Click here for more info on the Black Nazarene.
Click here for more info on the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. ACT OF CONTRITION Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, I am heartily sorry for having sinned against You and my neighbor. You are my Lord and my God whom I love above all things. Help me not to sin again, and lead me to a new life of grace. I trust in Your loving forgiveness. READING (John 19:16-18) Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified. Jesus, carrying the cross himself, went out to a place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotta. There they crucified him, and with him two others one on either side, Jesus in the middle. SILENT REFLECTION LITANY Response:Have mercy and save me. Lord Jesus, Your blood washed away my sins and the sins of the world. (R)
Lord Jesus, Your blood formed like sweat and fell to the ground at Gethsemane. (R)
Lord Jesus, Your blood flowed out while you were scourged at the pillar. (R)
Lord Jesus, Your blood covered Your face at the crowning of thorns. (R)
Lord Jesus, Your blood was shed at Your crucifixion. (R)
Lord Jesus, Your blood is a river of mercy and forgiveness. (R) (Here mention your petitions)
Our Father...Hail Mary...Glory be... .
May almighty God bless us all, the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
(Click here to read about my experience at the Fiesta of the Black Nazarene.)
A prayer based on the Book of Wisdom9: 1-6, 9-11 (Morning Prayer: Week 3, Saturday)
Heavenly
Father, we thank You for giving us this opportunity to gather here to pray. We thank You Lord for creating all things and made each one of us in Your
image and likeness, and in Your infinite wisdom, chose to make all people as a
part of Your eternal plan.
Father,
we acknowledge that without You, we are as nothing. We earnestly beg You
Father, to give us the wisdom we need, the same wisdom that You have revealed
in Your Son Jesus Christ, that we too may be like Him in word and deed. Send Your
wisdom from Your holy heavens Lord, so that wisdom may work by our side and that we may learn what pleases You and wisdom
would guide us intelligently in all that we do and say.
We
ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. AMEN.
Mother Mary, the Seat of Wisdom…….Pray for us. Amen.
I find it so fitting
that John and Mary has chosen this day to get married; the weekend where the
Catholic Church celebrates the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. It is my
desire and hope and I strongly believe that as you listen and reflect on the
homily you would understand why I had said that it is fitting that this couple
has chosen this day to make their commitment to each other. Pope Saint John Paul II in his 1994 Letter to
Families suggested to the various families in the world to take the Trinity as
a model of Family. I quote; “In the light of the New Testament it is possible
to discern how the primordial model of the family is to be sought in God
himself, in the Trinitarian mystery of His life. The divine ‘We’ is the eternal
pattern of the human ‘we’, especially of that ‘we’ formed by the man and the
woman created in the divine image and likeness.” Now in a simple way for you
John and Mary, what St. John Paul II is saying is that in their marital relationship,
a man and a woman can together image the Most Holy Trinity, definitely in a
limited human way. So basically your marriage life should draw you into the
life of a Triune God.Taking the
Trinitarian life as your model in marriage, your marriage life not only follow
this perfect example of unity and community but to participate actively in this
Trinitarian life it would also mean that you two would have to use your
individual and couple gifts as followers of the Trinity in the work of
Salvation.
The Trinity is founded
in love. It is so appropriate to listen to the reading taken from 1John 4:7-12
that you two have chose for your wedding. The statement ‘God is Love’ is
Trinitarian; only because God is love can God self-communicate to us as love
(Kasper). Our life is meaningful only when our love mirrors the love of the
Trinity.The theologian Richard of St.
Victor explains that ‘When one person gives love to another and he alone loves
only the other, there certainly is love, but it is not shared love. When two
love each other mutually and give to each other the affection of supreme
longing; there is certainly is love on both sides, but it is not shared love
either. Shared love is properly said to exist when a third person is loved by
two persons harmoniously and in community, and the affection of the two persons
is fused into one affection by the flame of love for the third.’ From here, we can
see now that the Trinity becomes a model of love too. St. Augustine once
explained that the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son. The Holy
Spirit then, as the spirit of love of the Father and of the Son, transforms the
love of man and woman into part of the Trinitarian love which is the very being
of God. ‘Just as in the Trinity where the Father and Son bring forth the Spirit
by their love, so too marital love is open to another who proceeds from the
mutual love of the husband and wife’ (Gallagher) and here we are definitely
talking about the procreation of children, in a way we see that it parallels
the creative and nurturing dimensions of the Trinity. Of course this particular
and special fruitfulness of marriage has been the dominant aspect emphasized by
the church but this fruitfulness is not limited to generativity. The creative result of a marriage though has been highlighted by the church as generativity can also be a shared purpose of a life project between the two of you. I hope the two of you had discussed about your ambitions, visions, dreams and plans as a family.
‘The relationship among
the Persons of the Trinity is marked by equality of personhood, interdependence
(not independence), cooperation (not competition), unity of purpose, and mutual
self-giving and receiving’ (Martin Davis). Moreover, the relationship among the
divine Persons in the Trinity is so close and intimate that they are said to ‘mutually
indwell’ one another (perichoresis).
At this junction here I find it very appropriate to quote the United States
Bishops’ Conference in their pastoral letter entitled ‘Marriage – Love and Life in the
Divine Plan’ “First, like the Persons
of the Trinity, marriage is a communion of love between co-equal persons,
beginning with that between husband and wife and then extending to all members
of the family…. This communion of life-giving love is witnessed within the life
of the family, where parents and children, brothers and sisters, grandparents
and relatives are called to live in loving harmony with one another and to
provide mutual support to one another…. These relations among the persons in
communion simultaneously distinguish them from one another and unite them to
one another…. Therefore, just as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are
distinctly who they are only in relation to one another, so a man and a woman
are distinctly who they are as husband and wife only in relation to one
another. At the same time, in a way analogous to the relations among Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, which unites the three persons as one God, the
inter-relationship of the husband and wife make them one as a married couple….
The Trinitarian image in marriage and family life can be seen in a second way.
Just as the Trinity of persons is a life-giving communion of live both in
relationship to one another and to the whole of creation, so a married couple
shares in this life-giving communion of love by together procreating children
in the conjugal act of love…”
Dear John and Mary, immediately after making
your vows, you both no longer would participate as individuals but as a couple.
The other married couples gathered here to witness your marriage can testify to
this that in a marriage there is constantly mutual giving and receiving.In all
that you do, in your decisions, you have to consider the other. Love consists
of self-giving and receiving, a lot of sacrifices. Here meaning that each of
you would be putting the needs of the other before one’s own.“In marriage, man
and woman can complement each other in a mutual way by making decisions
together and sharing roles. This shared life pattern is an expression of the
couples’ love and mutuality; it shines from and contributes to their ongoing
marital relationship’ (Denis Toohey). In this living out of mutual giving and receiving
the married couple most closely resembles the Trinity. Just as their
relationality gives meaning to the three divine persons, it is the process of
becoming one flesh that gives meaning and purpose to a marriage as we have
heard in the short Gospel text taken from Matthew 19: 4b-6 chosen for the
wedding today. The persons in the relationship are equal, there is no
hierarchy.“In any form of true community and especially so of the Trinity and
of marital relationship, the focus is on the other, not oneself; persons relate
as equals in personhood, regardless of talents or rights” (LaCugna). I am sure
that all of us gathered here, can see the expressions of love that both of you
have for each other. The love that you express especially when you make your
marital vows, forms a unity; a communion of love. In the Trinity, there is love
so perfect that the result is perfect unity, one God, and this perfect communion
of love is what that you two must always remember and continue to aspire. In
sacramental terms, the presence of the Trinity, already bestowed on you through
the grace at baptism, is now effected in the Christian marriage in a new
manner, as a joint communion of both of you and your participation in the
Trinitarian love.
The Vatican II
document, Gaudium et Spes, n.48,
marriage is described as ‘an intimate partnership of life and love’. Within the
unity, there is profound intimacy and as I mentioned earlier, this intimacy is
described as ‘mutually indwell’ in the Trinity. The intimacy within marriage
refers to much more than only conjugal union and is achieved through the self
giving in love. “Intimacy in marriage involves an overlapping of space, a
willingness to be influenced and openness to the possibility of change’
(Whitehead). John and Mary, I have been using the model of the Trinity to show
you that marital relationships are to be like the Trinitarian relationship.
While the Trinitarian relationships are eternal, the marital relationship is
forever. This is the commitment that the two of you are about to make. “Your
irrevocable commitments in mutual surrender reflect the unbreakable fidelity of
God within the Trinity and to those whom God loves outside it” (Hogan and Le
Voir).
I hope that this homily
not only finds a place in the married life of John and Mary but also to all
those gathered here to witness this bond between them, let it be to those
already married and those who are thinking of getting married. By modeling and
patterning your marriages on this perfect example of unity and community, I
hope your marriages fulfill the vocation in bringing about the reign of the
Trinitarian God, not only in your married life and family but also through your
witness to the love of God in the world. We pray that John and Mary and all
married couples do not only image and model the Trinity but also participates
in the Trinitarian life and work of salvation reaching out to all people who
come in their way.
I believe all of us do not like ‘waiting’ though waiting seems to be part of
life. It is like we spend more than half our lives waiting. We have this
culture that has slip into our way of life now; that is, we want everything instantly;
we want quick answers to all questions and problems! This is why waiting is so
hard. We can get annoyed with the long queue at the MRT/LRT stations, the
lengthy checkout lines at the store. We get frustrated by long red traffic
lights. Because waiting seems to be part of our life now, many of us spend a
lot of time waiting. We wait for a baby to be born, and then we wait for them
to be grown up and be steady in life. We wait for someone who is late and we
wait for time to go by. Travelers wait for buses and planes, students wait for
exam result and workers wait for 5pm to go back home or waiting for vacation
time. We even have waiting rooms and waiting lines nowadays. But many a times,
whatever we are waiting for shows up sooner or later. And when that happens,
wow! such great satisfaction, relief and joy that we experience then.
In the Gospel today, we see two elderly people, Simeon and Anna who spent their
whole life in and around the temple in Jerusalem and like us they too were
waiting. What were they waiting for we ask? From our Gospel readings we see
they were waiting for what Luke called ‘the
consolation of Israel’. They teach us that there is something worth waiting
for. Luke in his Gospel describes Simeon as just, pious and the Holy Spirit was
upon him. As for Anna, a widow, she is a prophetess who was constantly in the
temple, worshiping day and night in fasting and prayer. Now, they like the
rest of the Jew prayed and hope that the Messiah would come and bring peace and
comfort (‘consolation of Israel’). ‘The
Consolation of Israel’ is a reference for Jesus and is a frequent theme found
in Isaiah 40-66. Isaiah says the Messiah would come and so they were waiting
for him. And this sometimes is what God is inviting us to do too, to wait. Yes,
waiting for the Lord can be difficult, but it is not a passive activity like
waiting for a dentist or waiting for a surgery where we feel so nervous or in
anxiety. For us Christians, waiting on the Lord is an act of faith.
The Jews were waiting for the Messiah to deliver them from the Roman rule,
and who would conquer the enemies of Israel. But Simeon and Anna who waited
patiently on the Lord with prayer, fasting and in faith recognized that the
Messiah has come and instead of coming to crush the gentiles as expected by the
rest of the Jews, the child Jesus is the ‘light
to the Gentiles’ and He is going to ‘deliver
Israel’ and the rest of the world through His passion, death and
resurrection. He is going to defeat sin and death. So how then was Simeon and
Anna able to see it this way and not the rest of the Jews? This is because
they waited on the Lord in faith.All
their lives they waited quietly and patiently upon God.
So what are we waiting for then? What are we looking forward to? Is it to
settle in life and getting married? Maybe having a child? Is it that next vacation?
Or getting that promotion at work? Maybe retirement? Or to pursue a higher degree
or to finally completing studies?All of these things are good things to wait for. All of these things are good
things to accomplish in life. All of these things are blessings from God. But
real contentment in life comes from knowing what to look forward to, from
knowing what to wait for.
Simeon and Anna knew what to wait for. They waited
for and looked forward to Christ’s first coming. And similarly, we are to wait
for Christ’s Second Coming. The New Testament tells us over and over that we
should eagerly wait and anxiously look for the blessed appearing of our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. Living with this in mind, knowing that Jesus could
come today, or tomorrow, causes us to live with the right priorities. It causes
us to live with eternity in focus. It causes us to do things that will matter
for eternity, rather than just for next week. We wait for the day we can
finally be with the Lord eternally. Until we are finally together again with
the Lord, let us, like Simeon and Anna, wait for the Lord in prayer and be
ready to do His will when He calls.
Each time during January, I used to read the reports on
the tremendous procession of the Black Nazarene. At times there would also be
tv news reports on the event and never did I imagined that in my life time I
would be witnessing the event or even participate in it. Since coming to the
Philippines in May 2012, I have made it a point to go and pray at the Minor Basilica
of the Black Nazarene and now I can be considered a devotee to the Black
Nazarene too. (Here they say; “Hijos del Senor Nazareno” – ‘Sons of the Lord
Nazarene’. Very often (at most times monthly),
I would make my own pilgrimage to the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene,
Quipo, Manila, bringing with me all the prayer intentions of the people I know,
who have asked me to pray for them. In 1880 Pope Pius VII gave the statue his
Apostolic Blessing which granted plenary indulgence to those who piously pray
before it.
On January 08-09, 2014, I had the opportunity to be
participating in the event. The best part of this is that, I would be very
close to the altar where the Mass would take place and where the statue of the
Black Nazarene would be. As a seminarian I was given the privilege to serve as an
extraordinary minister of communion. It was a meaningful task for me, and I
would elaborate further on this later. The mass was held at the Quirino
Grandstand, Luneta, at the very same place 19 years before, I had participated
in the great gathering of 5 million youths with Pope John Paul II, i.e. The
1995 World Youth Day.
As I mentioned earlier, I was given the task to serve as
an extra-ordinary minister of communion for the mass in the evening of January
08. I was directed to distribute the communion at a far corner where devotees were
gathered for the Mass. At that place, I could also smell strong stench of
urine. Not that the toilets were nearby, but it was due to the huge crowd and
long wait that some people might have relieved themselves there. If you had been to slums or to any areas or
even on people who do not care for hygiene or not able to clean themselves,
this stench would be very familiar!!
While standing with the ciborium waiting to distribute Holy
Communion, I reflected that the Lord who is now present in the Holy Eucharist
that I was holding came down as a human to be among them. It was indeed an
‘Emmanuel’ experience; God ‘pitching his tent among His people’ (Is. 7:14 / Mt.
1:23). My heart was then soften, that instead of feeling uncomfortable due to
the strong smell, I was now joyfully ‘distributing the Lord through the Holy
Eucharist to His people’. For as we see
in the Gospels, Jesus came to the world to serve all people especially the
poor, the broken hearted, those ostracize and the sick (Lk.4:18-19). So with a loud proclamation, I profess to the
people ‘The Body of Christ’ (Lk. 22:19) as I distribute the Holy Communion and
the people with conviction that ‘It is the Lord’ (Jn 21:7) who came as man and
died to save them all and He is now present in the Holy Eucharist; replies
‘Amen’.
I stayed over at the Quirino Grandstand after the evening
Mass. Even though there was place for us seminarians who stayed over to rest or
lay the head a little while, I just could not. Seeing the ‘church’ (the lay
faithful) awake and in vigil with the Lord, how can I rest! I then watched some
performance by the youths, listened to the parish priest and a Jesuit priest
who has a great devotion to the Black Nazarene share their experiences and
stories of miracles attributed to the Black Nazarene. When my companions were
tired and wanted to rest a while, I then decided to go on my own to the back of
the stage to look at the flow of the crowd going to touch the statue with
utmost reverence. I was moved, just by looking at those devotees expressing
themselves. I shared in their feelings. When I saw tears, I too shed my tears.
When I saw faces of joy and accomplishment for having being able to persevere
and braving the long queue and now finally being able to venerate the statue, I
too was happy and shared in their joy. I just could not leave the place where I
was standing watching all this, for it was a sight to behold. It was a sacred
moment for me especially in that sacred place. The Holy Scripture came alive.
All of them wanting to touch the cloak of the statue and this reminded me of
the incident in the bible where a woman touched the cloak of Jesus and she was
healed because of her faith in Him (Mk.5: 25-34). I also saw mothers and
fathers, interceding for their children and this reminded me of the incident in
Mk 7:24-30. I saw two men carrying a lame man up the many steps so that he may be
able to venerate the Black Nazarene, something very similar we see in Lk 5:
17-26.Watching all this, I could not
hold myself but to cry with them and join them in their prayers. I then moved
away to another angle to behold the face of Jesus the Black Nazarene. I cried
even more and asked the Lord to bless us all including my family and friends
who have asked me to pray for them and also to give thanksgiving to the Lord
for the healing and successful operation of my aunt who months earlier was
diagnosed with cancer. I had offered her up to Black Nazarene during my monthly
pilgrimage to the Minor Basilica at Quipo and the Lord had answered that
prayers together with the many prayers that I was asked to pray for. I had recently bought her a statue of the Black Nazarene as a
Christmas gift. Now looking at the face of Jesus carrying the cross, I could
see LOVE. Jesus has so much love for each and every one of us that he willingly
took up the cross, suffered and died for us (Jn.10:18). He is ‘the lamb of God
who takes away the sins of the world’ (Jn.1:29). I also prayed that I may persevere
and be faithful in this journey towards the priesthood and one day soon be a
priest after the heart of Jesus who is filled with love for all people.
I know many people including priests and seminarians were not happy that the
mass were interrupted and had to be concluded in the sacristy due to the
massive crowd breaking through the barricade so as to be nearer to the statue’s
carriage known as ‘andas’ or ‘carosa’
so that during the procession they can be near to the statue of the Black
Nazarene. I too wished that it could be avoided but what I saw there was as
mentioned in John 6:14-15; ‘When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is
truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off
to make him king…’ Yes, clearly there should be more catechesis for the
people and it is the responsibility of the very ones (priest and seminarians
included) who had shook the head when the ‘mob took charge’!Since
now this situation seems to be an yearly occurrence and the crowds are
increasing every year, so I would like to offer a suggestion that instead of having
the procession (traslación)
immediately after the mass, there could just be a ‘para-liturgy’ or a service
to begin the procession instead. The mass can be in the evening the day before
or hours before the procession, anyway there are masses taking place hourly at
the basilica at the same time, so I feel a liturgical service to begin the
procession should be sufficient and can be meaningful and then can conclude with a
thanksgiving high-mass when the statue arrives at the Minor Basilica.
I
praise and thank God for giving me this opportunity to experience this largest
procession in the Philippines and I believe in the world; the annual
commemoration of the ‘Traslacion’ of the image of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno
(aka Black Nazarene). For more information on the Minor Basilica of the Black
Nazarene click here.
The hymn Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno was composed by Lucio San Pedro to honour the Black Nazarene. It is used by the Minor Basilica as the official anthem of the devotion and its associated rites.
SILENT REFLECTION
