Sinulog NZ Newsletter Mother's Day 2013

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18 May 2013, Saturday 3:00 - 7:00pm Mt. Albert War Memorial Hall Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Mums don’t need to be the fairest ones of all, but they should be charitable to others by striving to look their best (almost) all the time -- in fast, easy, and affordable ways.

What Goes in Must Come Out

Like it or not, the food and drinks mums put inside their bodies impact their health and nutrition. Configure Express St. Lukes shares what mums should avoid and what they should eat and drink more to live a longer and healthier life.

Caring for Those Chops

There’s nothing like a perfect smile and the best smiles mums can have is with the proper care of their teeth and gums. Take it from the experts.

It’s Hip to Fit

Mums have gotta move it, move it. Configure Express St. Lukes explains the need stretch those muscles that lifting shopping bags just won’t do, and demonstrate simple exercises.

Get Into the Zumba Craze

Courtesy of Configure Express St. Lukes, mums will learn to move and groove the Brazilian dance that’s an effective calorie burner, complete fitness program, and brilliant stress therapy.

Celebrating Motherhood

A Mother’s Love

A personal reflection of Miriam Batucan My Role & Experiences as a Mother Let me give a brief meaning to & synonym of the word motherhood: The word “motherhood” is synonymous to “parenthood.” The Collins English Dictionary says “motherhood” means female parent or head of a female religious community.

My sharing will then be based on parenthood.

My understanding of what my role entails: 1) Before becoming a mother, of course I have my relationship with my husband that I have to nurture for as long as we live; as called for in the Sacrament of Matrimony pledging love, faithfulness and dedication, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do part us. In doing this, I always call on God for guidance and direction and always keep our marriage, our plans, and all our undertakings in prayer.

In other words, GOD is the centre of our marriage and family life.

2) As a wife and in partnership with my husband, I have to ensure that we build a good home for the family.

3) As a mother, I have the duty to nurse my child until he or she is ready to have solid foods.

4) I also recognise my role in ensuring a good and healthy growth and living for the children and the entire family for that matter (again in partnership with mu husband) .

5) It is a by-word that “education begins at home.” I also consider it my duty, in partnership with my husband, to make sure that my children will learn the

basics of life and living and ensure good education outside the home when they come at the right age.

6) As mother, I feel that I am the disciplinarian in the home, while my husband stays on the bargaining side in behalf of the children.

7) Motherhood does not stop when my children get married. It carries on to giving them guidance in building their own home, but making sure that I don’t impose my experiences on them. It also entails that I will love and embrace new additions to the family, like the husband of my daughter or the wives of my sons.

8) As mother, I make myself available when they need assistance at home or with their own family. That is, my grandchildren.

Memorable Experiences with My Own Mother My mother always tried her best to provide the best that she could give us, even to the point of letting go of her own needs, letting go of her own desires and letting go of her own wishes. This I have inherited from my mother.

How I Perceive the Role of Blessed Mother Mary as the Greatest of All Mothers I remember the time when Blessed Mother and St. Joseph were looking for Jesus for 3 days and when they found Him, she was told, “ Did you not know that I have to do my Father’s business?”

Although she did not understand it, she kept silent and kept it all in her heart.

I have experienced this many times,

especially when my children turned into young adults. They do or plan to do something and when I give my own thoughts, I get told that mine is old-fashioned way of life.

I sometimes blurt out and tell them off, telling them my life experiences, and what I have seen or heard. But oftentimes, I have to keep silent and let a day or so pass, while trying to understand where they are coming from. I do this in prayer asking for the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

As children go up, they get exposed to the many faces and challenges of the world and to their own environment -- that is, their circle of friends. God has given them, and all of us for that matter, free will.

We know that whatever we do, God is looking at us and gives us the freedom of choice, but He also gives us the grace to know and understand and be able to make a choice. It takes patience and courage to handle teenagers and young adults.Let alone when they have their own families and we parents feel that we now have competition to the love that they used to give to us only.

I always call on the Blessed Mother to help me in these difficult vocation of being a mother, of being a parent.

To be Like You

by Cherry Thelmo-Fernandez

To follow without question, I’ve always had a problem with that.

I answer a query with another, all the why’s and the hows.

To be the wind so someone greater could fly, I’m not sure I know how.

I tend to be at the centre of it all, and bask under the light.

Help me to be like you, you have shown the way.

Teach me how to follow and on that path stay.

To live simply and not want more, I continuously struggle with that.

I keep dreaming, wishing, acquiring things; never having enough.

To totally abandon to His will, without doubt, without fear.

I strive to be like that and constantly remind myself to be so.

Mother of God, pray for me, keep me as your own.

And with hope, one day I will become like you.

We had YCAP (Youth Civil Action Program) in high school and one of the activities we had to do was to clean the Redemptorist church grounds and candle stands every Friday afternoon. At 14, any empty sacred place was synonymous to fuzzy balls of light, unseen creepy voices, and strong ghostly scents. So I never did any candle cleaning work.

I suppose I was too busy picking up leaves just outside the rectory that I didn’t notice an elderly priest come up to me. He asked me if I knew the story of the Mother of Perpetual Help. Not waiting for a reply from me, he just continued on to narrate how the Redemptorist priests were made custodians of the miraculous image.

The painting originally came from Crete. It was stolen by a merchant who was going back to Rome on a ship. A lifethreatening storm arose and thesailors prayed to Our Lady for help not knowing she was on board. They reached Italy safely.

Soon after he arrived in Rome, the merchant fell ill and his condition steadily worsened. He gave the picture to his best friend and ordered him to have the image enshrined in a church. The man gave it to his wife who kept the icon for herself and displayed it in her room (as she found it to be too beautiful to give out).

Our Lady appeared to the man in a dream pleading him to deliver the picture to a church. When the man told his wife about it, the wife did not believe him. The Lady appeared in the man’s dream for the second time. She was sad that the man did not fulfill her wish, soon after, the man got sick and died. This time the Madonna appeared to the man’s daughter asking for her to expose the picture for veneration at a nearby church. She told her mother of the message given to her which now frightened the mother.

So, the mother gave the image to her neighbour, who took it and also got very very sick and wanted nothing more but to fulfill the Madonna’s wish. Soon after the image was given to a church, her health was restored.

But Our Lady appeared yet again to the younger daughter indicating the exact location where she wanted the image to be placed. The church was St. Matthews and it was home to Agustinian friars who gladly took the icon where it

by Chichi B. Abadingo soon became a popular pilgrimage place for 300 years.

Many miracles happened for the people that came to pray before it.

In the late 17th century, the governor of Rome didn’t want to have too many churches in Rome, so he ordered St. Matthews to be destroyed. The Agustinians took the sacred painting of Our Lady with them and enshrined it at a new church as Our Lady of Grace.

When the Redemptorist priests built a house in Rome, they chose a vacant lot where St. Matthew’s Church was previously located. They constructed a small church for St. Alphonsus on the same spot.

Many people came back to the place looking for the miraculous picture of the Mother of Perpetual Help. The Redemptorist started the search for the image that the people longed for. The people gave the priest a picture to help them search for it.

They soon found the famous icon and the Agustinians gladly handed over the image, even if the icon meant much to them, so it can be enthroned at her favoured domain. The Redemptorists constructed a new beautiful altar for Our Lady. There was a huge procession to welcome the Lady back. This made our Mother very pleased and outpoured her love through several miracles. As expected, reports of the great blessings and gifts from our Lady spread widely. People came by the hundreds to visit.

And so it is, the Redemptorists was given the mandate by Pope Pius IX to ‘Make her known!’ *** I know for a fact that being told this story was completely beyond chance.

Looking back to the events in my life, I realised, Our Mother made things happen.

In College, a friend would constantly bring me to hear Wednesday novena masses at the audio visual room for Our Mother of Perpetual Help. I attended the mass to please her but never really placed my heart into it.

When we moved to Guadalupe, the community wanted to build a chapel at our Sitio. A neighbour had a beauti-

ful hand carved frame of the Lady of Perpetual Help, which she donated to the group prompting the avalanche of donations for the ‘kapilya’. The chapel was moved to different locations until a subdivision developer donated a piece of land to enthrone her. She has never looked beautiful.

When my son Lorenzo was 6 years old, he drew a portrait of a smiling (very happy) Madonna that bested all the other entries. He was the youngest representative to compete. He later on told us he drew from memory how our Mother looked like. I am so proud of him.

When we moved to Mactan Island, I found an attractive photo of a lady’s face and commissioned a carving be done to match the picture as I was so enamoured by it. I realised later that the photo was patterned from a Greek artist representation of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. I can only hope it was from Crete.

And then we moved to New Zealand.

Out of all the suburbs to choose from, we find ourselves planted in Glendowie where the Redemptorist parish is at - The Mother of Perpetual Help. I am no psychic nor am I superstitious, but every time we make plans of moving house, plans are thwarted and we have remained.

So every Wednesday night at 6:30 pm, I make my way to St. Benedict’s parish to attend the weekly novenas. The group started at the Lady’s chapel with a few attendees but now it has grown enough for Fr. Paul to offer us the use of the main church. My husband made a project out of a light box to illuminate the picture of our Mother so we can have a new moving altar. The picture of the Mother of Perpetual Help’s face is of unspeakable majesty and calm and yet her large eyes, partly closed, expresses indefinable sorrow and sympathy. She is not looking at Jesus, but rather to us, her adopted children, as if to convey compassion for us in our fears and sorrows.

I have not been consistent in coming to the novenas lately as I need to pick up my bearings but I know my mother’s call and help will always be endless.

I am truly blessed and grateful of my Mother’s love.