worship at the cathedral 9: color coding our prayers
"And just when did God start
color coding our prayers to him?" This was my shocked and irritated
reaction when somebody told me that there are different colors of candles
corresponding to different prayers and needs – a red candle for love problems, a
green candle for money problems, etc.
So, going back to the question,
"just when did God start color coding our prayers?"
Nobody seem to know the origin of
this practice - when it started, how it started, the reasons for the practice and
how people coming to Jaro came to embrace it.
But it seems that people when oppressed by so many needs, in their
urgency for finding solutions, can be gullible for just about anything. And rightly, you can find many of them in
church (where else).
And so, this is my take.
First, a quote from Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI who said in a lecture at the University of Regensburg: “Distortions
of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and
structuring role of reason within religion.”
I think it says a lot regarding our
religious practices nowadays and the tendencies of practices when this is not
founded on reason. Two weeks ago I wrote
about that Good Friday incident in our parish when people, almost mob-like,
grab whatever their hands can grab from the pasos. One time I asked one person who had a handful
of these flowers, "So what are you going to do with that?" His answer surprised me. He said, "ambot, a." One could notice this every now and then in people
wearing polka dots in New Year's day, red dresses on their birthdays, faithfully
and rigorously observing panimad-ons especially in practices surrounding the
dead, like never passing on the same route or not accompanying a visitor on his
or her way out of the wake, or passing chain letters in the internet and even
in the hallowed room of our adoration chapel.
Others, in doing them, may not be giving much thought about them. But when these practices become necessary or
overly more important, for example, than attending mass on your birthday, or observed
obsessively to the point of believing that these things really do bring the
good or harm they intend, then something is really wrong. Our faith and our relationship with God
become irrational. I believe the call is
to be reflective. Let us not do things
just because the mob is doing it or some creative vendors at the cathedral
gates venture to tell us with their brand of catechism the proper way of
lighting candles, or even if priests tells us this and that. Be reflective, think, reason. According to the gospel of John "in the
beginning was the logos. Logos is Greek
and is translated as Word and Reason.
God is reason (not just word, according to Pope Benedict). Let us be reasonable therefore when we relate
with him.
Second. Prayer must always be open to God's will,
otherwise our attitude towards prayer will have no difference with the way we look
at luck or swerte in life. We need to be
persistent and even insistent on our prayers like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
who repeated his prayer three times while sweating blood. And yet he ended it trustfully saying "yet
not my will but yours be done." This should be the characteristic of all
prayers offered to God, persistent like the woman before the unjust judge yet allowing
God to be God at the same time, always trusting that God, like the Father that
he is, will not give his child "a scorpion if he asks for an egg." (Lk.
11:12)
Third, again, we need to emphasize
the giftedness of God's grace which is the aim and fruit of prayer. God's grace is a gift. It is not a question of pushing the right buttons. It is not a question of wearing the right
clothes or doing things in a certain way so as to win God's favor. God after
all is not a vending machine. He is our
loving Father " who knows our needs even before we ask him." (Mt.
6:8)
Fourth, candles, like images, are
aids to prayer. They remind us of deeper
realities ... that Jesus is light in our darkness, that we need to hope, and
trust and have faith even when all about us is darkness. Light is also the symbol of presence – God is
with us. We may not always get what we
want or what we ask for in prayer, but we are assured of God's abiding presence,
that he will not leave our side nor will he abandon us in our need.
______
The renovation of our Perpetual
Eucharistic Adoration Chapel is on-going.
It would take the parish probably another ten days to finally finish it. The roof needs to be repaired since some
parts are already leaking. The floors
need sanding. The air-conditioning units
need replacement. We need to separate
the comfort room from the chapel. We
also need to put an altar (I will explain this in later articles.), and we also
need to make the Blessed Sacrament more secure by enclosing it in glass and by putting
an opaque door so that we can close it every time no one is in the chapel
(liturgical law does not allow exposition without the presence of at least one
person adoring the Blessed Sacrament.). We
need to separate the chapel from the guard house and probably provide a new entrance
that would lend an air of sacredness more conducive to prayer (in other words, a
more orderly foyer in contrast to the clutter that greets us every time we
enter the adoration chapel).
We need your help. For so many years this room has been a refuge
for so many of us. I saw people in joy
coming to the chapel, like after a wedding, leaving before the Blessed Sacrament
the bridal bouquet. Or young students leaving
their pencils after a successful exams.
I saw also people in tears, burdened by needs pouring their hearts out
to Him who listens intently to us. I
also saw people just sitting it out before him like a solar cell exposing
themselves and recharging in the light of the Sun. If the cathedral is our spiritual home this
is the one room in this big house where we can truly feel attended to. Let us help rebuild it.
----------
To celebrate the centennial of the
apparitions of our Blessed Mother in Fatima, I am inviting everyone to join us
in a triduum starting May 10 to 12 and culminate it by commemorating the 100th
anniversary of her first apparition to the children of Fatima in May 13. Let us celebrate mass together at 5:30 in the
afternoon and pray the Rosary in these three days as our Mother desired we
would, for reparation and consecration. Then
let us celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Fatima at 5:30 in the afternoon after
which we will inaugurate the Chapel of Lights which we build in honor of our
Blessed Mother in her title Ntra. Sra. de la Candelaria.
Comments