If you want to be happy

"  If you want to be happy,
     Begin where you are,
Don't wait for some rapture
     That's future and far.
Begin to be joyous, begin to be glad
     And soon you'll forget.
That you were ever were sad."  

I went to the McCloud Post Office on Saturday morning to get my mails. I saw a smiling face of an elderly man sitting on a car parked in front of the post office.  I see this man every morning when I go to work there during the week days.  He usually comes all by himself and driving his own car to get his mails.  But on this particular day, he was with two ladies, one driving the car and the other seated at the back seat.  Since we know each other by face I went nearer to say hi and greet them.  Bursting with joy, the man said to me, these are my daughters, they came to visit me.  Then I said, "   Oh, I am so happy for you, have a nice day!"    For me, moments like this are unique and rare in life.  My joy in my job today is that each morning I meet different kinds of people who live in this little old mill town. Most often I will receive a compliment like, "  This place smells so neat and clean!"   or "  You are doing a great job!"    And my heart will sing a song of joy and gratitude to God and I will celebrate another day of having done God's most perfect will, to be the best I can be as His hands and feet in the world. Happiness is being attuned to what is true, good and beautiful in life as gifts of God, the giver of life and the designer of all creation.  One needs eyes to see, ears to hear, soul to perceive the innumerable sparkles of joys that abound in the here and now.
Yesterday, I went with a group of friends for a sailing trip at Lake Almanor.  While my friends were sharing things about their family life, I took time to get some photos and to contemplate.  My memory brought me to that scene in the gospel when Jesus walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and called his first disciples.  He said, "  Come, follow me"  .  They left everything and followed Him.  And the found the real joy they were seeking for in life.  I have that same experience many many years ago when I was still a college student and I was watching the beautiful sunset at Manila Bay, Philippines.  I heard the same call and began my journey of discipleship.  When we were going home from that sailing trip, while we were driving home in the darkness of the night, I was telling my friend, Lynn E., that lake reminded me of stories in the gospel of Jesus making a trip with his disciples to the lake.  They too were busy and tired after doing the Father's business of spreading the good news.  They need to relax and be by themselves to sail, to rest, to pray.  And after they got rejuvenated they went on to spread the good news to other towns and villages. These days I am learning to be gentle with myself and to relish the simple joys of daily life as I continue to seek the face of God in the moments of each new day.  I work to earn my living and rest, relax and pray to balance my life.  I have always the greatest joy to spend quality time with my wife Marl on a daily basis as we abide to our motto:  "  Love will always find a way."  in terms of communication and other important foundations of married life.  In my apartment, I have a door post which says, "  It is better to give than to receive"   .  I keep giving myself in many ways of service to others and also treasure what life gives to me every day.  I always tell my wife, let us be contented with what we have, everything comes from God as blessings!



"  The way to be happy is to make others happy.
Helping others is the secret of all success ---
in business, in the arts and in the home."  

Courage to Change

Any day we wish, we can discipline ourselves to change it all.  Any day we wish, we can open the book that will open our mind to new knowledge.  Any day we wish, we can start a new activity.  Any day we wish, we can start the process of life change.  We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

We can also do nothing.  We can pretend rather than perform.  And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are.  We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence.  The choices are ours to make.  But while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause.  As Shakespeare uniquely observed, "The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves."  We created our circumstances by our past choices.  We have both the ability and the responsibility to make better choices beginning today.

Those who are in search of the good life do not need more answers or more time to think things over to reach better conclusions.  The need the truth.  They need the whole truth.  And they need nothing but the truth.

We cannot allow our errors in judgment, repeated every day, to lead us down the wrong path.  We must keep coming back to those basics that make the biggest difference in how our life works out.  And then we must make the very choices that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives.

And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and needing to make changes in their life - If you don't like how things are, change it!  You're not a tree.  You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life - and it all begins with your very own power of choice.

              From Change Begins with Choice by Jim Rohn

Personal Reflection: 

   

In my very own personal life, I have a lot changes and still some more changes are in the offing.  What is important for me now is be very wise and prudent in making those choices that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives as pointed out by Jim Rohn.  Indeed, we can make choices that can manufacture our joy, or choices that can create misery.  It is really a great gift to have this freedom to choose.  To use this freedom of choice in a responsible and loving way makes a lot of difference.

A Dream - A Blue Vestment

I had a good sleep last night and I had a dream.  I was vested with a blue vestment for some kind of a liturgical service.  My companions were looking for some kind of white or red vestment, but they cannot find one.  So I settled with the blue one.


Personal Prayer/Reflection:
Today is Good Friday. My wife said to me early this morning over the phone that it is flaming hot in Manila as far as climate is concerned. Whereas here in MCCLOUD, California we are having a snow storm and it is expected to reach up to 8 inches of snow. I went to work this morning and went back home immediately to keep myself safe. I don't know if we can have the Good Friday liturgy at St. Barnabas, but hopefully they will give me a call about it. As I thought and ponder about my dream, I remember the Blessed Virgin Mary. In her portraits she is always arrayed with blue colored or white vestments. The vestment I wore in my dream was similar to what she usually wears, a blue vestment dotted with some stars. I just write this dream so I will not forget it this time. I have a beautiful, serene and peaceful feeling after the dream. Fr. Ted Ridgway, the Priest-In-Charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Mt. Shasta, California saw me having some quiet prayerful moment just before our celebration of the Agape Meal and Eucharist yesterday evening, Maundy Thursday. He smiled at me and said that he mailed a letter containing a very favorable recommendation that he and Larry Holben made about me to Bishop Barry Beisner, our Diocesan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California, USA. He said, he and Larry Holben will meet up with Bishop Barry on April 15,2010 and he will make a follow up to his letter. In my dream, I was vested with a blue vestment and I tried to understand few things about it. One of the things I received as an insight is that as a servant of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary has been always there in my life. I got ordained to the Catholic priesthood on September 7,1990 on the eve of the celebration of the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The ordination was done in a shrine dedicated to her name, The EDSA Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace in Mandaluyong City, Philippines. That was almost 20 years ago. Now I have left the Catholic Church and joined the Episcopal Church. I am a married man now and doing some active service in our church every Sunday as a Lay Eucharistic Minister, with a certain hope to be re-accepted and commissioned as a priest of the Episcopal Church. The dream gave me a new vision of what kind of discipleship will I have in the Episcopal Church. It will be one according to the heart and spirit of the Mother of God. Today as I pause and take a good reflection at what happened in Calvary on Good Friday, I see the image of Mary as the one who is also having the greatest of pain and suffering, the loss of her son Jesus. My heart goes all out in unity and love to all those who lost their loved one's. May God console and give new strength and hope to all these! Good Friday is about dying and self-emptying in love. It points to the very essential of what life is all about, not the collection of things, power and status, but a clearing out of the debris of sin and guilt in one's life, so we can all live in joy and freedom as God's children redeemed by the Blood of Christ on the Cross.Last night before I slept, I read SERMON 7, THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE MEASURE OF THE WORLD by JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. At the end of the sermon, John Newman, an Anglican priest who was converted to become a Catholic and died a saintly death as a Cardinal said, "And so, too, as regards this world with all its enjoyments and disappointments. Let us not trust it; let us not give our hearts to it; let us not begin with it. Let us begin with faith; let us begin with Christ; let us begin with His Cross and the humiliation to which it leads. Let us first be drawn to Him who is lifted up, that so He may, with Himself, freely give us all things. Let us "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness," and then all those things of this world "will be added to us". They alone are able truly to enjoy this world, who begin with the world unseen. They alone enjoy it, who have first abstained from it. They alone can truly feast, who have first fasted; they alone are able to use the world, who have learned to abuse it; they alone inherit it, who take it as a shadow of the world to come, and who for that world to come relinquish it."

True Home

For the wayward from their true home,

The journey back is so lonesome.

For those who found their true home,

Thoughts of going away is gone.

Each one is always a searcher,

Seeking for horizon's somewhere

Till one's heart is at peace out there

And one's soul finds room for slumber.

Real home is a precious treasure.

Once it's lost, life becomes obscure.

True home, a pearl of seas asure,

Once it's found, life's hurts get a cure.

This world is a home, but not yet.

I dream of a home, peace I get.

Serenity, my soul's outlet.

 God's home I will never forget. 

Artist's Profile

God has put in the heart of every person a deep and intense longing for a true home.  My inspiration in writing this poem came out of my own lifelong search  for a place of love, peace and silence.  I have been a missionary priest for many years and I found a home in the hearts of the people I served, loved and cared for in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the Philippines.  My vision of life as a poet is that it is an amazing journey from the womb of the mother to the Father's bosom in Heaven.

Note:  This poem was published in the book, A SURRENDER TO THE MOON,

 The International Library of Poetry, Howard Ely, Editor, Copyright@2005, Watermark Press, One Poetry Plaza, Owings Mills, MD 21117 USA

The Last Supper Meal in the light of Intimacy, Service and Hospitality

This a personal reflection based on John 13:1-20, The Last Supper Meal

One of the common public worship services by the three major Christian Churches: Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican is the celebration of the Holy Eucharist or Holy Mass.

Here, I would like to share few significant points, which could be a basis for further reflection and sharing in a small group of Christians doing a Bible study.

The first thing that John wants us to reflect is that the whole of Christ's life and death is an expression of His special gratuitous self giving love for his disciples. "He had always loved those who were in the world, but now he showed how perfect his love was."(John 13:1 The New Jerusalem Bible). This means literally that since the time he called them up to the end, he has always loved them. This brings us to meditate on the call of Jesus to intimacy with him. In human experience, what does it mean to be intimate? I conceive intimacy as a home or an environment of a true maturing love between Jesus and his present day followers, between husbands and wives, among friends, among communities, etc. M. Scott Peck's definition of love is one that I am most convinced as a classic expression of what really love is. He defines love as "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." In her National Bestseller book, "all about love" Bell Hooks built her idea on that and further said, "When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive." She also said, "When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment and trust." For me, this is precisely the kind of intimacy that Jesus left as a perpetual legacy to his beloved disciples in that upper room of the Last Supper Meal on the night before he suffered and died. He gave us love's highest standard, that of giving up oneself for the sake of the beloved. "No greater love man has, than to offer his life for his friends."(John 15:13) Thus, intimacy is breaking through the barriers of personal differences, of time and space, of boundaries and cultures and simply being there to sincerely interfere, through the little and great acts of kindness and love, while allowing oneself to be also disturbed and challenged by the words and life of the one loved, for the sake of promoting spiritual growth, achieving mutual happiness and fulfillment, and like Christ, doing everything well in love.
This brings us now to the second important thing that John wants to drive at, i.e. humble service, "He got up from table, removed his outer garment and, taking a towel, wrapped it round his waist; he then poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and wipe them with the towel he was wearing."(John 13:4-5) In the Jewish custom this gesture of Jesus is very symbolic of the humility of a slave serving his master. How can we do the same act of humble service. Maybe we can understand this by looking at the angle and feeling of the one who is served. When someone serves me as I order something to eat in a restaurant I feel superior to that person. The cliche', "The customer is always right" is often used to claim one's right and superiority in an ordinary human setting. Jesus revolutionized a change in this mentality. His kind of leadership is one of being always disposed to be of service, rather than being served. A further note I would like to look closer is the defiant attitude of Peter when Jesus approached him to wash his feet. To teach him a lesson in true discipleship, Jesus told him that if he persists in his denial of the Lord's service the consequence will be, "...you will have no share with me."(John 13:8) which is a Semitic phrase of cutting him off from any further relationship with the Lord and from all share in Jesus' ministry and in his glory, because he does not appreciate his Master's outlook. Behind the act and the reply that Jesus made to Peter, he explained that his sacrifice has already achieved the purification required in the Mosaic Law. "Every branch that does not bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are pruned already, by means of the word I have spoken to you."(John 15:2-3) Also we find another relevant text, "But if we live our lives in the light, as he is in the light, we are in union with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."(1 John 1:7-8)
Lastly, the third and very important thing that John wants to stress is Hospitality. "I tell you most solemnly, whoever welcomes the one I send welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me."(John 13:20) By calling all his disciples to eat with him the Passover Meal just before he suffered the brutality of crucifixion, Jesus gave us all the core of the very heart of God, which is hospitality. I came from the Philippines, a country known by those who come to visit us a a country gifted with the gospel value of hospitality. In the different towns and cities around the Philippine archipelago, especially during the "Fiesta" celebration in honor of the Patron Saint of the town, all visitors are welcomed to eat in every home. Not only that the best food are put on the table but they are served both with smile and love from the Filipino host family. Here, in the very act of Jesus at the Last Supper Meal, hospitality is very much connected with intimacy and service. When I am intimate with someone, I also gladly welcome that person into my life and I am willing to offer the gift and the good that I have for that person in order to make the joy of fellowship complete. As a former Benedictine monk in Pecos, New Mexico, one of the best things I remember and still try to live is a tenet in the Rule of St. Benedict urging us to see the very person of Christ in every guest who comes to the monastery, which in itself is a practical application of the last supper admonition of Jesus. As we continue to live our christian life, the daily challenge is to make our hearts, our homes, our persons as the very sure place of the hospitality of the heart of Jesus - a heart pierced by the soldier's sword, yet a heart that continues to accept, to forgive, to love, to offer his very last drop of blood for each one of us.
In closing, we can ponder on the mysticism of love from the book, The Way of Love, The Last Meditation of Antony de Mello, "The symphony of life moves on but you keep looking back, clinging to a few bars of the melody, blocking your ears to the rest of the music, thereby producing disharmony and conflict between what life is offering you and what you are clinging to. Then comes the tension and anxiety which are the very death of love and the joyful freedom that love brings. For love and freedom are only found when one enjoys each note as it arises, then allows it to go, so as to be fully receptive to the notes that follow."

The Space of God

The silence of this autumn morn

brings me

to the keyboard

to write something

in this space

of God's cyberworld.

The Heart of God

is the silence of the soul

is the home of welcome

for those who are tired

for those who are weary

of browsing here and there

not knowing where to stop

start to listen and pray.

Oh, the silence

of the dwelling place of God

on the net, always waiting

to give a wholesome

resting place

for those who find life

burdensome and complicated

and still searching

for the answers to their many whys.

This little humble space of God

refreshes the yearning soul

delights every one

with His holy presence

in the here and now

in this eclipse of

one's reality with God's eternity!

The beauty of a white lily

sprouting tall and radiant

in the murky water pond

is the same beauty of God

in my moment of serenity

in all my adversity.

This space of God

is my online home

and my source of true peace

in my laptop window.

It is a safe haven

and a strong refuge

from the noise

and saturation

of the world, money and power.

This space of God

is a cyberhouse of prayer

and a wonder to behold.

In this simplicity

of God's networld

one finds the richness

of God's mercy

that brings forth

a new creation

a real purity

and true holiness

in the very soul

that connects to it.

This is also a place

of total healing

of the body, mind & spirit.

Jesus alone

is the Physician and Healer

and He wants only faith

and trust that He could do

the next impossible thing for me.

If He can open

the eyes of the blind

make the lame walk

and even make the dead

come back to life,

will He not also

be the One to help me

in my life's bottomlines?

As Jesus washed the feet

of His disciples

this space is also

a space of humble service

and most loving concern

for each guest and browser

who takes time to sit and pray

in God's holy space.

At this moment in space

in this still point of the universe,

a circle of Christian love

is embracing everyone

and like the wheel of life

it swiftly moves towards

our Heavenly Father

in His Kingdom of light.

Over and above

this space is a little room

of contemplation

how much Christ offered

on Calvary's top

as He cried out

all the anguish

and pains of suffering humanity

and with His total surrender

lifted us all and set us free.

In this space of the Risen Lord

He is calling you and me

to wake up now

and rise with Him

and fill the whole world

with His love, peace and joy!

Performing the Work of God during the day

A time of grace in my life, I spent as a Benedictine monk in Pecos Benedictine Monastery, Pecos, New Mexico (2005-2007). In my period of Novitiate there I learned about the Rule of St. Benedict. In Chapter 16 of the Rule, St. Benedict tried to reflect on the question: How the Work of God is to be performed during the day. In reading the Rule, each one of us first reads it as a Lectio Divina. One of the important moments in Lectio Divina is to ponder on a word or a phrase. In this particular chapter, as I spent some quiet time praying over it, I underlined the Bible verse, "Seven times a day, I have given you praise." (Psalm 119:164)In performing the work of God, the first act is to praise him. And what is praise? According to a comment on this chapter, "Praise is the joyful overflow of a heart filled with gratitude and delight." Psalm 119 and the spirit of praise in it recalls us to our center, who is God Himself and His Kingdom within. The number seven is a sacred number which in jewish mind is perfection or completion. As Benedictine monks we take time to pray seven times a day and we are aware that in our recollection and singing of the psalms it is our common act of embodying both the perfection of our persons and the glory of God. In our worship of God together and with those who join us we witness how mighty and how loving is the God who was and is and will be. At the end of the Lectio Divina on this, I wrote my Prayer/Response and I gladly share it with you:

A joyful song stirs
from within my heart's portals
sounding forth
bursting of awe
wordless echoes
tearless cries
brightness of lights
of my soul's awakening
from a slumber
and fatigue of yesterday's
bleak, stormy, restless nights.
So this morning
I sing my song of praise
to you my Lord
and I delight
in giving thanks
for this new beginning,
so peaceful in its unfolding
so gentle in its embraces
so calm in its assurances
of your never exhausting love!
My soul praises you
Mighty fortress in my weakness
Flowing river of my dryness
Solid rock of my defences
Full moon of my quietness
Golden valley of my playfulness
White mountain of my emptiness
Oh Holy Presence of my world,
blessing, sanctifying this moment
at day's beginning
all praise to you now and forever!

- B. Sagra