FROM OUR BRETHREN... A CHRISTIAN DENOMINATION THAT IS IN UNION WITH US IN OPPOSING THE FALLACIES OF THE RH/RP "LAW" AND THE OTHER DEATH BILLS: “The Gospel of Oneness”

“The Gospel of Oneness”

May 18, 2014

4^th Sunday of the Great Christian Passover

Acts 17: 1 – 15/Psalm 66: 1 – 9/1 Peter 2: 1 – 10/John 14: 1 – 14

His Excellency

The Most Reverend Ariel Cornelio P. Santos D.D.

Auxiliary Bishop and Locum Tenens

of the 

Archdiocese of Manila

the 

National Church in the Philippines 

and the 

Territorial Church of Asia

International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church

We are thankful that God continues to be with us, patiently leading us, molding us, training us and not forsaking us. This is our God who never leaves us and forsakes us and turns away from us.  What God started, He will be faithful to complete. 

Repeating what Jesus said in John 14, "Do not be troubled; do not be afraid; do not fear; do not be anxious; do not be in doubt; instead believe!”  Do not fear, only believe. These are not my words, but Jesus’ words.  As Christians, we are called believers not unbelievers, not doubters, and we believe in God.  If you believe, then, you will see the glory and the salvation of God. Believe in what? Among other things, Jesus says, “I am going to prepare a place for you. I am not leaving you for I am Omnipresent.  I am not going away. I will prepare a place for you and then, I am going to come back so that I can receive you to Myself that where I am there you may be also.”

Thomas, one of the apostles, didn't quite understand what Jesus was saying.  He asked, “Lord, we do not know where You are going. How do we know the way?  Show us the way.”  Jesus answered, “I am the Way; I am the Truth; and I am the Life.” No one comes to the Father but through Me.”   Obviously, Jesus was going to the Father and He wants us to be with Him and with the Father.   Jesus said, “The Father and I will make an abode in you so that you can be one with Us as We are one.”  This place is where the Father is.

I am not here to talk geographically where heaven is because our Father is in heaven as the prayer says; but the Father is bigger than heaven and earth and He made heaven and He made earth.  What was it before that was there before heaven and earth were made?  It is the kingdom of God. What is it now that there is heaven and earth?  It is still the kingdom of God.  It really doesn’t matter but what matters is that Jesus prepares a place for us where the Father is.  This place being prepared for us is called being one with the Father and Jesus is the Way.

When the first Adam was created, he was put in the Garden which was on earth.    Earth was made by God.  It was not separate from heaven.  It was part of the kingdom of God. Everything is part of the kingdom of God and everything is smaller than God.  He is eternally huge and unfathomable. The first Adam was in heaven, in that, he was in the kingdom of God walking in its principles and more importantly, he was one with God.   The Father was in him and he was in the Father.  He spoke to Him face to face, walked with Him in the cool of the day and the night and communed with Him.   Earth and heaven was one kingdom – no division; seamless; not even an extension.

It is like Luzon is as much part of the Philippines as Visayas and Mindanao.  A better comparison is Hawaii is as much as State as California is even if it is not in the U.S. Mainland.  The same federal laws are in place and at work in Hawaii.  It is a full status State even if it is not in the Mainland.  The people that are there are called the citizen of the United States of America and their laws are the same federally.

There was no division, no heaven and earth, but only the kingdom of God.  It wasn’t necessarily to pray, “Thy kingdom come on earth; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” because it was being done.  There was harmony, unity, and what was on earth in the Garden was the same that took place in heaven.  There was life; there was no death.  This was heaven but Adam fell and sin entered into the world, a part of the kingdom of God; and then, death came.

Jesus had to come.  A second Adam had to come so that He could restore this part of the kingdom of God that fell back and fell short of what the kingdom of God was supposed to be.  Christ is now the new and living Way back to the Father, back to His kingdom, back to communion with Him, and back to fellowship with Him.  We always say this, “God, in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to Himself.”  The world is part of His kingdom.  It has to come back to Him because He created both the heaven and the earth.  It is all His kingdom.

Philip says to Jesus, “If the plan is for us to go back to the Father, then, simply show us the Father and it is enough for us.”  Jesus says to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet, you have not come to know Me, Philip?  He who has seen Me has seen the Father.  How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?  The words that I say to you, I do not speak on My own initiative but the Father abiding in Me does His works.  Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, otherwise, believe on the account of the works themselves.”  Jesus is the Way and He is one with the Father so that whosoever has seen Him has already seen the Father.  Really, that is enough because the Father is invisible; He is spirit.  Jesus has flesh and He is the embodiment, the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form so that the Godhead can be seen and be manifested.  This is why He became incarnate so that God can be seen and heard and tasted and felt in a more clear way.

Jesus says, “The works that I do proved that I am in the Father and the Father in Me because He does His works through Me.  Because I am First-born of many brethren, He who believes in Me, who lives out My principles and applies My words, the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than this shall he do because I go to the Father.”   Like what Peter said to the lame man, the Church, you and I, should be able to say, “Look at us!”  When you make your witness in your workplace, in your neighborhood, in your school, you don’t say, “Look at my Church leader because he is a good preacher.” “Look at my sister in this Church because she is a good minister.”

We say, “Look at us!  All of us are the Church!” “Look at us!  He who has seen us has seen the Father and has seen Jesus.”  We should be able to say this because we are His hands; we are His feet; and we are supposed to be Jesus with skin on.  He is sitting at the right hand of God waiting for us to be able to say that with fullness and genuineness and authenticity.  He who has seen the Church!  We are supposed to be one with Christ. We are one Body who has also seen Christ, and he who has seen Christ has seen the Father.

We must be able to show our oneness with God and our oneness with each other to the world.   We are supposed to be able to show them that we are of one mind, one soul, and we have singleness of heart.   As the kingdom of God, as the church of God, we cannot, borrowing the words of Elijah, falter between two opinions.  We cannot serve God and the world at the same time.  We cannot walk in the principles of the kingdom of God and at the same time walk in the principles of the world.  One cannot have fellowship with God and with belial or an idol. In Tagalog,  “Huwag mamangka sa dalawang ilog.” We cannot do this.  We are citizens of the Kingdom; we are citizens of heaven.   There is only one way and our goal is to go back where the Father is.  The Father is where there is life, light, righteousness, joy, peace, salvation and all the things of the kingdom of God.  This is where the Father is and this is where we are going.  Jesus says, “Where I am, there you may be also so that We can make our abode in you.” 

I was asked one time by a friend, a bishop, who is in the United States.  They watched the video of the sermon on the website and they have heard that we have left Sheridan.  They were asking how we were doing and one of their questions was, “How many followed from Sheridan?”  I said confidently or maybe naively or ignorantly or with hyper-faith, “Everybody!"  Why would somebody not follow?  In my mind and in my heart and I am convinced of this: we are not the Cathedral of Sheridan. We are the Cathedral of the King.  Where He is, there we are.  When we occupy a building, we give life to the building and the building finds its identity in us.  The Cathedral; the church of God; the kingdom of God; the citizens of heaven.

Why would somebody not follow?  Is he worshipping the building or is he worshipping God with the people of God?  All follow! I did not even think that some would not be where the Church is.  The Church is not the building; the Church is the people of God.  Where we are, that is the Church.

If you are one with someone, it is through thick and thin.  Sixteen years ago, my family moved out Merville and to Sucat which is also in Paranaque.  Then, all my family members moved with me – all of them followed.  They had to adjust; my wife had to adjust because she really struggled because I took her away from her Dental Clinic which was five minutes away from the house we lived in before.  If you are one, you stick together! This is how we show our oneness. The inconveniences don't matter. We have to build relationships; we are to show the authenticity, the genuineness of our being one.  This is the goal.

Jesus and the Father are one. His prayer is that we be one with each other and with Him, “Make us one with Thee and with each other.”  Sometimes, we have to adjust, but we are bigger than that.  Our love for each other must be bigger than anything, not that God’s purpose is to inconvenience us.  God is not an old man sitting on a big throne where every day, He is thinking how He will make life miserable for us.  God is not like this; He wants the best for us.  Sometimes, to get to the best, we need to be inconvenienced.  We need to learn certain things. I am here to tell you, borrowing God’s promise, I promise you that the best is yet to come because He wants the best for us.  Nobody else can give us anything better.

Many times, the problem with us is that we redefine words and understanding of certain things  changed.  One word is swerve. My understanding of that, prior to an encounter with a traffic enforcer, is to change lanes or direction abruptly or suddenly. To some traffic enforcers, it simply means you change lanes.   Another word is friend. How many friends do you have?  I have at least four hundred whom half I don’t even know.  For a friend, we sit at one table, face to face, and we spend two hours together having a meal and we only fellowship for one minute.  This is between looking down on our gadgets and posting our picture together.  They spend quality time together being on Facebook while having a meal.

We have redefined time.  Two o’clock in the afternoon is not really two o’clock in the afternoon.   It is usually after thirty minutes or an hour later.  We have redefined love. A young man would say to his girlfriend, “If you love me, you will do this for me.”  We have redefined marriage. We have to be vigilant on this in this nation.  Marriage is between a man and a woman.

I come to a word that I really wouldn’t want to be redefined and I want to be preserved: know.  Know or knowledge means more than just intellectual recognition of something.  It is relational and experiential.   It involves intimate communion and fellowship.  Know means to be one with.  In the Bible, it also means to be one flesh with.  In the German understanding, know doesn’t mean, “I know President Noynoy.”  You don’t know him because you don’t have a relationship with him.  A mother knows her son.  She raised him; she cleaned up his mess; and she fed him.  She knows him because she has a relationship with him.  A husband knows his wife because they have gone through crisis and problems and they worked them out together. They fought against each other; they kissed and made up.  This is knowledge; this is knowing somebody.  You don’t know your neighbor. You may know their name, certain traits of theirs, but you don’t know them because it is not in the Biblical sense of the word.

Know is what John said in his Epistle, “What we have heard, seen, smelled, touched, tasted – if I may add – whom we ministered with, whom we had been persecuted with, whom we almost sank in the boat with, whom we went on missions with and sent by, who trained us, who disciplined us, who rebuked us and corrected us, whose breast I rested my head on, this is who we proclaim to you.”   It is not somebody we googled, not somebody we studied in a theological school or not somebody we read about in the Internet. You just do not hear about him, but you have a relationship with him.  You know him.  This is a prerequisite to proclaiming God.  This is knowledge.

The Gospel was not proclaimed by word only but by spirit and power.  Spirit and power come from good witness of relationship and knowledge.  Remember that the purpose of Jesus going to the Father is to prepare a place for us so that we can be with Him and be one with Him.  John said his purpose was so that, “You may have fellowship with us or be one with us or know us and have communion with us because indeed, truly, genuinely, authentically, our fellowship, our oneness, our communion, our knowledge is with the Father and His Son.

Meditate on this:  as Christians, the power of our testimony or our witness is proportionate, commensurate to our knowledge of Who we proclaim.  The early Church turned the world upside down in their generation because they were one with each other and they were one with God.  John says, “These things we proclaim so that our joy maybe made complete.”  If we are one with God and we are one with each other, we will find our joy in the fruit of our proclamation of the Gospel.

Jesus’ own words, “Love one another.  Bring good news to one another. Stimulate each other to good deeds and obedience so that your joy may be full.” St. Paul said to his letter to the Thessalonians, “Now, we really live.  Now, we find full meaning in our lives because we know that you, the fruit of our labor, are standing firm in the faith.  Our joy is made full when we edify others and we bring them to the knowledge of God.   We are to bring good news so that our joy be made full.  Do not give bad reports.  In Tagalog, “Huwag magtsismis.”  Bring good news.  Bad reports, tsismis, are usually exaggerated and based on fear and ignorance of the truth of God’s promise. Sometimes, it is based on jealousy and other unfounded reasons.  Good news, good reports is what should come out of our mouths because we are the people of God.  We are to lift up, not tear down.  We are to build up, not to destroy.  You will not find joy in destroying others.  Never!  You will find fulfillment in edifying others.

Jesus says, “Love one another. Be one with each other and with God that your joy be made full.”  We are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s people.  We are to act on our prayer for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Why are we the people of God?  This is so that we can proclaim His praises by our oneness and by our love for Him and for each other.

This is the way it is in the kingdom of our God!

LET US CONTINUE OUR REFLECTION 

WITH

HIS EMINENCE, THE MOST REVEREND LUIS ANTONIO "CHITO" GOKIM TAGLE D.D.

ARCHBISHOP OF MANILA, 

CARDINAL OF HOLY MOTHER CHURCH

AND 

VENERABLE PRIMATE

OF THE PHILIPPINES

THROUGH

THE WORD EXPOSED

TOMAS AND PAQUITA

SCRUTATIO SCRIPTURAE

TOMAS AND PAQUITA

 SCRUTATIO FOR THE FOR THE 5^th SUNDAY OF THE CHRISTIAN PESACH/PASSOVER

Readings from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer

Acts 17:1-15 / Psalm 66:1-11 / I Peter 2:1-10 / John 14:1-14 

Readings for the Pauline/Vatican II Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Acts 6:1-7 / Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5 and 18-19/ I Peter 2:4-9 / John 14:1-12

Readings for the Tridentine Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Introit: Psalm 98:1-2 and 1

Epistle: James 1:17-21

Gradual and Alleluia: Psalm118:16 + Romans 6:9

Gospel

John 16:5-14

Offertory:

Psalm 66:1-2, 16

Communion Antiphon: John 16:8

Readings for the Tridentine Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Introit: Psalm 98:1-2 and 1 

Epistle: James 1:17-21  

Gradual and Alleluia: Psalm118:16 + Romans 6:9

Gospel 

John 16:5-14

Offertory:

Psalm 66:1-2, 16

Communion Antiphon: John 16:8

For today's SCRUTATIO, let us be challenged and encouraged by the lives of this Saintly Couple:

Biography of Tomas and Paquita Alviras

Tomás Alvira was born in Villanueva de Gallego, near Saragossa, on January 17, 1906, and died in Madrid on May 7, 1992. After earning a doctorate in chemistry, he taught at the Natural Science Institute in Madrid.

Paquita Dominguez was born in Borau, near Huesca, on April 1, 1912, and died in Mardrid on August 29, 1994. She worked as a high school teacher during the Spanish Civil War years. At the end of the war, on June 16, 1939, she and Tomás were married in Saragossa. They had nine children, the first of whom, Jose Maria, died at five years of age. The young family moved to Madrid in November 1941, where Tomás took up his teaching position at the Natural Science Institute.

Both were Supernumeraries of Opus Dei: Tomás since February 15, 1947, and Paquita since February 1, 1952. Faithful to the spirit of Opus Dei, they passed on to their children and to many other people their example of Christian life and marriage, of a “bright and cheerful home,” as St. Josemaria used to say.

They strove for sanctity through the heroic and persevering exercise of the Christian virtues. The Holy Mass was the center and root of their interior life. Assisted by divine grace and living in God’s presence, they imbued their ordinary daily activities with supernatural meaning.

Both suffered painful illnesses towards the end of their lives, and offered up their suffering with a deeply supernatural outlook. 

In today's society where the Sacrament of Marriage is degraded into a mere contract rather than a GOD-GIVEN AND LIFE-LONG COVENANT, and sex is merely used and abused for hedonistic purposes rather than A PLEDGE OF A LIFE-GIVING BOND, may we be CHALLENGED AND ENCOURAGED by this precious witness of these Servants of God!

LET US PRAY

God our Father, who poured out your grace on your servants Paquita and Tomás, so that they could live their marriage and professional and social obligations with a Christian spirit, send us the strength of your Love in order to spread in the world the marvelous reality of fidelity and holiness in marriage. Deign to glorify your servants and grant me through their intercession the favor that I ask … (Make request here.)

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be.

I CORINTHIANS 13

FROM OUR BRETHREN... A CHRISTIAN DENOMINATION THAT IS IN UNION WITH US IN OPPOSING THE FALLACIES OF THE RH/RP "LAW" AND THE OTHER DEATH BILLS: “The Gospel of Security”

“The Gospel of Security”

May 11, 2014

3^rd Sunday of the Great Christian Passover

Acts 6: 1-9; 7: 2a; 51-60/Psalm 23/1 Peter 2: 19 – 25/John 10: 1 – 10

His Excellency

The Most Reverend Ariel Cornelio P. Santos D.D.

Auxiliary Bishop and Locum Tenens

of the 

Archdiocese of Manila

the 

National Church in the Philippines 

and the 

Territorial Church of Asia

International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church

This is the Fourth Sunday of Easter.  This is also called Good Shepherd Sunday.  This year, it is also Mother's Day.  Mothers are in their own way and in their own right good shepherds. They provide; they lay their life down for their sheep. I don’t know of any mother personally that is not a good mother that “hindi ibibigay yung pagkain sa anak na isusubo na lang nila.”

Happy Mother’s Day!  We have something for you to honor you and your vocation. Do not ever belittle this vocation of motherhood.  It is no joke; it is a hard, difficult task to be a mother.  I haven’t done it yet, but I can see that it takes life.  Mothers give life and sustain it for the rest of their lives. Mothers fulfill Psalm 23 and John 10 and we salute them today!

As it is Good Shepherd Sunday, in Acts 6, what is the origin of the Deaconate Office got to do with being a good shepherd?  I would say, “Everything!”  Each of us in the Body of Christ is a servant.  Deacon means servant; minister; a waiter serving tables.  The need arose for the office to serve needs.  There was a need in the Church, in the Body of Christ as they were growing.  The name of this office is “servant.”

Thirty plus years ago, during President Marcos’ time, the Departments of the government were called Ministries – like Ministry of Education or Ministry of Public Works and Highways. The head guy is called Minister.  They were, then, ministries.  Somehow, in our history as a nation, we forgot that term.  The Ministries had workers called public servants and I don’t know the essence of the titles.

You and I are ministers. Don’t think that if you don't wear clerics or a collar that you are not a minister or a servant.   Deacons are not the only servants in the clergy.  All of us are.  I remember Patriarch Adler, in an ordination that I was with him, him being a bishop, was wearing a deacon’s stole.  He told me before the Mass started, "It is because all of us should not stop wearing a deacon’s stole because no one should stop being a servant.”  It doesn’t matter what you are called.  It doesn’t matter what your rank is.  We are all servants.  Each of us is a servant.  I told somebody after I was made Bishop that, “Underneath my vestments, I still try to remember that there should be an invisible deacon’s stole because we are all servants.”

In the CEC, you don’t become a priest or a bishop without first becoming a deacon.  Before you become a shepherd, you are first to become, in structure and in heart, a servant or a deacon.  It is a prerequisite or a requirement.  Shepherds must first be servants because otherwise they are hirelings who won’t give their life for the flock or for their sheep. The qualifications for a bishop, priest and deacon are practically the same.  We are to be servants.  If you are not one of those three, you have a legitimate office yourself.  You are called the “faithful” in the Body of Christ.  In the CEC, you are an ordained minister if you are baptized.  You are ordained for service not for gain.  It is for ministry and not for lording over.

Jesus said, “The greatest among you shall be a servant.” This is the definition of greatness in the kingdom of God.  We must always remember that we are first of all servants.  We are to serve and not to be served.  In his letter, Peter obviously knew that and of what comes with being a leader.  He was the first leader and he knew what it becomes to be a leader. You won't please everyone.  You need never to forget servanthood because if you forget servanthood, these other things will affect you.  Peter was encouraging the servants, the slaves, to submit to their masters even to those who are unreasonable.  This is coming from the encyclical of the first Pope: submit to your master, to your leader even if they are unreasonable.

In Acts 6, the need was there for a group of people that was obviously being overlooked.  The Hellenistic Jews complained that they were being overlooked in the serving of food.   This was in the midst of all the miracles and the signs and wonders taking place through the Church.  They were growing and becoming a big force in the known world then and they turned the world upside down in their generation.  This group of people was concerned about fewer shares than the other first class citizen Jews.  “Just because we are Greek Jews?”  They complained and Peter knew that in the midst of the Church’s phenomenal growth and impact.

The Israelites were like that too in Moses’ time.  In the midst of the deliverance and seeing that the ten plagues came up in Egypt and God’s mighty hand working in them and through them against their enemy, they complained.  You will always have people that even though there are blessings around, you will hear something.  You and I need to make them see that there are a lot more blessings than what they are complaining about.   We should not be guilty of it ourselves but we should be thankful. When we know how to count our blessings, we would realize that we have nothing to complain about. Peter said that even if you are experiencing something that is unreasonable and unjust and unfair to you, submit to God.

When I was made leader, I fervently asked God for help.  I vowed to give my all, my life for service in the Church.  Ironically, and I am not complaining, that is the time I started receiving criticisms like I never had before.   Before, I was just lackadaisical; but it comes with serving God.  He puts the tests and the challenges there to test the mettle of our servanthood.  It is all part of serving God.  I am just acknowledging this is the nature of serving God. It will not be a walk in the park.  Having said that, the blessing part still overwhelms that which we acknowledge as being there.

As your Bishop, I want to be known as a pastor.  I want to be known as a shepherd.  Not as a theologian, not as a good speaker, not as anything else. I would like to be known as somebody whom you could call a shepherd.  This is our calling.  It is not just people in leadership but all of us.    Peter says that we are called for this purpose to follow Christ, our Good Shepherd.  He says, “Do what is right and patiently endure reviling.”  Revile means verbal abuse.  You have to endure that. Do what is right; serve; do your ministry and fulfill it; and endure whatever comes.   We are here to serve like what Jesus came to do.  Jesus came to serve and not to be served.  He was reviled. He was sinless.  Nobody had reasonable right to revile Him. He was perfect.  He was reviled but He did not curse but instead, He blessed and forgave.  He was sinless and yet He took on the sins of the world.

This is our Good Shepherd.  He knows His sheep, what we go through.  He can empathize with us.  We don’t have a high priest that doesn’t know what we go through, which is why He also became incarnate and lived our life.   He was a baby; He peed in his diapers.  As a baby, He knew how it was to be helpless and totally dependent on His parents.  He knows all of us and what we go through.  Scriptures says, “Aren’t two sparrows sold for a cent, yet, not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s knowledge?”  This is our Good Shepherd. He knows what we go through and even the number of hairs in our head.  Some are easier to count than others. Can you imagine the details, the cares?  If He knows the number of strands of hair that we have on our head, wouldn’t He know about your job problems or your boss’ problem or your school subject’s problems or relationship problems?

Our Shepherd knows His sheep.  He calls us by name.  He can empathize with us. Actually, He knows us better than we do.  He knows what we can do that we think we cannot do.  He knows our abilities because He made us.  He calls us to lead us to green pastures and to quiet waters.  He leads us to abundant life.  This is why He came – that we may have life and have it more abundantly.  He provides for us.

The challenge is that we must learn to count our blessings. When we do, we would realize that many of them did not happen by accident.  Many of them are providential.  A couple of years ago, Fr. Adel, on one Daily Office of Morning Prayer, started this collection for the land.  Looking back, that was providential.  God is preparing us.  He did not just thought of this on one time that he was going to Church, “This would be a good idea. After all, some groups do this.” No, it was providential because God provides for us.

Look at your life, look back and see how God did some things which you did not even realize.  I am sure many times you thanked Him, but I bet you that you did not realize every time that it was God. Many of the things in our lives and the possessions we call our own, we got not because we earned them but because God provided for them.  It is God’s grace.  Never stop being thankful because this is our calling.

The Good Shepherd lays His life for the sheep and protects them in inclement weather and against wolves and bandits.  He lays His life down for them and He puts them in a fold.  There is a fold.  Another word for fold is the Church.  John 10 says that it is God’s will and Jesus desires to put all sheep in the fold.  His will is for sheep to be inside the fold.  The sheep knows the shepherd’s voice and follow Him.  May we be true sheep heeding His voice, familiar with His voice, obeying it and following it because then, we will find green pastures and quiet waters.

Like sheep, we think that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence of the fold. So we stray and jump over only to realize, “I should be back in the fold where God wants me. The Good Shepherd wants me.”   Outside the fold, you are outside the protection.  If God wills for us to be in the fold, I can tell you that He knows best.  Mothers come in second but God knows best. He wants us in the fold.

Psalm23 says, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”   We will not want if we stay within His will, His fold, and we obey His voice and follow Him.  He knows best.  He is our Shepherd and we are His sheep.  He restores our souls and guides us in the paths of righteousness.  Lest we misunderstand, His rod and His staff they comfort.  It is not to hurt. When fathers use the rod on their children, they are comforting them not hurting them. The staff, its hook goes around the neck and it is to get the sheep back into the fold.  If that doesn’t work, the shepherd breaks the leg of the sheep so as to keep it in the fold.  He doesn’t hurt it by doing that, but he comforts him.

The word “comfort” came from two root words; com which means with; fort which meansstrength and fortitude.  To comfort means to provide strength and to keep going.  It is not to make us feel good but to strengthen us so that we can face, not avoid, what we need to face even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  We do walk in the valley of the shadow of death.  Like sheep, we have this tendency to stray away from the fold.

Unfortunately, we, city dwellers, don’t understand sheep herding or shepherding.  We are not agricultural especially in the city.  It is not common in our world so we don’t see ourselves as meek, quiet, dumb, submissive animals.    We are sophisticated human beings.  We have the internet; we have the gadgets and the others. We are more like sheep than we care to admit because we stray thinking we know better. We are oblivious to anything but the grass around us here and now.  This is our only care.  We are short-sighted just like sheep.  We are not conscious or aware of ravenous wolves.  We need a shepherd to warn us and to make us see what we don’t see.  As we look down, we see grass and we eat and eat.   Sheep are ruminants- eating and eating without getting full.  They don’t see impending danger or threat or things that are not good for them. It is the shepherd that sees those things.

We must understand that we should follow David's words in Psalm 23.  “The Lord is my Shepherd.”   We must realize that He looks after us.  He is not just a shepherd but a Good Shepherd who would lay down His life for us.   This is why David says, “Surely goodness and mercy and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life.” This is because the Lord is his Shepherd and he is not in want of anything.   He finishes the Psalm by saying, “I will dwell in the fold, in the house of the Lord forever.”   This is where God commanded the blessing – in Zion, in the fold, in the Church, in the Body of Christ.

This is the Shepherd that we have.  Never ever think that you know better than He does.  Never ever stray away from Him and never ever disregard His instructions and His leading.  God only wants the best for us.

I repeat the last verse in the gospel today, “Jesus came not to steal, kill or destroy but He came so that we might have life.”  The life that He mentioned was not a life that we think life consists – of material things, fame, wealth and all the other things that is short of the abundant life that He wants for us.  These are things that our money cannot buy – peace, blessings, relationships, happiness, joy and even the joy that comes from, in the first place, in serving others.

Mothers can tell you this.  I am a parent myself, but they can tell you that despite all of what they say about the difficulties of being a parent, particularly a Mother, the joy far, far exceeds the challenges.  I have six children and I would not rather have fewer than six at this point.  I have seen the challenges. My house is normally with constant sound and noise.  When it is not there, I miss it. It is different.  Am I complaining?  Am I saying that this is something bad?  No, it is part of the joy.  It is part of what God wants for us.  It is part of the abundant life.  When you give life, you reap life.  When you serve, that is when you become the greatest.

This is the Good Shepherd Sunday.  We are to look at our Shepherd, not only so that we can depend on Him, but so that that we can follow His steps because this is the way it is in the kingdom of our God.

LET US CONTINUE OUR REFLECTION 

WITH

HIS EMINENCE, THE MOST REVEREND LUIS ANTONIO "CHITO" GOKIM TAGLE D.D.

ARCHBISHOP OF MANILA, 

CARDINAL OF HOLY MOTHER CHURCH

AND 

VENERABLE PRIMATE

OF THE PHILIPPINES

THROUGH

THE WORD EXPOSED

PSALM 23

LEON

SCRUTATIO SCRIPTURAE

LEON

SCRUTATIO FOR THE FOR THE 4^th SUNDAY OF THE CHRISTIAN PESACH/PASSOVER

Readings from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer

Acts 6:1-9 and 7:2,51-60 / Psalm 23 / I Peter 2:19-25 / John 10:1-10

Readings for the Pauline/Vatican II Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Acts 2:14a and 36-41 / Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5 and 6 / I Peter 2:20b-25 / John 10:1-10

Readings for the Tridentine Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Introit: Psalm 66:1-2 and 3 

Epistle: I Peter 2:11-19  

Gradual and Alleluia: Psalm 111:9 and Luke 24:26

Gospel 

John 16:16-22

Offertory: 

Psalm 146:2

Communion Antiphon: John 16:16

I would like to share with you this article from Crises Magazine:

Léon Harmel: Pioneer of the Just Wage

by Christopher O. Blum

You could call the nineteenth century stupid, but hardly dull. At its birth, it was the stage for Napoleon’s antics and for the heroism of the captains of wooden ships; at its death, the old Europe itself was giving way before the hard, cold era of aluminum, centralized planning, and the IRS. Sure, it was an age that liked its gauzy paintings and dolled-up houses, but this Victorian sentimentality can be understood as a kind of by-product, a clinging to comforting certainties amidst seismic changes. “To live is to change,” Newman once said, “and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Of the many innovations of the nineteenth century, the least equivocal were in engineering, the most in the arts and philosophy. Thanks to Michael Faraday, among others, we have electric lights. Thanks to Beethoven and Nietzsche, among others, we have rock music and deconstructionism. Much harder to think through are the century’s innovations in the world of human organization and social life. In the wake of World War II, it was common for Catholics to view the nineteenth-century nation-state as a kind of political heresy. Today, however, some pine for the good old days of nationalism, seeing it as at least preferable to the etherized dreams and painful mandates of the world-planners.

Buried deep within that confusing world of nineteenth-century political and economic organization is a man who, when remembered at all, is filed away as a conservative or a reactionary—and perhaps with some cause—but who by temperament and achievement should be lauded as a healthy innovator.  He was the modern re-inventor of the family wage, Léon Harmel, owner of the woolen mill at Val-des-Bois.

Harmel (1829-1915) was born late in the reign of Charles X, the last of France’s legitimate kings. From his devout parents he inherited his conservative politics and also a factory, which he would manage, with the help of brothers and cousins, from 1854 until the German occupation in 1915. Located in the countryside just miles outside of Reims, the factory of Val-des-Bois was, for a season, a Catholic workers’ paradise. In an age that gave birth to such characters as Dickens’s Gradgrind and Hugo’s Javert, Harmel stood out for his humanity. He devoted his life to the well-being of his workers, materially, culturally, and spiritually, and rightly earned their admiration and respect.

It was no small task to run a successful textile mill in northern France in the second half of the nineteenth century. There was extraordinary competition near at hand; failed mills literally dotted the landscape, and those that survived bore their scars. Other challenges included such daunting factors as cheap English products, unreliable commodities—as during the American Civil War when cotton supplies all but dried up, a bewildering array of ever-changing tariffs and trade laws, at times an insufficient labor supply, near-constant technological change, and, finally, even fire. In 1874, Harmel’s factory almost burned to the ground, but the flames went no further than the feet of the statue of Notre-Dame de l’Usine (Our Lady of the Factory). Not only did Harmel have Our Lady to thank for having saved the part of the factory she did, but also for providing an occasion for him to modernize his operation, which may have saved the firm.

A businessman through and through, Harmel knew that profit was industry’s life’s blood: there could be no sustainable effort without it. He did not flinch from tough decisions and risks, trying out new products, making ventures into foreign markets—even once to Argentina, and sinking substantial investments into both capital improvements and the training of his workers. A brother with a knack for design supplied bright ideas in threads and cloth, but Léon himself used his gift of a lively moral imagination to shape the human side of the factory community.

To be a factory worker in those days was a tough lot. Early on in the French Revolution, the trade guilds of the Old Regime had been disbanded and a draconian law against workers’ associations passed. It remained on the books until 1884 and made collective bargaining impossible. Workers were very much at the mercy of their employers, who were, in turn, waging an increasingly bitter war for profits that led them to make demands that hardly seem human. How incredible it is that men really worked 15 hour days and women 13; that children slaved away almost as long and even before reaching adolescence; that it was ordinary for the interior temperature of certain parts of a textile mill to be over 100 degrees. And all this for a pittance in wages. Truly, the past is a foreign country.

And so, when we hear that Léon Harmel’s factory was kept at 75 degrees, that his workers toiled only 11 hours per day, and that many of them lived in company housing whose only adornment was a modest garden, we have a standard of reference. Still more important was Harmel’s dedication to the overall well-being of his laborers. He provided for their retirement, for the education of their children, for a suitable use of leisure time (with drama, symphony, and chorus), and, most importantly, he built them a beautiful stone chapel, where, within a decade and a half, he saw a 70% rate of Easter communion among his workers—an extraordinary figure for the working class at the time, and, crucially, achieved without compulsion. “Accounts are unanimous,” says Harmel’s biographer, Professor Joan Coffey, “that chapel attendance as well as participation in religious events in general was a matter of individual choice.”

Harmel’s goal was, as he once put it, to “baptize industry and make it the servant of Jesus Christ.” He pursued that ideal by a heroic practice of the virtue of justice. At the very center of that practice was his policy of a just wage, a wage that would be—again, in his words—“proportionate to [the laborer’s] work and as sufficient as possible to support his needs and those of his family.” This policy did not mean a fairy-tale pay scale. In point of fact, a man could earn more in nearby Reims, but only at the cost of either living in the city, which was more expensive, or trudging home to the countryside after a back-breaking work day that started at five in the morning. Not much of a choice. But the measure of his family wage can perhaps be seen in this fact, that over time his workers were able on average to put away 10% of their salaries for the needs of their retirement, and this in an age when workers’ savings were almost unheard-of. Harmel also rewarded merit with increased pay, and, as was customary, paid men significantly more than women. Finally, in the face of a downturn in the industry after 1900, he stood by his men, thinning the ranks of the factory mostly through retirement rather than lay-offs. The earthly reward of this justice? A good work is its own reward: he kept alive a factory employing between 375 and 675 people for over half a century. It was a solid achievement in a world characterized by flux and impermanence.

What was the secret of Harmel’s dedication? He was a devout man, to be sure. A Franciscan tertiary, he devoted himself single-mindedly to his children and his factory after the death of his wife when he was only 41. He took vows of chastity, obedience to his spiritual director, and poverty, which last he expressed by personal austerities such as giving up smoking, which had been habitual.

Yet we must not overlook this crucial fact: Harmel trusted in his people. In 1898 he gave a speech to the veteran laborers of his factory, praising them in these terms: “Thanks to your good spirit and your confidence in your leaders, we have been able to establish factory councils . . . giving you a real participatory role in the governance and the discipline of the establishment.” This was to take a great step and certainly a risky one. Was he similarly adventuresome with his management team? We will probably never know, but it seems that a man who became a diplomat of Catholic social thinking and organized and led worker pilgrimages to Rome—including one with 10,000 French laborers—was likely to have confided much of the day-to-day workings of the factory to the brothers and cousins who shared the management with him. What is certain is that Léon Harmel sought profit for his business for the sake of his people, for whom he generously poured out his money, time, and effort. And so, we can safely say that he possessed the essential and irreplaceable advantage shared by the best entrepreneurs: a trust in God’s Providence at work in the unpredictable power of human creativity.

Offering our family life, our educational endeavors as well as our industries, together with our lives as a LIVING SACRIFICE-ROMANS 12:1  

This is the the very LIFE AND WORK of MR. LEON HARMEL…

THIS IS THE CHALLENGE OF OUR NEW LIFE IN CHRIST!

CHILDREN OF EASTER MORNING, WHAT IS OUR RESPONSE?