Lives of Saints Book

  One unforgettable book from my childhood was the LIVES OF SAINTS book. I'm not an outdoor kid. I remember I love to read even before. We started with local kiddie comics, and then my aunt would give us books. My very first introduction to the  Bible was this children's Bible given again to us by our aunt, MY BIBLE FRIENDS by Etta B. Deering. I love the illustrations, and I remember I never get tired of reading it over and over again. Selected stories from the Bible in each volume. This set consists of 10 volumes. (I checked this title, and Googled it. I saw it on an Adventist online store, I don't endorse any book that is not by Roman Catholic. I just cited this book because it was the first Bible story that I read.)

We have lots of books when we were growing up. As a homebody person. My sibling and I likes to play the PC, board games, and just read books or comics. My aunt gave me a LIVES OF SAINT book, sadly that book was not in my possession now. It is just a pocket sized book with beautiful drawings of Saints on the front and back cover. She bought it from a religious sister who was selling books at their office.

I love reading the story of St. Therese of Lisieux also known as St. Therese of the Child Jesus, I remember the story when she was walking one night with her father, she saw the stars form a letter, her name, she said her name was written in heaven! I also love the story of St. Rita, the wife, the nun, and the Saint! I also read the sad story of St. Maria Goretti.  I recommend this book for you to give to your children, and loved ones. We can learn a lot from them. Do not forget saints are humans too! They have feelings too. They have experienced joy, happiness, grief and sadness. The lives of these religious people, who loved God dearly is a good example of how we should live our lives. In everything that they do it is for the greater glory of God!

Journey to Carmel

  No, I have not been to Carmel, and I have not traveled to the place where Elijah has trod upon. I am referring to my journey to Carmel as a Carmelite aspirant, more than a decade ago. When I was a young girl, I dreamed of becoming a nun. As a teenager and a young adult I have visited a long of Contemplative orders in my country, namely, The Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters (more popularly known as the Pink Sisters), Poor Clares, Dominicans, and of course I have seen cloistered Carmelite Nuns when I professed our promises in a local Carmelite Convent. St. Therese of the Child Jesus, was influential in my religious desire. I have her autobiography, and for those of you who didn't know she entered the Carmelite convent at such a young age, she's 15 years old. It is not usual for religious order to accept younger women, but she was an exception. Her zealous desire to be a religious at such a young age, even telling the Pope, of her desire to enter the convent.

Third Order Secular are lay people who belong to a religious order. They profess "promises", similar to vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Why I chose the Carmel way of life. First, I am attracted to a contemplative life. A prayerful life, and religious studies. Also because, I look up to Carmelites saints! St. Teresa and St. John of Avila. I have read the book written by St. Teresa before, The Interior Castle. Below are a lists of what Carmel life is about.

• *listening to the Word of God and responding in silent prayer for at least half an hour each day,
• *participating in the Church’s liturgy – daily Mass where possible, Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church, and, if possible, also Night Prayer,
• *taking Mary our Mother as our model of prayer and service as she pondered the Word of God in her heart and lived in obedience to that Word,
• *studying and meditating on the inspired teachings of the Carmelite saints, especially Saints Teresa and John of the Cross,
• *studying and meditating on the beliefs of our Christian faith and our Catholic tradition,
• *supporting one another through regular Community meetings, contact and service.

I am glad that I'm back now. I was baptized and confirmed as a Roman Catholic and I am so relieved to know that whatever I do it cannot be taken away from me. Of course, I know my mistake of joining a Protestant church. Being baptized as a Roman Catholic it cannot be taken back. It is already imprinted in me, marked on my soul, as stated in Canon 845.1. 

What I want to say is my life is a testimony of God's love, grace and mercy. I am absolutely a sinner, not perfect, but I still want to follow our Lord Jesus. In our lifetime, there will come a time when we feel as if we are like traveling in a dry desert. But it is one way of God communicating with us. Like what Thomas Merton said. 

"Wilderness had been created supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit. The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone. They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had traveled directly to it. God's plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back on the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone. The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else."

Let our prayers be, that we may see and feel God no matter what state of life we are in. That He is always near us, and know that He will never ever leave us. 

Christian Community Bible (Catholic Pastoral Edition)

"Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path." - Psalm 119:105

  I have a lot of Protestant Study Bible. This is the only Roman Catholic Bible that I have. This is sort of the Philippine or Asian edition Bible for Catholics. This was conceptualized by Fr. Bernardo Hurault, a Claretian priest and a Bible scholar, who spent most of his years in the Philippines by helping out on Bible translations on the different Filipino dialects, specifically, Ilongo and Cebuano. This Bible is really for English speaking Filipinos, and Asians. My copy is the twelfth edition in the year 1994. This is the copy that my late aunt bought. I just kept it because my other aunt just set it aside, and to not let it be dusty I took care of it. This was produced by St. Paul Bookstore, and Claretian publication was also a co-publisher. The Nihil Obstat is Fr. Efren Rivera, OP, and the Imprimatur is from the CBCP, Bishop Cirilo R. Almario, Jr. The English used here is not Old English, and the words are not archaic. Because this Bible is meant to be understood by Filipinos whose second language is English. This Bible is hard cover.

This Bible is complete with Deuterocanonicals. I like this Bible because it has a guide, if it's your first time to read the Bible. It also includes summaries and dates of Sacred History of the Old Testament, and important dates in the New Testament. It has Gospel index, and an explanation of the Order of the Books, as well as why the Apocryphals (hidden or secret books) are included, as how the Protestant likes to refer to the Deuterocanonicals. Inside this Bible is also a photo of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and a painting of a typical Filipino family. Other additions are maps, and the 4 week Psalter.

Another feature of this Bible is the commentaries, that makes it also a good Study Bible. If you are confused with the text you are reading, you can refer to the commentaries below.

(Note: This Bible is not recommended by some because the commentaries is sort of like from a Liberal Catholic point of view. The recommended Bible to me when I went to a Roman Catholic Bookstore, St. Paul Bookstore was the New American Bible)

Questions and Answers

  Many issues are thrown to the Roman Catholic church. I also have questions that were not really fully answered before. Now, I'm thankful that I have discovered this new group online that I can freely ask questions. I also came to know a Jesuit priest Fr. Jacob Boddicker, who answered all my questions in brief and concise manner. Sharing it with you all:

My first question has something to do with the Bible books. Protestants removed the deuterocanonicals, they like to call it apocryphal, meaning secret or hidden. But it's not actually.

When Christianity began, the early Christians only had the Jewish Scriptures; what we call the Old Testament. The Jewish world was divided into two kinds of Jews: those that lived in the Holy Land, and those that lived outside, known as the "diaspora." Most of the Jews outside the Holy Land spoke Greek, not Hebrew, and so they used a Greek translation of their Scriptures called the Septuagint. In the Holy Land their Scriptures were in Hebrew. The Septuagint had 7 more books than the Hebrew scriptures, mainly books telling stories of their people's history so that they would not forget. Jews outside the Holy Land also observed feasts and holidays for an extra day longer than Jews in the Holy Land; being a Jew in a foreign land required you to do extra to maintain your cultural identity. 

 When Christianity began spreading outside of the Holy Land, Greek became the common language; this is why the writings of the New Testament were almost all written in Greek. The early Christians therefore used the longer Greek Septuagint for their Scriptures because Jew and Gentile alike could read it, and this became the primary translation of the Old Testament the Church used from the earliest days. If you look up the oldest Bibles still in existence, from just a couple hundred years after Christ, you will see that they contain the deuterocanonical books just like Catholic Bibles do today. All Bibles had these books until Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, and decided to use the Hebrew version of the Old Testament to translate into German, and so he removed those seven books; this is why they are not in Protestant Bibles. It is useful, too, because 2 Maccabees gives good Scriptural support for purgatory and praying for the dead.  He wanted to remove the Gospel of John, the Letter of James, and the Book of Revelation but his fellow Reformers argued against it. Why? He claimed they weren't Scripture, but if you think about it John gives the strongest Scripture evidence for Catholic belief in the Eucharist, and James says "faith without works is dead." 

My next questions is that if God forbids statues, why do Roman Catholic church have statues.

 Why do we have statues? Leah, do you have photographs of loved ones in your room? Churches have had statues for centuries to remind us of the saints and of Jesus, to help us remember that they were real people. In ancient times there were no photographs, so you had a painting or a statue made of an important person. Many cultures still make statues of famous or important people; why wouldn't we do that for the most important people of all: Jesus, Mary, and the saints? The commandment against graven images is only against images that are made to be worshipped; Catholics do not worship statues. If making statues of holy things at all was against God's commandment, why did the Temple have statues of trees, animals, and even angels and cherubim? Even the Ark of the Covenant had two statues of cherubim on it. 

The Protestant study Bible is different from the Roman Catholic. Because of the interpretation. My Protestant churchmates said Jesus has siblings. So what is really the truth?

Regarding Jesus' brothers and sisters: There are two main ways to explain what this means. In the Hebrew language there is no word for cousin, step-sibling, or half-sibling. Remember how Jacob had 12 sons? They all referred to one another as "brother" and never as "half-brother," even though Joseph, for example, was born of a different mother. Even Abraham refers to his nephew Lot as his brother! This is because in that culture your close relatives were seen as your siblings; you likely even grew up with them, possibly in the same house or at least the same neighborhood. It is most likely that the "brothers and sisters" of Jesus were either half or step-siblings from a previous marriage Joseph was in before becoming Mary's husband (hence why Joseph is sometimes depicted in art as being much older looking than Mary) or they were His cousins, whom He would have seen as being His brothers and sisters though they had different parents.

So that's it. I hope that you also have found the answers to your questions. If you have questions never be afraid to ask.