I have spent the weekend in the Philippines (Manila and Cebu) and today head home to NZ. The brief visit was an opportunity to meet with friends in both cities and to journey together in faith. The simple purpose of the visit: friendship, the kind of friendship without which life is not possible.
Fifteen hours of flying from NZ is rewarded in these encounters. One day an hour’s Uber trip for dinner with three friends, then 4 hours each way through Metro Manila traffic for a one hour visit richly rewarding the the time and effort in our focus on Christ present in reality.
The photos give only a word or two of the rich text that is the lives of these people of faith. I am grateful to receive this gift.
Entrance to the home of the Servants of Charity
Entering the Monastery of the Augustinian nuns at Bulacan
The road to the Augustinian monastery – not the best.
Accompanying friends to visit the graves of their parents.
“So what is friendship? Friendship in its minimal state, is the encounter of one person with another person whose destiny he or she desires more than his or her own life. I desire your destiny more than I desire my life. The other reciprocates this and desires my destiny more than his or her life. Friendship is like this, and the proof that this is true is that you’d want anyone you’d meet in the diversity of circumstances to understand this, so that everyone would embrace each other. Those who do not experience this must humbly ask the Lord and the Blessed Mother to make it understood to them, because without this, not even the relationship with God is true.”
Is It Possible to Live This Way? Vol.1 Faith – Luigi Giussani
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