Christmas Morning

Christmas eve ushers in a flurry of excitement because of family reunions, partaking of the Noche Buena or evening meal in our culture, the opening of gifts and late night chats over a glass of wine. It’s truly the busiest time of the year (at least in my country) especially as the traffic builds up in the metro and malls are open till midnight leading up to Christmas eve. This is also the time our calendars are filling up with get-togethers and parties of friends and family that we have not seen and will probably not see for the rest of the year. Busy is an understatement, really. Maybe chaotic is more like it? But I guess – joyful chaos is the more appropriate way to call it as the excitement is all about the spirit of giving and sharing. That is, after all, what the message of Christmas is all about right?

Whatever the noise and excitement that Christmas eve brought in somehow is brought to a slight halt on this particular day – Christmas morning. Yes – morning in particular. I woke up later than usual, which is good for me. I woke up ahead of everyone else and for me this is the peaceful time I long for. Alone time…listening to silence and the breathing of my husband who lies beside me in bed and the neighborhood’s birds chirping away.

In this silence however, I longed for some inspiration – someone my heart wanted to listen to. I opened my phone and as an OC person, I always have this habit of ticking off all unread emails (especially those that were sent as subscription updates) because I don’t really like seeing unread or unopened notifications on my apps. One email that has been consistently popping up is the one from Formed (a Catholic online revolutionary platform to bring the faith to more people around the world). They were offering Christmas specials that were only going to be available till the next 24 hours. Thinking I might miss this opportunity, I opened the email and found myself scanning through different options we could buy either for ourselves or as a gift to someone else. One particular offering that caught my attention was the one from Kitty Cleveland called God Will Provide. What got me was this phrase because this has been what I would call our battle cry as a family. Through all our challenges in life, we knew God will provide always and He will never ever leave us alone. All He asks of us is to throw our trust in Him.. in Him who knows all things.

I didn’t know who Kitty Cleveland was and what was her particular story. So I decided to Google her and find some information about her. I found myself opening YouTube and clicked on her testimony about her Divine Mercy miracle. I looked at the how long the video was and it was about an hour and seven minutes. Whoa.. I thought to myself.. this is pretty long. But I decided anyway to listen to her testimony.

I was hooked. This is exactly what I needed on this Christmas morning. Some inspiration drawing us back to the reason for the season – our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is her testimony that had me crying buckets at realizing how easily I could forget how Our Lord Jesus Christ was there for us – through Seve’s illness, through our financial losses, through storms that wrecked our home and through all other family challenges. He, my Lord and my Savior and my every reason for being – has carried me through it all! He has never abandoned me!

May you find inspiration as well in her Divine Mercy Miracle Story as I had. And although it is Christmas and Divine Mercy Sunday is still in April, I know that our God is a God of all seasons and He creates opportunities for you to find Him and love Him whatever season you are in, and wherever you may be.

Merry Christmas everyone and may you have a truly blessed New Year!

Going on a Spiritual Retreat

I’ve always been a believer in the saying “a time for everything”. I’ve heard this time and again but never really fully understood the meaning of it until my life got a little bit “complicated” as I grew older. Your circle becomes wider and along with it, more commitments to honor as well. Before you know it, your commitments simply take more than double the number of hours in a day. It can truly get overwhelming if you don’t take control of what needs to be controlled – your time. It’s at this point when you need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and examine your life, your time and the most important things.

At any point in your life – single or married – I think people should hold the highest priority. They may be your parents, siblings, husband/wife or children. If you put people first in your list, they will know the importance you give to them and that makes them happy. And wouldn’t life be joyful if the people in your life are happy? In the family, there is a noticeable and positive change in the people’s disposition.

Investing time in people who matter most to you is always a good thing. When the time comes when things get a little challenging, we can always draw out from the bank of happiness with the hope it will help carry us through this rough patch and look forward to happy times again.

For me, however, I find that the most important investment is time with God. Time spent with my creator is never a waste of time. I know that I am not only investing in my life in the here and now.. but am also investing in my life after. Time spent in a retreat is also time for oneself – a time to pause, reflect, perhaps recalibrate our goals and directions in life and fine tune what is needed in order to get our journey back on track. Are we headed in the direction we really want to.. or we are supposed to? We only have this one life to live on earth for a limited time.. and a life in eternity after. If you were to invest in anything – shouldn’t you put more weight into what is forever, right?

There’s always time we need to dedicate for the important things in our life – family, work, friends. But let us not forget to think of our life after.

Take that time to go on a spiritual retreat. Who knows? It may just change your life forever.

Happy thoughts everyone!

Visita Iglesia 2016

Since we are parents of young children, we try to find creative ways to impart teachings to them. This Lent, we thought of trying to show them about the life and passion of our Lord by doing the Visita Iglesia again.

We did it in 2013 visiting some old churches in the Rizal area. It was a wonderful experience which they enjoyed despite the heavy traffic. Since memories of that visit were a bit sketchy already for some of the kids, we decided to do it again, this time however, visiting the other churches in the province that we had not gone to yet. In each of the churches, we decided to do two stations of the cross and stay a moment to make three wishes since it was the first time for most of us in most of these churches.

Our first stop was the Church in Boso Boso, Bgy. San Jose in Antipolo, Rizal. This church was built by the Franciscans sometime in the late 16th to early 17th centuries. The Jesuits took over the administration of this parish later on in the 17th century, and they began constructing a new church made of stone and brick. In 1768, the church was turned over to the seculars. Although it was burned down by the Japanese and leaving only the lower portion of the original church facade, it was eventually restored when the Camillian order took over. The restoration was completed in 1995 preserving the original facade of the old church.

 

Nuestra Señora dela Annunciata, Boso-Boso, Antipolo

 

Our second stop was the St. Rose of Lima Parish in Teresa. We got here close to noon already so it was really scorching. But when we entered this church, it was bright and airy.. so visiting it was a welcome stop amidst the harsh and hot summer weather. St. Rose of Lima was built in 1903 following a camalig-style building design (if I’m not mistaken, camalig means storage house).

 

Interiors of the St. Rose of Lima Church (altar was under construction)

 

After visiting St. Rose, we were already hungry as we had left Manila almost mid-morning, so our driver Omar (a resident of Antipolo) brought us to a nearby local restaurant that was open (thank goodness!). So we had lunch over at Tita Els’.

While having our lunch, we saw a group in another part of the restaurant dressing up in costumes… apparently, our area was one of the stops where a portion of the re-enactment of the passion of Christ was being done. The scene being re-enacted was where Our Mother sees Jesus Christ who was carrying his cross. I hurriedly brought the kids closer to the sight so they can witness what was happening. Of course the younger boys were asking me why the man was being hurt. I then had to explain that it was all re-enactment of Jesus’ suffering and death.

After lunch, we went to our third church in Binangonan: Sta. Ursula Church. This parish of St. Ursula was founded in 1621 by the Franciscans. In 1679, its administration was turned over to the Jesuits but who eventually transferred it to the Augustinians in 1697. Then in 1737, it was returned to the Franciscans. This church was built from 1792-1800 and later renovated in 1853.

St. Ursula Church, Binangonan, Rizal

 

Interior of St. Ursula Church

Our fourth stop was in the parish of Taytay – The church of St. John the Baptist. According to what I read on the internet, this parish was founded by the Franciscans in 1579 and they initially built a small chapel made of light materials. Then in 1591, the Jesuits took over the administration of the parish and was later transferred to a higher place called San Juan del Monte. The parish has remained here to this day. A new church then made of stone was built in 1599 completed in 1601. A larger church however was built in 1630, repaired in 1632. It was damaged in 1899 during the Filipino-American war and was repaired and made bigger in the 1970’s.

St. John The Baptist Church, Taytay, Rizal

 

Interior of St. John The Baptist Church

 

By this time, we had already felt that the traffic was really building up and we didn’t want to be caught up. In 2013, we did all the seven churches in Rizal and we reached home at midnight already. Since we had another family with us who needed to get back to Manila, we decided to make our next Church our last stop in the Rizal province.

Our next church was one we already visited in 2013 but decided since it was along our way, we wanted to drop by to do our 9th and 10th stations of the cross. This church is found in Morong, Rizal: St. Jerome Church.

This church begins its history around 1586 where a wooden church was first constructed. However that church was burned down in 1612. After three years, a new church was built of stone and mortar on an elevated ground. This church was dedicated to St. Jerome and was completed in 1620. This church remained pretty much unchanged until 1850-1853 when the parish priest commissioned an artist to renovate the facade and build a bell tower. The new Baroque facade was then completed in 1853.

 

Interior – St. Jerome Church, Morong

 

We made our way back to Manila and did our last two visits inside the Ateneo campus: the Church of Jesu and the Grade School chapel where we finished off our Stations of the Cross.

I believe it was a good opportunity for the children to see the different towns of Rizal and learn to love not only their history, but more importantly, their faith.