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4 Living Water - January 9, 2015
PLEASE WEAR YOUR BLD ID EVERY FRIDAY
A N N O U N C E M E N T S
FINAL CALL ! There are several seats remaining for the com-
munity Start-of-the-Year Retreat. “Ascent to
the Pure Love of God” by Fr. Charles Anang,
St. Augustine Seminary.
Please register at the basement hall after the
Prayer Meeting or call Annie 905-568-4198
or e-mail: bld_toronto_pastoral_services@googlegroups,com
JANUARY 2015 LECTORS
January 9
1st reading.................Cliff and Cristy Jacinto
Psalm..............Willie and Annette Guillermo
2nd reading............Bing and Emma Ongteco
January 16
1st reading....................Ling and Bing Brinas
Psalm........................................Edmar Aquino
2nd reading............Willie and Vivian Saguil
January 23 1st reading...................Bert and Cecile Cruz
Psalm................................Marife Capistrano
2nd reading.........Gusty and Annie Andino
January 30 1st reading............Charlie and Jo Gonzales
Psalm......................................Linda Canaria
2nd reading..............................Espei Cosme
YOUTH MINISTRY KORNER
Registration is on-going for the 2015 YLSS #
16 on January 9, 16, 23 and 30, 2015. Non-
BLD youth are welcome to attend YLSS # 16.
Please visit the Youth Ministry desk in the
basement hall for registration or e-mail
Froilan and Charito Piamonte at
[email protected] for more information.
Welcome/Salubong will be held on
Friday, February 13, 2015
LIFE IN THE SPIRIT MINISTRY
LSS No. 31 : April 11 – 12, 2015
Orientation will be held on the following
dates and days:
Fridays at the Mark 10 room
January 16 and 23 after the Praise
and Worships
January 30 before the Praise and
Worship
February 6 before the mass
Salubong will be on Friday, February
13, 2015.
For more information, please contact any
members of the Life in the Spirit
Ministry.
Living Water - January 9, 2015
January 9, 2015
BUKÁS-LOÓB SA DIYÓS • OPEN IN SPIRIT TO GOD
www.bldworld.org www.bldtoronto.com
THEME
We are guided by the star in our journey of
faith when we strive to obey God’s command-
ment.
WORD
Is 55:1-11; Is 12:2-3, 4bcd, 5-6; 1 Jn 5:1-9;
Mk1:7-11
ORDER “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call
upon him while he is near.” (Is 55:6)
“Everyone who thirsts, come to the
waters.” (Is 55:1)
DIRECTION Let us bring everyone to our forthcoming
LSS for adults and Youths.
Draw people closer to the Lord by being a
good witness
REFLECTION
This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Bap-
tism of our Lord Jesus Christ. It marks the end
of the Christmas season, which is about a cele-
bration of Incarnation, when Heaven and Earth
meet through the arrival of God as a human
baby. It is also a demonstration of Jesus’ awe-
some humility. This Sunday also marks the be-
ginning of what is called “Ordinary Time.”
However, the purpose of Christmas does not
end.
Last Christmas (December 25, 2014), Pope Fran-
cis made a private visit to the Sistine Chapel for
his personal prayer and devotion to celebrate his
baptism, eight days after he celebrated his 78th
birth anniversary. Earlier, on December 14th, in
a baptismal ceremony with the attending fami-
lies, he said, “I would be somewhat curious to ask a
question…but I won’t ask for the answer…How
many of you know your day of Baptism? However, if
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
www.bldworld.org www.bldtoronto.com
tel:%28905%29568-4198mailto:[email protected]
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2 Living Water - January 9, 2015
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you don’t know it, go find out: call your aunt, your
mother, your god mother…Because it is a feast day,
that is the day that we encountered Jesus for the
first time (underlining is ours)… This is a task for
the home. When was I baptized? … it’s beautiful! I
was baptized, precisely, on Christmas Day!” Pope
Francis said it was the custom – at least in Ar-
gentina – to baptize children eight days after
their birth. He exhorted his listeners to remem-
ber this always as he promised to pray for them
and wished them to have joy, “so much joy,”
with the children, joy in the home, and joy in
hope (Zenit.org., Deborah Castellano Lubov,
December 31,2014).
Birthdays, like Christmas are important, yet as
some commentaries have declared, Christmas is
now thoroughly commercialized or secularized.
All of us in many respects are party to this com-
mercialization making Christmas, at least, an
over-rated celebration. Easter is less significant
in Christian celebrations, but it is the greatest
victory feast of Christendom.
The more significant, if not more important day
in our lives is our baptismal day. Our birthday
is most significant to our mother and father. For
each child is the result of the love of two per-
sons, the human cooperation of mother and
father and the power of the Holy Spirit (God).
Only God can create, God allows people to pro-
create. Note that Baptism is much more under-
rated, actually, it is practically forgotten in the
main celebrations of our Christianity. Do you
celebrate, at best, by offering Mass on this an-
niversary?
Baptism is the first and most powerful Sacra-
ment. Like spiritual immigrants, it is our Chris-
tian citizenship day. God became human on
Christmas day; we became godly, children of
God during our baptism. “See what love the fa-
ther has given us, that we are called children of
God” (1 John 3:1).
On a Wednesday general audience in 2013, Pope
Francis said, “Baptism is in a certain sense the iden-
tity card of the Christian, his birth certificate, and the
act of his birth into the Church. All of you know the
day on which you were born and you celebrate it as
your birthday, don’t you? We all celebrate our birth-
day. I ask you a question, that I have already asked
several times, but I’ll ask it again: who among you
remembers the date of your Baptism?” (Pope Fran-
cis; General Audience, Saint Peter's Square,
Wednesday, 13 November 2013).
“The day of our baptism — even should we live to be
well over 100 — is the most important day of our
life, the day that made us a child of God, a temple of
the Holy Spirit, a member of Christ’s body the
Church. It’s a day that opened up heaven for us. It
deserves to be celebrated” (Fr. Roger Landry,
Meditation: Renewing and Living our Baptism,
CIAM Center, Urbanium University, June 5,
2014). Do you celebrate by offering Mass on
your baptism day anniversary?
Baptism as a gift and power from the Holy
Spirit has been shown by the witness of the
early Christians in Rome in three centuries of
persecution; but again, almost for three hun-
dred years in Japan, a similar fate was endured
by the first Catholic Japanese converts through
the evangelization efforts of religious, such as
the Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits and
their followers from Mexico, Portugal, Spain
and The Philippines. The first Filipino born ,
Living Water - January 9, 2015
St. Lorenzo Ruiz was among them. Unlike the
evangelization of the first and third worlds, in
Japan, the only Sacrament that sustained Japa-
nese converts to keep the faith was Baptism.
They did not have priests, thus they never had
the gift of the other Sacraments like the Eucha-
rist. The Japanese children of God showed that
Jesus is with us through thick and thin, yester-
day, today and forever as promised in the Gos-
pel of Matthew (28:19-20).
Today, the main task is navigating evangeliza-
tion from the movement mainly from Bishops
monks and other religious (Fr. Raniero Canta-
lamessa OFM Cap, Navigating the New Evangeli-
zation, Pauline Books, 2014) to us the Laity, sup-
ported by select consecrated persons. The gift
and power of the Holy Spirit initiated at Baptism
is the spiritual seed that God has invested us, to
evangelize in the new missions, Christian life
among the previously baptised (”baptised pa-
gans”) and for the non-baptised. We pray as
Pope Francis has blessed the sponsors of the
newly baptized that our Baptism becomes the
initial power and reminder of the purpose of the
God-Man who is the infant we celebrate on
Christmas, the God-Man who dipped in the Jor-
dan river that henceforth all the water that roll
down from babies heads empower them as
faithful witnesses, evangelizers in the name of
our Master and Brother, our Lord Jesus Christ!
PROMISE
“…so shall my Word be that goes out from my
mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall
accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the
thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)
“Take care of your spiritual life, your relationship
with God, because this is the backbone of every-
thing we do and everything we are.”
“Take care of your family life, giving your chil-
dren and loved ones not just money, but most of
all your time, attention and love.”
“Take care of your relationships with others,
transforming your faith into life and your words
into good works, especially on behalf of the
needy.”
“Be careful how you speak, purify your tongue of
offensive words, vulgarity and worldly deca-
dence.”
“Heal wounds of the heart with the oil of forgive-
ness, forgiving those who have hurt us and medi-
cating the wounds we have caused others.”
“Look after your work, doing it with enthusiasm,
humility, competence, passion and with a spirit
that knows how to thank the Lord.”
“Be careful of envy, lust, hatred and negative
feelings that devour our interior peace and trans-
form us into destroyed and destructive people.”
“Watch out for anger that can lead to vengeance;
for laziness that leads to existential euthanasia;
for pointing the finger at others, which leads to
pride; and for complaining continually, which
leads to desperation.”
“Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker
… the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless
and strangers, because we will be judged on this.”
Pope Francis’
Suggested New
Year’s
Resolutions