Daily Reflections - June 13,2013

MINISTRY THROUGH GOD’S MERCY

 

Today is my late father’s birthday. He was named after St. Anthony. With his own father going blind very early on, my dad had to go through the school of hard knocks, and be a full-fledged farmer at age 11, with his only brother dying at a much younger age, a victim of typhoid fever. He had a lot of stories to tell us, most of which I don’t remember anymore. But there was one that I cannot forget — how he decided to begin planting coffee as a boy, a job that eventually sent us all to school in his adult life.

       He had a long-term vision, alright. But what I really admired was his courage and determination. By the grace of God, on the day most young men and women his age in our little town were garrisoned and murdered in cold blood by the Japanese, my grandmother’s premonition proved true. She told him not to go to work in the fields at Tagaytay. That saved him from certain death, which is exactly what befell scores of others whose bodies were thrown down the Tagaytay ridge overlooking the Taal volcano.

       I share this story because I learned from him the discipline of seeing with the eyes of faith, even if blessings are “veiled” by all sorts of difficulties. I learned from his simple and trusting faith to see beyond the trials of the moment and, despite the seeming impossibility, to see clearly what lay beyond, for there remains the hope of being “transformed from glory to glory into his very image by the Lord who is the Spirit.”

       Years later, as we were all growing up, his steadfast faith remained. He was, for some time, president of the parish council and, for many years, an active member of the Adoradores, despite his being a government   accountant by necessity and a farmer by vocation, even on weekends. I learned firsthand what it meant to “possess” some “ministry through God’s mercy,” and not “give in to discouragement.” Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: How has your faith enabled you to go through your life’s trials?

 

Thank You, dear Jesus, for protecting me and seeing me through all the difficult situations in my life.