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. 
One day while observing people lighting candles, I saw one young woman holding in one hand 5 candles in 5 different colors!  Lord, have pity on her –5 different problems at the same time?!  (Life can be cruel, indeed!)  For those of you who are bored with life, I suggest, that you stand one afternoon on the place where people light their candles in the cathedral and observe the different colors of candles they light.  Or if from time to time you feel oppressed by difficulties like I do, spend your time there and you will realize how blessed you are compared to the many who come there with candles of different colors on hand.
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.

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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.
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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.

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