Exacto Moments

Thirty-Five Years

From Araneta Coliseum, 1991 — to a chapel in Napa, 2026

It was exactly three o’clock in the morning on June 23 — the hour of Divine Mercy, the hour of great mercy. I woke up. Not from a noise, not from a dream that startled me, but from the gentle prompting of the Holy Spirit. He was telling me, plainly as anything: get up, John, and write this down. So I am writing.

For some time now the Lord has been speaking to me about His work — the work He is doing in me through the Holy Spirit, and the work He wants to do through me. When I joined Couples for Christ, I finally understood that God wanted me. Not only to bring myself closer to Him, but to bring my whole family with me. Renewing families. Evangelizing the whole world. That was the mission I was being folded into. And that was five years ago, after I came to America.

And there is a dream I have to tell — except it was not my dream. It belonged to Elba.

Elba Sacris and I barely knew each other back then. We had met only once, very briefly, and mostly we spoke by phone. Then one morning in February of 2008, out of nowhere, an email arrived from her. She wrote that she had dreamed about me, and that the dream was so strange and so strong that she believed the Lord was using her to bring me a message. In the dream she had recalled everything about me — my family name, even where I used to live — and that was how she managed to track me down and find me online.

Her dream, she said, was set in a big healing concert — probably in Araneta. Araneta. She found me sitting in one corner, and when I saw her my face lit up, and I told her: “Elba, anjan ka lang pala — I have been waiting here for five years.” Then we went inside together, and the place was packed with people seeking healing and conversion. And just like that, she wrote, I suddenly vanished from the dream.

“My dream was set in a big healing concert, probably in Araneta, and I found you sitting in one corner. When you saw me, your face lit up, and you told me: ‘Elba, I’ve been waiting here for 5 years’… the place was really packed with people seeking for healing and conversion.”  — Elba Sacris, February 2008

She ended her letter with two words: strange, huh? But I knew it was not strange at all. It was exact. A woman who hardly knew me had dreamed of me in Araneta — the very place where Jesus had met me in the Holy Eucharist — surrounded by people hungry for healing and conversion, and she heard me say I had been waiting five years. God was counting. God was waiting. And He used Elba, all the way back in 2008, to remind me that none of it was ever an accident.

The Word at Napa

It started with something small — a simple flyer back in 2019, for a retreat with Father James Blount. That retreat stayed in my heart for years, and for the longest time I did not fully understand why. I only knew the Lord had marked it for me.

With Father James Blount — the beginning of a thread God would take years to reveal. Father’s Day, 2019.

Then, this year, God finally brought it all together. In 2026 I attended a retreat with Father James Blount not once but twice — one sponsored by the Filipino

Catholic Charismatic Communities in San Francisco, and the other a Flame of Love conference held in Napa on the second of May.

It was there in Napa that Father Barry prayed over me — and he did not know a single thing about my condition. Yet he named my health concerns aloud, the very things I had told no one. And then he said something that stopped me completely. “Thirty-five years ago…” he began — and I fell down and rested in the Spirit.

Thirty-five years ago. I did not yet know what he meant. But I knew it had to be a revelation of something far bigger than I could see in that moment. Beside me through all of it was my spiritual best friend, Karen.

When Karen and I counted the years, we were both moved to silence. Thirty-five years ago was 1991.

Nineteen ninety-one. The year of Araneta Coliseum. The year I always come back to. The year of my encounter with Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

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Who I Was in 1991

To understand what that number means, you have to know who I was back then. I was in Makati, and I believed — truly believed — that everything I was doing in this world was my gateway to heaven. Helping people. Doing good. Serving. I thought that was enough. I was wrong.

Because while I was doing good, I was not good. I was not perfect. All the perks of life were there with me, and I held onto every one of them. There was the pride — the pride of being a public servant who was applauded, accorded, acclaimed. They called me boss. They called me sir. I liked how that sounded.

And there was politics, with everything that comes with politics. I enjoyed people. I enjoyed the nightlife. I enjoyed the drinking, the alcohol. The perks. That was the other part of John — the part nobody applauded.

I had not entered the Church yet, and I want to be honest about why. I carried a resentment toward priests and cardinals who, to my eyes, had mixed themselves into politics.

I disliked clergy in the political arena.

I had seen it in my own family — my uncle leaning toward the leftist ideology, the Marxist line, under the influence of Father Hilary Lim, who fought for the Philippinization of the churches. I understand now why all of it happened, why I felt the way I felt. But back then it only pushed me further from the altar.

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The Monstrance Turned Toward Me

And then came Araneta Coliseum.

I thought it was just a concert. I went curious, nothing more. I had no idea — none — that I was walking into the night that would change my life forever.

The priest stood and raised the monstrance. He lifted it high in front of everyone, and he turned it slowly toward the people, the way we always see in Eucharistic adoration — blessing every direction, every soul in that great arena. I sat there watching. Just curious. And then it came to my direction. The monstrance turned, and it was facing me. I was looking at it —

— and I was no longer looking at gold and glass. I was looking at Him. Jesus, truly present, looking back at me. In that instant every perk, every title, every “boss” and “sir,” every drink and every applause fell silent. The man who came in for a concert was met by the living God in the Holy Eucharist, and I have never been the same since. Father Larry Faraon raised the Monstrance that night — and the Lord raised me.

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That Night, He Entered My Heart

That night, I felt God enter my heart. I felt Him — and I started to cry. I sobbed, asking God for forgiveness. And I felt different. After that I felt very light, as if something heavy had been lifted off me. Something in my very being had changed. I walked out of that arena a different man than the one who had walked in.

And there was something more I would only understand later. That same priest — Father Larry Faraon, the one who raised the Monstrance toward me — was the same man who had been inside Radio Veritas, calling the people out into the streets. He was part of how the EDSA revolution began. When I realized that, everything turned over in me. The very thing I had resented — the Church stepping into the life of the nation — was the very thing God used to reconcile me to Himself and to His Church. I finally understood why it had to be that way: that the truth carried by the Church was meant to help rebuild our country. God reconciled me with the Church, and He did it through the very priest I once would have kept at a distance.

The Fear, and the Way Back

But I was young, and I still carried fear in my heart. I felt insufficient — not enough, not ready. And that fear cost me. At that time I was engaged to my fiancée, Caroline, and the fear came between us. We separated because of it.

Yet God was not finished. For some reason — His reason — when I went back to City Hall, someone invited me to a Life in the Spirit Seminar led by Sister Ninny Torres. It was a small group, a Sacred Heart charismatic community. I got involved with them, and that small group changed me. There I learned to surrender everything to God, to hold nothing back.

Then something happened. There was a baptism — the baptism of my best friend’s son. And suddenly, there she was. My future wife appeared. That night we were invited to a restaurant in Aberdeen, and we talked the whole night through. That was the night God reconciled me with Caroline — with the woman who would become my wife.

Wedding and Grace

After meeting her again that night, I knew for sure. It was God Himself telling me: this one is for you.

Not even a month later, I went to their house to ask for her hand. I brought my mother with me, and my stepfather, Mr. Sumbillo — the father of Doctora Elenita Binay, wife of the Mayor of Makati. We did the pamanhikan, the old and honored way of asking the family’s blessing, and it was around October when her family asked us about our plans for the wedding.

We told her mother: December of that same year. But her mother could not believe it — that her eldest daughter would so soon be separated from her. So soon. We understood, and we said, all right, we will move the date.

January 4.

And it was a very beautiful and elegant wedding, at the National Shrine of the Sacred Heart Church — the same Sacred Heart that had been at the center of my life all along. It was our own choir who sang at the church that day, the very brothers and sisters God had used to bring me back to Him. Our reception was at Club Filipino in Greenhills. The gifts overflowed. They overflowed so abundantly that out of them we were able to buy our very first car — second-hand, but ours. And that, too, was a revelation: the grace of God is overflowing. It is always overflowing.

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down,

shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.”

— Luke 6:38

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A Change of Course

On that same year, the course of my life changed again. Somebody invited me to join the ticket for the barangay council. I was hesitant — I did not feel ready for it. I was only just beginning to build my family. It was eighteen days before the election when I finally said yes.

Years before, I had been elected youth chairman by the slimmest of margins — a single vote, just one. This time it was different. This time I received the highest number of votes, and I would go on to serve two full terms.

Back as a Kabataang Barangay Chairman, in 1985, I had been honored with the Gawad Parangal ng Pangulo, the highest award given to the youth. And after my term of office, I was nominated as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines.

But looking back, I know I could never have done any of it alone. It was the youth — the young people I served, and who served right alongside me — who helped carry me to those achievements. And above all of them, it was God. Because with God, anything is possible.

“With man this is impossible,

but with God all things are possible.”

— Matthew 19:26

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Another Sign, in the Adoration Chapel

The sign that God is truly alive in the Holy Eucharist was manifested to me once again — and once again, it happened at Napa, this time at Saint John the Baptist Church. There had even been a dream beforehand, my officemate Geraldine’s dream, and a word about the desert. I carried it with me into the retreat.

I had gone into the Adoration Chapel to pray. And there, in the corner, I noticed a man quietly reading — a green book in his hands. The Holy Spirit prompted me, plainly: get that book. So I waited. When the man was finished, he set the book back on the little shelf of books just outside the Adoration Chapel — and I went and opened it.

What I read stopped me where I stood. It was the testimony of a priest — and it was my own story. He wrote of the moment the monstrance was raised, and how, the instant he saw it, it pierced his heart and he began to sob. He wept. The very same thing that had happened to me at Araneta. A priest I had never met, in a book I had never gone looking for, carrying the exact experience the Lord had given me.

There was more inside — an account of a religious sister, Sister McKenna, and a place up in the mountains connected to an apparition. It was written there on page sixty-three. I could not keep the book; it belonged to that holy place, and I had no way to obtain a copy of my own. So I took careful note of the page. And then I remembered: as I had walked into the chapel, I had seen my friend David Perez. I messaged him at once — please, send me a copy of page sixty-three.

Only later did I realize that this had happened on September 25, 2023, my sister Julpha’s birthday. And I remembered that exactly one year earlier, on September 25, 2022, also on Julpha’s birthday, my brother-in-law Onald, Julpha’s husband, had told me that he was a friend of Brother Ray Faraon, the brother of Father Larry Faraon. Brother Ray, I later learned, had also been a friend of my mother, Betty. I simply smiled. Thirty years had passed since Araneta, yet somehow the Lord was still allowing little threads to appear, quietly connecting one memory to another.
David was there for the retreat of Father James Blount. And here is the beautiful part. I had been longing to speak with Father Blount, waiting at the church for the chance. Then David texted me: “You know what, John? I was given the chance to talk to Father James Blount.” I only smiled — because that very same night, the Lord had already given me my own. I was able to speak with Father, and he spoke into my life about many things, reminding me of what I needed to remember. We talked from eleven at night until a quarter past midnight — on the very day he was set to fly out of the country for a conference in Europe.
Three days after the conference, on the fifth of May, Father Blount received me privately at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Napa. He anointed me. He gave me spiritual direction. And I watched him kneel before the Blessed Sacrament — before the Tabernacle, with Our Lady on his left and Saint Joseph on his right — and pray with a stillness I will never forget. Here was a man so used by God, and what was he doing? Kneeling, like a child, before the same Eucharistic Lord who had met me at Araneta.
God is alive in the Holy Eucharist. He showed me at Araneta. He showed me again through a stranger’s green book in a quiet chapel. And He is still showing me. Another witness. Another confirmation. Always, always exact.

David was there for the retreat of Father James Blount. And here is the beautiful part. I had been longing to speak with Father Blount, waiting at the church for the chance. Then David texted me: “You know what, John? I was given the chance to talk to Father James Blount.” I only smiled — because that very same night, the Lord had already given me my own. I was able to speak with Father, and he spoke into my life about many things, reminding me of what I needed to remember. We talked from eleven at night until a quarter past midnight — on the very day he was set to fly out of the country for a conference in Europe.

Three days after the conference, on the fifth of May, Father Blount received me privately at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Napa. He anointed me. He gave me spiritual direction. And I watched him kneel before the Blessed Sacrament — before the Tabernacle, with Our Lady on his left and Saint Joseph on his right — and pray with a stillness I will never forget. Here was a man so used by God, and what was he doing? Kneeling, like a child, before the same Eucharistic Lord who had met me at Araneta.

Father James Blount in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament — Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Napa, May 5, 2026.

God is alive in the Holy Eucharist. He showed me at Araneta. He showed me again through a stranger’s green book in a quiet chapel. And He is still showing me. Another witness. Another confirmation. Always, always exact.

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Thirty-five years later, in a chapel in Napa, a priest who knew none of this looked at me and said it: thirty-five years ago. And he told me I was being healed. He was pointing me straight back to that arena, to that monstrance, to the first healing of my soul. The Lord was telling me, plainly as anything: I have not forgotten the night you turned toward Me. I am still turning toward you. I am still healing you.

Five years of waiting in a dream. Thirty-five years from Araneta to Napa. God counts. God remembers. God is exact.

Another Exacto Moment. Woven by God.