During these days of Covid-19 pandemic when Churches were forced to close and people to be quarantined at home, we have also realized how we need each other’s prayer. Prayer gives us comfort in these difficult times. Prayer helps us develop a close and intimate relationship with the Lord despite the deprivation of the public celebration of the sacraments.
To pray for one another has given us hope too. To pray has helped us to grow in our faith and widen our consciousness to respond to those in need.
Today’s Gospel reminds us of the intimacy Jesus shared with his Father. This is evident in the way the Lord Jesus prayed to his Father in heaven. There is tremendous confidence in Jesus and at the same time, that oneness he has with the Father. This is expressed by Jesus saying, “everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine.” This is how the glory of Jesus is also the glory of the Father. Hence, the suffering and pain of Jesus at his passion and even death is also shared intimately by the Father.
All of these have been revealed to Jesus’ friends who were also dear to the Father. Jesus treasures this friendship. And as a friend, Jesus manifests his concern by expressing his desire to pray for them.
Jesus is about to leave physically in the world. But it does not mean that Jesus will abandon his friends. In fact, Jesus prays for his friends. “I pray for them,” said Jesus. This means that Jesus remembers his friends in his thoughts.
Being in the thoughts of Jesus also means that Jesus makes his person present in the life of his friends. It is a promise of faithfulness and of constant presence of God in our life, in each of us.
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Today, Jesus reminds us too, that he prays for us and with us. Jesus joins us in our prayer. The Lord is there every time we pray. The Lord makes himself ever present the moment we also dispose ourselves in prayer. We can say this confidently, Jesus prays with me because he remembers me and he is with me.
Being remembered by Jesus in his prayers, let us make an effort too, to pray for others today. Pray for your friends, for your family members and those who really need our prayers. Prayer will make us more conscious of others as we become one with them in their hopes, joys and suffering. Prayer moves us also to respond and to be in solidarity with those who are in need of our help. In prayer, we also become more present with God as we grow in our confidence and faith in Him who calls us and loves us. Hinaut pa.
“Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)
The Seventh of the Seven Last Words of Jesus on the Cross.
Shared by Bro. Froilem Bonn Barreto, CSsR, on Good Friday, Siete Palabras
When I was informed to be the seventh sharer for this Siete Palabras, I asked myself silently, why me? What will I say since it is going to be live-streamed on Facebook. However, my formator told me that the seventh, which is “Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit,” fits me well. Trusting in the support that was given to me by my formator, I accepted this task to courageously speak in front of you about my reflection and to share something about my life.
One of the most challenging and difficult times in our life is when we get into an experience where seemingly life does not allow us to breathe, and when life seems so unfair. When this thing happens, it does not meet our expectations. It does not let us see the beauty of life. This experience only brings us pain and misery instead of joy and comfort.
Like the rest of you, I too, have my own share of life’s ups and downs. I joined the seminary right after I graduated from high school. I enjoyed my seminary formation. However, as the old saying goes, “life is not a bed of roses.”
It was in 2002 when my life started to change. I was then a fresh graduate from college, working as a faculty member in a college institution when my mom passed away. She died of cancer at the age of 43. With my mom’s untimely death, things changed. Her death would mean missing a lot of things: her, waking us up early in the morning and cooking our meals. For me, I would surely miss her putting a hand towel on my back when I would sleep because I sweat a lot.
I believe that the words of Jesus “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit,” invite us to re-examine our relationship with God.
I was not done yet in grieving over my mom’s death when another unpleasant surprise beset my family. In December of 2006, while on a mission exposure, around 2 a.m., I received a phone call. A woman on the other line was crying, and it took her a while until she was able to tell me the reason for her call – my aunt said that my father died of cardiac arrest. I was speechless. I did not know how to react. The first thing that I thought was my siblings. What I remembered then was that I caught myself picking and packing up my stuff because I wanted to go home. With my parents’ death, life will never be the same.
Growing up without my parents was a life filled with uncertainties. It felt like groping in the dark. I was anxious most of the time but I pretended to be strong. As the eldest in the brood of six, I was forced to take up a responsibility that was too heavy for me. I left the seminary and embraced anxieties and the responsibility to become a mother and a father not only to my siblings but myself as well.
It was difficult growing up without those people who are supposed to be there for their children. I was faced with a whole lot of concerns and issues ranging from personal, psycho-emotional, financial, and a lot more. And so, I braced myself. I worked hard from being a faculty member to being a customer service representative to being a resto-bar singer. On my rest days, I sang at weddings and other occasions just to augment the salary that I was receiving from the company.
But often, I caught myself complaining to God. In my moments of solitude, I kept on telling myself, had only my parents lived, we would never have experienced this kind of life. This particular experience created in me a feeling of resentment towards God.
In my prayer, I questioned him, “What kind of God are you?”, “What have we done, Lord, to deserve this?”Is the offering of my life to follow you not enough that in exchange, you are treating me like this? It is unfair!
In other words, I blamed God. I blamed him for everything. I was at the brink of losing my faith. I stopped going to church. And, what I disliked the most during those times was when people would come to us and comfort us by saying, “God has a purpose for doing this” and “God has a reason for everything.” Such insensitive comments!
I would react by saying, “kindly stop over spiritualizing things.” But like any other telenovelas, the story continues, the drama anthology continues. In 2006, a sister of mine, closest to me, was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease that has no cure at all. A health condition that is slowly killing her. She has been in and out of the hospital. She has two lovely and adorable kids. And thinking about her health condition bothers me a lot. In my prayer, I asked God, “Lord, please don’t allow her children to experience what we have experienced growing up without a mother.” I even shared this with my formator in one of our colloquiums. I expressed to him my fears and anxieties over the things that are beyond my control.
My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus’ last words are very powerful and compelling, I asked myself, why despite his agony, the humiliation he experienced, and unbearable pain on the cross, Jesus never blamed his Father. He instead uttered these words like a perfect prayer from the depths of his heart “Father into your hands, I commend my spirit.”
“Into your hands, I commend my spirit” is part of the psalm traditionally believed to be written by David and prayed by devout Jews. No wonder Jesus himself uttered these words before he breathed his last. It is a prayer of complete surrender, a prayer of unwavering trust to his Father. Jesus entrusted himself to his Father. “Father, into your hands, I commed my spirit” speak of a deep level of intimacy of Jesus with his Father. This line demonstrates what it is to be in a relationship with God. We see here that trust is such an essential element in a relationship. It is where a relationship should be anchored. We can only entrust something when we trust the other. There can be no genuine relationship when trust is absent. Trust brings a relationship to a deeper level and we see this concretely in the life of Jesus. No amount of pain, humiliation, and persecution prevented him from fulfilling his mission. This is because Jesus trusted his Father wholeheartedly.
Oftentimes, when we are faced with problems and difficulties, when we are carrying heavy crosses, our human tendency is that we lose track of our faith. We rely much on our human capacities and strengths. We become too focused on our suffering and pain, on what we can do to the extent that our energies are depleted, and we become exhausted. We start to complain, self-pity, regret, become anxious about what the future holds, and perhaps blame others, or even blame God. Jesus has given us a glorious example of total surrendering to God.
I believe that the words of Jesus “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit,” invite us to re-examine our relationship with God.
Do we trust God wholeheartedly? It is so easy to say I believe in God, and I trust in Him when everything that happens is favorable to us. The real test of faith is when life offers us exactly the opposite, “Do we still manage to say, Yes Lord, I trust in you?
Trusting God does not remove our pains and suffering but transforms the meaning of these things in our life. Our faith and trust in God will sustain us as we go through this life, like Jesus whose trust in God sustained him in and through his sufferings even up to death, his death on the cross.
We continue to ask for the grace of God to strengthen our faith, to trust in His words, “come to me, all who labor and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. .. for my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” God is indeed faithful to His promises.
Let me end this sharing with a song that speaks about total surrender to God and putting our life in Him. Let this be my prayer for you and your prayer for me as we continue this journey called life.
Forgiveness, indeed, is of God, and it is only through His grace that we may be able to give it to persons who have wronged us.
“Radical Love” is a documentary on forgiveness and healing of Ms. Cherry Pie Picache. Cherry Pie, is a Filipino actress, best known for her dramatic roles in Movies and Television. The film captures her experience of meeting her mother’s murderer five years after the dreadful event. One of the highlights in that film features the most heart-wrenching scene where Cherry was able to forgive her mother’s murderer. As she underwent the process of healing, she affirmed how difficult and challenging it is to forgive the person who literally “broke her life.”
In her words, “It took me a lot of courage, strength, and prayers from God to be able to forgive the person who murdered my mother.” Painful though it is, She took the road of forgiveness for her to be healed and move on. Her story is indeed exceptional, but for many who are drenched in pain, grief, and revenge, to forgive is such a rare thing do. What does it mean to forgive and how to forgive?
We look back to the scene where Jesus uttered these words, Jesus at this hour was on the brink of death, nailed to the Cross with the Roman soldiers at his feet. As he addressed these men, we could picture how exhausting the scene was. By this time, these Roman soldiers had been executing many criminals and had seen death day after day. They are reduced to mere functionaries. They have no choice and freedom to do what is just and right at that moment as they were only following orders. Familiarity with violence and brutality causes these soldiers to be numb and deaf with their emotions. Their society has allowed them to be stripped of their dignity as human persons gifted with freedom and compassion. It is in this human frailty and desperate condition where Jesus uttered to them, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing?”
Like us, Jesus understands what it means to be a human person. He showed in his life that a human person is a being created, loved, and cared for by God. Jesus believes that in every human person, there lies within goodness. Despite our weaknesses, short-comings, and sinfulness, each has the capacity to go beyond our human conditions. Each of us is called towards goodness. Each of us can share this innate goodness to our fellow beings. When Jesus addressed “Father, forgive them…” these are not words of condemnation and self-righteousness. Instead, these are words of prayers addressed to his Father. Even in suffering, He went beyond our underlying tendency for revenge and offered a path for us to be reconciled with God, our Creator. Forgiveness, for Jesus, is an act of prayer and unselfish concern for the good of the other.
Does forgiveness also mean to forget? I think we are familiar with the phrase “to forgive is to forget.” Forgiveness, to some, may come in the non-recognition of the wrong done. Or to forget, others would condone the transgression in exchange for shallow healing and reconciliation. But if we look into the truth of its meaning, forgiveness in Greek means “to send away.” A word used for commercial language meaning “to release from an obligation or to cancel one’s debt.” That is why in other translations of the “Lord’s Prayer,” sin or transgressions is equated with debts. In Matthew, it says, “forgive us from our debts as we forgive our debtors.” To cancel one’s debt includes a thorough acknowledgment of the debt owed by that person. In other words, from every transgression we commit with ourselves and with others is a debt we owed to God. And this debt has to be paid in full.
Here comes the Good News. The debts we owed to others, to our environment, and God, are now paid in full, with and through, Jesus our Lord. His life, death, and resurrection are in itself the entire process of what it means to forgive and be forgiven. Forgiveness is a process where it involves acceptance of undergoing pain, anger, and grief which in the end will lead to an experience of “resurrection.” What it requires is our openness and obedience to the movements of God’s Spirit already working within us.
In the film’s last scene, as Cherry was able to meet the Convict, both of them were in tears. She could not imagine doing such an impossible thing of finding the grace to forgive. What is most striking in their encounter was that she was able to bless and pray for the healing of her mother’s murderer. She forgave not only for her good but to the person who wronged her, who is significantly in need of healing as well.
Watching that scene made me realize that it only brought into reality what Jesus’ words on the Cross truly meant. Forgiveness, indeed, is of God, and it is only through His grace that we may be able to give it to persons who have wronged us.
My brother and sisters, today is a time of grace, let these words of Jesus penetrate in our hearts. Let his words be a reminder that God, our Father, is madly in love with us despite and in spite of our human conditions. And in realizing this truth, may we see that innate goodness which moves us to a genuine reconciliation with our brothers and sisters in Christ. My friends, let us ask to our Father for that grace.
(This prayer may be used by families visiting their beloved dead in the cemetery. Anybody can lead this prayer as long as he/she can read and lead well the family.)
(An appropriate song may be sung.)
The prayer begins.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Introduction:
Brothers and sisters, we gather today as a family to pray for our beloved brothers and sisters (parents/grandparents/relatives) whose bodies (ashes) lie here in rest. They have passed from death to life in company with our Lord Jesus, who died and rose to new life, and are purified now of their sins. We pray that God may welcome them among the saints in heaven that they may become our intercessors and guardians for our family.
SCRIPTURAL READING
A reading from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians (15:20-23)
Brothers and Sisters: Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead came also through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order: Christ the firstfruits; then at his coming, those who belong to Christ.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
(A moment of silence may be observed.)
LITANY
(OPTION: While the litany is recited, the sprinkling of holy water may be done here – only if holy water is available. If there is no holy water, then, proceed as usual.)
Let us now call on the Holy men and women of God and ask for their intercession that our Loving God may show our beloved dead, mercy and compassion.
Lord, have mercy. Response: Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy. Response: Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy. Response: Lord, have mercy.
Holy Mary, Mother of God* *Response: PRAY FOR THEM.
Saint Michael, the Archangel*
Saint Joseph*
Saint John the Baptist*
Saints Peter and Paul*
Saint Andrew*
Saint Stephen*
Saint Anne*
Saint Joachin*
Saint Teresa of Avila*
Saint John of the Cross*
Saint Alphonsus de Liguori*
Saint Lorenzo Ruiz*
Saint Pedro Calungsod*
(Other names of the saints may be added here)
All you holy men and women*
Christ, pardon all their faults*** ***Response: LORD, HEAR OUR PRAYER.
Christ, remember the good they have done***
Christ, receive them into eternal life***
Christ, comfort of all those who mourn***
Lord, have mercy. Response: Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy. Response: Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy. Response: Lord, have mercy.
Filled with confidence in our hearts, let us now call on God our Loving Father through the prayer our Lord Jesus taught us.
OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN,
HOLLOWED BE THEY NAME.
THY KINGDOM COME.
THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES,
AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINTS US;
AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION,
BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
Let us also ask the intercession of Mary, Our Mother of Perpetual Help.
HAIL MARY, FULL OF GRACE,
THE LORD IS WITH YOU, BLESSED ARE YOU AMONG WOMEN,
AND BLESSED IS THE FRUIT OF YOUR WOMB, JESUS.
HOLY MARY, MOTHER OF GOD,
PRAY FOR US SINNERS,
NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH. AMEN.
LET US PRAY.
All powerful God, whose mercy is never withheld from those who call upon you in hope, look kindly on our beloved dead and your servant/s (names can be mentioned here), who departed from this life confessing your name, and number them among your saints forevermore that they may also intercede for us here on earth and watch over us.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Concluding Rite
Eternal rest grant unto (name/s, them), O Lord.
And let your perpetual light shine upon (him/her/them).
May (he/she/they) rest in peace.
Amen.
May the soul of (name/s), and the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A DOSE OF GOD TODAY 