It has been part of our annual family tradition to spend Holy Week nourishing our spirits.

We don’t go on vacations during this week. We believe that there is a time for vacations and the Holy Week is meant to commemorate the sacrifices of Jesus and how He died for our sins so we could have eternal life. We also believe that Holy Week should be spent nourishing our souls by reconnecting with God and deepening our relationship with Him.

I had been practicing this even when I was still a single lady. I’m so thankful to God that I got to marry a man who agrees with me on this issue.

So, last week, we had our annual visita iglesia wherein we visited seven churches. We prayed the Stations of the Cross during our visita iglesia.

We also attended a Holy Week Retreat conducted by the Feast Alabang District titled Deep Waters aside from attending the church services in our parish during the Triduum.

It was our first time to attend this Holy Week Retreat of the Feast Alabang District. We usually attend the Holy Week Retreat conducted by Bo Sanchez and the Feast Bay Area at the MOA Arena. But our budget is tight this year so we were so grateful to discover that there is a FREE retreat that we can attend as a family. The Feast Alabang District has been doing this yearly. So, you might want to consider attending next year.

We all had a great time! The Feast gatherings are characterized by beautiful music, powerful talks and spirit-filled worship. Our children love attending The Feast. They love the songs. They can also sing and dance to the music if they want to during worship. If you want to listen to the worship songs in our retreat, please click here. The team made a playlist on Spotify.

As for me, aside from the spirit-filled worship that I really miss experiencing because we don’t attend as often as we’d like to, I loved the talks by the speakers.

I love diving deep into Holy Scriptures and I always enjoy it when the speakers help me undertand and apply passages from the Bible.

One of the things God reminded me through our Holy Week retreat this year is that the most important legacy I can give/leave to my children is my legacy of faith and my testimony of a faithful Christian life.

The books, the honors and awards, the properties or whatever I accomplish or acquire in my lifetime pale in comparison to the witness that I will give to my children.

Their lives and souls were entrusted to me and my husband by God. It is our main responsibility that they get home to God, our Father in heaven, through our guidance as parents.

As Fr. Arlo Yap said in his talk, everything that we have is only LENT to us by God. Not borrowed but LENT. Lent because it was God who initiated, not us. We say borrowed if we took the initiative to borrow. But this is not so with our lives and with our loved ones like our children.

Therefore, I was reminded by God that preparing our children for eternity with Him is the most important part of their education and in parenting them.

This is one of the reasons that we homeschool our children. We put more weight on their spiritual guidance and education over their academics. We want to make sure that Jesus would be their firm foundation. We want to invest on their early years so that they would have our Catholic faith as their foundation in their life here on earth.

Like the last sharer, Cha Pinto, I pray that one day (I hope not too soon), all my children would be in a much happier place, in heaven with our loving Father.

Cha shared about losing her son (still a teenager) to an accident. Her son may have lived a relatively short life here on earth but he lived a full life serving the Lord through his time and talent. He was a drummer in one of The Feasts in Metro Manila.

It is not easy to be faithful. Life is always full of challenges. Choosing to have faith is a daily, if not a moment-by-moment decision.

So, during times of crises and trials, we hold on to God and rely on His grace. Even His grace and our faith are favors from God.

Thus, we need to continuously be humble and acknowledge that we NEED A SAVIOR and that Savior is JESUS CHRIST.

He is our strength. He gives us hope and courage. He walks with us in the fire and in the deep waters.

This is what I want my children to also know, learn and live by.

By the witness of our lives of faith and faithful service, I hope that we as parents would be able to show our children how to be brave and strong in the face of difficulties.

I pray that my husband and I would be faithful to the end. We cannot do this on our own. We need God’s help. We need a SAVIOR to save us and to lead the way.

He is the one who stays with us in the fire. He is the one who helps us when we are sinking in the waters. He is the One who helps us win victories.

May we faithfully follow Jesus’ lead so we could lead our children to Jesus and back home to the Father in heaven.

To best parent our children, we need to continuously look to the Father and follow His example of love.

I believe that by the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, this is possible!