Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?

Are you the favorite person of anybody? Take a second to let that question sink in. Then think of someone who might consider you a favorite person. Are you absolutely sure that you are indeed that someone’s favorite person?

I did give this question a serious thought after watching the video below. The first person to come to mind was my mother, but I have two other siblings and she has always maintained that she loves the three of us equally. Then I thought of my nephews and nieces – who might consider me as their favorite uncle – but they have other uncles!

In the end I realized that there is simply no way for me to be absolutely sure that any of my relatives, friends, coworkers and acquaintances see me as their favorite person. But I also realized another thing – there might be no way for me to be certain that people close to me would treat me as their favorite, yet it is beyond doubt that I am God’s favored one.

I’ll say it again. I am God’s favorite. Everything that I have – friends, family, ministry, joy, even problems, difficulties, challenges – are proofs that I am indeed God’s favorite. I could not think of another day in my life that I felt I lived so fully as the day I realized that I am spending the rest of eternity with a God who chooses me as his favorite person.

All of us are God’s favorite. I fully agree with St. Augustine when he said “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” To God, all of us are special. To God, no one is more important than us. We are precious and honored in God’s sight. All of us have a favored place in God’s heart.

We are God’s favorite people. The Father himself said “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness” (Jer 31:3). And Jesus also declared “As the Father has loved Me so have I loved you” (Jn 15:9).

A person who knows that he or she is God’s favorite keeps for life a thankful, loving heart.

Use Twitter for Evangelization

Twitter is the third most used social network in the planet. It is reported that it gets 55 million monthly visits from all over the world. I first tweeted in October 2007. My very first tweets were updates of my whereabouts and what-abouts. Then in May 2008 I began tweeting inspirational quotes from well-known authors. Five months later I started posting biblical quotations as tweets. Last July 16th I posted my first prayer tweet. Since then I’ve been tweeting nothing else but prayers.prayertweet

My Twitter and Facebook accounts are linked in such a way that every time I post something on my Twitter account, the tweet automatically appears as my status in Facebook. Many of my Facebook friends respond to the prayer tweets, and based on their comments and on the “who likes this” list I feel that the online prayers have made a difference in their lives. Some of them respond with an “Amen” or another prayer. While some others ask me to include them in my prayers. There are also those who say that they will live out the prayers.

The prayer tweets have not only deepened my relationships with my online friends, they have also allowed me to minister to them. Praying for and praying with people can be as authentic an experience online as it is in the real world.

This experience convinced me that Twitter is a useful tool for evangelization. I am aware that a good number of people are already using Twitter to spread God’s Word. If you are planning to use Twitter to evangelize others, here are some topics/themes that you might want to focus on:

1. Passages from the Bible
2. Thanksgiving prayers and intercessions
3. Quotes from saints and pontiffs
4. Inspiring words from Christian authors
5. Excerpts from Catholic Social Teachings and other Church documents
6. Your personal reflection on faith and life

What Being Close to Jesus Means

Today is the memorial of Mary as the Sorrowful Mother. Early Christians have identified seven moments of great sorrow in Mary’s life, and these are the following:

1. The prophecy of Simeon (Gospel of Luke 2:34)
2. The flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13)
3. The loss of the child Jesus in Jerusalem (Luke 2:43)
4. The meeting of Jesus and Mary on the way of the cross. (Luke 23:26)
5. The crucifixion ( John 19:25)
6. The taking down of Jesus from the cross. (Matthew 27:57)
7. The burial of Jesus. (John 19:40)

The sorrows of Mary clearly highlights the fact that being close to Jesus means being close to His cross, being close to his suffering. Yet this truth did not deter Mary from following Jesus closely and without regret.

The suffering of Jesus did not shake Mary’s faith. The everyday problems we face cannot compare to the sorrows of Mary and this certainty should enhearten us to stand committed to our faith in times of problems and troubles. The difficulties we encounter in life should not cause us to doubt God’s mercy and faithfulness. Indeed they should strengthen our resolve to follow Jesus no matter what the cost.

What gives me encouragement every time I face a hurdle in life is the realization that challenges and difficulties are inevitable facts of life and part of following Christ. Knowing that being close to Jesus means being close to his cross does not discourage me. For being close to Jesus also means being close to Heaven.

Stay Connected to a Power Source

The title of the following video is simply “Reach”. I can’t anymore remember how many times I have used this video in my homilies, talks and presentations. I like it not only because it is short and simple (i.e., fits nicely into my homily time frame) but also because it is meaningful and purposeful.

The video brings home the point that when you are disconnected from a power source you can do nothing. The robot mirrors how many of us live our lives. Like the robot, we want to do things by ourselves, independent of others.  Often we rely on our strength alone. Like the robot, we forget that without being connected to the source of all power we can do nothing. True strength, true power comes from God.

We always need to stay connected to God. Our strength grows out of our closeness with God. With God as our “power source”, we can accomplish far beyond what we can do on our own. For with God we gain strength, courage, and confidence in becoming who we are capable of becoming.

The Joy of Sharing Knowledge

For three Saturdays now I’ve been going to a place called Paradise Heights. At first glance you couldn’t think of anything paradisaical about the place. Built at the foot of the infamous Smokey Mountain, Paradise Heights looks like nothing but a series of unfinished buildings rising above mountains of trash.

That's me showing a workshop participant how to use the mouse by playing a GCompris game.

Gawad Kalinga volunteers have not only built homes for the poor in Paradise Heights, they have also organized the community for a series of trainings. One of these trainings is a computer literacy program for adult women. I volunteered to be one of the facilitators of the said program.

The age range of the 17 computer workshop participants is from 23 to 55. Their organizer told me that most of them are former garbage scavengers. On the first day of the workshop, the participants made it clear to me that they’ve never held a mouse nor a keyboard before. So we spent the first Saturday playing GCompris – a collection of free and opensource games engineered to teach users how to utilize the mouse and keyboard.

As expected, they found it hard to keep the mouse pointer steady and hit the mark. But four hours of practice, patience and perseverance paid. I was happy to see them making double right-clicks at the end of our first session. So that they wouldn’t forget the assigned keys for each finger, the participants traced their hands on paper and wrote the corresponding keys on top of each illustrated finger.

A workshop participant practicing her newly-acquired skill. Take note of the drawing as her guide. Click the image for bigger size.

During my second session with them I taught them how to use OpenOffice.org Writer, a free and opensource word processor. I started by explaining to them the basics of word processing and then asked them to type “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” After four hours they were able to encode paragraphs and effect basic formatting such as bold, italics and underline all by themselves.

In response to popular request, I taught them how to navigate the world wide web during our third session. Something as everyday as websites for people reading this blog appears so out-of-this-world to the Paradise Heights women. I made an effort to slowly explain to them how to visit websites, how to search for virtually anything using google and yahoo, how to play educational games, and how to watch videos and listen to music online. I also taught them how to open an email account and send/reply/forward electronic messages. By now, almost each participant has an email account.

The participants helping each other to create their very first email accounts. Notice the smile and the excitement on their faces. Click the image for bigger size.

You can only imagine the joy I experience as their facilitator. Women who used to pick rubbish from dumps are now empowered individuals who navigate the internet and eventually, I hope, encode their stories and make their voices heard all over the world through online media.

The three Saturdays I spent with them taught me that it is never too late to learn anything new. It has also taught me that a garbage dump can become a “paradise” when residents envision and believe it to be so. Through their desire to be computer literate and their willingness to practice what they’ve learned from the training, I can say that in time they will take their “paradise” to new heights.

10 Lessons I Learned from FarmVille

FarmVille is a Facebook game which allows members of the popular social network to plant, grow and harvest fruits and vegetables as well as raise animals on one’s virtual farm.

I only started playing FarmVille five days ago and, as of this writing, I am now at level 14 with 45,431 coins and 4248 XP. You can say that I am a dedicated farmer. Most of the animals and trees I own are gifts from fellow farmers. The more I play FarmVille the more I enjoy the real-time flash game. One time I had to reschedule my dinner to harvest my crops on time.

Here are ten lessons I learned while tending my virtual farm.

1. Growth takes time, effort, and lots of patience. You cannot hurry the crops. Or make your cows produce milk in seconds. Growth is neither sudden nor easy. It is a process which requires that one step be completed successfully before proceeding to the next.

2. There are always elements that will try to stifle your growth. In FarmVille you have to deal with leaves, weeds, and crows. I real life you have to deal with difficult situations and people who discourage you and try to pull you down.

3. But don’t worry about leaves, weed, and crows – your neighbors will always come to your aid. Look around, you are never alone. Believe in the goodness of others.

4. Helping others clean up leaves, scare off crows, or kill weeds not only give you extra coins and XP but also make you a better neighbor. Whenever I receive messages like this – “Hiya, Fr.! Just look at these leaves! Would you help me rake them up?” I always click “yes”. My main motive is not to gain more coins and XP but to return the favor to people who have also helped me keep my own farm clean and healthy.

5. The more gifts you give, the more gifts you receive.
This is true in FarmVille. This is also true in real life. It was Orison Swett Marden who said “We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.”

6. If you don’t harvest on time, your plants will wither. Just as in FarmVille, to succeed in real life you have to do the right thing at the right time.

7. You can share your triumphs with others. In Farmville you can share your rewards in the form of bonuses. I know of some people who regularly check their Facebook feeds to see if any of their friends have recently won any ribbons. For there they will find the option to earn a bonus from them. The better the ribbon the more coins you will get.

8. You need to work hard to get what you want and need. Aside from plowing, planting and harvesting and dealing with leaves, weeds and crows, you also have to budget your time and coins. You also need to buy the right seeds, trees and animals for optimum profit. Believe me, it can be complicated. If you want to succeed in FarmVille you have to work hard. If you want to succeed in life you have to work harder. As David Bly puts it – “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.”

9. You do not become a Good Samaritan through a single act of kindness. You need to help other farmers hundreds of times before earning your Good Samaritan ribbon. In the same way, you do not become a good person just by doing one single act of goodness. You need to be a good person, a “good samaritan” repeatedly and consistently.

10. After a harvest there must plowing and sowing again. Such is life. The end of something is the beginning of another one.  And I hope that as you complete one step in your life may you begin the next one as a person who has matured and learned his lessons. Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

It is Jesus You Seek

I actually made this video about four months ago. It is my hope and prayer that this short video will inspire viewers to become more committed and faithful to Christ. It is based on a writing by the late Pope John Paul II:

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed off the mask of a false life; it is he who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”