JESUS IN JAIL

Thank you so much for this online retreat, this is my first time and my first lent away from the Philippines and specially my Mary the Queen Parish and my choir there.
Am so grateful for this encounter with the Lord, i had many disappointments in life too but this time he answered my prayers to be able to migrate here in the US after waiting for 22yrs but still waiting for him to answer my prayer since my husband was left behind.
I know Lord Jesus you are here with and will never abandon me in all my struggles in life and also in my happiest moments you are there, please continue to give me strength to discern things and to always “Let your will be done.”
i love you Lord thank you for everything
?Amen

Dear Lord,

“Not my will, but Yours be done”, those words have always stirred something in me. They bring such an intense sense of awe and fear in me. There must be immense faith needed to see it through. There must have been intense fear of what that meant for your comfort, for your safety, risking all that for no clear reward except God’s promise and the knowledge that you are hopefully God’s instrument of love in this world. Even you, Lord, was left in so much despair by what the full impact of those words eventually meant for you. But, in the end, you still chose to place your faith in God’s will.

I am disappointed with many things. I wish my life turned out better. A much better career. More money. More praise. More prestige. More comfort. More safety. Less pain. Recently, I felt deeply disappointed with politics, the increasingly mean-spirited attitudes of people on each political side, the murders, the growing poverty, the simple lack of care for others. I feel disappointed with people. We have more money, more food, more knowledge than at any point in human history, yet, we have been more persistent than ever in our selfishness and narrow-mindedness.

But I do not wonder where God is. I have come to a point in my faith that I know God is here, God is watching, and God cares for us all. Amidst the pain, the disappointment, the anger, the frustration, you, Jesus, have shown me that putting your trust in the God of endless love and compassion will lead to a better place. God is no magician. God works through God’s creation: nature, its living beings, us.

If you, Lord, have not lost your faith in God’s will for our salvation, who am I to give up over my own disappointments? Though I fail many times to live up to those words, inspire me and grant me the strength to keep getting up and trying again.

“Not my will, but Yours be done.”

Dear Jesus,

Our grandfather was laid to rest yesterday. Remembering the story of Lazarus is quite an unsettling story to look at today, especially whenever I remember the teary-eyed faces of my relatives and my mother. I have yet to properly cry about my grandfather the same way my family had: indeed, I have this unsettling tendency to not cry during the burials of the people I am related to. I sometimes wonder if this is me having already learned the reality/impermanence of things, or this is me being confronted by my own lack–by my own inability to acknowledge that for a while now, I have been someone who have placed very little emotional stock for my family. Maybe instead of being just the one who is disenchanted, I have been causing disenchantment myself.

Maybe you know this feeling, Lord. Maybe this is the very thing you felt when you saw your disciples hankering over the glory of what they thought was your impending reign as the Messiah of Israel–the one to deliver them from Rome. You may feel that you are being a monumental let-down to the miserable who look to you for material salvation. Maybe this is the thing keeping you at fear in prison. Maybe this is why you are afraid of the Passion: that everything you preached, the hope, the message of love, will fade away when you are a corpse on the cross.

Right now, two millennia after your sacrifice, in a far-away, island country, people are dying. The rich continue to hold power. The religious continue to hover above us in hypocrisy–using even your very name. The people trying to help and make a difference are either killed or hounded out. You may have found this place familiar. You may even have been killed in this place yourself, had you been here.

Wait–you are. You have been. In the seven thousand killed suspects. In the miserable who were left behind. In the old battle-hounds who could only scream vengeance, bloodied, bruised but unable to lift any further hand to attack. In us who are losing the will to fight and speak.

Lord, teach us how to hope. How to continue loving in a world who seem to be unable to–or at the very least, only promises a fleeting, facetious image of love in exchange for our very souls. How to live with love, to give the will to stand up and make a difference in a world which doesn’t want to make sense. Help us to love as you did–to end, to the cross, alone and driven to near-insanity by the pain, to be met by contempt–or worse–by the impenetrable silence of the eternal.

i was broken by someone and am still recovering from it…yet i do remember that one time, amidst my suffering, someone offered me a cup of coffee in the rain and said i was welcome to visit (that institution) anytime i needed shelter.

you see, at the time i bought something for someone who didn’t care. it was raining and i got wet and a bit sick…but when i arrived (at that religious institution) i found caring. and i knew that Christ was always there, watching me. as he does now.

thanks for this. it’s very timely. what happened to me (ironically after a very meaningful holy week last year) really disrupted me. and i appreciate this theme. so thanks 🙂

Jesus, as you suffer alone,
from Your arrest, imprisonment, torture, even in Your death.

One thing comes to my mind.

THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME.

You took all loneliness, abandonment, disenchantment, and all human suffering for our sake.

I FEEL I AM UNWORTHY.

But I thank you, Jesus. For being one of us.

Teach us to be like You. To be able to say to God the Father:
“Not my will, but Your will be done.”

Kudos for Father J and the rest of the team of this online retreat! Another fruitful Maundy Thursday! #3rdyearparticipant

Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to hear from you through this retreat. Though I have my own disenchantments, You console me by letting me know that You will never leave. You are always here for me, Lord. May I be able to use this grace to let others know of your presence. Your will be done, O Lord.

Fr. J… I have a lot of disenchantment… I am grateful to you. After watching and reading your module online. I realized a lot of things in my life. God LOVES me. I am crying now as I listen to all the music you’ve partnered into every gospel. I am so much grateful to God for this wonderful online retreat. I am a sinner yet God still loves me…It is only now I realized the value of Holy week… Thank you father J! May God reward all your efforts in glorifying him.

A part of me thinks going through this retreat was a bad idea. After all, my innocent sister is in detention, and in fact I just finished visiting her today.

Weirdly enough, she was once faithless, but discovered belief in God during her stay there. Sadly, I can’t say the same for myself… I am no longer sure what to believe anymore. We have become pariah among family and friends have turned against us. I only keep my social media accounts because I get paid to post updates on them, it’s part of my job description, and honestly this whole experience has made me want to resign and close all accounts altogether. I can definitely relate only too well with this because it has been my life since 2016.