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He Gave His Only Son

"Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

John 21:29

• There should be less talk. A preaching point is not a meeting point.


• The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.


• In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta. (Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997)


• It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.


• The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.


• I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?


• I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.


• Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.


• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

~Mother Teresa~

I can only draw on my own witness, my own story. I am almost 50 years old, and looking back, I can see my whole life as a journey on learning how to pray that is to say, that by learning how to pray, my life has also been a journey on how to relate to God, how to seek Him and how to understand Him. From those years, allow me to tell you about two moments that have profoundly affected the progress of my life. The first one happened when I was five years old. The second one happened on the day before I turned 18 years old.

One afternoon, when I was 5 years old, my grandfather took my hand and led me before a picture near the stairs in our house. It was a picture of a little girl crossing a broken wooden bridge with her Guardian Angel behind her. My grandfather was 75 years old and already sick although I didn't know it at that time, and he was to pass away less than a month after that day. My grandfather led me to look at the picture and after a while he said that I was that little girl in the picture and that the Guardian Angel in the picture was my Guardian Angel. He then said that I would have a very happy life but that I would have to suffer long and endure long before being happy. Then he said that I also would have not just one, but two guardian angels walking behind me soon. And then he told me, that no matter what happened, I should always remember, and I did. He was right. I did have a long suffering life. And because the cause of my pain has to do with the absence of God in the hearts of some of the people whom I love dearly, I still have the wounded heart. But after 45 years our loving Father finally gave me a safe haven and home again in the heart of my husband who not only loves me but also has a big space in his heart for J esus. So, after almost 45 years I am finally in a home again where Jesus is welcomed and loved.

The second moment came the day before I turned eighteen years old. There was to be a little party on my 18th birthday and so I went out the day before to visit my friends to invite them to the party. Most of us lived in a small neighborhood, right in front of our high school. About noontime, I was riding a tricycle and nearing our school (a tricycle is a motorcycle with a side cab attached to its side, enough to carry two people). There was a huge fence made of cyclone wire enclosing our school, so I could see my friends and teachers playing tennis. I would learn later that for some reason the front gate of our school was locked for that day, and that was the reason why my friends were not able to intervene and help me in what was about to happen.

As I neared the school, the tricycle driver and I noticed that a number of people were running toward our direction. They were screaming. Soon I looked toward my left where the tennis courts were, and there were my friends screaming and waving their arms and saying something I couldn’t understand. And then I saw the tricycle driver fell from his seat. They told me later that he fainted. As I looked in front, there was this huge and menacing man, waving a huge machete in the air, and barreling toward where I was, intent to strike me. And then it happened. Everything and everyone started to move in slow motion, even slower than the slow motion that we see in a movie. It was so slow that I was able to see each movement of the armed man in perfect clarity, each of his steps toward me broken in measurement slower than a second. When he finally reached the tricycle cab where I was, he thrust his face and upper body inside the cab and glared at me. When he pulled back to give him enough force to plunge the machete in me, the movement was so slow that it gave me enough time to think and act. As he began to thrust the machete at me, I was able to kick him in the chest and it was strong enough that he fell backward to the ground. That gave me room to get out of the cab and ran toward a row of apartments. I ran to the first door and began pounding on it. They would not let me in. I went to the second door and began pounding on it. Still they would not let me in. As I ran toward the third door I saw the man getting up, more furious now and more determined on attacking me again. The people inside the third apartment would not let me in and I knew that I would not be able to escape the man this time. As he was nearing me I ran to the fourth door and it opened even before I started pounding on it. There was only an old woman inside and as I pushed the door closed, we heard the crash of the machete against the door. I noticed with desperation that the windows by the door were not protected by any iron grill and soon we heard the machete shattering the windows. Any moment soon the mad man would be able to put his hand through the window and unlock the door. The old woman told me that I could leave through the bathroom window but she would stay. The way she said it and the way she looked at me reminded me o f my grandfather and what he had told me 13 years before. She was asking me to listen and remember. And so I did. I did not leave her and the quietness in her eyes brought me stillness and made me patient as death was rampaging on the other side of the door. Through her eyes I saw death in a different way.

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