God Bless the "Land of the Morning"

I know the emphasis of this blog is about the liturgy and my travels, and maybe this post still qualifies in a way....but the truth is, I can't really focus on the normal, spiritual texts as my heart is just breaking for the people of the Philippines.

Typhoon Haiyan

I lived in the Philippines for 2 years back in the late 60's.  My Dad was stationed at Clark Air Force Base during the Vietnam War at the USAF Hospital there.  We lived off-base in a mostly-American housing area in Angeles City, but I was still able to experience a lot of the culture of the Philippines and her people.

I loved it!

1967-ish

I was 8-10 year old in a land of perpetual summer!  Or mostly.  I was outside most of the time, but even inside our house was like living on a porch as there was not even glass on the windows!!  Just wooden slats that shut for privacy.  Our yard had banana and papaya trees and even pineapples!  It was so wonderful.  Our next-door-neighbors were Filipino and had a pet spider monkey!  Oh, it was nothing like the sterile environment of the Air Force Bases I lived on in the States!!  I learned to love many things about this tropical place and it's people, and I know my experience there has impacted my life and is part of what has made me who I am.

If I was to use a word to describe the Philippines, it might be Green.

Green in all it's shades and hues. 

My first sight of the Philippines was from an airplane window in the Spring of 1968.  I was only 8 years old.  After a long, 18 hour flight with my parents & 3 younger siblings (my poor mother!) I gazed out the window to get a glimpse of my new home for the next few years.

 I will never forget.

My memory....I put together three photos from Wikimedia to make this

As we descended down through the blanket of clouds, and popped out beside a mountain terrraced with rice paddies.  It could have been a travel movie for the perfectness of it!  It had been raining, but the sun was setting? rising? and was shining below the clouds.  Everything was SO GREEN!   Or maybe it just seemed that way to my mind since I had just left the winter browns and grays of the U.S. 

And just when I thought it couldn't be more beautiful, the plane turned and I was presented with the glorious gift of a beautiful, full-spectrum rainbow!  Oh My!

I was completely charmed by my new home!!

To compare that cherished memory with the devastating video I am seeing on the news of the destruction of Typhoon Yolanda is breaking my heart!

That beautiful, colorful country - wiped out!

Those beautiful, colorful people - so many lives lost!

I cannot imagine the hardships that the survivors are enduring either!  I was in Hurricane Hugo in Charleston in 1989 and although the South Carolina coast was ravaged we had all the rest of the U.S. to come to our aid.  Or to run to.

So much loss of life.  So much suffering now.  I feel so helpless here in my safe, warm, dry, secure home.

More than half of my fellow pilgrims to Israel, and both priests are Filipino.  I imagine that in a group that large people have lost friends and family.     : (     And those with surviving family in the islands must be beside themselves with worry for their loved ones in their need for the basics like food, water, shelter and medical attention!  The stress and sadness for the people I came to know and love last year must be great.  My heart breaks for them all!

Lord, please watch over the Philippines!  Please take care of the people and end their suffering.  Please be with them as they wait aid.  Please be with the aid workers to be swift.  Please open the hearts of anyone who can help so that they do all they can as quickly as they can.  Lord, please be with the littlest survivors, especially the new orphans!  God Bless them all and give them hope and peace!  

And God, please be with my fellow Pilgrims.  Give them hope and peace for their loved ones and their homeland.  Amen.

Mass & Life are Wiggly

Jesus Our Risen Savior Catholic Church, Spartanburg, South Carolina

Each Sunday we arrive at Mass early and claim one of the pews in the back of the Sanctuary.  I don't like sitting in the back, but it's the right thing to do when you have 4 small grandchildren with you under the age of 7!

I have learned that during this season in my life, Sunday Mass is a micro-study in "The World" of today...so many distractions.

Not that my grandchildren are in any way bad in church, they are not!  They are so so so good!  But they are children.  They want to be held.  They fall off the kneeler.  They need to go to the bathroom.  They ask a question at the most in-opportune time.  They need assistance getting off and on the pew.  They have "wardrobe malfunctions", getting stuck in coats, bows fall out or shoes fall off.  They can't control their whisper.  They want help to find the song page.  They want to sit on my lap.  They wiggle.

It might not even be my loved ones distracting me, it might be the people in front, beside, behind me.  They are in my "radar scope" and I see them from the corner of my eye - a noise, a blur, a bump, a wiggle.


Just like the World.

Busy, insistent, noisy, attention-stealing....our lives are wiggly.

We are headed in one direction when something wiggles in the peripheral of our vision.  Our attention is altered.  We are distracted.  We change direction, move to something else.

First thing you know, the day is over and we have spent time doing things we never intended, no matter how well-meaning or good, still - it was a distraction from the other activities we wanted/needed to do.

Jesus warned us in several parables to be ready, be prepared.  Basically:  Keep Your Eye On The Ball.

Hard to do in today's World.  Satan LOVES the World.  Satan loves to distract us with the World.

It's an effort every single day to stay focused.  To turn back from the distractions and set your eyes back on the Altar of God.

We want to pray, we want to go to daily Mass, we want to participate in Eucharist more often, we want to attend bible studies, Adoration, Reconciliation.

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"...only the second half of Matthew 26:41.

It's a battle every day to stay focused on the Lord.

Dear God, help me to pay attention to you.  When I am distracted by the pull of daily life, turn my face back towards you as soon as possible.  Help me to be strong to ignore the World as background noise and keep my heart centered on You each day.  Amen.

As we move through the busy, out-of-focus, noisy, wiggly world, let us work hard to stay focused on Jesus and our path to Heaven to be with Him and His Father.

Oh...and the first part part of Matt 26:41?  

"Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test."

 

The One Year Anniversary of My Trip to Israel

2012 Pilgrimage to Israel from Jesus Our Risen Savior Catholic Church, Spartanburg, SC and St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Lodi, NJ

Hello to all my Fellow Pilgrims!

It's hard to believe a year ago, I was blessed to be with all of you, taken on the most profound experience of my life - to visit the area where Our Lord and Savior lived and died. 

I can't thank my Mother, Rosemary, enough for the great gift of this trip.  I don't know about all of you, but it changed me.  I cannot go a single day without thinking about some event or building or view or place that we visited.  I find I can relate to the Bible like never before, I can picture a lot of the Gospels right where they happened.  It's almost overwhelming - wonderful & awe-inspiring at the same time!

At the time I was told of the trip, I began to try to keep a journal and although I attempted multiple versions, multiple times, I was not able to find a way or the time to write down all that I saw and did, my observations and thoughts, while we were in Israel.  But after I returned home, I finally began to write it down.  Not in chronological order, but liturgically.  

As the Gospels were read in church on Sunday, I would be inspired to write down my thoughts regarding the trip pertaining to that scripture reading.  Not every week, but first thing I knew, I had filled almost an entire book! 

My journaling has not been steady (I could not hardly write a single thing during Lent or the Easter season for some reason!??).  I have lots of memories that are incomplete and have not quite come together to date and which are only half-written.  And I feel like there is a lot more to come. But I have posted my impressions and completed thoughts to date here.  

If you are interested, you are welcome to go scan over them.  I didn't use anyone's real name, except the tour people.  

I would love, love, love for you to post your comments or reply to me regarding your memories of the places I have posted about!  Whether spiritual or not, just your impressions as you experienced it.  I'd love to hear them to see how your experience differed from mine!!!

In any case, I just wanted to let you all know that I think of you all often and will always hold a special place in my heart for all of you!!  As our year approaches Thanksgiving, I am giving thanks that all of you were there with me last year.  The trip was what it was because of each person involved.  It was wonderful and tiring and exciting and scary and happy and sad and profound and spiritual and frustrating and just the best ever in my opinion!  : ) 

I am praying for you all, always!

Love ~ Kathy

Holy Mass on the Mount of Beatitudes

ORDINARY TIME

Mt 5:1-12a

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward will be great in heaven.”

View from the top of the Mount of Beatitudes looking down to the Sea of Galilee

Yes, I know. This isn't a Sunday reading, but the daily one for November first.  I loved the Mount of Beatitudes so much though; I will always remember it as so peaceful.

The word beatitude literally means "happiness" or "blessedness". 

Well we were certainly blessed the day we visited.  It was gorgeous, with a wonderful "blue-bird sky" as my husband calls it, and perfect temperatures.  I did take some notes that day....

"Mass on the Mount of Beatitudes - listening to the Gospel story with the breeze on my face and the birds singing, sunshine so bright and flowers blooming - it could not have been more precious.

 The sermon was perfect, but I can't remember the words - oh how I wish I had a better memory. 

 As Fr.  N. held up the host, it was backlit by the sun!  It glowed with light and looked radiant to me.  Bees buzzed and birds chirped and it was p.e.r.f.e.c.t.

I look out now over the altar that we used and can see the Sea of Galilee below me from this mountain, I see banana trees and palms down the mountainside to the water.  It is an amazing place to be, how blessed am I."

Fr. N. delivers a "sermon on the mount"

I just cannot convey how absolutely peaceful it was on the mountain for me that day.  Mass was just beautiful.  It was outside, right on the side of the very mountain where Jesus gave the Beatitudes to all Believers.

Fr. T looks to be deep in the spiritual moment of this beautiful place

We were out in the sunshine, under the trees just as the people might have been that very day so long ago.  Looking around, I wondered if some of the rocks were the very ones the people had rested on as they heard His words!

Rocks on the Mount of Beatitudes

Bougainvillea blooms overhead in the outside chapel area

Birds were singing and when I looked up, the dappled sun shone down on me through the gorgeous Bougainvillea flowers and my heart was just bursting!

I kept picturing Jesus teaching the people on this mountainside and being so glad in the providence of God that allowed us to be outside for Mass rather than inside the chapel.

Sermon of the Beatitudes - James Tissot

I'm guessing that at most of the holy sites we were allowed the great gift of celebrating Mass, our priests attempted to have our services indoors the sacred and famous chapels and churches.  But it didn't always work out, and this was one time when I was glad to be outside to celebrate Mass.

Beautiful Mass in a beautiful place

 

Although we were given time to explore the grounds of the Church of the Beatitudes after mass, I went to a bench beside the altar and looked out over the hillside down to the Sea of Galilee (where we had just been earlier that morning).

I wanted to be alone and I could have stayed there and basked in my own happiness for quite a while.  and I knew I was blessed to be feeling so profoundly effected by this place.

View from the top of the Mount of Beatitudes

I looked down the hillside from my bench and the banana groves and palm trees swayed in the gentle breezes.  The sky and water were almost the same shade of blue, and Mt. Arbel was barely visible in the distance.

I remembered being told once at a retreat to close my eyes and let the sunshine warm my skin like the love of God shining down on me.  I sat in this wonderful place and reveled in trying to absorb the glorious feelings I was experiencing, the spiritual souvenirs I was receiving. 

Although I did explore the inside of the Chapel (and the gift shop too!), I will save that memory for another time.  I wanted to again savor the moment on that day in November 2012 when I was privileged to have spent time on the Mount and so today I will stop here in my reminisces about the blessings I received that day in that special place.

Thank You Lord for that moment on that day in that place.  And if it be your will, please let me one day go back and sit on that bench on the top of the Mount of Beatitudes.  Amen.

From the top of the Mount of the Beatitudes

2012 Pilgrimage to Israel - Day 5