MASTERPIECE

REMEMBER YOUR DESTINY, FOCUS ON YOUR ORIGIN

You and I are God’s original masterpiece. We were created geniuses, holy and brilliant. This is our origin and it is our destiny. We are made for God and we will go back to Him if we live excellently. To live a Holy life is not to spend the whole of your life’s hours on your knees. It is more than that. It includes that surely but it must go beyond that. Doing well in your business, in your studies, performing brilliantly and whatever you do and touch and feeling awesomely satisfied is the mark of Holiness.

However, the quality of your life is a sum total of the quality of your thoughts, of yourself and of life. John Mason reminds us that no life is a coincidence. It is a reflection. Most of our problems are out own making, a result of our own low quality thoughts. If you could beat up the person most responsible for your problems, you would not have teeth. We all admire the people who have succeeded and who have gone through great problems and have come through alive. However, when problems come our way, we give up, become angry and blame God while playing the victim. We can change this by seeing problems as challenges to purify us as gold is. It is a matter of changing the way we think and as Christians, the way we believe. Faith is walking everyday believing that everything will be alright. Louis XIV once said, ‘there is little that can withstand a man/woman who can conquer himself/herself.’ So, conquer those feelings of fear, of smallness, of insignificance or they are going to cost your life, literally. Act against your fear, not in agreement with it. Walk in faith and not in fear.

Stewart Johnson was right when he said, ‘Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves, to break our records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before.’

Believe in you God and in yourself. One without the other won’t work. If you doubt yourself, you doubt God’s creative genius and vice versa. ‘A person who doubts himself is like a man who enlists in the ranks of his enemy and bears arms against himself. Alexandre Dumas wisely says. You may and you can succeed even if nobody believes in, be they parents or friends, but you will never succeed if you don’t believe in yourself and your potential.

ON THE SUCCESS ROAD...

NEVER TRADE RESULTS WITH EXCUSES

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot… and missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan

John Mason puts it powerfully when he writes, ‘don’t spend half your life telling what you are going to do and the other half explaining why you didn’t do it.’ I think this is great. I great reason for why we fail is our inventive capacity with excuses. We don’t like admitting that the reason for our failure is our refusal to look at alternatives, to see the big picture or simply, to be response-able. When you use excuses, you give up your power to change and improve. You can fall down many times, but you won’t be a failure until you say that someone else pushed you. Above all, believing in God assures you of being forgiven and of energy called Grace to lift you up. Most importantly through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, one can shape up and start again. Remember, Holiness is not in never sinning but in rising up every time we fall. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Stop playing the blame game, nobody wins this game by the way, and start living your life to the full.

Failures are experts at making excuses. There are always enough excuses available if you are weak enough to use them. However, there is no excuse for being full of excuses! When you make a mistake and then you make an excuse for it, you have made two mistakes. You wasted time and creative energies when thinking up excuses. Instead, get up and work, think big ideas that you’ll be proud off. An excuse is a foundation upon which one builds a house of failure. Most failures are people who are professional at giving excuses for why they failed and that they are not to blame. Challenges are not problems until you see them so. See in every difficulty, the fire that purifies gold. Follow the ant philosophy; if you find a block on your path, try going around it, under it, over it but don’t you give up. No excuse will ever support you purpose in life. The person who really wants to do something finds a way, the others find an excuse. Failures say that success is luck, the successful say that it is focus plus daily improvement over time. Choose where you belong and block those excuses. When excuses come, say, ‘Excuse me please, I’ve got to pass!!

LIVE YOUR DREAM!

John Mason, founder and president of Insight International, a minister, an inspirational Speaker and the author of several books, wrote Imitation is Limitation, one his most wonderful books. This book is timeless. The points he has reminded us are so important and if anybody decided to work on those points, he or she would become a world class human being. He reminds us of the need to realize that we are God’s original masterpiece, each in our own way and that imitating anybody else or trying so hard to be accepted by everybody is an injustice to ourselves and to God. Imitation is limitation. I shall try to share with you some of the major ideas that he has shared in that book over the next few days.

IF YOU ARE NOT YOU, THEN WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BE?

“Wood may remain ten years in the water, but it will never become a crocodile!” Powerful point from a Congolese proverb. I could not but be taken up by that beautiful proverb in the book. In short you are who you are. Julius Hare is also quoted in the book as saying that, ‘Be what {or better still, who} you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.’ We all want to grow and shine and be successful but we forget to brand our selves. We can only become better by first accepting ourselves, with our weaknesses and strengths and then growing from there. That is the launch pad.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers. Great point. I can’t change until I love that image in the mirror. I can only get stagnant and wasted. I add that what most matters in life is not what others think about you but what you think about yourself. You are not the sum total of other people’s opinion of you. You are who you decide to be. Reconnect with your life giver and let Him tell you for what you were created. You are here on purpose and for a purpose. Powerful words from John Mason. Andre Gide says in the book that, ‘It is better to be hated for what you are than be loved for what you are not.’ How many of us fall into the trap of being pleasers in order to be accepted and liked. We play to the audience but we cry at the privacy of our rooms. ‘Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be content with what you have.’ The words of Doris Mortman. You can be a King in slum or a slave in a palace.

I liked this point. “The person who walks in someone else’s tracks never leaves his/her own footprints!!” Think of that for a moment. Are you living your own dreams or the dreams of your friends, peers, parents or society at large? Why do you do what you do? Why are you who you have chosen to be? And by the way, did you actually choose to be and do what you are doing and being right now or is it a result of someone too timid to live465 his or her own life? John Mason reminds us that the opposite of courage is not fear but conformity. Being everyone else except yourself.

I found the words of Leo Buscaglia inspiring and I will leave them with you, “The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.”

So be original and not a copy. You are God’s original masterpiece. But you’ve got to believe it. I can’t do that for you. Don’t be an atheist of your own awesomeness.

THE FUNERAL CEREMONY..

Celebrating the Life of the Mother of The Youth Chaplain

 

Lovely Quotes for Moms

Favorite Quotes About Mothers

Mother by Mary Cassatt 

 

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."
-- Washington Irving

"Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother."
-- Lin Yutang

"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."
-William Makepeace Thackeray

"To a child's ear, 'mother' is magic in any language."
-Arlene Benedict

"No influence is so powerful as that of the mother."
-Sarah Josepha Hale

"A mother understands what a child does not say."
-Jewish proverb

"No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother's love."
-Edwin Chapin

"Mother is the one we count on for the things that matter most of all."
-Katherine Butler Hathaway

"Mothers can look through a child's eyes and see tomorrow.
"- Reed Markham

"Great mothers build bridges instead of walls."
- Reed Markham

"The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother."
-Napoleon Bonaparte

"The mother is the one supreme asset of national life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman, or business man, or artist, or scientist."
-Theodore Roosevelt

My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her."
-- George Washington (1732-1799)

"A good mother is worth hundreds of schoolmasters."
-George Herbert

"When you were small and just a touch away, I covered you with blankets against the cold night air. But now that you are tall and out of reach, I fold my hands and cover you with prayer."
-Dona Maddux Cooper

"Make a memory with your children, spend some time to show you care; toys and trinkets can't replace those precious moments that you share."
-Elaine Hardt

"You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be I had a Mother who read to me."
-Strickland Gillilan

"Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life."
-Sophocles

"My mother was the making of me. She was so true and so sure of me, I felt that I had someone to live for--someone I must not disappoint. The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me."
-Thomas A. Edison

"Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother."
-Oprah Winfrey

"Who ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My mother"
-Ann Taylor

"God could not be everywhere and therefore He made mothers."
-Jewish Proverb

"Mother: the most beautiful word on the lips of mankind."
-Kahlil Gibran

"Children and mothers never truly part - Bound in the beating of each other's heart."
-Charlotte Gray

REST IN PEACE MOTHER

In Memory of Esther, The Mother of Fr. Edwin Hunja, the Archdiocese of Nairobi Youth Chaplain

The Mother

By Gwendolyn Brooks 

All the Gifts You've Given to Me

You gave me love when I first drew breath...
You nourished my body and soul.
You gave me the gift to believe in myself,
helping me become the unique person I am.
You gave me an understanding of the value of life...
a desire to share my special talents with others
and to love others with the love you
so generously bestowed on me...
and I will leave this world a better place
for having made a difference.

-Marie Lawrence

A Mother's Love

She holds a mirror to what we can be and helps to cultivate
what others may not see... helping her children to succeed.

As she binds wounds wiping the tears as they fall...
with her words she nurtures our souls as deftly as she mends torn clothes.

She gives us a sense of the magic about life and that the secret of happiness
is to follow our hearts... and have faith in our dreams.

She gives us the freedom to find our own path but guidance when we go astray,
and with the insight of new wisdom to know we are going the right way.

We learn the importance of honor and the virtues of loyalty and truth
as she reminds us never to abandon our values in a meaningless chase of material pursuit.

She teaches us how to build character as we learn from our mistakes,
and from the midst of our sorrow to have hope for a brighter tomorrow.

We learn from her example how to handle strife...
and the importance of forgiveness as we go along in our life.

When tested to our endurance, she reminds us of a larger purpose
as we learn from her example that we have sufficient strength.

She inspires us with her words, empowers with her faith in us,
and gives us the capacity to love others with the love she's given us.

I see her face through tears when I was first a child
learning to face my fears, and an illuminating light for all these years...

She will remain my truest friend until the very end
and even beyond...when we meet again

-Marie Lawrence

INCREDIBLE

Priest conceived in rape recounts journey to forgive father

CNA STAFF, Feb 18, 2013 / 04:01 pm
 A priest who was conceived in rape when his mother was only 13 years old is sharing the story of how he met, forgave and heard the confession of his father, who is now living a life of faith.
“I could have ended up in a trash can, but I was allowed to live,” said Father Luis Alfredo Leon Armijos of Loja, Ecuador.
In a Feb. 6 telephone interview with CNA, Fr. Leon, who is pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Loja, said his mother, Maria Eugenia Armijos Romero, was working as a maid to help her parents support their eight children. 
“The owner of the home took advantage of her working alone, raped her and left her pregnant,” he said.
His mother always defended his life, even though she was young and alone, without the support of her family members, who tried to cause an abortion by giving her concoctions to drink and punching her stomach.
“She prayed and felt that the Lord was saying to her in her heart: defend that child that is in you,” Fr. Leon recalled.
The young girl ran away to the city of Cuenca, where she managed to survive on her own. On Oct. 10, 1961, she gave birth to Luis Alfredo.
A short time later, with the help of the baby’s father, she returned to Loja to begin a life as a single mother.
“She ended up under the care of her rapist - my father - who acknowledged I was his and said he would take care of me,” Fr. Leon said, “but that doesn’t mean that things between them were healthy.”
He went on to recount how his father “always visited our home and fulfilled his duty to us. They had three more children, and my relationship with him was distant but pleasant. I respected him a lot, he instilled a sense of authority in me, he was tough with me and he took me to work.”
Fr. Leon encountered Christ through an invitation to the Charismatic Renewal at age 16 and began preaching and teaching catechism “wherever God put me,” whether on the bus or with young people in juvenile detention.
At 18, he felt a call to the priesthood and entered the seminary despite the opposition of his father. He was ordained at the age of 23 with special permission from the bishop.
Two years later, he joined the Neocatechumenal Way, and his mother revealed to him how his birth came about. She had ended her relationship with his father, and this marked the beginning of a journey of reconciliation for them both. Fr. Leon helped his mother understand that she could not hate his father and dealt with his own need to forgive as well.
“God allowed me to be a priest not to judge but to forgive, to be an instrument of his mercy, and I had judged my father a lot,” he said.
Years later, he received a call from his father, who was about to undergo surgery and was afraid. He asked his son to hear his confession and returned to his faith after 30 years of being away from the Eucharist.
“I told him: Dad, you deserve heaven, eternal life,” Fr. Leon said, and “at that moment my father broke down in tears.”
When Fr. Leon preaches to pregnant women undergoing difficulties, he reminds them that just like Jeremiah, God formed their children in the womb as well.
He encourages children to learn how “to see things from the perspective of God’s love” as they come to know their own life story.
“If you are a child or a single mother, you should see how God our Father has cared for you in your life,” he added.