Look! Stop! Listen! And Discern!

We all have pleasant memories to cherish. We opt to keep on recalling events that express positively about us, excites our emotion, elevates our thinking, and qualifies the state of our life. Our experience is not just a series of events but a bearer of folded and unfolded meaning of our life. Our memories have always something to reveal who we are. Unfortunately, we sometimes take for granted our experiences, which deprives us to look upon the message that lies behind them. Once we fail to look back to our past, we become blind to our future. We are all products of our past; who we are today is the result of our previous life happenings.

   Our experiences have, indeed, special role in our life as to our vocational discernment. Our life evolves in the kind of experience that we have. We create our identity based on the way we deal with ourselves, with other people, with the surroundings and with the world, which constitute all to our experience. The way we look at things and the way the things come to us build our character and attitude. Thus, the fruits of our interactions between ourselves and with the world in which God manifests Himself are the objects of our vocational discernment. We discern the kind of life we prefer to live basing upon our reflections on our past.

In the sharing of many priests, sisters and brothers, they often times recall their past experiences as the common ground of their vocation stories. Most of them begin their stories with the phrase “When I was…” and follow, “that is why I have chosen to be here”. They don’t simply narrate their stories and mention a series of events; they actually draw the message of their experiences that awaits to be unveiled by their reflections. It is a moment of “seeing” beyond what our eyes can see. The same invitation is given to us in doing the proper discernment: we need to see the soul of our experiences in which the presence of God is seated.

  The proper discernment comes when we think that things are interconnected. In every single day of our life, we have always fresh experience and yet they will become a part of our memories which will soon be a part of our future. We need to stop for a while and see the connections of the events of our life; and we need to listen how they are going to affect our future. If God is always present in our life, then He is always a part of our experience. Discernment is perfectly done when we allow our experiences to speak to us. 

by: Harold Tan, cmf
email: hrtan94@gmail.com

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THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

Baptism …….The beginning ……. To do his Mission

Is 40: 1-5, 9-11

Tit 2: 11-14, 3:4-7

Lk 3: 15-16, 21-22

This is the last Sunday of the beautiful season of Christmas, therefore we shall re-live the happiness and joy of Christmas in this day.

Baptism is the sacrament of entrance and the beginning of Christian life. And thus we become the children of God. Jesus’ baptism is well known and clear evidence for the sacrament of baptism in the Holy Scripture. We may tempted to ask then; who invented the baptism? Is it John the Baptist? Or Jesus? Neither John nor Jesus invented the baptism. It had been practiced for centuries among the Jews as a ritual equivalent to our confession until the fall of the Temple in 70A.D, it was common for Jewish people to use a special pool called a MIKVEH – literally “a collection of water” – as a means of spiritual cleansing, to remove spiritual impurity and sin. Men took this bath weekly on the eve of Sabbath; and the women, monthly. Converts were also expected to take this bath before entering Judaism. The orthodox Jews still retain the rite. John the Baptist went furthermore, to make use of this same ritual for the real preparation for the coming of messiah. And Jesus gave true meaning to the baptism by his own baptism in the river Jordan.

This day, as we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord Jesus, is giving us concrete understanding of Christian sacrament of baptism. John the Baptist preached that ‘… a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ (Lk 3:3) then why Jesus wanted to be baptized?  A sinless and even son of God. Why we can say that Jesus wanted to give true meaning to the baptism? Even though he need not Baptism; in order to unite himself with people and to save them from their ignorance he gave a good example. And also that was a prefiguration of his suffering and death for his people.

After the baptism Jesus went to the desert and he began his ministry, the work of redemption and that the baptism was an entrance or to say through which he got affirmation of the father to do his mission with authority. This is the challenge of each and every one of us today; do we really do the mission of Christ? Since we received our baptism, and have an eligible certificate to do his mission; not only as priests and nuns, also as true Christian faithful. This is the invitation today that the lord gives us to reflect and to live.

Therefore as we received our sacrament of baptism freely, we too are invited to live the life that pleasing to God and our neighbors as Jesus did. And thus the new life through Baptism will flourished when we practice the Christian moral values such; love, kindness, forgiveness and peace. And to living these we too can hear the voice of God saying, ‘this is my beloved…’.

By: Br. J. Donal Christy CMF

donalchristy@gmail.com

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