Novena to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel - Third Day

Theme: Mary - A Truly Liberated Woman

The word liberty in the N.T. refers to the state of freedom of the believer, who is not in the grip or bondage of sin (Cf. John 8:32-36) or under the external compulsion of the law (New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible). This is what the word liberated means - freed from the grip or bondage of sin or from the external compulsion of the law.

This state of freedom from sin is attributed to Mary, firstly, because she was "conceived in the state of perfect justice, free form original sin and all its consequences and penalties, in virtue of the redemption won by Christ on the cross. In this sense, the privilege of the Immaculate Conception was the anticipated fruit of Christ's saving passion,death and resurrection" (Catholic Encyclopedia). Hence, the Church, through Pope Pius IX, based on this doctrine proclaimed Mary as the "Immaculate Conception" at the apparition to St. Bernadette. Secondly, because she is "immaculately" conceived. She is the woman prophesied in the book of Isaiah: "The virgin shall be with child, and bear a son and shall be called Emmanuel". She was then predestined to be the Mother of the God-Son Jesus which was further confirmed in Luke's Gospel that Mary, as greeted by the Archangel, "Hail full of grace! is highly favored. And the Angel continued: "The Lord is with you...behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall name him Jesus". Therefore, what makes Mary a truly liberated woman is, namely: she was conceived without original sin, hence she is immaculate, highly favored by God and full of grace. Her freedom from sin gave her a significant role in the history of salvation, God's vessel in His saving plan.

One of the signs of our times is women's demand to be treated equal with men. And so way back in the 70's we encountered in the headlines of some journals "Women Liberation" with pictures where women were doing men's work and the men clapping their hands cheering them. Then, came the feminist movement where the pro-choice women claimed to be liberated by choosing to do away the product of their conception through abortion. And lately, women wanting to become ordained priest, which is already happening in non-Catholic Christian churches.

It was God who gave women equal right with men through the dignity He gave to Mary through God's redeeming grace. But Mary never considered herself equal with her son when she was going with Him in His public life. She was always at the background as her Son Jesus went about doing the Father's will.

We are all beneficiaries of God's redeeming grace but we cannot yet be equal with Mary in her being truly liberated until such time when God's power rests upon us as it had in Mary. Women need not assume men's work neither to get involved in feminist activities to be considered liberated. The feminine Sunday we used to observe does not even give any sense of liberation but tied us up to a meaningless practice.

We are truly liberated when we, like Mary, remain always constant and faithful in listening to God's word and putting it into practice in our daily life, in the faithful living of our consecrated life, striving always to be congruent in our behavior especially with regard to chastity since Mary our exemplar is all pure and chaste.

She is the pure virgin before giving birth, during birth and after birth. She is the woman who fixed her single-hearted love to God and to us her children and to no other love. Pure love liberates, it is always at work and is never idle; it endures till the end. This was what Mary did and does through her liberating love until now to the whole of humanity, saving it from the grip of sin, from the evil one, the devil and his evil doings.

Liturgist of the day: Sr. Isabel Gregorio, C.M.

Novena to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel - Second Day

Theme: Mary, Woman of God Centered Intimacy

"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest."

The message of our Gospel reading today focuses on the call for intimate relationship with God and our neighbor. This is also the focus of our theme for the second day of our Novena.

Whenever we think of Mary, we remember a loving mother, simple and virtuous, chosen by God to do a magnificent role in the history of salvation.

If we go through the life of Mary in the light of the Gospels, the evangelists have consistently shown Mary as intimately centered in God.

First and foremost she is the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God. Mary is intimately bound to Jesus in the physical, psychological and spiritual sense. As a mother, she was there in all the journeys of his Son and in all His missionary endeavors; trusting, believing, loving, and caring for Him to the end. In so doing, she was deeply involved in the cause of humanity, the very cause of her Son. That's why we call on Mary for intercession. We are banking on that intimacy she has with God, to intercede for us in our time of need.

Liturgist of the day: Sr. Marivic Bucton, C.M.

Novena to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel - First Day

Theme: Life in the Spirit with Mary

None of us has ever seen the Holy Spirit, yet, like the wind, the Holy Spirit makes His presence known in tangible, sensible ways. His sanctifying intervention in the Virgin of Nazareth was a culminating moment of God's action in the history of salvation. He filled Mary with new life at the annunciation and Mary conceived the Incarnated Word. At every step in Mary's life the Spirit is present, to guide, inspire and strengthen her. With Mary, He formed Jesus in us so that others may be brought to new life in Jesus Christ, just as He filled the Apostle's with new life and they immediately gave birth to a new era through their preaching and example.

The role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Mary is a specially pertinent in our time. Her whole life was a song of love inspired by the Holy Spirit. Concretely, Mary's love for all persons that she met in her lifetime was always patient and kind; never jealous, never boastful or conceited, never rude or selfish. It took no offense and was not resentful. It was always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever came. Her love never came to an end. Without love, all other gifts of the Spirit in Mary and even in us would be meaningless.

Just like Mary, let us freely and earnestly heed the interior prompting of the Holy Spirit at all times. He always gives us other signs and make us aware of his presence in us and in his action, working through our poor attempts at faith in the mission he entrusted to us. If we are willing to open our hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to take our lives, we will see extraordinary things.

Let us, therefore, turn our gazed to the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus to renew the face of the earth and strive for this union of the Holy Spirit in Mary in our souls so that they can reproduce Jesus in each one of us.

Liturgist of the day: Sr. Mary Cristina Dean, cm

Book Recipients

Here are the pictures of some of the books that Dino George sent to the Carmelite Missionaries. These books will be sent to Mt. Carmel College, Escalante, Negros and Mt.Carmel College, Agusan, Mindanao and the Institute of Spirituality in Asia, Manila through Fr. Gabriel Dolotina, OCarm.

The pictures were taken in the convent of the OCarm Fathers at #31 Acasia St., New Manila, Philippines.

A Retreat Experience

Nightfall
(Day 1)

I could not remember exactly how old I was when this incident happened. But I am sure I was in my primary years in school. I could not also remember the preparations my father made for me. All I could remember was that I was sick. I had a very high fever. Then, I woke up around 9 o’clock in the evening. I was alone in the room which I shared with my sister. I remembered that it was that very night I had to give a welcome speech. I saw my beautiful clothes on the chair and my socks and shoes. I still had fever that time, but I could not let my father down. I had to deliver that speech.

So I got up and changed my clothes with those new ones. I went to the plaza and directly went to the stage and approached the emcee. I told her that I will deliver a speech. Then my name was called. I went up to the stage and got the microphone and delivered the speech. Afterward I went down. My father waited for me at the bottom of the stairs and slapped me. I did not know why. I intended to make him happy, to make him very proud of me. He was dragging me toward our helper and told her to bring me home. I still had fever at that time. I went home and went back to bed and slept.

It seemed as if nothing happened. I forgot all about it. There were times that I remembered that event, but I didn’t put so much attention to it. It was just like a nightmare in my life. Nevertheless something terrible must have happened inside me which I am not in touch or refuse to get in touch. I don’t know what it was but now I could not ignore it. I see a pattern of that event happening in my life over and over again.

Insecurity, loss of confidence, fear of rejection, superficiality, daydreaming, pretensions, feeling of abandonment… These are but a few of its side-effects but the worst is the pattern it is creating. Similar incidents of different times and causes are happening in my life and with much more destructive effects and of greater magnitude. It was as if I was creating a chain collecting similar incidents of failure and rejection and just shrugged my shoulders and turned my back away from it. I went on living as if nothing happened, as if I were not hurt but as I grew older it took a toll in my life. My way of coping with the pain is daydreaming and planning. I project my life in the future; I build castles in the air.

This could not go on for the remaining years of my life, or else it will curtail whatever contributions I am supposed to make in my lifetime and I don’t have much years left. If life is 80 for those who are strong, I have already spent more than half of it.

Loving God and Father, grant me the grace to relive this experience fully today. Grant me the courage to experience once again the pain. It is high time now Lord, before, it might have broken me but now I am old enough to bear it without breaking.

Oh my God, you must have allowed all those other incidents to happen in order to strengthen me to face this very delicate stage in my life. You must have allowed it so that I can finally faced that first trauma I had as a child. You must have allowed this incident to happen in my adult life so I can face that incident in my life where I was so vulnerable and so fragile.

Oh my God, you are actually working double time to make me whole once again through those failures and rejections. Oh my God how slow I am to see your finger in all these painful incidents in my life. Oh my God…

My childhood experience is begging for fullness, for completion. Living it once again in its fullness now will complete that experience, and only then can I say goodbye. Incomplete experiences are like unfinished business. It will recur asking actually for attention, begging for closure.

Let this be the moment that I will spend the day with you dear God for this particular sad event begging for this grace. So help me, God, Amen.


Contemplative Gazing
(First Hour of Prayer)

I was standing once again in that same room looking at myself as a little girl sleeping alone on the bed. God was standing beside me with his right arm around my shoulders. I saw the little girl woke up and she remembered that that was the time she has to deliver the speech. She could not let Papa down; there was nothing else in her heart but to please Papa, to show her love for him, to make him proud of her.

She knew she has a fever, but she was determined to deliver the speech. How can she frustrate Papa, he has plenty of visitors at that very moment. It was her way of showing love to Papa. It was the right moment of showing her love to Papa; she must go no matter what. Papa also wants to show off his favorite and intelligent daughter.

I saw her changed her clothes, put on her socks and shoes and with trembling knees went to the plaza and confidently approached the emcee and told her that she would deliver the speech and I saw her got the microphone and there in front of all the visitors delivered the speech upside down. Not one sentence was correct; all were mixed up in an unintelligible way. I saw Papa fuming with anger and shame for what she did but she did not know it. All she wanted was to deliver that speech to make Papa happy and proud in front of his visitors. That was all she wanted. In her little heart there was nothing but pure intention of love.

She finished the speech and confidently went down the stage and there at the bottom of the stair I saw Papa waited for her. She expected an embrace but what she got was a slapped on the face and a pinch in the ear and she was dragged towards the helper who brought her back to the house.

Her little mind could not grasp what really happened and she was literally carried back home, straight to bed and she went back to sleep. A very deep wound was inflicted in her psyche but she was too little to understand it all. She slept brutally wounded but when she woke up as if nothing happened. She did not understand the implications of those blows. She was too little and her psyche too fragile. It must be protected by innocence. So she woke up the following day, as if nothing happened. Life continued its normal course, but something inside her was altered and because she did not know it she thought it is just part of life. The resolution of that incident can wait when the psyche is already strong to face it once again.

Now is the long awaited moment to heal the little girl from the wound she did not even know she had.

God no one was at fault. Everybody was innocent. Life is an interplay of human talents, strength, weaknesses and limitations. That’s why you said that “they do not know what they are doing”. Oh God, I’m beginning to have an insight into the great mystery of the cross. So you were willing to die because you see all of us innocent despite of the seeming malice of which acts were done. The cross, the cross… that cross…


Landmark
(Second Hour of Prayer)

I went back again to that incident but this time I paid more attention to my body. I recalled the incident and scanned my body for discomfort. In what part of my body did I feel pain, discomfort, heaviness, shame…I tried to locate that particular part of my body, the landmark.

I realized I felt the heaviest part in my heart. My chest was so heavy as if I were carrying a very heavy emotional burden. Then my shoulders had some acute pain. I first focus on my chest then I did breathing exercise and I imagined Jesus and the divine rays coming from him to unload my heart opening the long bottled-up pain stock in there and releasing the energy out into the atmosphere where it can be recreated. I spent the rest of the hour in this awareness…

Somebody said that “success is just a point along the road; the real goodness of living comes with the journey itself”. I say that the painful experiences in our lives are landmarks which indicate important points in our live’s journey. When you want to go to a new place you always ask for landmarks that will tell you that you are in the right track.

As we move on with life, we encounter experiences that are new but are familiar. It is painful but the pain is familiar. Somehow you have a memory that you have experienced it before. That memory would be helpful if it is devoid of emotion, you just remember the incident but without the underlying current of emotion that goes with it. That is the kind of memory that is powerful. It will help us face the present moment with stability and serenity.

That is why healing of our memories is very important. If our memories are not healed, which means that it is still emotionally laden, then it will be a burden not an asset in our life. It will add up to the present experience multiplying the present pain several times. That is why we said that one person is overreacting to the incident. The overreaction comes from the previous incidents that were not yet healed. It is like collecting burdens as we move on with life. You were just corrected for one little thing and you went ballistic about it, and the people around you wonder why, but you feel justified because you feel it. But it is not only the present pain which was only very little. That very little pain just triggered the tons of accumulated pain bottled up inside.

Healing the memory is not forgetting the incident, we could not forget painful events in our lives and it is not healthy to forget it. If we try hard to bury it, time will come that it will come out with a vengeance and we could not control its effect. It is like cancer cells buried in our body. When we know about it; it has already multiplied a billion times that drastic interventions have to be done.

There are plenty of pains buried in our lives and we are not anymore aware of most of them. As I have said they come to the surface when they are triggered by present experiences. We know that something is triggered because of our over reactions to little things. These incidents are God’s way of revealing to us what we do not want anymore to see. This is what’s really beautiful with God; He reveals our pains to us one by one, piece by piece, little by little, incident by incident. And God heals these sorrowful mysteries of our life in silent prayer.

The first half of our life is spent in creating lots of pain and the second half is spent in healing them. That’s where I am now. That’s where we are now and it is a crucial task because that’s where our real mission lies. We are called to be healers of the pain that we ourselves have inflicted on the human race. No one is exempted. And our first mission assignment is ourselves. Let us buckle down to do our mission, remembering that we are not alone, God is there ahead of us, He is just waiting for us, waiting for so long…

Offering
(Third Hour)

Loving Lord Jesus, I offer this particular pain to you. It rightfully belongs to you my Lord because you have redeemed it already by your suffering on the cross. My pains are prepaid by your precious blood my Lord. I offer it back to you now. This is my Christmas gift to you my Lord. Thank you my Lord and God.

The final moment is not a saying goodbye; it is offering the pain back to God. In the first place, he redeemed it already. It rightfully belongs to Him. The cross, the cross…that cross has unfathomable meaning. I was mesmerized by it as a child and until now, it has a message to me that I could not grasp. All I can say is the cross, the cross…that cross…

Yes, our cross is but a shadow of that cross that Jesus our Lord had carried. It was God’s way of telling us “I love you”. With His cross all the pain of humanity are prepaid, paid for by Christ. So when we encounter it, do not dilly dally, go to Him immediately and lay it down on his feet, on the altar, offer it back to him. God wants us to live life to the fullest, not half full, not just full but to the fullest. That’s why he came, that’s the reason for Christmas.

So let us celebrate because we have a God who became man and as man carried the cross for us, suffered the pain for us, felt the thirst for us, endured the wounds for us, braved the insults for us, accepted the humiliations for us, received the blows for us…what can we asked for?

With His birth, God initiated the exchange of gifts between Himself and us. He was born to assume human weakness that we might become strong. He cried to assume human sorrow that we might be happy. He died that we might live and live forever with him. This is man’s hope and my hope.

I sleep this evening at peace with myself, at peace with my father, reconciled with that particular incident in my life. I am redeemed and I accepted fully this redemption offered to me today, at this very moment: December 16, 2007 at 9:30 in the evening.

My God Experience

I know better than anyone else what my personal experience of God is. It is important that I be aware of and reflective about that experience. It is important that I be able to identify and articulate the nature of my God experience.

1. For me God is …

2. I seldom think of God as …

3. I feel most in touch with God when …

4. For me Jesus is …

5. I have felt the Holy Spirit active in my own personal experience when…

6. What I would want most of all to share with someone about my experience of God is ...

7. What delights me most about God is …

8. When I think about God’s love for me personally I am …

9. For me the surest sign of God’s presence in my life is…

10. One ‘moment’ in my own life when I was most aware, most conscious that God’s power was working in me beyond my own limits was…

11. My prayer to God is most often…

My Vision-Mission

MY VISION

I am a woman of GOD consecrated to LOVE.

I calmly begin my day with a bright and focused mind and a deeply prayerful heart.
I enthusiastically work with determination guided by my mission, goal and objective.
I certainly know what to accomplish today and I do it with serenity and joy.

I pause at noon with gratitude in my heart for a morning filled with grace, vibrant with life and radiant in beauty.
I create clear systems to facilitate space and time to listen and love others.
I accomplish my task with utmost satisfaction and end the day renewed and contented for having given my best.

I gladly contemplate the setting sun pregnant with hope for a new gift of dawn.
I specially love those who needed love most and wholeheartedly support the endeavors of others.

I peacefully retire in the soft breeze of the night humming the melody of life in harmony with all creation.
In the silence of my soul, my heart prays in a song:
LORD, I LOVE YOU TODAY.
I OBEYED YOUR WILL, I GAVE MY ALL, AND I DID MY BEST.
INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMEND MY SPIRIT.



MY MISSION

Is to create, inspire and foster communion of love for all those around me.


MY GOAL

Is to build communities of love.


MY OBJECTIVE

Is to be loving and lovable today.