I have no regrets,” said Fernandez. Twenty seven years ago, Joavan came to him as a foundling... <blockquote></blockquote>Read more at <a href="http://http://services.inquirer.net/print/print.php?article_id=20100620-276565">Father has "no regrets" about son Joavan </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4021891214022467807.post-5151030277592790842010-06-20T12:57:00.001-07:002010-06-20T12:57:54.222-07:00Recollections from DecemberArriving from an invigorating walk to and from St. Lucy. Took photos along the way; winter can remake the urban landscape with its pretty blanket of snow. It is instant playland; walking in the fresh snow before the New Year's Eve-delayed plowers was a treat, like snowshoeing. Thank God for the nudge to bring my camera which I had to go back into the house for, remove my boots and all.<br /><br />Got Fr. L to confirm the ad for the Advocate incorporating the Filipino and Ibo masses. Had Richard show me the outlets for the hon's keyboard, the entrance gate for the readers and me, cantor. What privilege to be in the front of the church, discovering vantage points that I cannot have envisioned as a mass goer. From the lectern, I turn on the mike, look out to the pews where many times I sat and wondered how they organize Masses, do outreach, set up for Catechism, make wonderful homilies? In short, make the Church work. Now as in my experiences in medicine and the arts, I get to see how it's done, even participate.<br /><br />Such amazing people I have met so far and mostly volunteers! They make this a joy, like the Italian man who acknowledged me during one Mass when I was introduced by Father as the coordinator for the Filipino masses. He says he will see me again, and today rightfully so. He was shoveling the church driveway with such concentration that twice he didn't hear my greeting.<br /><br />Other tasks done: went over with Fr. the sequence of the Mass where there will be Filipino responses. He suggested that we say, not sing, the "Our Father". He explains," Catholics rarely pray it as a group, but here, we can use the Mass to really pray it, really feel the meaning of the words." Come to think of it when we sing there is the tendency to be on autopilot. This is something that singers, even karaoke ones, should guard against, I guess.<br /><br />Distributed more flyers in the Colonnade, one of two Mies van der Rohe buildings in Newark, the largest nearby complex which has minimal chances of having Filipino tenants but this should not be ignored in evangelization, no? The African-American guards were so helpful, reading the flyer intently, offering to even post it on the glass doors, volunteering their own scotch tape. I hope they come. It seems that there is confusion that people are thinking the Mass is in Filipino whereas it is only the songs.<br /><br />Gave fliers to Filipino staff in front of St. Michaels Hospital. I feel lucky to have this much concentration of Fil-Ams in my area--NY/NJ. (Though it is thanks to colonialism that friends and family gravitate here. But here we all are.) It is hard for me to imagine the loneliness of other Asians who are not as represented. I remember sitting next to an Asian man in the train to CT and the moment I sat down, he asked, "Are you Tibetan?" No, I said, then slept most of the way, regretting I didn't draw him even in fleeting conversation.<br /><br />In the shops, streets, bakeries, I'd spot Filipinos like a radar, I have leaflets, calendars, verbal invites for the mass, I knock on cars, follow promising prospects, offer my own cell to dozens of strangers. There is no shyness or foot-dragging when you want results. Long admiring the candor of salespeople, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would do their league proud, though this morning, I had a <a href="http://www.licatholic.org/2009/10/102109/mother_teresa_li_catholics.html">dark-night-of-the-soul</a> moment. I was paralyzed in the same way I was in med school, knowing the immensity of the day's work and learning ahead. Who am I to think I can help build a community in this parish? I almost forgot that it was Fr. who directed me to, forgot that while I volunteered it was he who first asked and it offered me a way to contribute to the parish that helped me most in my anguish and healing post-work.<br /><br />So here goes! All the best this Sunday, the first monthly mass for my parish and community. Here's to a New Year, a re-Newed me, a New Mass (Breaking news: Fr. thought we can make it weekly if it succeeds, wow! Plus <a href="http://www.calandrasbakery.com/">Calandra's</a> committed to French bread for the post-Mass fellowship). Funny I am using fellowship here in such a different context from the medical one, where in a past or paused life, post-residency training was THE definition. I do not even cling to finding a job anymore. If it comes, it comes.<br /><br />Right now, I got an offer for part-time ME-related work from home from Rockland. I have the forms and clearance waivers to fill to teach Catechism to some of the 300 kiddies coming this September, hopefully get the coursework from real or <a href="http://vlc.udayton.edu/">online</a> by then. I can learn with Eric the <a href="http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/">sheet music</a> and <a href="http://www.ocp.org/products/title/all/HHC-HSC?st=32">songbooks</a> I ordered from Catholic music and liturgy resources as <a href="http://www.ocp.org/">OCP</a>. God did empty me of many burdens, assumptions and worldliness to ensure He gets the prime seats. And I am so, so grateful.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4021891214022467807.post-34256297764956227992009-05-20T20:19:00.000-07:002009-05-20T21:53:18.248-07:00Invitations and God-willed encountersEarlier in the day I resolved to follow a rigorous schedule but my body doesn’t want to cooperate. I acknowledge body wisdom now and do not work myself to exhaustion as I have done so in the past. While it may be to good effect or purpose, it is rarely sustainable and could be better served by healthier work habits and friendlier hours. Disclaimer: I have pulled all-nighters for mostly presentations (or reading slides) and have been rewarded by unexpected insight, friendships (the 2am club at Sinai), the realization of one’s intrinsic rhythms and the best time and process for you and others, and also actual gifts from above—like the exercise machine that glowed as a gift sitting in the sidewalk left for discard in the Upper East Side that I know was for me—how it is perfect for the size of my room and works the upper and lower body with cardio and resistance simultaneously, my perfect gym. I took it home giddy and lifted of spirits from an initially gloomy, spent 4am arrival from the hospital.<br /><br />There are certain immutables that emerged from a day I try to follow my GRAPHED sequence--God, ‘Riting, Arts, Pathology, Public Health Everything/Everyone Else and Diary. It is a miracle that I was able to land a mnemonic that also fits my theme— something I try to do in the absence of visitors, but one I should do even with. I did not pull myself out of bed for early mass, so at 9am, antsy in my desk, I had a feeling that I should walk outside. Once out, I did not know what direction I will go, only that I will do a rosary walk. And when I was ready to, I felt called to do it in the direction of the unemployment center and so I did, returning home to get my IDs. And when I am doing so, who is it that I will meet among the smiling, uniformed, good morning-ing children of St. Benedict—Fr. Philip! As soon as he helped them cross the street (as Sister Linda did who also waved) he took a chaplaincy call for a Newark Beth Israel man—“they suddenly get scared when they go to a hospital”--and then heard my confession right on the steps of St. Mary’s. What a sight for the drivers in mostly Protestant Newark—an Asian girl in jeans and Irish priest in garb bowed in prayer in the church steps. I was able to get my confession, which I have ached for all along, the subconscious immutable, and knew it would have to be the first thing before any attempt to hear mass, which would have been Fr. Aro’s time if I went to St. Lucy.<br /><br />Fr. Philip told me, “Parents are a funny thing. You’re supposed to be having two old friends when you grow up with them. It is good you’re doing it together rather than separate…It is different when children become the adults for their parents….When I muscled my father because he had Alzheimer’s I didn’t feel too good about myself.” I was stilled. My parents are young, they are vital. Suddenly, the loss of their liveliness and fire to Alzheimer’s made me shoot up like a flame. Their personalities, their argumentativeness, their constant, vigorous advising became precious, almost poignant. In my rosary walk in the corner of Prince and South Orange, I realized, Tatay, our grandparent, did that too to them. And they obeyed. Tatay felt that they are wasting their brains in the province and pushed them, literally, handing Daddy to a recruiter for Manila that afternoon when he saw him coming from school with soil-stains from helping students dig a garden and felt sorry. They accepted his challenge because it was also for me, for my schooling, and rightfully, Tatay's pushing and their following allowed me to become who I am right now.<br /><br />I should not be too scared of the future, of the demands of children, of a new location. I already have realized it is more possible to grow where you are planted. I have been guided, purified, transformed by the rigors of medicine, edified by the work, the company and delighted in the friendships whom I still enjoy this very day and in meeting my husband and in-laws. I have been allowed to live and work in the same area as my immediate family whose own locus of schooling and work could have been far-flung but was not. I should be more thankful and not utter any further ungratefulness. Right now, I am further blessed by the friendships of lay ministers and the religious, who also struggle and also get fatigued in their ministering, yet raise life and hope. "Fr. Aro, you are a man of joy!" a participant squealed. Later, Fr. Aro lamented his own aches ("I am tired, O Lord") in a sad, shaky voice that made me more admiring of him in his struggle. It was my first glimpse to his pain who seem very above all the aches we all have, though earlier he confessed he was unable to sleep when he found out his nephew’s house has been stripped of all contents (“but praise God their lives were spared because they weren’t there”) and that his priesthood was filled with wavering and doubt in the earlier years that he had wanted to quit.<br /><br />It seems almost an underscore for me. Any vocation, particularly, the one deemed by God, is never easy. I should not leave medicine that easily after all the struggle. Now Fr. Aro is on his jubilee year—25 years of priesthood. In India where has worked for 15 years, he ministered to a flock of 12000. Here in America (bumper stickers on his gray Toyota Camry proclaims—‘Freedom’ and ‘Proud to be an American’) where he as been for 10 years, he feels he wants to learn and do more by being a pastor. I am the third priest here, he says of Montclair. There is no dissent that can be made in issues of practice. One pastor may not like another for the latter’s religious devotions, or for their liberality. Fr. Aro is devoted to the Virgin, would have crowned her appropriately, like a true dignitary, on her feast days. “My mother,” he says.<br /><br />He treats me with the “Love Handles” burger at Jakes and splits the carrot cake before the prayer group. I end up bringing most of the bacon-wrapped cheese burger and fries home, after we share my graduation photos, Eric’s talents as a musician and lists of great ministries to be added in a parish. “It is not easy to be accepted as a pastor if you have a different color,” stroking his skin, but he has high hopes and have already done shown the way in Montclair. He prays for me “Sister Jennifer” endlessly thankful that I brought was able to be a channel to make his pilgrimage to Ireland possible. He is grateful that people come at the right juncture when he is low on funds and solutions and that with me and Eric, and the Cenacle prayer group he feels loved and supported. In the very house where the prayer group is held, the host turns out to be a Felician College Vice President who later offers to endorse me to the MA in Psychology program. The serendipity is just earlier I stirred in bed with the thought that that is the rightful next step but didn’t know of any open programs. Another one is by Fr. Aro's invitation to the group I realized how our own house in Boston is so great and grand and filled with memory and potential. How in Boston and in any house we hold, the family and/or parish mates can have frequent and voluble praying to enhance the Spirit. How prayers as this prayer group has given has blessed this house and hosts many times over. How Our Mother has relayed through Fr. Giddo, a visionary who receives her messages in his heart and shares it, that we pray in cenacles, that if we only do it alone, Our Mother will ask, “And your brother is where?”<br /><br />Even Fr. Aro has shared problems as they arise, getting support and solutions in the process. He has brought me, another soul, into the group, allowing reflection, healing shared support, how people have been suffering medically, and need or have been given solace, and that there are ‘saves’ as they call babies saved from abortion by vigilance in their nearby abortion clinic, that Evil/ the Adversary is allowed by Our Mother only to purify us, but at which point we are to call upon God for help, or to say to distraction, flaw and despair, “Begone!”, that to give in to despair even for a bit is to let go of God.<br /><br />How I know our family is moving closer to healing and joy, that I can do what I can through insights from my own prayer and spiritual life, that if we enhance our inherent sharing and community our brave and resilient spirits will be on the up and up and up.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0