Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan

September 8, 2011

Feast of the Birth of the Virgin Mary

Circular 2011-28

RE: Formation Modules for Stewardship

My brothers in the priestly ministry:

In pursuit of our ecclesial vision mission ICTHUS and in recognition of the spirituality of stewardship as the means to reach our pastoral goals, I am sending you the enclosed book SERVANT LEADERSHIP by Frank Padilla. Among all the resources I have encountered on the theme of servant-leadership-stewardship, this is the best material I have found so far. It is divided into six chapters which can easily be used as six modular talks for our formation in stewardship. The themes are comprehensive and the explanations are simple and down to earth.

Please compose a STEWARDSHIP TEAM for your parish or school community. I suggest that you select from the pool of lay leaders in your parish or school who have attended or are enrolled currently in the School of Lay Leaders (SLL).

A team of six lay formators will be ideal. You can assign them one chapter of the enclosed book for their study, mastery and delivery in the parish stewardship formation program. This team can conduct formation seminars in the school or parish to disseminate the spirituality of servant-leadership-stewardship. Let me reiterate that the stewardship program is not a finance scheme but a spirituality formation. Through these stewardship formation programs, may we be saints together.

I entrust this matter to your prompt pastoral action. Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS

Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan

Easter Meditation for 2011

Love is stronger than death! The greatest is love! The greatest one is the one who loves the most!

We have been meditating on his passion since the start of Holy Week but what use is meditation if it does not increase our love? We have devoutly gone through the Via Crucis but what good is prayer if we remain uncaring? We have fasted and sacrificed but what use is sacrifice if it does make us more merciful? We have kept vigil and stayed awake to await the Easter message but what use is Easter joy if we do not share it and give it away? We can only win over death if we love. Easter is the true feast of love. Only through love can we rise from death and overcome the darkness.

Love is a verb. Love calls for action. Easter must move us to action. Easter is surely a feast to celebrate but it is equally a mission to accomplish. The risen Lord sends us forth back to Galilee where he preached and healed and proclaimed the kingdom of the Father—there we must prove that he has indeed risen from the dead not by wise argumentations but showing that our lives have been changed by Jesus Christ. The world outside our parish churches will not believe that Christ has risen if our lives do not show any signs of new life at all.

Many filled up our churches during Holy Week and many more fill up our churches today Easter Sunday. But among those who valiantly fasted and offered mortifications during these pious days, how many really poured love into our suffering world and made our world a little better than when we began our Lenten exercises? Is our world better than forty days ago? The victory of Easter is the victory of the Greatest Lover of all who died that we may have fullness of life. We who are an Easter people must pour love into our bleeding world, bind the wounds of our society and bring it back to life—through love.

If indeed we are people ready to love, we must make our Easter Sunday an occasion to bring an end to cold indifference—walang pakialam! Love cares. Love gets involved. Love reaches out. The risen Lord pricks us to get involved in politics and make it a liberating not a corrupting kind of politics. The risen Lord urges us to bring Christian ethics to economics and put charity not profit as its overriding principle. The risen Lord sends us on a mission back to Galilee to restore all things to him. Easter people: spread the values of Christ!

If love has indeed fully possessed us, then we must break out of our protective shells of our insensitivity and heartlessness—walang pakiramdam. Love takes responsibility. Love is rich in mercy. Love is kind. We cannot continue with Easter and continue to ignore the poor. It is not hard to meet the poor if we are not playing blind to their presence. We cannot claim to be an Easter people and yet not do anything about the silent moans of aborted babies. We cannot sing Alleluia and remain insensitive to rising criminality, the commercialization of sex and the unabated availability of shabu in the neighborhood. Easter people: act now!

If we are truly an Easter people and love is our rule of life, we must destroy callousness and audacity—walang hiya. Contraception is corruption of love and life. It is not a solution. It will only open more problems for the soul of our nation. Sin is abnormal. Obedience to the Ten Commandments is normal. Let us not extol impurity and ridicule virtue. Polluting the minds of children by teaching them sex without God cries to heaven for divine justice. Easter people: stand up for life!

Love is a verb not a noun. Easter is a mission not just an event. We can only share in the glory of this greatest of all days by making love reign supreme.

Goodbye indifference and apathy.

Goodbye insensitivity and heartlessness.

Goodbye callousness and audacity.

Let us live in love, for love and with love. Let us love. Easter is a feast of love and only those who love will see the glory of the Risen Christ!

From the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, Dagupan City, April 23, 2011

+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS

Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan

April 1, 2011

Re: Archdiocesan Youth Day

My brothers in the priesthood:

We have an opportunity before us to put into practice the spirituality of stewardship that we have been preaching about since the start of the Lenten season.

The Parish of Saint Rose of Lima in Domalandan, Lingayen, the host of the 2011 Archdiocesan Youth Day, is in need of financial aid in order to cover the expenses of this church event. Those among us who have been host parish priests know the great demands that this undertaking entails.

In response to the appeal for help from a member of our spiritual family, we shall hold a second collection for the Archdiocesan Youth Ministry in all the Masses on April 17, 2011, Palm Sunday. Incidentally, this special collection for the youth coincides with the turn over of the World Youth Day Cross by Pope Benedict XVI to the host country of the next World Youth Day. You can animate the parish youth leaders to spearhead this collection.

Secondly, I am inviting all the parishes to make a stewardship contribution for the 2011 Archdiocesan Youth to be remitted to the Chancery by April 15. In the spirit of stewardship, we will not impose a quota on parishes but instead appeal to your sense of fraternal solidarity and communion. Let us start to live our Lenten homilies and set an example for the Catholic faithful.

Even now, please receive my pastoral blessings and fraternal confidence in your priestly stewardship. Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS, DD

Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan

March 4, 2011

Circular 2011/7

RE: STEWARDSHIP HOMILIES

My dear brothers in the priesthood and brothers and sisters in the consecrated life:

Enclosed are two meditations on the SPIRITUALITY OF STEWARDSHIP that we have adopted as the formation thrust in the Archdiocese of Lingayen Dagupan.

The first meditation may be used for Ash Wednesday and the second meditation for the first Sunday of Lent. You may use it as a basis for preparing your Lenten homilies or you may also read the meditation as is during the homilies at Mass. I also suggest that you make use of the themes contained herein in your parish Lenten seminars and recollections this year. The meditations for the succeeding weeks will be sent to you later.

Please keep in mind that one of the expected results of this pursuit of the Spirituality of Stewardship is the gradual phase out of the arancel system in the dispensation of the sacraments and sacramentals. We are moving towards encouraging voluntary offerings from the Catholic faithful instead of fixed fees for the services of the Church. Please be guided by this direction.

I trust that you will avail of these materials to slowly form our Catholic faithful on this laudable apostolic vision.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS

Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan

Meditation for the First Sunday of Lent

March 13, 2011

The Lenten season invites us to return to the desert and there wrestle with our number one enemy—ourselves. Today the Lord shows us how he himself went into wilderness, wrestled with the devil and stood firm in the path of goodness. The desert reminds us of our defenselessness. The desert reminds us our vulnerabilities. The desert reminds us of the dark secrets we are afraid to confront. The desert confronts us with our naked sins. In the desert, we can hold on to nothing and boast of nothing. In the desert we choose to let go of everything if only to survive.

The desert is not a garden like Eden. In that garden of abundance, we forgot that we were only caretakers not owners. We must go to the desert of isolation and discover God again.The desert is barren. The desert is hard life. Stripped and distanced, we start to understand the things that matter most. The desert is our powerlessness.

When I am powerless, I am strong. When you recognize your powerlessness, you have made the first step to stewardship. You have begun to recognize that you have nothing. You see things within the perspective of a steward not an owner. All that you have is from God.

The desert experience teaches us the three pillars of the spirituality of stewardship.

The nothingness of the desert leads us to the spirit of contentment. You want to be happy? Keep your desires simple and your needs few. Another teacher about contentment, the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, said “Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness and have few desires.”

If I am content with little, enough is as good as a feast. The grace of contentment is one of God’s best gifts (Isaac Bickerstaffe).

St Paul wrote Timothy “We brought nothing into the world and we will leave it with nothing. Let us then be content with having food and clothing. Those who strive to be rich fall into temptations and traps” (I Tim 6:7-9). We can do all things in Him who strengthens us (cfr. Phil 4:13).

If you can be happy with nothing, you have found real happiness.

Your happy disposition must lead you to the second pillar of stewardship which is generosity. The greatest measure of love is to love without measure. It is not enough to give. We must give fearlessly and cheerfully. The real measure of generosity is not how much we give but how much we keep for ourselves. The generous one is not the one who gives the most but the one who keeps the least. We believe that God cannot be outdone in generosity. We are generous because God has been unreasonably generous with us. God will always provide. His blessings will never run dry.

The third pillar of stewardship is humility. St Bernard said humility is the mother of salvation. We fell from the grace of God because of pride. We will be saved by cheerful giving, by humble sharing. Perhaps the best way to define humility is to echo the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: Humility means seeing ourselves the way God sees us. Humility is truth and pride is nothing but lying.

“The test of real greatness is humility. The humble man knows that the greatness is not in them but through them. They see something divine in others and are endlessly, foolishly and incredibly merciful”, said John Ruskin.

The real steward is always happy. The real steward gives from his contentment. The real steward knows that He is not the savior; he is not the owner; he is not the almighty one—God is. I am only a steward.

From the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, Dagupan City, March 13, 2011

+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS

Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan