"Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires"
Psalm 37:4
Today's Thought
As you think about setting goals for the coming year, here is a place to start: Make a commitment to learn how to apply your faith to everyday life and to become more confident about what you believe. When you pursue these goals, you'll find that the other priorities in your life will fall neatly into place because there will be no conflict between what you believe and what you do.
Today's Plan...
Have you ever set goals for your spiritual life before? Make the extra effort to do this year.
Activities during Light the Advent Candle - 2011
Pictures - Light the Advent (Please click icon to view the page)
Advent: The Knowing behind the Doing
On December 2nd, we invited Fr. Jim Haley, parish priest of St. Peter's Church and our community's spiritual Adviser for a mini-advent recollection. I can still remember the last advent talk that Fr. Jim gave us a few years ago - he said that advent is the hopeful waiting for Christmas.
This year, Fr. Haley stressed the importance of advent in the light of Christmas. Just as action without faith is meaningless, so is Christmas without Advent.
Christmas is all about the celebration, the reminder to us of how much God loves us as His own by sending His Only Begotten God-Son to be born and to live like us, mortal, human beings. But Christmas should not end on the day we take down and put away the Christmas decorations - Christmas should go beyond Christmas.
It was so well put when Fr. Haley said that if Christmas was all about the celebration of God's love to mankind, then Christmas should not end on December 25th - it should be Christmas all year long - and I am not referring to the decors and carols - it's the spirit of joy, of loving, of kindness and of giving that should continue - the reflecting Jesus in our lives.
But advent without Christmas is like putting up the Christmas tree without the lights, the buntings, the decors - it remains just as a tree and nothing more. Advent is not just the hopeful waiting for Christmas - it is the time of preparation, of knowing what needs to be done. Advent is the time when we arm ourselves with the knowhow, with the strengthening of our Christian faith. And Christmas is the doing, putting our faith into action - living up to what is expected of a Christian.
We should not just be Christians in name - we should also be Christians in the way we live our lives - in words, thoughts and deeds. We as Christians should take advantage of the Advent to prepare ourselves for the fulfillment of God's promises in Christmas - by knowing what needs to be done and by actually doing it.
And as Fr. Haley ended the recollection, he told us to reflect on this question - IS THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE BECAUSE I AM A CHRISTIAN?
Sis. Ning Serrano
Living For Christ Prayer Community
FCCCPC members IN MOTION.
Congratulations - 1st Anniversary of the Living For Christ Prayer Community
The Year that Was
We just celebrated our first year anniversary but our community is technically more than a year old.
Our community has been in existence for more than 2 decades and had gone through a lot of major changes. The latest being our confirmation as the Living for Christ Prayer Community in November 2010.
It was not an easy task trying to separate from an entity that had fed and nourished us spiritually but at the same time had shackled our freedom and controlled us. After a lot of prayers, intercession, deliberation and more prayers, we have finally decided that we would want to be freed from this stronghold and be what we have always wanted to be - a pillar of support to the Catholic Church - a guiding light for souls under the directions of the magisterium.
Our first year sure was an eye opener for all of us. We have never seen our membership so active and excited in participating in all our community activities. In the past, seldom have I seen our members stay beyond 9pm and if they did, it is always with grumbling and complaining. After we became the Living for Christ Prayer Community, it became the opposite. Our members have become more involved and would stay even beyond 10 pm!
Our members' involvement did not end with staying late after the prayer meetings. They have also become more actively involved in our ministries.
In the past we have been told that we will never know what our gifts are until we try and exercise them. Unfortunately, this teaching did not seem to resonate in our community until now.
Not all the members had the initiative to join the ministries so we brought the ministries to them. Members were assigned to lead prayers - members, who in the past would be contented to just be mere audiences. Some were given the task of calling up other members who have seemed to have taken a different path. The Music Ministry has more guitarists than an ordinary band has. And our prayers were answered as we now have a keyboard player! All these happened in our first year.
One of our major activities during our first year is the summer picnic. We went to the Christie Park and shared food and laughter. And what a turnout it was in terms of attendees! It was like bringing the prayer meeting out in the open fields and everyone including their families and friends came. It was such a very wonderful and joyous event that we have vowed to have it every year.
Another major activity is when we invited Fr. McKenna to conduct the seminar on Healing the Family Tree. Healing did happen not just in the respective families of each member but also within our community as well. It was an activity that brought us closer to each other and to the God we adore, who is the greatest healer.
As one of our missions as a support to the Catholic church is to bring more souls back to Christ and make people aware of how the Holy Spirit works in our lives, we conducted a Life in the Spirit Seminar. We invited powerful speakers who not only spoke to our minds but to our souls as well. We may have been very familiar with the topics but this time the teachings resonated and made an impact not only to our invitees but also to the members as well - it gave us a fresher look at what it means to really live with the Holy Spirit.
Aside from all these activities, there were so many wonderful changes that also occurred in the community - we now have a better involvement with FCCCPC, we have become more visible in the parish activities and we do not have to worry being scolded for inviting priests to talk in our prayer meetings.
One major thing we had in the Community is that we were finally able to set up and organize our Youth Ministry. Our youth have now, more than ever, become more active and involved in the community activities. We have started to provide separate teachings for the youth, catered to their needs and interests. Our Community even had the joy to send some of these young ones to a weekend youth retreat organized by CCRC.
And although we can say that we have been able to accomplish so much in the span of 12 months, we know that we still have a long way to go. We need to continue to pray and find ways of growing and maturing in the spirit so that we can truly claim and proclaim that we are indeed living our lives for Christ.
Thank you to all of you. The work of the Lord is a success.
The Loved Flock Toronto Chapter had their Catholic Life in the Spirit Seminar on September 4 to 5, 2010 at the Holy Rosary Parish Hall. The community is an active member of the Filipino Canadian Catholic Charismatic Prayer Communities. View Pictures.
Fulfilling the mission of the Loved Flock Catholic Charismatic Renewal
Ministries, that is to evangelize and spread the good news of salvation through the Life in the Spirit Seminars and Growing in the Spirit Seminars, The Loved Flock Toronto Chapter conducted a Life in the Spirit
Seminar last September 4-5, 2010 at the Holy Rosary Parish Hall, Toronto.
We invited our Head Councillor from Loved Flock main, Bro.Jing Mendoza as our main speaker for the said seminar. Father Ben Ebcas, the Pastor of our Lady of the Assumption Parish and also our Spiritual Adviser together with Deacon Bob Rosales, our Spiritual Director, shared with us their spiritual lives through the topics they presented.
Our heartfelt gratitude to all who participated, especially to our dedicated Servants of God, Bro. Jing, Fr. Ben, Fr. Abella who celebrated the Holy Mass and Deacon Bob Rosales. To all the members of the Loved Flock Community who did their best big or small ways, thank you for sharing he blessings to our brothers and sisters through your services and love shown to everyone on the said event. The Joy of the Lord, Bro. Ed and Bro. Rod, thank you also for your help and support all the way. And last But not the least to Bro. Tony, who took his time out to be with us on our last day of the seminar although it's his special day, he covered the church activities with all those beautiful pictures and video, thank you so much.
TO GOD BE THE GLORY!
After the FCCCPC - Final meeting for the preparation of the 30th Pilipino Pilgrimage Celebration at Martyrs' Shine in Midland, Ontario, all FCCCPC Members and Officers went to Our Lady of the Assumption Church for the Blessings for all Pilgrims and advanced thanksgiving for a beautiful turn-out of event to remember. View Pictures
FCCCPC - Final meeting for the preparation of the 30th Pilipino Pilgrimage Celebration at Martyrs' Shine in Midland, Ontario. This was held at Deacon Bob Rosales' Residence on August 1, 2010 and delicious food was prepared by Sis. Jeanette Rosales. View Pictures
