True Love is Faithful to the End

Acts 3:1-10/ Gal 1:11-20/ Jn 21:15-19

Love, they say, makes the world go round. But what is it? Those warm, mushy feelings that well up inside us? Those tears that flow when we watch our first communicants walk up the aisle in the little white suits and dresses? No, those moments are charming, but they’re not love. They’re sentimentality, which comes and goes faster than we’d care to admit.

Love has a different shape. It’s a determined desiring of the best for the other, and a willingness to do whatever is necessary to make the best happen. In sum, true love, by definition, is faithful and has no limits.

In today’s gospel, Jesus — in the time after His resurrection — asks Peter three times whether he loves Him. The repeated question was an echo of the three times that Peter had denied even knowing Jesus. How those questions must have seared his heart!

But those three questions are for us too! They’re probing the seriousness of our commitment to the Lord. It’s highly unlikely that any of us will be called to witness to our faith by martyrdom. But every one of us is called to witness our love for Jesus daily by being true to the mission He’s given us.

-Errol Tangco

Perfection

"I’m perfect? Imperfect rather. The only way to be perfect is to take away the “im”, or “I’m.” Human beings are imperfect, and it is only once we take away ourselves, and realize it is only by Him, that we can begin to seek perfection. That perfection is not found in “I” but in Him. By taking away the “I am” or “I’m” or rather, by completely giving ourselves, and realizing our frailty as human beings, are we able to truly seek perfection. Let us remember it is not us who are perfect, it is only He. And perfection is found when we empty ourselves of our own wants, our own desires, our ” ‘I’ this, and ‘I’ that.” It is only once we humble ourselves, and accept that we alone cannot attain perfection are we able to discover the perfect image He created us to be. It is through Him that we are to the find perfect happiness, fulfillment and content in our lives. I am a perfect image in His love, we are a perfect image in His love, do not taint this image with our pride by believing perfection is found in ourselves. Our Lord does want us to seek perfection, however the only perfection that is to be shown, is Himself within us. Let us rejoice and be glad, for although we are weak, by simply giving ourselves, He may illustrate us to this world, as the perfection that we are meant to be." -Isaac Guevera

Everything

"You can have everything, just not all at once." -via Erin Tangco

Of Sewer and Excrement

“I was reading an article on BBC about how archeologists are extensively studying the remains at Pompeii, an ancient Roman City buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. They are starting to study how the Romans lived 2,000 years ago. The most useful part of the study was found on the largest excrement ever unearthed in the Roman world. The archeologists says the sewer helps them understand the lifestyle at that time, what they eat and even there health and jobs. They even called it unprecedented! Well, indeed it is! Imagine finding the lifestyle of people living thousand years ago in an excrement.

Isn’t it ironic that sometimes the only way to solve the riddle of life is through the lowly excrement! Nothing is wasted indeed, even the considered dirtiest place like a sewer can hold an answer to so many questions. Life is like that, the lowest and indescribably sewer like situation has its use too. Our hurts, pains, feelings of betrayal, losses, our seemingly unending excrement, our sewer life, can actually be useful. When we learn to face our excrement, unearth our sewers and faithfully reflect upon it, we can actually get the most astonishing discovery. The discovery of our very self! The vulnerable yet indomitable self! Nothing is wasted!” -Kuya Gelo

Redemption

"There’s a pattern here: New life is found in Jesus.

Giving our lives to Jesus means we are made new. Our hearts, our minds and our stories are forever changed. The past is no longer the defining factor in who we are - Jesus is. And the past does not decide our future - Jesus does.

That’s why Paul was also able to tell the Philippians, ‘One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.’

Redemption happens the very moment we give our lives to God. But wounds heal slowly, and the enemy’s lies are hard to forget. That’s why it’s a process - Sometimes it takes a while before we start to really feel it and believe it. But that doesn’t make it less true.

And we’re not alone in that process. But the whole reason Jesus died was to free us from those wounds and lies - to free us from the past. He’s in it with us to the very end." -skripture-sketches

God Alone

"God will sometimes break the strongest bone in your life when you think you are very strong. So that from now on you will say that the strongest part of who you are, is not your job, not your education, not your pleasure, not what you attained, not your family, not your friends, but God alone." -Errol Tangco

Worship

"As worship begins in holy expectancy, true worship only ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life." -Richard Foster

Be True from the Inside Out

Acts 1:1-11 / Eph 1:17-23 / Mk 16:15-20

Buried somewhere in our high school memories is a novel that was on everyone’s reading list, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. It’s the story of a pious young puritan clergyman who becomes secretly involved with a beautiful young woman, Hester Prynne. Nature takes its course and the woman gives birth to a child. But no father is in evidence, and no marriage vows have been pronounced. So the tight little Puritan village in which she lives labels her “adulteress,” and casts her out of church and friendship and out of all kindly contact. She is alone, with the scarlet letter “A” sewn upon her dress.

Meanwhile, her secret lover, the Reverend Dimmesdale, continues to rise in the esteem of his people. From far and wide they come to marvel at the purity of his soul, and to listen to his beautiful words. But he has no words for Hester and no embrace for his fatherless child. The years pass. Hester and her child survive — alone. But Dimmesdale slowly crumples from within, crushed by the weight of the lie he is living. At the height of his career he is dying. At the very last moment — with the whole town gathered round — he takes Hester to himself and for the first time embraces his little child. Then he dies.

And what moral are we to take from this long, sad story? Hawthorne sums it up in two words — which he repeats three times: “Be true. Be true. Be true.”

I wonder if that isn’t the essence of Jesus’ last words to us before ascending to heaven. “Go out to the whole world,” he says to us all, “and tell the good news.” Now in its literal sense, telling means using words, talking. And who can deny that talking is important if we want to share good news? But talk is cheap; and, as Dimmesdale reminds us, it always has been. So if we have any hope of following Jesus’ command to proclaim the good news, we’re going to have to do a lot more than talk, a lot more than just tell the truth. We’re going to have to be true. Be true on the inside. And from that truthfulness on the inside will spring forth not only words that are true, but deeds that are true. Deeds that, in their rightness and goodness, shout to the whole world what really matters, deeds that proclaim to the whole world that God is here, living in the hearts of his people.

God has given us an immense mission, telling his good news to all the world. So we truly need to pray for one another:

May God help us become true on the inside, so that every word and deed of ours may speak his good news till that day when he will speak it to us all face to face. Amen.

-via Kuya Gelo