weddings at the cathedral
Marriage is one sacrament that has lost some of its sacredness because of an over-emphasis on externals brought about by some wedding coordinators and over-eager couples who do not really understand the nature of the sacrament. And so beginning the month of May the parish will provide the couples with a church wedding coordinator who will guide them as they prepare for their wedding. No we’re not going to choose your motif, or scout around for caterers. That is not within our field of expertise. But we are going to help them plan what’s going to happen in church.
Registration for weddings starting May this year will be five weekends before the planned date. A more thorough Pre-Cana Seminar to prepare couples for married life will be given for four Saturdays (no more than two hours per session), part of which is to go through the rites of the wedding so that they can better appreciate and therefore participate actively in their wedding rite. (One of our dreams is to provide the couples the option of going through an overnight retreat instead of this four protracted Saturday Seminars.)
As in the past we will not allow church decorations done by others except by two decorators especially selected by the Cathedral. Part of the amount they pay for the decorations would enable us to provide a simple but decent decoration for weddings of couples who could not afford. (Our common weddings for couples who could not afford [where all fees are waived] are on Thursdays at 8 in the morning complete with a choir, a carpet and simple decorations.)
Only sacred music can be sung inside the church. We are sorry if we cannot permit their love songs and other favorite songs sung inside the church, but a church is church and we could not just allow any song.
We can only accommodate two weddings on a Saturday that is at 10 AM and at 3 PM but we are forewarning the couples that we are obliged to accommodate the funeral of a parishioner at 8:30 AM and at 1 PM (don’t worry funeral masses usually don’t take long). And the cathedral may now accept evening weddings at 6:30 on weekdays and 7:00 on a Saturday.
We have a brochure which can guide the couples through the requirements and the allowable perks they would like to add on their wedding day. It is our hope that together with our staff we could really make this important day in the life of the couple as sacred as it should and at the same time memorable.
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It’s getting hot, really hot and the effect of this extreme weather is taking its toll. The cathedral never ran out of water even in the hottest summer of years past. But now our well is dry. Three weeks ago we have to lay down new pipes to bring in water from the well at neighboring Pius XII. But now even that can no longer support us and we have to ration our supply. Each of us priests were just given by our majordoma a very big pail to stock water with. Water coming from the drain of the washing machine is reused to clean the Public Restroom and water the plants. And we have to close down the pipes every once in a while to save the little that is left in our wells.
This is not really big news today, isn’t it? After all people in the parish have been clamoring about their lack two months before and it seems that there is no immediate solution in sight. We have been praying for rain for a month now, every day, at every mass, but it’s seems that our prayers are not being answered at the moment. We just have to make do with the little we have.
At the height of this water and heat crisis it might be good to reflect on our feelings of helplessness. There are things we cannot control. There are events that we have to simply learn to accept, learn to live with, to cope with, and to bear with. There are events too that we have to learn to accept as a consequence of our past and present negligence and abuses; the consequences of not acting decisively when there was still time; the consequences of our inaction even now.
Today we are, so to say, at the mercy of the elements. We have to make do with the little that MIWD and our wells would give us. The gush has turned to trickles overnight.
Again I would like to ask you to pray for rain. We’re reprinting the prayer in this issue and we invite you to get serious with it, to include it in your daily prayers, to bring with you your copy during the mass so that together we could bombard heaven with our supplication.
___________
Another concern which is turning the parish once more into a beehive of activities is the upcoming elections. We need to rally our people to help us in educating voters in the new method of voting, we have to provide assistance during the elections and we have to do some poll-watching. At the moment we only have 53 volunteers who will man the voting centers in Jaro I Elementary School and Jaro II, also at the Jaro National High School, Bakhaw Elementary School and at the Judith Lazarraga Memorial School in Tabuc Suba, Ilaya. It may not be enough. We need more people to man the stations, to help people locate their precincts, to give assistance to voters who would find the system a bit confusing, but above all we need people, volunteers, who would man the cathedral and other places of prayer which we will set up during election day. Why do we have to pray during election day? Why do we need prayer warriors who will man our stations of prayer during election day?
First, because we need to ask God to enlighten us, to guide us to vote the leaders that would lead our nation, our city. As they often say, we deserve the leaders we have. If they become lousy and corrupt, if they turn out to be self-serving and inept, then we deserve them – after all we were the ones who elected them. We need to pray because we need to ask God’s help to choose wisely for the sake of the whole nation and for the future generation.
Second we need to pray and let our prayers be heard not just by God but also by the people who would vote, and even by the people in communities and barangays, because prayer has a calming effect. Lets accept it, it not just the weather that is extremely hot today. It’s also the mayoral and congressional elections that make this election in our city stressful, nerve-racking and tense and hot-headed people must be soothed with the calming effect of prayer in our midst. No, it might not be enough to pray in the silence of the Cathedral and Adoration Chapel. It might be necessary to let our prayers be heard by God and the people, to remind them that this is a godly exercise, a sacred duty, and a responsibility that must be done with utmost honesty and respect. We need to air our prayers so that people will be reminded that God is watching us reminding us that we should not short-change our democratic system to vote buying, to remind us that we have to pay a steep price, now and in the future, if we sell our votes to the highest bidder.
Let us not forget: If this is a corrupt nation because of prevalent corruption in the highest places of government it is because we have permitted ourselves to be corrupted when we set up this government on the day we elected them. The government will become corrupt the moment we corrupt ourselves especially by selling our votes. In the end we deserve the leaders we have. Amen to that!
Registration for weddings starting May this year will be five weekends before the planned date. A more thorough Pre-Cana Seminar to prepare couples for married life will be given for four Saturdays (no more than two hours per session), part of which is to go through the rites of the wedding so that they can better appreciate and therefore participate actively in their wedding rite. (One of our dreams is to provide the couples the option of going through an overnight retreat instead of this four protracted Saturday Seminars.)
As in the past we will not allow church decorations done by others except by two decorators especially selected by the Cathedral. Part of the amount they pay for the decorations would enable us to provide a simple but decent decoration for weddings of couples who could not afford. (Our common weddings for couples who could not afford [where all fees are waived] are on Thursdays at 8 in the morning complete with a choir, a carpet and simple decorations.)
Only sacred music can be sung inside the church. We are sorry if we cannot permit their love songs and other favorite songs sung inside the church, but a church is church and we could not just allow any song.
We can only accommodate two weddings on a Saturday that is at 10 AM and at 3 PM but we are forewarning the couples that we are obliged to accommodate the funeral of a parishioner at 8:30 AM and at 1 PM (don’t worry funeral masses usually don’t take long). And the cathedral may now accept evening weddings at 6:30 on weekdays and 7:00 on a Saturday.
We have a brochure which can guide the couples through the requirements and the allowable perks they would like to add on their wedding day. It is our hope that together with our staff we could really make this important day in the life of the couple as sacred as it should and at the same time memorable.
------------------
It’s getting hot, really hot and the effect of this extreme weather is taking its toll. The cathedral never ran out of water even in the hottest summer of years past. But now our well is dry. Three weeks ago we have to lay down new pipes to bring in water from the well at neighboring Pius XII. But now even that can no longer support us and we have to ration our supply. Each of us priests were just given by our majordoma a very big pail to stock water with. Water coming from the drain of the washing machine is reused to clean the Public Restroom and water the plants. And we have to close down the pipes every once in a while to save the little that is left in our wells.
This is not really big news today, isn’t it? After all people in the parish have been clamoring about their lack two months before and it seems that there is no immediate solution in sight. We have been praying for rain for a month now, every day, at every mass, but it’s seems that our prayers are not being answered at the moment. We just have to make do with the little we have.
At the height of this water and heat crisis it might be good to reflect on our feelings of helplessness. There are things we cannot control. There are events that we have to simply learn to accept, learn to live with, to cope with, and to bear with. There are events too that we have to learn to accept as a consequence of our past and present negligence and abuses; the consequences of not acting decisively when there was still time; the consequences of our inaction even now.
Today we are, so to say, at the mercy of the elements. We have to make do with the little that MIWD and our wells would give us. The gush has turned to trickles overnight.
Again I would like to ask you to pray for rain. We’re reprinting the prayer in this issue and we invite you to get serious with it, to include it in your daily prayers, to bring with you your copy during the mass so that together we could bombard heaven with our supplication.
___________
Another concern which is turning the parish once more into a beehive of activities is the upcoming elections. We need to rally our people to help us in educating voters in the new method of voting, we have to provide assistance during the elections and we have to do some poll-watching. At the moment we only have 53 volunteers who will man the voting centers in Jaro I Elementary School and Jaro II, also at the Jaro National High School, Bakhaw Elementary School and at the Judith Lazarraga Memorial School in Tabuc Suba, Ilaya. It may not be enough. We need more people to man the stations, to help people locate their precincts, to give assistance to voters who would find the system a bit confusing, but above all we need people, volunteers, who would man the cathedral and other places of prayer which we will set up during election day. Why do we have to pray during election day? Why do we need prayer warriors who will man our stations of prayer during election day?
First, because we need to ask God to enlighten us, to guide us to vote the leaders that would lead our nation, our city. As they often say, we deserve the leaders we have. If they become lousy and corrupt, if they turn out to be self-serving and inept, then we deserve them – after all we were the ones who elected them. We need to pray because we need to ask God’s help to choose wisely for the sake of the whole nation and for the future generation.
Second we need to pray and let our prayers be heard not just by God but also by the people who would vote, and even by the people in communities and barangays, because prayer has a calming effect. Lets accept it, it not just the weather that is extremely hot today. It’s also the mayoral and congressional elections that make this election in our city stressful, nerve-racking and tense and hot-headed people must be soothed with the calming effect of prayer in our midst. No, it might not be enough to pray in the silence of the Cathedral and Adoration Chapel. It might be necessary to let our prayers be heard by God and the people, to remind them that this is a godly exercise, a sacred duty, and a responsibility that must be done with utmost honesty and respect. We need to air our prayers so that people will be reminded that God is watching us reminding us that we should not short-change our democratic system to vote buying, to remind us that we have to pay a steep price, now and in the future, if we sell our votes to the highest bidder.
Let us not forget: If this is a corrupt nation because of prevalent corruption in the highest places of government it is because we have permitted ourselves to be corrupted when we set up this government on the day we elected them. The government will become corrupt the moment we corrupt ourselves especially by selling our votes. In the end we deserve the leaders we have. Amen to that!
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