2007 Reflections

"I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another". - John 13:34-35

2007 is a year of endings.

2007 is the year of my return to my native Philippines after 13 years of being away. I spent 5 years living in Australia and 8 years in the United States and today, I'm glad to be home at last. There really is no place like home! All those years spent abroad were certainly the most uncertain years of my life. I experienced a lot of things while I was away and I made a lot of mistakes. The Lord did much to prune me. I left home with a vastly different world view than what I have now.

The love of God has found a place in my heart and though I am still the same sinner, I am now conscious of the universal call of Jesus Christ - directed towards myself. "Why me of all people?", I used to think to myself but that is all vanity. Humility is to know to be thankful simply because I do have a need and only God can fill that need and so I must obey the call of Christ.

The presence of the Lord has become very real to me. For out of the wellspring of His love I have tasted of that certainty of things unseen and the everlasting vision of God. I saw through the eye of faith that God and His love is one and indivisible. God is where His love works. One can not speak of love without God and one can not speak of God without love. To try and separate God from God's love is impossible. For indeed, as Sacred Scripture testifies, God is love. The measure of this love is to love without measure because God is infinite and without measure. And as God is one, love is one. Now, I know that God is love for God loves me and I know that God loves me because God's love is in me. For the Holy Spirit is in me and He bids me to repent and persevere in the way of my Savior Jesus Christ.

Today, I am trying to discern my vocation within Holy Mother Chrurch because I want to tell the world of this incredible love of God in Jesus Christ.

O Lord, let me be a witness of Thy love.

Amen.

- EJ San Miguel