From the Pastor: Rev. Anacleto S. Asebias, Jr.
39th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 25, 2026
Matthew 22:34-40
Dear Ascension Family,
Blessing of peace and good health!
On November 21, 1983, a ship named MV Doña Cassandra sunken route from Nasipit, Agusan del Norte (near Butan) to Cebu City, Philippines. The vessel sunk at the shark infested waters of Bohol Sea bringing several hundred passengers with her. More than a hundred perished in the tragedy, which was blamed primarily on bad weather.
There were four Good Shepherd Sisters on that ship: Sisters Concepcion Conti, Consuelo Chuidian, Mary Catherine Loreto, and Virginia Gonzaga. At one point during the sinking, they were given their own individual life vests. They immediately took them and put them on. However, when they started going around the ship, they realized that many of the passengers did not have any life vests simply because there were not enough for all.
Thus, without hesitation, they courageously took off their own life vests and gave them to people who had none. In the end, when rescuers started recovering and counting bodies of the victims who had drowned, they included the bodies of these four sisters.
In today’s gospel reading, a scholar of the law asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commanded in the law is the greatest?” In response Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind… You should love your neighbor as yourself.”
For some of us, especially for those who are “skeptics,” hearing these two commandments, we may ask, “What? Loving God with ALL your heart, ALL your soul, ALL your mind? And your neighbor as yourself? Is this really possible? Can this really be done? Can people, real people, truly love like this?”
An answer to such skepticism is what those four Good Shepherd sisters did. They achieved what some people may think is simply not possible. Exactly by giving, offering their own life vests to those who had none, all in the name of faith in their God and all in the name of genuine concern for their neighbor, they were able to manifest and express a love, which is the very kind of love, the very quality of love which Jesus speaks of and insists on in today’s gospel reading - unconditional, uncompromising love! How can we learn to love like this?
Loving is an art. Like any art, it is learned not through books, not through seminars, not through discussions, but through actual practice. For just as a person learns how to play the piano only by actually playing the piano, just as a person learns how to drive a car only by actually driving a car, we learn how to love much only by actually loving much.
That is why we need to realize that our quality of loving needs to be given time - time to grow, time to deepen. This is so because we do not immediately begin to love God with all our heart, with all our mind, and all our strength. And surely, we do not all of a sudden just begin to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Indeed, it is quite apparent that we are not natural-born lovers!
Our way of loving may initially be self-centered. Our way of loving may be self-seeking, self-serving. Many times, perhaps, we are too concerned with “what will I get in return? What will I receive in return?”
However, after much practice our quality of loving may slowly, gradually begin to become less and less self-serving, less and less self-seeking, and become more and more Christ-like. Like any act that we have to learn, it might be difficult in the beginning, just as a baby finds it difficult to walk at first. But when one does it, often enough, it becomes easy. It becomes easier to love.
This was most likely the case with the case with the four Good shepherd sisters. A person does not decide to give up his or her life in the name of love in an instant. Great and heroic acts of love are surely preceded by small acts of love - small, little acts of charity, simple acts of kindness and gentleness.
In other words, what those four sisters did at the sinking of the MV Doña Cassandra was not an isolated event. They had been loving much even before this disaster. They had been caring much long before this tragedy took place. What happened in that ship was just a culmination, a climax to all the acts of loving in their lives.
Practice. This is how the art of loving works. This is how, in the end, we can learn, aided by God’s grace, to love with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. That is why we should not belittle our simple acts of loving. We should not belittle our very capacity to love - giving thanks, forgiving people, giving our time and sharing our talents and treasure, affirming others. This is how we begin.
Let us pray for God’s grace that we may learn the art of loving.
Praying for you all,
Fr. Anacleto
