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Participants to the PWHS Lenten Recollection, held last Saturday, March 13, 2004 at the Betania Retreat House in Quezon City learned a lot of things from Fr. John Cordero, recollection master. For one thing, they learned that lent is an old English word which means spring or freshness. Lent usually occurs during spring, which is identified as the time for cleaning as in spring cleaning.
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| Fr. John Cordero, MMHC, delivering the homily during the Eucharistic Celebration after conducting the Lenten Recollection for the PWHS |
He also said that quaresma,
another Latin word, is taken from the word quadragesima which means 40
days. The 40 days of lent starts
from Ash Wednesday until the day before Easter, excluding the Sundays of Lent.
40 days is said to be a traditional number in
inculcating discipline, as cited in several Biblical incidents:
Moses stayed in the mountain of God for 40 days and 40 nights
(Ex. 24:18); the Hebrew spies were in Canaan for 40 days
(Numbers 13:25); Elijah
traveled 40 days before he reached the cave where he had his vision (1 Kings 19:
8); Nineveh was given 40 days to repeat (Jon 3: 4); Noah experienced the great
flood when it rained for 40 days and 40 nights (Gen. 7: 12); Jesus fasted for 40
days and 40 nights (Matt. 4: 2).
These seemed as the proper backgrounder for Fr. John to dwell
on Lent as the perfect time for: Conversion,
Offering of Life, and Reparation.
As a practical application, Lent is not just a time for
cleaning, but also a time for sorting things out in our life, and classify them
into four categories:
The things we keep because we value them; the things we
should fix; the things we can share; and the things we should throw away.
For the things that we keep, Fr. John quoted St. Therese as
saying: This world is just our ship; it is not our home.
Indeed, with these guiding words, one can go into an activity of
self-introspection in finding out what are really the things that matter in
ones life, the priorities, and the things that we really need to bring in our
journey.
For the things that we need to fix, these may include the
brokenness we feel within us; the broken relationships especially among loved
ones. Fr. John emphasized that the
opposite of love is not hatred it is indifference.
The cold attitude that one invariably shows is the thing that
destroys the world; the non-caring attitude; the lack of time for loved ones,
and ones tending to take them for granted.
For the things that we need to share, the participants were
reminded that no one is so poor that they have nothing to share and no one so
rich that they have no need of something.
The best thing that one can share or give away is LOVE.
At the end of ones life here on earth, one will be judged on how
useful and fruitful is the life that one had led.
But most of all, one will be asked how one had manifested the love that
the Lord has for us in our dealings with others.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus was said to have impressed upon St.
Margaret Mary Alacoque the following words when He appeared to her at the Paray
Le Monial last December 27, 1673:
My Divine Heart is so full of love for men and for you in
particular, that It no longer is able to contain within Itself the flames of Its
burning charity; it must spread these flames by means of you, and it must
manifest itself to men in order to enrich them with its precious treasures.
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Among the things that one should throw away are feelings of
anger and resentments. The key here
is to learn to forgive. One can
start by forgiving oneself. There
is no point in moping and dwelling on mistakes that one may have committed in
ones life. One should learn to
accept, let go, and move on. Fr.
John further emphasized the need to forgive those who have hurt us in whatever
way, as this is critical to our own personal healing.
The recollection culminated with an anticipated mass
officiated by Fr. John. He ended
his homily with a story about an emergency pow-wow meeting that was convened by
the top honchos of the hierarchy in hell who had noticed the waning number of
captured victims descending down there. After
brainstorming on various ideas on how to increase the number of captured souls,
the winning suggestion was: to
whisper to the ears of each and every creature on earth, THAT THERE IS ALWAYS
PLENTY OF TIME
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