My theme song..."Five Loaves and Two Fishes"

Thank you and God bless you Corrine May for this beautiful and inspiring song...! Pax!

Recollection...my Five loaves and Two Fishes

My day of recollection this year brings to mind my liaision with the "5 loaves and 2 fishes' ~ the experiences of my Mt Tabor Sabbatical last year.  It was there that I was totally elated and even humbled when I 'saw' that Jesus had changed my little offering into food for 5 thousand men [not counting women and children!]. The elation [consolation?] has lasted for some months...

At this point, I am beginning to realise that my contribution is still strictly only '5 loaves and 2 fishes'. Did  I think that it was my giving that caused the multiplication?? Did I expect more in return?? Did my pride inflate? Yes, Yes and Yes! But... God said no... very gently, but clearly and firmly! The multiplication is not mine to claim, to covert, it belongs to God!  That [reality] is hard to accept! My finite being expects, perhaps even demands that God gives me the extras and magnify my contribution! And, that's where I fall on my face, bruise myself and border on self-pity! 

Fall I did but God, ever gracious and patient, holds me up, reminds me that the '5 loaves and 2 fishes' I gave are still my gift and that it's not to be taken for granted.  I can still claim them and as such, still surrender them to God if I choose to.
So, that's the invitation now, a hard choice but honestly, it's one that I will choose to make ~ a choice that comes with greater awareness and less demands and expectations. I now make a choice that has no strings attached because I know with my head and my heart too now that even the '5 loaves and 2 fishes' are not mine to hold and keep.  I need to surrender all and know that in God's hands it is going to feed all who seek God.  I too will be fed with perhaps 'food' that I never dreamed of, but with food that will nourish not only my body but especially that of my spirit... and that food is priceless.
So, I have been 'educated' further into the ways of God. The Holy Spirit lit my journey and I am called once again, to offer my meager self in trust and freedom.  I am again called to let go of my rights and wrongs, my rational expectations and to choose the narrow path that leads to the Lord of Light.
May our loving Mother whose FIAT showed us the way, continue to intercede for this journey.

It's 2011

Another year... it's begun quite eventfully with the Golden and Silver Jubilees of our Sisters celebrated on the 2nd of January.
Gosh... mine's next year!!

25 years of my life as a Religious Sister has passed like mostly like the breeze [at times like a fragrant rose and at times like a tempest!] that constantly blows.

I have absolutely no regrets about responding to the call to Religious life. God has been utterly wonderful and in the light of the 'infidelities' of today's culture...especially faithful.

I am filled with gratitude to God for the gift of my vocation and all I seek to do is to listen and obey the voice of God from especially from within my heart.

Listening to God's voice from within calls for fidelity from me... fidelity to my quiet time with God Alone and to holy discernment, particularly at 'crossroads'. I have not always been faithful and consequently, I have had to ride the high tide of fiery, desperate and even depressing moments of feeling lost and alone.

In and through all this, God has never left me alone as I was always led to 'seek and find'. There would always be 'God in skin' to show me the light that led me home. Home to God and to my community, to those who patiently waited to lift me and shower me with loving care.

This is the ultimate gift that is given... basically to all, 'all people of goodwill' because God is Abba in the most loving way! This is the gift of Mary's 'Fiat' ~ that is our call, a call that leads to the conception of Jesus deep within each one of us! Christians who are called to eventually to birth and thus proclaim the love of Christ to one and all!

Yes, the year has begun... Chinese New Year is round the corner... another reminder of the call to 'go out and proclaim the Good News!'

Shalom!

The beginning of another 'era'!

We've closed our beloved St Anthony's Canossian Convent!! [SACC] [Thankfully, the Schools will remain!] I am sooooo sorry and really sad that the convent of my school days has been closed! Upon reflection and looking at the situation, I have to admit that there really isn't much of a choice :( It's all been cleared, only the building stands and that too, not for long. So much love had been poured into it's building but the love will surely remain even if the building doesn't. Upon my return I considered going to say 'goodbye' but.. I don't have the heart to do that so, now all that is left to be done is to now clear what has been collected from SACC. The remnants of books, furniture and loads of other stuff. I have avoided looking at all that has been salvaged, but that's quite impossible, there's stuff [and good stuff too!] in every corner of the convent I now live in and so... I'll do my share of clearing and feel the heartache as I wade through the library books especially. The library was a special place of really good books. I am grateful that the good books have been saved.. now for the sorting.
"Dear God... As this new 'era' begins, give me the grace to let go of SACC with a whole heart so that I many give my best to where I am and basically, 'bloom where I'm planted'. I know you're here and will give me new life in this community and convent, so God, 'here I am, I come to do your will'. Pax!

It's been sooooo long!

Far too long since I blogged... My 7 months of Renewal in Tagaytay, Philippines has been really good! Why?? Simply because God is good and there was time there, being enfolded in the beauty of God's loving creation helped me to truly experience the wonderfully generous love of God! God truly cannot be outdone in generosity and I am grateful for the gift of time that allowed me that space to allow God's presence and love to sink deep into my heart.
My only desire presently is to be able to give that which I received so freely from Abba and to be worthy of the love I have abundantly received.
I pray for the grace to respond with love and compassion to all whom God gives me in my life and to be true to my community and to my call as a Daughter of Charity!
Peace to all who pass this way cos this truly... 'Holyground'!

A sabbatical experience...

The dawn has coloured the clouds a light bluish grey and the mountains are navy blue with light grey clouds hovering over the top. Patches of bright orange manifests the determination of the rising sun amidst the darkening clouds. The rising sun will win this 'battle' but, for now, the clouds that darken are holding the eternal sky.

The beauty here that my eyes have captured and wistfully seeks to retain cannot be justified by a mere photo shot. God's transcendence as seen here in the exalted array of clouds, mountains and trees with the glorious rising sun breaking through... is only viably seen through God's gift of sight!

The camera - like many other human devices, has obviously 'failed' me! The numerous shots I've taken [beautiful though they may seem to be] clearly manifests this failure :(

Ultimately, it is only in sitting before this awesome sight - glorious splendor of God's creation at the dawn of a new day - that I am filled with the totality of God's infinite goodness and love!

What more can I say but "Abba, Thank You!"

Big Hearts!!

Who is This Wonderful Man??

Awesome!.. A 'Sacrifice' of Love!

Welcome to the family.. the Canossian one here

Mission!

Canossians 200th Anniversary!

Bakhita - Irmã Universal

Sainte Bakhita

wow! This is about St Bakhita!!

Breath of Heaven

08. Michael Card - Why

excellent duet!

17. Michael Card - Scribbling in the Sand

awesome!

Bakhita Quoted in " Spe Salvi"

ENCYCLICAL LETTER
SPE SALVI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN HOPE

Introduction

1. “SPE SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. Now the question immediately arises: what sort of hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is involved here?

Faith is Hope

2. Before turning our attention to these timely questions, we must listen a little more closely to the Bible's testimony on hope. “Hope”, in fact, is a key word in Biblical faith—so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem interchangeable. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews closely links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter exhorts Christians to be always ready to give an answer concerning the logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15), “hope” is equivalent to “faith”. We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions. Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing)[1]: so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say: Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.

3. Yet at this point a question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is “redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the Letter to the Ephesians quoted above: the Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father's right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.

The concept of faith-based hope in the New Testament and the early Church

4. We have raised the question: can our encounter with the God who in Christ has shown us his face and opened his heart be for us too not just “informative” but “performative”—that is to say, can it change our lives, so that we know we are redeemed through the hope that it expresses? Before attempting to answer the question, let us return once more to the early Church. It is not difficult to realize that the experience of the African slave-girl Bakhita was also the experience of many in the period of nascent Christianity who were beaten and condemned to slavery. Christianity did not bring a message of social revolution like that of the ill-fated Spartacus, whose struggle led to so much bloodshed. Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barabbas or Bar- Kochba. Jesus, who himself died on the Cross, brought something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within. What was new here can be seen with the utmost clarity in Saint Paul's Letter to Philemon. This is a very personal letter, which Paul wrote from prison and entrusted to the runaway slave Onesimus for his master, Philemon. Yes, Paul is sending the slave back to the master from whom he had fled, not ordering but asking: “I appeal to you for my child ... whose father I have become in my imprisonment ... I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart ... perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother ...” (Philem 10-16). Those who, as far as their civil status is concerned, stand in relation to one an other as masters and slaves, inasmuch as they are members of the one Church have become brothers and sisters—this is how Christians addressed one another. By virtue of their Baptism they had been reborn, they had been given to drink of the same Spirit and they received the Body of the Lord together, alongside one another. Even if external structures remained unaltered, this changed society from within. When the Letter to the Hebrews says that Christians here on earth do not have a permanent homeland, but seek one which lies in the future (cf. Heb 11:13-16; Phil 3:20), this does not mean for one moment that they live only for the future: present society is recognized by Christians as an exile; they belong to a new society which is the goal of their common pilgrimage and which is anticipated in the course of that pilgrimage.

5. We must add a further point of view. The First Letter to the Corinthians (1:18-31) tells us that many of the early Christians belonged to the lower social strata, and precisely for this reason were open to the experience of new hope, as we saw in the example of Bakhita. Yet from the beginning there were also conversions in the aristocratic and cultured circles, since they too were living “without hope and without God in the world”. Myth had lost its credibility; the Roman State religion had become fossilized into simple ceremony which was scrupulously carried out, but by then it was merely “political religion”. Philosophical rationalism had confined the gods within the realm of unreality. The Divine was seen in various ways in cosmic forces, but a God to whom one could pray did not exist. Paul illustrates the essential problem of the religion of that time quite accurately when he contrasts life “according to Christ” with life under the dominion of the “elemental spirits of the universe” (Col 2:8). In this regard a text by Saint Gregory Nazianzen is enlightening. He says that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ the new king, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ[2]. This scene, in fact, overturns the world-view of that time, which in a different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free. In ancient times, honest enquiring minds were aware of this. Heaven is not empty. Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love[3].

to continue reading...

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html

CHAPLET OF DIVINE MERCY (PART 2 OF 2)

and a second part... for all who suffer.

CHAPLET OF DIVINE MERCY (PART 1 OF 2)

Let's pray together... all the many who are in need.