Remedies Against Lust

SECTION I

General Remedies

Lust is an inordinate desire of unlawful pleasures. It is a vice most widely spread in the world; one that is most violent in its attacks, most insatiable in its cravings. Hence St. Augustine says that the severest warfare which a Christian has to maintain is that in defense of chastity, for such combats are frequent, and victories rare.

Whenever you are assailed by this shameful vice resist it with the following considerations: Remember, first, that this disorder not only stains your soul, purified by the Blood of Christ, but defiles your body, in which the thrice Holy Body of Christ has been placed, as in a shrine. If it be a sacrilege to defile a material temple dedicated to God's service, what must it be to profane this living temple, which God has chosen for His dwelling? For this reason the Apostle tells us: "Fly fornication. Every sin that a man doth is without the body, but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body." (1Cor. 6:18). Consider, secondly, that this deplorable vice necessarily involves scandal to numerous souls and the spiritual ruin of all who participate in your crime. This thought will cause the sinner to suffer the greatest remorse at the hour of death; for if in the Old Law God required a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth (Cf. Ex. 21:23-24), what satisfaction can be offered Him for the destruction of so many souls, purchased at the price of His Blood?

This treacherous vice begins in pleasure, but ends in an abyss of bitterness and remorse. There is nothing into which man is more easily drawn, but nothing from which he is with more difficulty freed. Hence the Wise Man compares an impure woman to a deep ditch, a narrow pit, to show how easily souls fall into this vice, but with what difficulty they are extricated. Man is first allured by its flattering aspect, but when he has assumed the sinful yoke, and particularly when he has cast aside all shame, it requires almost a miracle of grace to deliver him from his degrading bondage. For this reason it is justly compared to a fisherman's net, which the fish easily enter, but from which they rarely escape. Learn, too, how many sins spring from this one vice; for during this long captivity of the soul how often is God offended by thoughts, words, and desires, if not by actions?

The evils which it brings in its train are no less numerous than the sins it occasions. It robs man of his reputation-his most important possession, for there is no vice more degrading or more shameful. It rapidly undermines the strength, exhausts the energy, and withers the beauty of its victim, bringing upon him the most foul and loathsome diseases. It robs youth of its freshness, and hurries it into a premature and dishonorable old age, It penetrates even to the sanctuary of the soul, darkening the understanding, obscuring the memory, and weakening the will. It turns man from every noble and honorable work, burying him so deeply in the mire of his impurities that he can neither think nor speak of anything but what is vile.

Nor are the ravages of this vice confined only to man himself. They extend to all his possessions. There is no revenue so great that the exactions and follies of impurity will not exhaust; for it is closely allied to gluttony, and these two vices combine to ruin their victim. Men given to impurity are generally addicted to intemperance, and squander their substance in rich apparel and sumptuous living. Moreover, their impure idols are insatiable in their demands for costly jewels, rich adornments, rare perfumes, which gifts they love much better than they love the donors, their unfortunate victims. The example of the prodigal son, exhausting his inheritance in these pleasures, shows how terrible is such a passion.

Consider, further, that the more you indulge in these infamous gratifications, the more insatiable will be your desire for them, the less they will satisfy you. It is the nature of these pleasures to excite the appetite rather than appease it. If you consider how fleeting is the pleasure and how enduring its punishment, you will not for a moment's enjoyment sacrifice the unspeakable treasure of a good conscience in this life and the eternal happiness of Heaven in the next. St. Gregory, therefore, has truly said that the pleasure is momentary, but the suffering is eternal. (Moral. 9,44).

Consider also the nobility and the value of virginal purity, which this vice destroys. Virgins begin here below to live as angels, for the beauty of these glorious spirits is reflected in the splendor of their chastity. "Living in the flesh," says St. Bernard, "and despising its allurements is more angelic than human." (In Nat. Virg.).

"Virginity," says St. Jerome, "is the virtue which, amid the corruption of this mortal life, best represents the perfection of immortal glory. It brings before us the happy condition of the celestial City, where there is no marrying, and gives us a foretaste of eternal joy." (De Virginitatis Laude). Hence virginity is specially rewarded in Heaven. St. John tells us that virgins follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. (Cf. Apoc. 14:4). They have risen above their fellow men in their imitation of Christ. They will therefore be more closely united to Him for all eternity, and will find in the spotless purity of their bodies a source of ineffable joy.

Virginity not only renders man like unto Christ, but makes him the temple of the Holy Spirit. For this Divine Lover of purity abhors whatever is defiled, and delights to dwell in chaste souls. The Son of God, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, so loved purity that He wrought His greatest miracle to preserve the purity of His Virgin Mother. If you have suffered the loss of this beautiful virtue, learn from the temptations which wrought the evil to guard against a second fall.

If you have not preserved the gift of chastity in the perfection in which God gave it to you, endeavor to restore the beauty of the Creator's work by giving yourself to His service with a zeal and fervor born of deep gratitude for forgiven sin, and with an ardent desire to repair the past. "It often happens," says St. Gregory, "that one who was tepid and indifferent before his fall becomes, through repentance, a strong and fervent soldier of Christ." (Past., p1). Finally, since God continued to preserve your life after you had so basely offended Him, profit by this benefit to serve Him and make reparation for your sins, lest another fall should be irremediable.

SECTION II

Particular Remedies

Besides these general remedies there are others more special, and perhaps more efficacious. The first of these is vigorously to resist the first attacks of this vice. If we do not resist it in the beginning, it rapidly acquires strength and gains an entrance to our souls. "When a taste for sinful pleasures," says St. Gregory, "takes possession of a heart, it thinks of nothing but how to gratify its inordinate desires." (Moral. 21,7). We must, then, struggle against it from the beginning by repelling every bad thought, for by such fuel is the flame of impurity fed. As wood nourishes fire, so our thoughts nourish our desires; and, consequently, if the former be good, charity will burn in our breast – but if they are bad, the fire of lust will certainly be kindled.

In the second place, we must carefully guard our senses, particularly the eyes, that they may not rest upon anything capable of exciting sinful desires. A man may inflict a deep wound upon his soul by inconsiderately turning his eyes upon a dangerous object. Prudently guard your eyes in your intercourse with the other sex, for such glances weaken virtue.

Hence we are told by the Holy Ghost: "Look not round about thee in the ways of the city. Turn away thy face from a woman dressed up, and gaze not upon another's beauty." (Ecclus. 9:7-8). Think of Job, that great servant of God, of such tried virtue, who kept so vigilant a guard over his senses that, in the expressive language of Scripture, he made a covenant with his eyes not so much as to think upon a virgin. (Cf. Job 31:1). Behold also the example of David, who, though declared by God to have been a man after His own Heart, yet fell into three grievous crimes by inconsiderately looking upon a woman.

Be no less watchful in protecting your ears from impure discourses. If unbecoming words are uttered in your presence, testify your displeasure by at least a grave and serious countenance; for what we hear with pleasure we learn to do with complacency. Guard with equal care your tongue. Let no immodest words escape you; for "evil communications," says the Apostle, "corrupt good morals." (1Cor. 15:33). A man's conversation discovers his inclination, for, to quote the words of the Gospel, from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

Endeavor to keep your mind occupied with good thoughts and your body employed in some profitable exercise, "for the devil," says St. Bernard, "fills idle souls with bad thoughts, so that they may be thinking of evil if they do not actually commit it."

In all temptations, but particularly in temptations against purity, remember the presence of your guardian angel and of the devil, your accuser, for they both witness all your actions, and will render an account of them to Him who sees and judges all things. If you follow this counsel, how can you, before your accuser, your defender, and your Judge, commit a base sin, for which you would blush before the lowest of men? Remember also the terrible tribunal of God's judgment and the eternal flames of Hell; for as a greater pain makes us insensible to a less, so the thought of the inexhaustible fire of Hell will render us insensible to the fire of concupiscence.

In addition to all this, be very guarded in your intercourse with women, and beware of continuing alone with one for any length of time; for, according to St. Chrysostom, the enemy attacks men and women more vigorously when he finds them alone. He is bolder when there are no witnesses present to thwart his artifices. Avoid the society of women who are not above suspicion, for their words inflame the heart, their glances wound the soul, and everything about them is a snare to those who visit them with imprudent familiarity. Be mindful of the example of the elders (Cf. Dan. 13), and let not old age render you less prudent. Do not trust to your own strength; and let not a habit of virtue inspire you with presumptuous confidence. Let there be no improper interchange of presents, visits, or letters, for these are so many snares which entangle us and reawaken dangerous affections. If you experience any friendship for a virtuous woman let your intercourse be marked by grave respect, and avoid seeing her too often or conversing too familiarly with her. But, as one of the most important remedies is avoiding dangerous occasions, we. shall give an example from the Dialogues of St. Gregory to show you with what prudence holy souls guard this angelic virtue.

There lived in the province of Mysia a holy priest who was filled with the fear of God, and who governed his church with zeal and wisdom. A very virtuous woman had charge of the altar and church furniture. This holy soul the priest loved as a sister, but he was as guarded in his intercourse with her as if she were his enemy. He never permitted her to approach him or converse familiarly with him, or enter his dwelling, thus removing all occasions of familiarity; for the saints not only reject unlawful gratifications, but forbid themselves even innocent pleasures when there is the slightest indication of danger to the soul. For this reason the good priest would never allow her to minister to him, even in his extreme necessities.

At an advanced age, after he had been 40 years in the sacred ministry, he fell gravely ill, and was soon almost at the point of death. As he lay in this condition, the good woman, wishing to discover whether he still lived, bent over him and put her ear to his mouth to listen to his breathing. The dying man, perceiving her, indignantly exclaimed, "Get thee hence, woman! Get thee hence! The fire still glows in the embers. Beware of kindling it with straw!" As she withdrew he seemed to gain new strength, and raising his eyes, he cried out with a loud voice, "Oh! Happy hour! Welcome, my lords, welcome! I thank you for deigning to visit so poor a servant. I come! I come!" He repeated these words several times, and when they who were present asked him to whom he spoke, he said with astonishment, "Do you not see the glorious Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul?" And, raising his eyes, he again cried, "I come! I come!" and as he uttered these words he gave up his soul to God.

An end so glorious was the result of a prudent vigilance which cannot be too highly extolled; and such confidence at the hour of death seemed a fitting reward for one who during life had been filled with a holy fear of God. (Dial. 4,11).

The Sinner's Guide: Chapter XXXII
- Venerable Louis of Granada (1505-1588)

A Post-Confession Meditation

"Eternal Father, send forth Your Holy Spirit deep into our hearts that we may serve You with chaste bodies and please You with pure minds".

- Father Keenan, CSSR - my confessor
at Shrine of our Lady of Perpetual Help
Baclaran, Philippines

Bless Your Holy Name, O Lord! Thank you for the grace of a good confession today. You are truly a good God! It has been a while since my last confession (second week of December) and much has happened. I can not wait to receive You once again Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. Thank you O Holy Spirit for Your presence in my life without which I would be left helpless and alone and in total darkness. It is Your Light, O Lord and Giver of Life, O sweet Guest of my soul, that shine in my darkness without which I would never know light. O gentle Master, thank you for Your tender mercies! O Holy Spirit, help me to bend to Your will for me, Help me to be docile to Your inspirations and to walk with a heart full of hope in Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God Who with You and the Father Almighty reign forever in heaven and on earth as one God forever and ever.

AMEN.

A Post-Confession Meditation

Lord, You do not ask for much from me. Just a little self-control, just a little inward mortification of the heart and discipline over the senses. O Master, my one and only Master, You know what's in my heart. You know me better than I can ever know myself. Please do not forsake the work of Your hands. Forgive me for all the trouble, offense, hurt, dishonor and humiliations that I have caused You, Your Immaculate Mother, Your holy angels and your venerable Saints over the years of my miserable life. Thank you, Lord, for the sacrament of confession and for the grace that it confers upon my soul. I am glad, O Lord, that we can be reconciled today in friendship through Your sacrament of confession without which I would be left helpless. O Lord, You know how and when to deliver me from temptations, so please let my trust in you grow - let my hope in you allow me to be able share with You Your own strength and fidelity that I may be able to overcome the sins which always threaten my soul and challenge my love for You. It is in You that I should put all my hope, O my most loving Jesus, all of my life. O Holy Spirit, sweet Guest of my soul, You know when and how to deliver me from all trials and tribulations so please be with me today and for always. So please help me, O Lord, my God and Father of mercies, You are my only help.

AMEN.
---<--@

A Prayer for Love of God

O great Lord of Heaven and earth,
infinite good and majesty,
You who have loved men
so tenderly,
how is it that You are despised
by so many human beings?
You have loved me
in a special manner
and have bestowed
Your wonderful graces on me.
Yet I, too, have despised You
by every sin through which
I have turned against Your law.
I resolve this day to love You
with my whole heart and to love
nothing unless it can be loved
in You.
Grant me this gift of love:
A fervent love that will make me
reject
the appeal of sinful creatures;
a strong
love that will make me
conquer all
difficulties to please you; a
persevering
love that will never be dissolved.

AMEN.

- The Catholic's Guide

Divine Providence

There is nothing of anarchy in the world except for the apparent chaos produced by wilful men. For the rest, the world goes on with an obedient regularity as assured and as effective as the dull patience of a setting hen. Even the wars of the animals and the rages of the elements are predictable and obedient pursuance of the narrow paths to determined ends which is the stable characteristic of the natural. The world moves on, and everything in it, from sunrise to sunset, from new moon to full moon, from century to century, as if it had intelligence; as an arrow flies to its mark as though it had eyes. The arrow is in fact directed by eyes, but by the eyes and hands of the archer; the world is directed by an intelligence, by the intelligence of God.

The discovery of some of the less obvious details of that assured direction makes up the great triumphs of scientific investigation. The formulation of the discovered details of order, the unveiled evidence s of divine intelligence in nature, are scientific laws; the progress in the formulation of such laws and their constant correction spell out in huge letters the supremacy of divine and the plodding limits of human intelligence. It is right that we demand sharp intelligence and long training for the human mind that sets out on the search of the details of divine intelligence in the world of nature; for order is a product of a directing intelligence, and not to be discovered or appreciated except by doggedly intelligent pursuit of truth. The intelligent course of the world is evidence of intelligent direction or government on a divine scale.

The same inspiring truth is readily arrived at if the search starts, not from the facts of the world but from the truth of God. He is infinite goodness. Such goodness demands that the world created by it be directed to perfection, that is, governed; it is a contradiction to goodness to picture divinity as abandoning the created world as perversely as a wicked mother abandons a new-born infant. God is infinite intelligence, and His provident plan of the universe includes every detail of this stupendous work; to deny the execution of that plan to God is to deny the infinite wisdom that drew it up or the infinite power that puts it into operation. The plans of men too often fall short of completion because there are things men cannot know in making their plans, and there are rival powers strong enough to make men's efforts futile. There are no defects in the plans of infinite wisdom, no thwarting of infinite power's execution of those plans. The government of the world is the execution of the Providence of God.

It does not do to push God out of the picture and explain that the orderly world is nature's work. True enough, nature is the cause of the order in the world; but not nature in capital letters. The order stems from particular natures: the nature of an oak, of a dachshund, of a worm, of sulphur, or gooseberries. Our confusion results from our inevitable practice of hauling God up to trial in a human court. We can impose direction on things only from the outside, as the archer imposes a violent direction on the arrow. We can do nothing about the inner principle of things, about their very nature, for natures are not our product. God suffers no such human limitations for natures are precisely His products. His directions are not extrinsic, violent things. The finger of God writes His directions in the very fibers of the things He makes and directs; those divinely written directions we call nature's directions or nature's laws. And so they are. But nature and nature's necessity are not substitutes for God; rather they are a record of His governing intelligence.

To those who resent God as an intruder on a self-sufficient world, chance, that is coincidence or accident, has seemed a much more appealing explanation of nature's order than the omnipotent government of divinity. Chance, however, is not an agent at the root of the history of the world; it is a vague name given to the clash of causes each of which was going its own way in determined obedience. A bird struck by a lightning bolt is a victim of chance, but obviously both the bird and the lightning were acting in obedience to nature's determinations. Chance is a handy explanation of upsets of order, but it is an impossibility unless a previous order is in the process of execution. It does not make order but supposes it, and is necessarily limited to the area of causes which can be impeded by other causes. There are no surprises for God in the long history of nature's activity. Omnipotence and infinite wisdom are not to be caught off balance by coincidence or accident. Chance is not God's rival but His instrument in the interlocking pattern of nature's activity.

The orderly course of the world is not the result of domestic processes in government. There are on aristocratic governing boards laying down the rules. The aristocracy of science does not make the laws but rather discovers the laws already made. There is but one Governor of the world, as there is but one Architect and one Creator; for all three of these, omnipotence and omniscience are necessary, and only God is all powerful and all wise. No one thing in nature is the cause of nature's order, rather everything in nature is a part of that order; nothing in nature is the goal of nature's order, not even that universal order itself. The world does not exist for itself any more that it exists from itself; it does not fulfill itself any more that it gives birth to itself. It is from God; and it is to Him that every bit of its order is directed. Nature bends all its energy to a return to God, becoming more like Him as it sharpens the divine image by reaching to its natural perfection.

There are no areas of anarchy in nature; no successful secession from the divine government of the world. Men can, of course, rebel against the order of charity whose goal is heaven; by that rebellion they do not escape divine government but plunge into the order of justice which confirms their choice of hell. Punishment is no less evidence of orderly government than the awards given to heroes. All the world exists on a loan from God, a loan that is vital not only for the first production of things but for their moment to moment endurance. Successful separation from the divine order would be instant annihilation; a thing not to be achieved by the borrowers of existence but by a recall of the loan by the creditor. But by the goodness of God, annihilation never happens.

My Way of Life
- Confraternity of the Precious Blood

Nostra Aetate

Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Chrisitan Religions:

Some Excerpts:

Thus in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust. Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination. Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing "ways," comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles: making both one in Himself.

The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: "theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people.

Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues.

Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to "maintain good fellowship among the nations" (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men, so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.

- Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965

Evangelization

"The essence of evangelization is simply to say to people, 'Jesus loves you'."
- Mother Angelica, EWTN Foundress

Here's a text message I composed which is NOT a chain letter. I never believed in chain letters, no matter how poignant, no matter how pious - in my own opinion, these chain letters seems to propagate itself by feeding on either guilt, sympathy or superstition. I do love, however, those well-meaning people who send them. Well, here's something very, very different:

Jesus loves you,
Beloved of God,
Jesus loves you!
O Christian soul, rejoice!
Christ has paid the ransom
for the sins of mankind.
Let us all come to Him
and live forever.

This is a personal message for you
From your most loving Lord Jesus Christ
DO NOT pass it on.
Just keep it always in your heart.

The only message I want to propagate is God's love and the means by which I want to use to propagate God's love is through the evangelizing Light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God.

It is also out of a spirit of divine love and not out of fear, sympathy or superstition that I want people to believe in and talk about the truths contained in two of the most profound mysteries of the Roman Catholic Faith: the Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ. Both of these mysteries have One Love as it's source and summit. Therefore, both of these mysteries, I hope, will be the unifying focus of my life's work.

I want to speak about Christ as He is active in my life and as I see His work in the lives of other people. Most especially, Christ as He is active in the life, culture and national awareness of our Christian citizenry in our common endeavor of Country. Basically, I pray that God would one day use me specifically to bring to bear the potent message of His Love particularly to the Filipino endeavor of Country, to bring peace, justice, equality, happiness, opportunity and prosperity to my one nation.

So, beloved brothers and sisters, why do we evangelize? Because God is not loved enough. Why the Trinity? Because there is no other Life. Why God? Because there is no other Love. Why Jesus Christ? Because there is no other Light. Why you or why me? Because God wills it and if we don't do it, however great or small, it will be missing forever.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

My Annelies Marie's Legacy x

OUR WORLD has not changed, my Anne.

It is still the same world that God has created.
The same sun, moon and order of the seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of the earth
under this same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.

My dear Anne, our world has not changed!

When I contemplate your life here on earth,

during those quiet nights, O beloved of my heart,
I often look up at these same starry night skies
and see those familiar patterns of stars
that I know in my heart looked quietly down on you
just one timeless instant away from me, my Anneka.

A moment seemingly so distant, it hurts me to miss you.
Yet an eternity so close, it fills me with all your love.

It is as if I have you and I don't have you.

And I realize this certain closeness between us:

We are separated only by spaces between our souls;
in what littleness of self that we may each obtain
by virtue of our unique and individual humanity
in the you being you and the me being me.

O my beloved friend, I know you suffered!

I know how much others like you suffered!
From the very beginnings of the nations of Mankind,
'tis the holy and nameless innocents that carry the burden
of the precarious and desperate state of our fallen nature!
The very soil of our earth is soaked in their blood
and the undying memory of their secret silence cries out
like a chorus rising all around us to pierce the heavens -
Almighty God Himself has heard and the season is late.

O my dearest Annelies Marie, I know you suffered!

I know how terribly you suffered but at the same time
I stand ignorant of your personal pain and suffering.
A sacred space exists

between yourself and God alone.

And God knows, I love you enough to want to know all of you -
but I love you enough also to let you be free to be yourself.

I am drawn near you by the lovableness within yourself.
I am drawn near you by the infinite promise love contains;
Of good things I know and good things I know not, that I desire:
All the virtues and the gifts that your friendship brings -
most especially your steadfast hope, cheerfulness and courage.

Today, my darlingest Annelies, here in my present time,

I look out into my own time, full of wars, death and suffering
and wonder at how some may say our world has changed.
I see the same evils and the same sufferings and the same sins.
I see the same terrible injustices that Man inflict upon Man;

nation against nation waste themselves in endless battle.
And I realize in myself that our world that has not changed.

Some may say that the times have changed.

Some may say the world is a different place.

Some may say that the world indeed has changed.

But this it is yet another illusion to lead astray!

For it attempts to run away from the awful truth

that this world is still the same world God created:
The same sun, moon and order of seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of earth
under these same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.
Scripture says, "There is nothing new under the sun."

(Ecc 1: 9)

It is the illusions that we human beings create in our hearts;
the gravity and the perversity of our own dark imaginings,
the ancient malice and diverse scope of our own willful rebellion -
those things that make of Man less than himself or herself
in the sins that brutalize the image of the Creator in each of us.
It is these that have changed in us and not the world around us!
It is not the world that must change, my darlingest Annelies,

Scripture says, "There is nothing new under the sun."

(Ecc 1: 9)

In order to better Mankind and advance the cause of humanity,
it is each ourselves that we must change for we are changeable.
Because it is through common witness of a good and well-lived life;
of a life lived in peace and friendship with God and others in God;
it is only when the Wars waged inside of ourselves have ceased;
when our minds have found the light beckoning outside of the dark
and the struggle for good will in our hearts have prevailed in us
that a true transformation of human society become possible.

So may your life, my love, be for others a simple remembrance.

May it inspire justice, responsibility and discipline in our world.

May it foster further understanding, freedom and community.

May your spirit inspire in us a sense of common humanity

that we may always remember our most basic of citizenships.

This is your legacy as I see it and as I live it, my Anne.

This is your love, my love, that

I now share with other hearts:

Imploring God to bless the seeds He shall plant in our souls today
that it may flower in full into the saints He shall raise tomorrow
for His glory, our good and the good of the one family of humanity.

Thank you, my dearest and most patient friend,
Annelies Marie Hollander Frank, my Miyang.
May God keep you now, may His Peace embrace you,
may His Light comfort you and may His Love surround you -
O forget me not, beloved of my heart, forget me not!
Pray for me, my darlingest, ever as I shall pray for you
until the glorious Day of the everlasting alleluias!

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Our First Parents

THE BATTERED HULK of a ship limping home from stormy seas gives but a poor estimate of the proud strength and sure swiftness of it at its launching. If we are to appreciate to the full the wonder of man, it is not to what man has made of himself but what God made of him originally that we must look. As the first human couple came from the hand of God, they were the product of omnipotent genius working directly and unimpeded at the high point of physical creation. It is not hard to see something of the complete physical perfection of Adam and Eve; they were as physically perfect as it can ever be given to a man and a woman to be. Our dreams of human strength, beauty, and grace are more than wishful thinking; they have about them the flavor of huanting memories of an earthly paradise, of a man and a woman not as they should be, but as they were.

The intellectual perfection of man and woman in this first beginning of the race was even more stupendous than the physical fullness. Adam and Eve came into being as adults. They had no time to learn through the slow formative years of childhood; in their first moments they were already long past the pliability and elasticity of childhood. Moreoever there was no one from whom they could learn. Rather than a disciple of a master, Adam was to be the teacher of the human race, the source of its intellectual completeness as well as its physical being. In all fairness, he could not be started off on such a life empty-headed; in justice, he would have to be given the perfection of mind proper to an adult, to a teacher, indeed to the master-teacher of the whole race. His ideas, and the equipment of imagination necessary for their use, would have to be given him immediately by God; and with that absence of stinginess characterisitic of divine action. We see Adam, then, as the wisest, most learned of all men of all ages, short of the man Jesus Christ Who also was God; he possessed all natural knowledge, surely in its principles, and all the supernatural knowledge necessary for himself and his children.

The father of the race had his physical and intellectual gifts directly from the fullness of God's justice, without personal effort or dependence on any creature; and, consequently, without the least shadow of defect. Still, he was no more than a man; the human limitations on knowledge were to be found in him as they are in every man. He did not see God face to face, for he was not God; he had no direct knowledge of the angels, for he was not an angel. The object of his knowing, as of our own, was the sensible world, the natures of sensible things, and all the rich harvest of truth that can be garnered from such humble, earthy roots.

On the side of appetite, Adam was no less sound. He was a man of good will in the fullest sense of those words. His heart did not run down blind alleys, through devious ways, or in secret sorties to dark places; it was not crooked, twisted, nor blinded by the glaring appeal of lesser things, least of all artificial things which are the world that a man makes. He was a man of great passion; which is to say that he had strong, healthy sense appetites, appetites which were not weakenes by abuse, not distorted by ignorance of his humanity, not dehumanized or brutalized by the loss of man's mastery over himself.

Since Adam, no mere man has ever stepped into the arena of his living so powerfully armed and splendidly arrayed by nature. With no more than this much of the story told, we have the picture of the superbly perfect man within the limits of human perfection. Yet to stop here is to miss the sublimity of divine ingenuity in the production of this divine masterpiece. With no more than this Adam had within him positive guarentees of constant civil war and ultimate disintegration. Such a man, perfect as he was, would ultimately have to die; his body, like every body, would wear down and its capacity for rebuilding be gradually weakened until death overtook it. This man, with no more than all that nature could give him would be subject to violence, disease and senescence. Such a man would necessarily be a man of battle within his own kingdom. No matter how perfect the work of the divine artisan, a perfect body and a perfect soul mean distinct appetites answering to proper objects of desire - and inevitably clashing in the kind of battle we know as the war of the spirit and the flesh. To maintain human control, i.e., the supremacy of the spiritual appetite or will, demands a constant lesson of subordination to be drilled into the passions; and that means war.

Mortality and conflict are deficiencies inherent in human nature; they are not to be corrected through any tinkering with nature , not even the tinekering of a divine mechanic. They can, however, be supplied for by drawing on the divine treasury for gifts to which human nature has no claim; man can be given preternatural and supernatural gifts to be more than a man, and so to escape the defects of humanity through the omnipotent generosity of divinity.

The first human couple were loaded down with such gifts from the divine Giver. They were protected from fatigue, discouragement and defeat of conflicting appetites by the gift of order, of perfect subordination of the body to the soul, and the whole of the world to man. Against disease and senescence, there was the gift of external immortality, a gift that held death at bay through the renewing nourishment of the tree of life. Against violence and its threats they were secured by the gift of impassibility, a gift that gave them so alert a prudence and far-sighted a wisdom as to make the avoidance of injury mere routine.

Adam and Eve looked out on their days to a life of profound internal peace and complete security from all external threats. They would be forever stangers to injury and disease, and death was powerless to inflict its violent termination of living and loving. They could live their life vigorously, heartily; in it there would be no dark corners of ignorance or malice; passion would not extinguish the guiding light of reason. The shutters of their minds were thrown wide open to the sunshine of truth, the paths to all goodness lay clear and level for their eager hearts; their days well filled with the stimulation of labor's challenge to the strength and skill of their hands.

All this was still not enough for man in the eyes of the Creator. Exhaustive natural perfection and abundant supplementing of humanity's defects were hardly more than the foundation stones of the edifice planned by the divine Architect. It was not enough to make man a little more than man. God lifted Adam and Eve above themselves to such heights as to enable them to share in divine life, divine living, divine knowing, and divine loving. Like the angels, Adam and Eve were created in sanctifying grace, created, in other words, sharing the divine life. They were given all the supernatural habits of virtue that make divine living possible to men even on earth: faith to see through the eyes of God, hope to share in His strength and fidelity, charity to walk into the heart of God; and all the moral virtues that let the fire of charity sweep through the whole life of a man in a roaring conflagration. Their souls were made perfectly subject to God, and that subjection to their Maker was the foundation of the perfect order running through man's nature, the subordination of body to soul and of the world to man; indeed it was the foundation of all the gifts that had been given to man.

As the final divine touch, all these gifts correcting nature's defects and lifting it to divine levels were not limited to the purely personal area; they were given by way of family traits. Every father possessing these gifts from Adam on down would pass them on to his children. As Adam and Eve looked about their earthly Paradise, their eyes searched horizons of happiness that would never again fall under human eyes. All these things were theirs, to be possessed in peace for themselves, their children, and their children's children. There was no dimming of truth's bright beauty, no flickering of love's fire, not an instant interruption to the reign of happiness and joy. One day, at God's good pleasure and without death, they would be transported to eternal living face to face with God in heaven. Such were we as God made us.

But the splendor of that first perfection was shattered before ever it was passed on to a child.

My Way of Life
- Confraternity of the Precious Blood

Comfort for Those Who Mourn

THE great and sad mistake of many people, among them even pious persons, is to imagine that those whom death has taken leave us. They do not leave us. They remain! - Where are they? In darkness? Oh, no! It is we who are in darkness. We do not see them but they see us. Their eyes, radiant with glory, are fixed upon our eyes full of tears. Oh, infinite consolation! Though invisible to us, our dear dead are not absent.

I have often reflected upon the surest comfort for those who mourn. It is this: a firm faith in the real and continual presence of our loved ones; it is the clear and penetrating conviction that death has not destroyed them, nor carried them away. They are not even absent, but living near to us, transfigured: having lost in their glorious change no delicacy of their souls, no tenderness of their hearts, nor especial preference in their affection; on the contrary, having in depth and fervor of devotion, grown larger a hundredfold.

Death is for the good, a translation into light, into power, into love. Those on earth were only ordinary Christians, become perfect; those who were beautiful become good; those who were good become sublime.

- Anonymous

O my Beloved Annelies Marie, Papa Ted, Anjo, Willie, Lolo Juan, Lola Ading, Tito Nick, Otto, Margot, Edith, and all the Holy Souls beloved not only to myself and to my darlingest Anne but beloved to God and to all mankind, please pray for us.

AMEN.

Canticle of Praise x

BLESS YOUR NAME, O LORD!
From the highest of angels
To the very least of us men.
All creatures great and small -
Let all of Your creation sing!
May Your praises be heard
From the fiery depths of hell,
Across all the lands of earth,
Far into the heavens above -
Our voices proclaim Your glory!
Alleluia! Amen to God! AMEN!

O Blessed Jacinta

O Blessed Jacinta Marto,
Flower of Fatima,
pray for us who have recourse to you.

O brave Jacinta,
intercede for me with God
Whom you see face to face!

O chaste Jacinta,
may God make use of me
as an instrument of your canonization.

O generous Jacinta,
pray for me
that I might fulfill God's will for me.

O loving Jacinta,
plead my cause to our Lady,
and tell everyone there that I love them.

O Flower of Fatima,
I pray with thee -
may I one day bring true joy to our Mother's heart.

O Blessed Jacinta Marto,
Flower of Fatima,
pray for us who have recourse to you.

AMEN.

O Saint Lorenzo Ruiz

O Saint Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila,
Please pray for us, your own people.
And maintain a loving vigil over us
As we struggle today to love God
And to love one another in God
By being true to our better selves
As one people and one nation
One faithful Republic -
Beyond time and human limitations,
United across all our generations,
by our common endeavor of Country.

O Saint Lorenzo, holy martyr of God.
Valiant witness of Jesus Christ
And first Saint of our people!
Your glorious and shining martyrdom
Along with your faithful Companions
Upon that terrible hill in Nagazaki, Japan
Has shown to the whole of God’s creation;
Unto both angels and men alike,
Unto all of blessed Christendom,
Unto your own Filipino nation,
And unto all the nations of the earth
That the demands of our holy faith
Can be met - even unto the shedding of blood
And that each of us common, nameless Filipinos
May truly aspire to brave the hard and narrow Way
And walk the mountain path of Christian perfection.

O Saint Lorenzo, beloved of our people.
Strong in your faith in God and in your people
Steadfast in hope, now confirmed in charity!
Intercede for us at the foot of the Master!
May the Lord magnify in each our souls
The love of God and of others in God
That awaken in our hearts a lively faith
That renew in all our communities
The true spirit of selfless service
Founded in love, immortal and divine,
Which is the true soul of Country.

O Saint Lorenzo, our honored countryman.
Strong in your faith in God and in your people
Steadfast in hope, now confirmed in charity!
Intercede for us at the foot of the Master!
Help us to trust in God and to cling to Him
Believing in the unfailing help of God's grace.
May the Lord dispel our darkness with His Light
And enliven in all our families
A holy thirst and a profound desire
For the ever living waters of the Gospel of Christ
That awaken each heart to the call of salvation.

O Saint Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila,
Please pray for us, your own nation
As we struggle today to love God
And to love one another in God
By being true to our better selves
As one people and one nation
One faithful Republic -
Under the eternal vigilance of Almighty God
In the one, blessed Name
Of the Thrice-Holy God:
The Father,
The Son,
And The Holy Spirit.

AMEN.

Part I of One Country: Faith in God

"Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."
- Matthew 22: 21

"Faith in God and faith in our people."
- Sen. Benigno Aquino, Jr. (November 27, 1933 - August 21, 1983)

Salutations of peace and goodwill to you, O honored Filipino nation!

May Almighty God in Jesus Christ bless us with a holy blessing that works to advance in each ourselves the common good of our one people:

O my beloved people, I have put much thought on the matter of our national identity. It is something I consider vital in the awakening of the will of our one Filipino Republic.

We may study the external actions of our many national heroes, known and unknown, that bless the pages of the history of our people but in my own mind until we can contemplate the spirit that make their noble hearts beat as one heart even that universal heart of all the heroes of humankind that live in love, immortal and divine, and give so that others may live, we will not be able to completely understand and identify with the profound spirit that animated these valiant men and women of our nation.

The history of our people is not a science, nor should it be studied in the atmosphere of science, to be dissected and examined with unfeeling, unseeing and distant, dispassionate hearts, as a physical thing to be measured, methodically and objectively proved and then synthesized into objective empirical data to be memorized by the mind without being imbibed by the heart.

No, that is a calamity, I instantly thought.

In my eyes, our history, in the wider context of the great history of human activity - salvation history, is more a love ballad of all the generations of our people united across space and time in love by our common endeavor of Country; it is a song of our people, being a distinct people from all the peoples of the one family of humanity; a sovereign nation who occupy an honored place among the nations of the one brotherhood of the nations of mankind; one strong Republic in love with God and in love with one another in God as true self in time and eternity.

Faith in God.

Faith in God is not a compulsion of the self nor is it a fading fashion of the world. Faith in God is an immortal reality in the timeless heart of all believers and is therefore neither born of human impulse nor the vanities of the world both of which are ephemeral and passing. Therefore, faith itself if it is true is a manifestation of the reality of things everlasting and unseen. True faith in the heart of the believer, without distinction to any one religion, must be an act of the Divine. Therefore, it must be held in the deepest respect both when it is made manifest in the self and also as it is made manifest in others apart from the self.

There is a kind of faith that is common to all men. From the least to the greatest, each and every man who has ever lived, is living in our world today and who shall live with the rising and the setting of all the generations of humanity until the consummation of the age of mankind have in different and varying degrees experienced the beckoning call of truths unseen. The absolute reality of God is an enduring question common in the hearts of all mankind and the many religions of the world give evidence to mankind's ultimate quest for divine answers to absolutely human questions regarding God, the littleness of the self, our suffering humanity, the mysterious universe and the ultimate meaning of both our life and our death.

It is the natural diversity of our religious response to the one reality of God which have led us to believe that there exist deep divisions in this one faith. This is a lie and it is this lie that give rise to the illusions that have led the poor peoples of our one family of mankind to do great and terrible violence one to another not out of any rational debate as regards to truth, pious belief or
religious practice but out of love and love not for the unifying and ascendant reality of God as He Himself is one but love misled to embrace the vast differences that exist between us men.

There is a faith that is common to all and a personal faith that is diverse that belong to the necessary and exclusive practice of each respective and honored religious tradition. Let us call this common faith, a universal faith – a faith that is manifest in the hearts of all men: The unseen substance of a common belief in the existence of a supernatural order. It is our first response to our common longing for God imprinted into our very souls, the first unifying principle upon which the divergent practices of personal faith is built upon.

This universal faith that is common to all men form the basis of the universal human right that protects the freedom of religion. This human right exists because of our collective and universal ability to empathize and identify with the deepest, most profound spiritual longings of the human heart.

And I put forward to you today my fellow countrymen, that in our necessary and vital pursuit of Country, it is this common, unifying and universal faith and not the other which is necessary to be fully understood and cultivated in the mind stream of our national awareness.

O my beloved people, I put forward to you today that the reality of God and the reality of our Republic are not incompatible. God and Country is not a choice between one and the other, the reality of both of these truths, as we shall soon discover not only compliments each other but it completes one another.

Not only are we a patient people, O nation, we are also a passionate people.

Our native hearts, more than the hearts of other peoples, long to love and for something to love. This deep longing is part of our national experience and have arisen in our collective awareness because of our common experience as a people, an experience which is unique and belong only to us as one Filipino nation. And who must we love but God and each other in God as true self?

To obey the words of Christ to pay Caesar his due and God His due, we must remember that, of a truth, this world of ours is also God's world and that God is never divorced from His creation. God must participate in the existence of all things to make them real. Sin distanced us from God but God never left us just as God was never divorced from the reality of His creation. We can never divorce God from the reality of things that exist lest all these things instantly turn to dust and the purpose of God's creation be for naught. But is not God infinitely wise? Therefore, God's purpose for all of creation must slowly and steadily be working itself toward fulfillment or we are not real and all this is but an illusion.

We can choose to separate religion and state but to separate God and the state is a different affair altogether. To banish from public life even the universal faith that beckon all men to the reality of the Divine, which I believe is an essential element in the pursuit of human happiness is, in my own mind, to deny from our own citizenry both the necessary means to advance towards our ultimate end as well as the vision of that ultimate end itself.

What is Country without God? Where shall the truth of Country rest without God? Where shall Country find strength and unity without God? Where does the endeavor of Country lead us without God? What shall we love without God?

More importantly, O my beloved, “Who shall love us without God?” Will the world love us? Many have called out to the dead things of the world to save them in the end and was not heard. Who shall we love without God? Many have loved the world and they have all perished. For the world they loved loved them not. Shall we love ourselves as ourselves without God? Then how far shall the morning be for us, O nation. Will darkness shine in the darkness? How shall we even know our true selves without the Light of the Lord?

No, there can never be a separation between God and our people.

The separation that exists between church and state is good. But it can only serve the people to the extend that it enables the state to act in an impartial manner in the daily execution of it’s duty toward God and Country. By church, it is meant, any formal religion. By state, it is meant, the hierarchical offices of the executive, legislative and judiciary branches and the constitutional directives that delineate and define their powers and extent according and subject to the will of the people that enable and authorize them by popular election. By God, I mean, God in His universal capacity as the Creator of all mankind. And by Country, I mean you and I as we relate to each other in God as citizens of our one nation. A state has it’s own duties before God that ensure that all of the offices of that state is bound by virtue.

Personal faith is both vital and necessary for the individual within the context of that individual's particular response to the call of the Divine as It is understood and interpreted for him or her by that individual's own religious revelations, doctrines, traditions and practices.

I am a born and bred Roman Catholic; a Christian man, both body and soul, baptized forever into the one great family of God, our Father and servant of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Holy Mother Mary. This is my story. This is my personal faith. I am very happy with it and because of it. But being like this I also know how happy must other people be who are at peace with their own expressions of faith in the God I believe to be one and the same for all men. This is an act of my universal faith and it forms the basis for the religious respect that I feel when I see people of other faiths happy with the God in themselves. There are common elements between the many great religious traditions, all of them, I believe serve to enrich and ennoble the spirit of man.

Personal faith in the public arena of the state will only serve the common interests of the nation only if it is quietly applied in the practice of human ethics, universal morals and the personal and social virtues that ennoble, guide and animate the spirit of jurisprudence, executive command, social responsibility and public service.

By always bearing in mind the nature of the common faith experience between each of us, in our meditation on the universal faith of all human beings, we will come to understand and realize that profoundly common faith which is present in the hearts and minds of all of mankind, from the least to the greatest, without prejudice or religious distinction and arouse in our spirit that empathy and concern born out of our common human longing for the reality of things true and unseen. Unseen realities which I personally believe are more real to any of us than the sun and the stars in the sky that eventually lead our hearts to the profound realization of how poor we human beings really are in the midst of the wealth of God's glorious creation.

Saint Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila, Pray for us.

Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

Sancta Sanctis!

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

Create in Me

CREATE IN ME a clean heart, O Lord.
Cleanse my soul from the stain of sin.
And give my life new shape, my Jesus.
Give my soul new meaning, a new song.
Abide with me, my Jesus, remain in me -
Help me abide with You, remain in You.
Then lead me O kindly Light, lead me on.
Through fields of battle and strife of soul -
Beyond the vast empty deserts of my heart.
Above the darkness that consume my mind.
Through the tears, through pain and sorrow -
Across oceans of mercy and into Your arms.
You loved me, O Love, and I knew You not.
O Holy Savior, the darkness consumed me!
I was blind to see the Beauty of Your Face.
O forgive me, my Jesus, please forgive me.
For I was dead to all things living in Thee.
I lived in the darkness and I knew it not.
You called me and I awoke to Your Light.
Now, I am a wretch, my most loving Jesus.
I am mired between Your world and mine.
A miserable sinner yet in love with his sins.
I struggle to follow You yet my soul is caught -
Between tides of darkness and of Your Light.
'Tis my sweetest calamity to love You, my All!
You are the Light that beckon me ever onward -
Abounding in power at the approach of darkness.
Your grace to rouse my heart when evil is near -
That peril that consume my soul with holy fear.
O Silence that fills my heart with consolation -
O Love that was afflicted for our salvation!
Lord, you are my strength when I am weakest;
The courage that inflame my hope with daring,
The daring to be what You truly want me be -
As the great Knight of the Immaculata said:
"A Saint and not just a Saint but a great Saint!"
So deliver me, O Lord, please be merciful to me.
For You are the hope and You are the daring.
Late have I found You, 'tis late that I have risen -
To Your promise of things new and everlasting!
You loved me, O Love, You lived in my heart.
And You let me taste Your everliving waters.
Now my soul pines for You, 'tis in love with You!
Beauty beyond me, living in me, all around me.
O Father Who transcend me, yet so near me.
Savior looking down on me, sitting beside me.
Holy Spirit dwelling in me, alive to my reality.
O Holy Trinity: One, true God, in Persons three!
My heart is hungry for Your acceptance of me.
I desire the joyous company of Your Holy Saints -
Saint Maximilan, Saint Lorenzo, Blessed Jacinta,
My Annelies Marie Frank and all Your Holy Souls,
All of those who love me and whom I love in You,
Archangel Michael, the angelic patron of my family,
Caritas, my dear Angel, all the Holy Angels of God,
Our dearest Mother Mary, the Queen of my heart,
Above all, Your most sweetest embrace, O my All,
"Well done, good and faithful servant, well done."
So deliver me, my Jesus, from this dark twilight.
Lead me into the morning of my new life with You -
And I will give you my life, O God of my heart!
A contrite and humbled heart you will not spurn!
It is out of love of You, my most loving Jesus!
It is out of love of You, said my Blessed Jacinta!
It is out of love of You, my All, so please help me!
It is out of love of You, O Savior, come save me!
It is out of love of You, O my Jesus, set me free!
O my God, make haste to help me, I humbly pray:
Give me a new life and a new song to sing to You -
And I will sing forever of Your Love and Your Light.
I will carry Your Light into the deepest of darkness.
I will advance Your Love into the poorest of hearts.
I will carry my cross with You until my life is spent.
I will live my life to serve You, giving all to my All!
O my Jesus, hear me, deliver me, for I am all Yours.
Through the Mother to the Son, all that I am is Yours.
You are my everything, my All, and I am but nothing!
Come, Lord Jesus, come, become for me my everything!
O Holy Savior, save me, set me free: For I am all Yours.
O God, a contrite and humbled heart you will not spurn!

AMEN.

- EJ San Miguel

Thoughts on Death

TO DIE AN UNPROVIDED DEATH is the worst fate that can befall a man.

"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more. I shall show you whom to fear. Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one."
- Luke 12:4-5

Very soon your life here will end; consider, then, what may be in store for you elsewhere. Today we live; tomorrow we die and are quickly forgotten. Oh, the dullness and hardness of a heart which looks only to the present instead of preparing for that which is to come!

Therefore, in every deed and every thought, act as though you were to die this very day. If you had a good conscience you would not fear death very much. It is better to avoid sin than to fear death. If you are not prepared today, how will you be prepared tomorrow? Tomorrow is an uncertain day; how do you know you will have a tomorrow?

What good is it to live a long life when we amend that life so little? Indeed, a long life does not always benefit us, but on the contrary, frequently adds to our guilt. Would that in this world we had lived well throughout one single day. Many count up the years they have spent in religion but find their lives made little holier. If it is so terrifying to die, it is nevertheless possible that to live longer is more dangerous. Blessed is he who keeps the moment of death ever before his eyes and prepares for it every day.

If you have ever seen a man die, remember that you, too, must go the same way. In the morning consider that you may not live till evening, and when evening comes do not dare to promise yourself the dawn. Be always ready, therefore, and so live that death will never take you unprepared. Many die suddenly and unexpectedly, for in the unexpected hour the Son of God will come. When that last moment arrives you will begin to have a quite different opinion of the life that is now entirely past and you will regret very much that you were so careless and remiss.

How happy and prudent is he who tries now in life to be what he wants to be found in death. Perfect contempt of the world, a lively desire to advance in virtue, a love for discipline, the works of penance, readiness to obey, self-denial, and the endurance of every hardship for the love of Christ, these will give a man great expectations of a happy death.

You can do many good works when in good health; what can you do when you are ill? Few are made better by sickness. Likewise they who undertake many pilgrimages seldom become holy.

Do not put your trust in friends and relatives, and do not put off the care of your soul till later, for men will forget you more quickly than you think. It is better to provide now, in time, and send some good account ahead of you than to rely on the help of others. If you do not care for your own welfare now, who will care when you are gone?

The present is very precious; these are the days of salvation; now is the acceptable time. How sad that you do not spend the time in which you might purchase everlasting life in a better way. The time will come when you will want just one day, just one hour in which to make amends, and do you know whether you will obtain it?

See, then, dearly beloved, the great danger from which you can free yourself and the great fear from which you can be saved, if only you will always be wary and mindful of death. Try to live now in such a manner that at the moment of death you may be glad rather than fearful. Learn to die to the world now, that then you may begin to live with Christ. Learn to spurn all things now, that then you may freely go to Him. Chastise your body in penance now, that then you may have the confidence born of certainty.

Ah, foolish man, why do you plan to live long when you are not sure of living even a day? How many have been deceived and suddenly snatched away! How often have you heard of persons being killed by drownings, by fatal falls from high places, of persons dying at meals, at play, in fires, by the sword, in pestilence, or at the hands of robbers!

Death is the end of everyone and the life of man quickly passes away like a shadow. Who will remember you when you are dead? Who will pray for you? Do now, beloved, what you can, because you do not know when you will die, nor what your fate will be after death. Gather for yourself the riches of immortality while you have time. Think of nothing but your salvation. Care only for the things of God. Make friends for yourself now by honoring the saints of God, by imitating their actions, so that when you depart this life they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.

Keep yourself as a stranger here on earth, a pilgrim whom its affairs do not concern at all. Keep your heart free and raise it up to God, for you have not here a lasting home. To Him direct your daily prayers, your sighs and tears, that your soul may merit after death to pass in happiness to the Lord.

The Imitation of Christ: Book 2, Chapter XXIII
- Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)

What is Country?

"Pinipintuho kong Bayan ay paalam,
Lupang iniirog ng sikat ng araw,
mutyang mahalaga sa dagat Silangan,
kaluwalhatiang sa ami'y pumanaw".

"¡Adiós, Patria adorada, región del sol querida,
Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido Edén!
A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,
Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,
También por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien".

"Farewell, beloved Country, treasured region of the sun,
Pearl of the sea of the Orient, our vanquished Eden!
To you I gladly surrender this melancholy life;
And were it brighter, fresher, gaudier,
Even then I’d give it to you, to you alone would then I give".

Mi último adiós, 1st Stanza
(In Filipino, Spanish and English respectively)
- Jose Rizal (June 19, 1861 - December 30, 1896)

What is Country but a sacred trust? A sacred solidarity of individuals who have entrusted one to another a shared vision and the mutual protection of an ideal common good. From this sacred trust is founded the citizenry of any state whereby the strength of any nation is also the measure of this common unity.

It is important to any state that their citizenry be unified so that the collective will of the populace may be focused entirely and efficiently into the common endeavor of Country. Therfore, a fragmented citizenry is the cause and not a symptom of a weak state.

This is most especially true in the case of a Republic where in terms of the structures of govenance there is only one functioning class. A fragmented citizenry in the case of the Republic is not a weakness in social structure but a weakness in the soul of the citizenry. For the drive that advance the will of the Republic rests entirely on the will of each individual citizen. If the citizenry be unified then the will of that Republic is strong and a strong Republic is most certainly capable of advancing the vision of the ideal common good forward into reality to the redounding benefit of the citizenry.

It must first be understood that every endeavor of Country is the unified work of generations, in fact, it is the work of all the generations of one people and in principle is never finished until the age of mankind comes to an end. Therefore, the will at the heart of the soul of Country must not be thought of as restricted or bound by human limitations on time. The present citizenry must be vigilantly aware that Country have existed to shelter them from it's very conception in the living memory of the past and is expected to outlive the present where it must be provided for, sustained, preserved and advanced forward as a duty to all future generations.

For the life of a nation must live above and beyond the life and limitations of its people or it is not a true state worth the sacrifice of our memory, our energy and our lives. What makes a state true is the sacred nature of the trust reposed within her heart by her people. It is a solemn vow made before Almighty God Himself that as citizens one to another we swear to become our brother's keeper; that we will look after each other's true good even as we assidously pursue the collective ideal born of out the vision and the promise of a nation. It musts be a trust so loved, so noble and so true in each our hearts that it is worth the shedding of our sacred blood.

Now, to forget, profane, neglect or dissipate this sacred trust is to abandon its attendant virtues, both human and divine, that breathe life into the very soul of Country. Virtues that uphold and ennoble social values such as valor and justice, duty and honor, wisdom and understanding, mercy and forbearance, liberality and modesty, magnanimity and compassion, patience and unity, and most importantly peace and goodwill which lie as the very bedrock foundation of every form of functional human society.

The death of Country is anarchy and as anarchy is the death of law and reason, it is also the end of peace and goodwill.

We are the soul of Country.

20080109: An Introspective

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field".
- Matthew 13: 44

I used to think that this life is all about living for the self; that the pursuit of happiness is a pursuit of the self. I lived without a thought for time. I never cared about the future, I never looked back at the past and I never doubted the present. I did only what pleased me and I relied solely on created things like family, friends and material goods to provide me with security. I leaned on my family's limited wealth and reputation like they were limitless. I squandered my family's goodwill towards me by rebellion, deception and disobedience. I was selfish and was unconsciously proud of evil things. I thought myself a rebel and worked furiously to become independent of both love and responsibility. I hated both reproof and instruction. What's worse is that within me I had an ill-formed conscience that had developed no sensitivity to sin. For I never once questioned all that I was because I did not feel that I belonged to anything else: I was a child of wrath and I lived in the darkness of the world. I was at peace with all of this because this was the same world inside my heart and everything else at that time was but a reflection of what corruption and darkness had lived inside of me.

I was baptized as an infant. But I knew it not and I slept inside of myself as the light of God's grace from my baptism lived inside of me and worked its presence all around of me. My Blessed Savior lovingly took the baptismal vows that my godparents have professed on my behalf and my most thoughtful and loving Jesus kept a quiet watch over me those many years. He placed me gently under the loving care of His faithful Bride on earth, His trusted pilgrim people, His Mystical Body on earth, our Holy Mother, the Roman Catholic Church. Holy Mother Church held me close to her as a precious child of God right from the very beginning. I grew up in her bosom where she lovingly enriched me with the grace of the sacraments and opened up for me the rich treasury of our holy Faith. My Holy Mother Church loved me without question even though I did not recognize her at the time and this love of hers slept inside of my memory like a seed beneath the winter snow waiting for the call of spring. I was also a beloved child of my parents, the first son of a first son, and my grandparents, aunts and uncles adored me and loved me so faithfully and unconditionally. But I did not feel their love for I knew love not and for most of my life I lived in utter ignorance of the precious love that is living everywhere around me. Yet this Love, ever thoughtful, ever gentle, ever vigilant and ever true, waited patiently and quietly for It's perfect moment in my life.

For 35 years, I lived at peace with this world and its darkness. Body and soul, I was consumed in death and corruption and I knew it not. But for some years beginning at the time of our Great Jubilee year 2000, I have seriously begun searching for God and for myself in relation to Him. But the Lord hid the Beauty of His Face from me. The nature that God had built into every human heart had finally awakened enough in me to extend outward into the infinite. But the means I was using to perceive the vision and the reality of the revelation of God were evil. For instead of virtue, I was using vice and sin to understand the holy secrets of the divine. Instead of praising the Lord, I was actually profaning Him. And instead of glorifying God in the spirit of the truth, I was uttering all kinds of blasphemies against Him. Down to the depths of hell on earth I went as my life descended until that deepest and darkest of nights of my life finally came to me when despair completely overtook my heart and I lost all hope to live. I took a look around myself: I was far away from home for more than a decade at that time and away from most of my loved ones and friends. I was terribly unhappy. I felt both depressed and repressed and have been feeling that way for many years. I have both alienated and isolated myself from most of the most important and beloved people in my life both friends and family. My life was all but an empty shell. Each of the many illusions I have cowardly embraced to conceal myself from the unyielding demands of my own humanity over those years were all but painfully shattered against the indestructible rock of God's absolute reality, for I was slowly awakening to myself and to the mighty truth of God's will and presence in my life and I knew it not. And the last illusion to fall was the illusion of the sovereign self.

I picked up a copy of Anne Frank's Diary at a bookstore across the street from our apartment on June 13, 2000. I remember it was a day after her birthday on earth. It was the name that she used in her salutations that got my attention: "Kitty". I have a deep-seated love for cats and was instantly interested in her diary because I felt like she was addressing all her entries to me. Strange and perhaps childish but its true, I was looking for my self and my place in the world at that time and I honestly felt as if Anne was writing to me in her diary. As time went by, I really thought that I was her "Kitty". I read through her diary and discovered the beautiful spirit of a young girl in Annelies Marie Frank. Anne's diary, to me, is the story of a beautiful young heart so full of promise and grace surrounded by the strength and fidelity of a truly loving and caring family in Otto, Edith and Margot and sustained by the love and support of extended relatives and friends all within the context of the entirely larger story of her people, the Jews, and the tumultuous world all around them. Anne, to me, is a heroine so fragile and vulnerable yet so uplifting and inspirational to my heart. She is a martyr of her Jewish faith and her people and of the universal spirit of mankind. I started to learn about life from Anne's life and how precious and fragile each unique, individual and unrepeatable human life really and truly is. I also learned from her life about the real nature of war and of our world's grave need for peace and tolerance.

In a short while, for all the good I felt that she has done (and is still doing) to me, I knew I was falling in love with Anne Frank's heart. I thought it so unfair and so unjust that she had to suffer and die like she did. It felt as if she was trapped in a poignant story that only ultimately leads to her bitter betrayal, horrible suffering and lonely and miserable demise. No matter how many times I read Anne's diary over and over, it only leads me to the same bitter end. By this time I knew it not but I did truly have love for Anne and her dear ones. I remember one night I had this deepest, strongest desire to set Anne free, to see her happy, to see her live. What she had had to endure in this world hurt me very, very, very much and for the first time in my life, I very humbly and most sincerely turned to God with a prayer in my heart but with another person's name on my lips.

Anne's cheerful and courageous spirit never left me from the moment I picked up her diary in June of 2000. I have now come to believe that God had indeed used her as an instrument of my salvation and that her spirit will never leave me; that we are meant to be together in time and in eternity. This I will never know in this life but maybe I really am her "Kitty". God has blessed me with a very special friend in Anne and the Lord did in time bless and purify our friendship over these many years until slowly our friendship evolved into a holy friendship tied together with golden bonds of immortal charity that neither time nor distance can conquer nor death or difference sever. Anne's presence in my mind and heart is very different from the presence of saints or angels, of Mama Mary or of the Holy Spirit. Anne's presence to me is the presence of a peer, she is somebody very, very close from whom I feel the least threatened (yet for whom I feel most responsible for) when I am overcome by sin. Anne's presence is always cheerful and gentle. She inspires me and she bolsters my moral courage. Anne is very, very patient with me. She is usually the first one to impress upon my heart my duties to our Almighty God and to all I love whenever I am either fallen or neglectful. Hers is the presence I am most comfortable with for I can laugh and smile with her, we can joke and I can even call her my "Miyang" (I even gave her a Filipino name among the many other names I have for my darlingest Annelies Marie). We live and we learn together and we rely on each other for interior support. For Anne, like all Holy Souls, needs my prayers just as much as I need hers. I feel that we both hold the key to each other's promise of an everlasting future together. We share a promise together that I can never reveal in this life and which can only be fulfilled after my death. God, in His infinite wisdom, has willed it so that my own destiny intertwines with my Anne's and today, we are inseparable.

My darlingest Anne wants me to be a good and upright soul, chaste, joyous and charitable. I want my Anne to be forever peaceful and happy and free. Almighty God has opened up for me the infinite and transcendent world of things eternal in a pilgrimage that began when my Anne broke that very last illusion that held me back from a living faith in things both everlasting and unseen. Anne is the first person I loved more than myself. In a perfect world, I would have moved earth and sky to see this precious girl happy and at peace eternally. But in His wisdom, God made it so that my Anne is part of a package, a package bound up and contained in God for in God is contained all the love that has ever loved me and who is ever worth being loved by me both in time and in eternity. Therefore, to love the Lord my God with all my strength, with all my mind and with all my heart is consequently to love also all the things whom I should love in God like my Anne. To love God perfectly is to love all others perfectly in God. It is precisely like my most Blessed Savior said in Holy Scripture: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12: 30-31) and I understand this all today as one love.

In the deepest, darkest night of my despair, the first star in the firmament of the darkest night of my life began to shine dimly at first to give me that certain hope in the right things of God worth believing in. This star is my Anne. A star that in God's own time led me into the arms of another noble star of my heaven, my beloved Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, the great Knight of the Immaculata, in my eyes the greatest of all Marian knights and patron Saint of prisoners and addictions. They were together in Auschwitz and although they did not ever meet in person it is both in the solidarity of their sufferings and the reality of their holy innocence which is how their lives intertwined inside of my heart. Saint Maximilian in time naturally led me to his beloved Immaculata, that great Star of the Sea, my Mother with Christ my Savior, Mary, Queen of my heart. Anne herself, in my own mind, was a herald to this meeting of my unworthy heart and my Mama Mary's own Immaculate Heart. She confirmed the Marian aspect of my life as God's will for me with the profound realization that my Anne's second name is Marie, her full name being Annelies Marie Frank. Consequently, Mama Mary led me to the shining heart of her beloved little one, Blessed Jacinta Marto of Fatima, the Flower of Fatima and I met Saint Lorenzo Ruiz as his own light quite recently shone for me here back at home. Of course, I have always had the light of the Archangel Michael as the patron of my own family for we hold our last names in honor of his name and of Angel Caritas, my faithful guardian angel, who has been with me right from my very beginning for guidance and protection from the Devil and his fallen angels. Today, I can say that the firmament of my life is nearing the break of twilight; it is strewn with myriad shining stars even as the dawn of a new day grows near and the sunrise of Jesus Christ in my heart fills my soul with a certain sense of joyous anticipation.

I have learned by grace of God that this life is more than just the living for the self. The school of Divine Providence taught me that if our focus is entirely on the self, if we dedicate our pursuit of happiness exclusively for the self, then we become blinded by the self and we lose track of what life is really all about. Life is a pursuit of happiness. But our life is not all about the life of the self alone. We do not live just for the sake of the self alone. The social nature of human beings in this world will not permit us to find true and lasting happiness in the limited confines of the dark prison of the self. Our true and lasting happiness is not found in the life of the self alone.

There is death in our world as well. A life lived in this world without a thought of the reality of death obviously and evidentially manifest in the world around us is folly because life by itself in this world is vanity. The realities of life in this world without the reality of death is pointless and without meaning. Without an ennobling and salutary fear of death (and what comes after death), the weaknesses and limitations of our fallen human nature will never be brought to the light of God's grace for there is no comprehending the goodness of Almighty God if we are allowed to become complacent in the living of life alone. The weak and wounded nature of humanity will never know the mountain path of virtue, which is the hard and narrow way of Christ, withoutmeditating on death. For without death we can never come to a true realization of life.

It was Anne who awakened me to the realization that there are other people in this world who are apart from and beside the self. I found that I needed her and that she needed me. Since no true and lasting Happiness can be found within the prison walls of the self, it only follows that only in the pursuit of another's happiness can we truly find our own. Now in truth, there can be no real giving of the self without dying, no real growth in virtue without suffering, no real extension of our hearts lovingly unto other hearts without feeling their pain. All the time that we give to others, we die a little to our self and we suffer a little pain. The giving of the self, if it is true to the heart of the giver, is an emptying of the life of the self. But when love is at the heart of giving, there is joy to be found even in our suffering. For the way of love is tread on the road of sacrifice and the highest, truest and most excellent expression of this reality is found on the way of Calvary in Jesus Christ Crucified where the mystery of death and the mystery of love become intertwined with the wonderful mystery of everlasting life. Life and death are not in opposition in Christ, O my soul. For our most loving Savior in Jesus Christ transformed death into an ally of life where the only evil left in death is to die an unprovided one.

Beginning with my Anne, right down the long line of our suffering, fragile, forbearing humanity, some of whom are my family and friends, past and present, saints and sinners all of them, up to the holy angels and into the blessed souls of our saints in heavens above, God's awesome truth is made manifest as a reality in my heart by a deep realization of all the good gifts and the merciful blessings that He brings to my heart through His grace and Divine Providence. The Good God has revealed to me a million ways of loving and serving Him by allowing me to walk into a realization of His Most Loving and Sacred Heart that is so full of mercy and so rich in loving kindness for all His creatures. In His wisdom, God also made clear to me that there is but one way not to serve Him. And that is to choose the self over Him for all sin is rooted in the inordinate love of the false image of the self. I have learned that this is the path to true and lasting happiness: To love God is to love others in God as true self. The image of the true self is the image of Jesus Christ in the soul of every person. The true self being the suffering self; the image of the self that is hidden in the darkness of sin.

Today, I can truly say that I have finally found a God in Jesus Christ worth living and dying for. For in Jesus I am made to understand that in death and in the dying to each moment is found our ultimate expression of love for God and for others in God as true self for we must die each moment of our lives that we begin to love one another until our love is utterly spent and our lives are completely transformed in God through the Holy Spirit. In our life, even here on earth, we find in real giving the ultimate expression of joy. God loves the cheerful giver for the cheerful giver is a true giver and a true giver gives not with his or her hands but with a heart full of love for God and for others in God as true self. True joy is a path that leads us to spend our lives in the service of God and of others in God as true self.

To learn to know how to be truly joyous is to follow the path of Christ Who gave of Himself so freely and so obediently out of love for us, sinful and unworthy creatures that we are.

Though immortal He allowed Himself to become vulnerable for our sakes. Everything about His life on earth, every moment, the Eternal Word calculated to give each of us the fullest and the greatest spiritual advantage.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and was born of the Virgin Mary. He was born poor in a manger in Bethlehem. He lived and He labored among us. He walked with us upon our world for thrity-three yeasrs. He was a common man, a builder. In His sacred humanity, He was like us in all things except sin. In His holy divinity, He was so unlike us in Mind and in Heart.

He humbled himself, allowed Himself to be baptized in solidarity with sinners, endured temptation and gave for us the Deposit of Faith through the example of His own life, a perfect life full of wisdom and of grace, and the many parables and miracles of His Light. He was truly with us, and even while we were yet sinners, He was as one of us, and He lived to serve the most wretched and the very least of us, His own creatures.

He kept watch over us and examined our ways and our hearts closely. He made Himself available to all and inagurated for all the Kingdom of God as a foretaste of heaven on earth. He called each of us by name unto repentance and He gave our hearts our hope in the strength and fidelity of God to help us to persevere and He gave our hopes His Heart with the courage to overcome the darkness within ourselves. He brought us unto Himself to rekindle in our hearts and minds the fire of His Love and the light of His Life. He taught us how to live to fulfill God' will in our lives. He bade us be holy, be chaste, be pure, be meek, be upright and be perfect as our own Father in heaven is perfect. He told us to pray always and taught us how to love God in spirit and in truth. He felt our pain and worked to alleviate our suffering. He grieved much over us and He prayed always and assidously for us. He gave us His timeless counsel and the wisdom of His new commandment of love. He lovingly offered the gift of His own Body and His own Blood and instituted for us the Eucharistic meal that would feed our souls for the journey into eternity and the promised Kingdom of God. He opened for us the way to a new life of virtue. He showed us by His own humble example the true spirit of service that breathes life into all genuine human relationships. He promised us He would not leave us orphans. He promised us the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

He longed over us. He yearned over all of mankind. He pondered and He agonized at the awful price of our Redemption. He was sorrowful unto death and shed bloody sweat. He feared the bitter cup yet He loved His Father more than He could ever fear. He was obedient unto death.

All His public life, He lived for the truth and refused to suffer the hypocrisy of men and He was made the object of ridicule and conspiracy by the religious authorities of His time. They plotted against Him and the Devil entered into the heart of Judas.

Now, the proud and wicked Prince of this world cometh. He was betrayed and abandoned by all His friends, was rejected, slapped, spat at, mocked and scourged, was punched, tortured, crowned with thorns and beaten with reeds. He was made an object of contempt and though innocent was treated more guilty than a murderer, was unjustly condemned to die a horrible and ignominious death, was made to carry His heavy, wooden Cross and amidst a jeering, shouting crowd was dragged violently through the streets of Jerusalem, was stripped naked and was nailed to the Cross, was raised up and made to hang in unthinkable agony, an object of scorn and ridicule to His own creatures, suspended between heaven and earth like a bridge between the world of God and the world of men.

His sacred humanity, bloodied and bruised beyond recognition, did reveal to us the depth of his hunger for us. He did thirst for our love. He wept out of sheer loneliness and looked down in sorrow upon the grieving faces of His Mother, Mary, and his beloved disciple, John. Out of love for His Mother and out of mercy for us, He entrusted to us to Mary and Mary to us at the foot of the Cross. His most loving and Sacred Heart, a Heart that has loved us so much yet in return is loved so little, was emptied out for us as He bore for all mankind the terrible wrath gathered up for all our sins past, present and future. He bled His Sacred Blood so profusely to wash away all our iniquities until finally He cried out in abject grief and utter desolation to His Father in Heaven, commended to God His spirit and died of a broken Heart. His broken Heart was then pierced with a lance and It flowed with the water and the blood that sealed forever the new and everlasting covenant between God and man. It is said that our Holy Mother Church, as Christ's new covenant people, sprang from His wounded side.

Alleluia, O my soul, Christ the Savior has paid the ransom for the sins of all mankind!

Our Blessed Lord gave to us the gift of Himself out of His infinite love for us, miserable and wretched sinners we are, until He was so completely and utterly spent that even though He was God and He is God and God being infinitely rich and powerful beyond measure, He gave until He had nothing left to give. Indeed, He loved us all without exception and cherished us each without measure right to the bitter end. He forgave His tormentors for He loved both His enemies as well as His friends. In so doing, our Blessed Lord and Holy Redeemer completely transformed our heritage by His life, Passion, death and Resurrection from one of everlasting death into one of resurrection unto everlasting life.

There is no true and lasting happiness to ever be found in the deep, dark prison of the self, in the limiting confines of our natural world or in the oppressive malice of the Devil. The only true relationship between men is that of service and through this door of service is found the path of the giver and in the heart of the giver is found the way of love which is the road of Christ - the royal road of the Cross - that lead all men to true and everlasting happiness.

God has allowed the truth of His presence in my life and in the lives of others to become very real to me and the majesty of His love to become tangible in my life through His infinite wisdom in the Beauty reflected in the beauty of His creation; the goodness and order of all created things, in the fidelity of His holy angels and in the instrumentality, grace and personal kindness of the lives of the people around me, of beings both seen and unseen, and above all in the life, Passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. The Lord my God has blessed me, and is still blessing me with countless gifts of love and miracles of grace in my heart and in my everyday until I have come love the Giver more than His gifts for it is but just to give love for love. But it goes even further than that for when I contemplate the goodness of my God, I realize for certain that God loves me so very much and so very dearly and that I am powerless not to react to such an unfathomable, incomprehensible magnitude of loving. The love of God in Jesus Christ and the love of the Giver above all His gifts compel me to respond. This response is our Christian religion - a covenant relationship born of the Precious Blood of Christ and an alliance between God and man - and this is who I am: I am a Christian, born and bred in the bosom of my Holy Mother, the Roman Catholic Church and my native Christian soul struggles to respond to the universal call of Jesus Christ, the Lord and Redeemer of all mankind, my All.

By virtue of the sacramental grace of my baptism and by humble obedience in faith, hope and love, I belong forever to the one great family of God as it is revealed to the eyes of our Christian faith dwelling within the Trinitarian mystery of the nature of inner life of our one, true, ever living and thrice-holy God.

I am also a Filipino, just like our beloved native Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, I am also born and bred in the bosom of the Pearl of the Orient Seas and my native heart beats for no other home than this one.

For 35 years, I lived at peace with this world and its darkness.

Today until the day I die, I am at war. With Jesus Christ as our pledge of ultimate victory, I join the honored ranks of my Holy Mother the Church: Triumphant, Militant and Suffering, all of blessed Christendom, all the just souls of the world, all of God's holy angels and with the Blessed Virgin Mary, as our Glorious and Immaculate Queen at the head of our charge, by the grace of God, we fight against sin and the lie at the core of every sin. Even that ancient lie at the heart of our faded Eden; that wicked perversity that came out of the serpent's forked tongue that seek to replace in each and every heart the one, true, ever living and thrice-holy God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit with false and unholy idols; dead and unfeeling, spiritless and sacrilegious abominations of base and created things. Even that lie, which is the first cause of all the evil, suffering and death that has been inflicted, is being inflicted and will ever be inflicted on all the generations of our poor and fallen humanity unto the consummation of the age of mankind.

We fight against the concupiscence of the flesh, against the darkness and the errors of the world that distort and corrupt the image of God's love for all souls without distinction, and against the irreconcilable hate and relentless cruelty of the Devil and his fallen angels.

We fight for love and all that we love and all who love us contained in the Name of Love Itself.

We fight to constantly improve each of ourselves so that God may better use us to fulfill His plan for our good, the good of all His Church and the good of all of creation.

We fight for each of ourselves and for all others who struggle with us for the promise of a better future for all of mankind.

We fight to see the one family of humanity renewed and reunited upon a new earth beneath a new heaven in the promise of the resurrection of the dead.

We fight for the promise of the unmerited reward of everlasting life purchased for us by our Savior Jesus Christ for we fight so that we may one day dwell eternally with our Lord Jesus Christ, with our Mother Mary, with all the holy angels of God and with the everlasting society of holy and pious men and women as Saints united in joyous friendships contemplating the vision of God together in peace and goodwill one to another, there in the place prepared for each of us by Jesus Himself in the glorious and shining Kingdom of our Almighty God; and I imagine being just there with you, being just truly and simply happy to live our lives together without interruption and without death or sorrow, pain or sickness, suffering or war or sin or tears forever and ever.

This is my happiness, this is our happiness:

I fight for you, my beloved; we fight for all of us.

- EJ San Miguel