Humility

Before the gist of everything is gone forever, I wanted to chronicle one of the better sermons I've heard during mass. Yesterday, I went to our subdivision's 8:30am mass that promptly started at around 10 minutes to 9am. The Mass celebrant, surprisingly, was the Parish Priest, Fr. Mhadz Lucero. I personally enjoy his homilies because he always has a fun story and an interesting twist to his sermons.

Unfortunately, the story didn't sit too well with me as much as the sermon that followed. And I really wanted to share it here because well, it applies.So the basic idea was this: "Love your enemies, and pray for your persecutor." It's a funny thing especially in our Philippine society because it's a little inconceivable. The reason it's so difficult to offer love towards your enemies is because of our individual pride. This, he said, was the root of five other sins that our heart sowed. This is what prevents us from loving; from becoming humble.

H - Hatred 
E - Envy
A - Anger
R - Resentment
T - Timidity

Everyone is prone to these sins. Sometimes we express anger and hatred towards others; towards friends, superiors, bosses and what not. We grow envious of others' circumstances. We often keep tabs on other people's allegations towards us that it damages our relationships. And we are just scared of admitting or taking the extra step for fear of failure.

Father Mhadz gave an interesting metaphor to how people should be more humble. He used rice crops would you believe! There are two types of rice crops: those that stood tall and those that were bent over. As you could imagine, those that stood tall represented the proud people, and the ones bent over represented those who were humble. In this analogy, he likened the proud rice crops to be "empty" per se, while those bent over were those that "bore fruit" as it were.

Love is humility, and humility is love. We all need a little more love in the world. And it really is difficult to forgive. But when we become humble, we learn to forgive and forget.

The 10th of October

I never knew the day would come so quickly that I would be spending a Saturday with Kai without worrying about either of us needing to go to class. What's even better was that Kai had been sleeping over with me since Wednesday night for internet. 8DDDD

The day was quite the interesting one. Kai and I woke up this morning and were still the lazy couple to get up from bed and get ready for the day. We spent most of the morning either trying to go back to sleep, just lying down, talking about things, playing with some of my stuffed animals to enact some conversations between them or whatever else floats our boat. Yeah.

So by lunch time, we had my all-time favorite meal of Dumpling Wrappers (yes, literally just wrappers) that we treat like tacos. My usual mix of the meat (which is ground round, I believe), rice and cheese are always delicious for me. ^________________________^v Thing of the matter is, I really have a big serving of it and end up eating a lot. I warned Kai about it beforehand as soon as I saw what was on the dinner table and she still raised an eyebrow at how much I was already eating. *laughs* I did tell you, Kai. xD

After lunch, Kai and I spent some time on our laptops posting to our roleplays, playing some Facebook games (I continue asking myself how School of Wizardry became so addicting by now) and watching some clips on YouTube. Not long after, we decided to both take a shower already so that we can get ready to go and that Kai would have time to pack her things (which, I must say, was a lot). When all was done, I asked permission from my dad to use his car before we headed off to Trinoma (where we ended up going the night before for our 11th monthsary) since she planned to buy a Smart Bro. Haha.

We ended up finding out that they were out of stock until the week started on Monday, so we decided to have some Dairy Queen instead. I had my usual Choco Kit-Kat blizzard while Kai had her Butterfinger blizzard. Hooray for ice cream~

At around quarter to 5, I took her back to her relative's place in Commonwealth before I finally headed home. Since I had a badminton tournament for my PE tomorrow, I told my mom that I would be going to hear Mass tonight. I took the car and got there, thinking it was 5:30 or 6, but ended up waiting until 6:30pm for the Anticipated Mass. Not wanting to go back, I decided to wait the hour out. I found time to visit my grandfather at the columbarium, at least. ^__________^

Father Mhadz, the Parish Priest, presided over the Mass and his homilies are always such a card. This particular homily he gave got me interested. The Gospel this evening talked about the commandment of love. "Love God and love your neighbors as you love yourself." He gave an analogy to the human person to that of an onion.

Yes, onion.

When you put an onion down on a table, it rolls around in a random direction and sometimes falls. Comparing an onion to a human, a human goes through life without knowing where to go; sometimes a human stumbles. Man's relationship with God is like this: to give you direction in life; to have a clear understanding of where it is you want to go.

An onion, when peeled, has multiple skins. A human, on the other hand, wears many masks. They enjoy putting up a front to deceive people or even themselves at one point or another. To understand oneself and to appreciate what they have is important.

And when you cut an onion for some time, you start crying. Like humans, when you spend time with other people, you develop a reason for them to cry about you. Man's relationship with others is as equally important.

Or something along those lines. But hey, an onion ain't half bad to be compared to. Almost ingenious, even!

Coming back home, I really felt like a part of me left. Spending time with Kai made me extremely happy beyond words. I guess it goes to show how much you can love a person the more you spend time with them. Here's to our anniversary next month, my koibito*~

*Koibito = sweetheart in Japanese