The Church of Toledo:
Church of Toledo
The Church is Under the Archdiocese of Cebu, Vicariate of Saint John of Sahagun
About the Church: The Bishop of Cebu, Romualdo Gimeno, a Dominican Friar, issued a Decree for the erection of the Parish of Toledo on the 24th day of February, 1863.
However, this decree was only executed on the 8th of July, 1863 and the Parish of Toledo was de Facto “canonically erected”. It’s official Patron was St. John of Sahagun. According to other sources, the town was previously named Hinulawan because of the nearby Hinulawan river situated in the Daanlungsod. But due to the influence of the Alcalde Mayor in Cebu who happened to come from Toledo, Spain, the town and parish was renamed Toledo.
The nearest existing Parish to Toledo was the Parish of St. Francis of Assisi of Balamban erected in 1857. Thus it was but logical that Toledo (Hinulawan) was under the “spritual tutelage” of Balamban and was regularly visited. It was termed “visita” then by the priests of this neighboring parish. It could also have been that Hinulawan was part and parcel of the large parish and town of Balamban, though this is not for many, a comfortable thought to dwell on.
On the other hand, at the far-south side of the Toledo was another existing Parish of Sta. Monica in Pinamungajan which was established in 1850, even earlier than Balamban. For one reason or another, we don’t know why it was not this Parish who took care of the spiritual needs of Toledo. It could have been because of the great difficulty for the travel and its accessibility that prevented this to happen.
It seems that the FIRST Parish Priest of Toledo was REV. FR. SERVANO SEONE. The First marriage that he solemnized was that of Pedro Conahap and Fabiana Mara on August 26, 1863.
With this information, we can conclude that Toledo Parish from the beginning of its founding was administered by the Diocesan Clergy of Cebu. (Sourced from the Website of the Archdiocesan Shrine of Saint John of Sahagun)
Other Sites to Visit: The Official Website of the Archdiocesan Shrine of Saint John of Sahagun. Aside from the Official Website, not much Sites or Blogs worth mentioning about the Church. If you do find any, please email me the link to pinoybyahero@gmail.com so i can include it.
My Visit to the Church: My Visit to the Church of Toledo was very short. We were in a hurry to get back to Cebu so I just spent a few minutes in the Church. When i went there there was a group of Women reciting the Rosary and it was rude to take pictures of the inside but i did manage to take a few (2012).
Last December 2013 we stayed overnight in Toledo City and from the Hotel we stayed in the Church was just a few minutes walk. It was a beautiful morning when i went to the Church and a mass was ongoing when i arrived. I spent a few minutes inside the church and quietly went out to buy something to eat. When i went back the mass was soon going to end. I took more pictures of the Church and it was then i realized how beautiful the Church was.
Address and Contact Number of the Church: The Church is Located in Toledo City, Cebu 6038. Contact Numbers of the Church Tel. (032) 322-5658, 467-8143
Other Ways to Contact the Church: Facebook Page of Saint John of Sahagun Church
Map Showing the Location of the Church:
Map of Toledo City
Where to Stay in Toledo City: We Stayed at Days Inn Toledo City (Rate: P2,400 up) which is near the Port. The Rooms are Standard, with Television and Hot and Cold Shower. The Rate includes Breakfast.
Where to Eat: Near Days Hotel is a Cafe (in the same Building previously occupied by Travellers) and beside it you can find Jollibee and Armando’s Pizza. Along the highway and around the port you can also find Eateries and BBQ Stalls.
Other Pictures of the Church:
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- Church of Toledo
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- Church of Toledo
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- Bell Tower
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- The Image of Saint John Sahagun
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- The Church Altar
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- Images of Saints found at the Entrance
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- Images of Saints at the Entrance
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- Map of Toledo City
Pinoy Churches 
Merry Christmas and God’s blessings “God the Father Almighty Jesus Christ His only Son conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”
God-knowing shows forth in their lives His great salvation in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
“HE WAS CONCEIVED BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, AND BORN OF WOMAN NAME HER “HOLY VIRGIN MARY” God the Father is the Creator God sent forth His Son, born of a woman Jesus the Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father.
Holy Spirit will come over you, and Power of the Highest One will the Holy One being born will be called the Son of God She will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people …
Jesus Christ is the Firstborn of the Father in the spirit .He was born to Mary at Bethlehem, lived a sinless life, and made a perfect atonement. The Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins. Mary that the Holy Ghost and the Highest (certainly a reference to the Father) …
In an advent message, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, with the conception of his mother, Mary. Therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Fathers’ saw the four major roles, the just father, the beloved son and bridegroom, and Son and Holy Spirit. Christ’s birth “focused on the spiritual reality of Mary’s virginity: Mary bore the Son of God.
Christian doctrine that asserts that Jesus Christ was born to a virgin, and thus that his conception was carried out without an earthly father. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can become like our Heavenly Father. He is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. Creator and Lord and to all his commandments, can be, in Jesus Christ, “Born of the Virgin Mary.
We will consider, in sequence, each of four terms, namely Jesus, Christ, Son of God and Our Lord
The New Testament origins for the name Jesus are associated with two events in the gospels, the Annunciation of Mary and the revelation to St. Joseph.
At the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel appeared to our Lady and addressed her as “full of grace.” She was disturbed by these words. So the angel reassured her. “Mary, do not be afraid,” he said. “You have won God’s favor. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus” (Luke 1:30-31).
Some time later, Gabriel again appeared, but this time to St. Joseph, who was understandably worried because Mary, his betrothed, had mysteriously conceived. Jewish law required that he put her away, yet he decided to do so quietly in order to spare her publicity. The angel told him: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name Him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:20-21).
The name “Jesus” is the Latin form of the Greek Iesous, whose Hebrew is Yeshua, which means “Yahweh is salvation.” Already in the Book of Genesis, after our first parents had sinned, God promised to send a Redeemer. Addressing the devil, He said: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; she shall crush your head and you shall lie in wait for her heel” (Genesis 3:15).
The seed of the woman, whom we identify with Mary, was to be descended from Adam. This same promise of a Redeemer was to be repeated many times in the Old Testament. And always the stress was on Yahweh as the one who saves. When it appears that He will not save, there is no one else who can save (Psalm 18:42). Yahweh alone saves (Hosea 13:4). The frequently occurring phrases “God of my (your, his) salvation” and “rock of my (your, his) salvation” are simply variants of the same basic theme. So often is Yahweh invoked or described by titles which use the words “save” and “salvation” that these can be called His most characteristic titles in the Old Testament.
This emphasis on Yahweh’s saving power dramatically attests that the Incarnation was far more clearly predicted in the Jewish prophets than the rejection of Jesus by the Jewish leaders might seem to indicate. Time and again, without ceasing, the Old Testament insists that only God can save. Logically, then, God would become man to save His people from their sins.
The name “Christ” is taken from the Greek Christos, which means “Anointed.” It corresponds exactly to the Hebrew Mashiah or Messiah.
Anointing was the normal way in which kings, priests, and sometimes prophets were invested with special powers by God for the exercise of their office among the people of Israel.
In what sense was Jesus anointed? He was not anointed by any mortal hand or with earthly ointment. He was anointed by the power of His heavenly Father with such fullness of the Holy Spirit as no mere created being could receive. We may, therefore, say that the humanity of Jesus was anointed with the Divinity. As a result, the human nature of Jesus was hypostatically — that is, personally — united with the Divinity. Yet all the while, the human nature of Jesus remained truly human. It was and is human like ours, in everything but sin.
Even as prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with material oil, so Jesus was anointed with the spiritual oil which conferred on Him the fullness of prophetic, priestly, and royal power.
Jesus was and is the great Prophet (Greek prophetes = one who teaches or speaks for another). He is the Teacher, as He called Himself, whose human lips and actions reveal to us the mind and will of God.
Jesus was and is the great High Priest who sacrificed Himself on the Cross for our salvation. He continues to offer Himself in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Jesus was and is the King who has authority to govern and direct not only Christian believers, but the whole human race. When during His Passion Pilate asked Him, “So you are a King then,” Jesus answered: “Yes, I am a King. I was born for this; I came into the world for this; to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice” (John 18:37). Jesus was saying more than meets the eye. He is King, indeed, because He is the divine Ruler of the world in human form. But His rule is not coercive. We must voluntarily hear His commands, which means listening to His voice, if we are humbly to submit to His words.
The Apostles’ Creed wisely places the profession of faith in Jesus as the Son of God before going on to declare that He was born of the Virgin Mary. No single mystery of Christianity has been more widely and militantly opposed than the unqualified Divinity of Christ. We may say that everything else depends on this.
The key words are “His only Son,” where each word has been chiseled out of the conflict between orthodox and heterodox Christian teaching. By the middle of the fifth century, the Church was ready to formulate her belief in the unique divine sonship of Jesus of Nazareth. Already at the Annunciation, the angel had told Mary that the child she was to conceive would be called “Son of the Most High”.
From the Annunciation on, learned voices were raised to explain away the literal meaning of the angel’s message to Mary. Strange names like Arius and Nestorius, Eutyches and Sabellius, Priscillian and Apollinaris are identified with heresies that in one way or another qualified Christ’s true Divinity. By the middle of the fifth century our familiar Nicene Creed was formulated, which stated in clear language what this unique sonship of Jesus Christ really means.
The Nicene Creed declares: “We believe…in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all time; Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not created, consubstantial with the Father, through Him all things were made.”
Because of the critical importance of this mystery of faith, it will be worth looking more closely at every term on the subject in the Nicene Creed.
The Only Begotten Son of God. Jesus Christ had a natural human mother, Mary. But he had no natural human father. St. Joseph was not the natural father of Jesus. The natural father of Jesus is the First Person of the Holy Trinity, who is God the Father. Certainly we are all children of God, who is our Creator-Father. Certainly God is also the Father of our supernatural life, which we received at baptism. The essence of fatherhood is to share the same nature with its offspring. None of us is the natural son of God either by creation – when we were conceived in our mother’s womb – or by baptism – when we were born into the life of grace. The best we can call ourselves is “adopted children of God.”
Eternal Generation of the Son of God. The First Person of the Trinity never began to generate the Second Person. The Son has always proceeded from the Father, and will continue to do so for all eternity. This is so true, that all other generations of human offspring by their earthly fathers take place only because there is in God Himself the everlasting generation of the Son from the Father.
Light from Light. In the text of the Nicene Creed we profess at Mass are the expressions, “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God”. This is to declare how totally the nature of the Son is identical with the nature of the Father from whom He proceeds. The one proceeding is equally God, equally true God, equally one as light is identical with its originating light.
Begotten, Not Made. Our Faith insists that the Second Person is not made by the Father because the Son is not created out of nothing. Rather, He is begotten of the Father. Why? Because He is “one in Being with the Father.” At the Council of Nicea, the Greek word homoousios was coined to state in the clearest possible terms that the Son has the self-same (homo) Being (ousia) as the Father.
Through Him All Things Were Made. Since the Son is one in Being with the Father, He is equally Creator with the Father. This is stated in the opening words of St. John’s Gospel. “Through Him,” that is, through God “all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through Him” (John 1:2-3). Thus the whole created universe depends on the Son, who is the Wisdom of the father, no less than it depends on the Father, who is Almighty Power.
In the light of what we have discussed, there can be no doubt why Jesus Christ is our Lord:
• He is our Lord because He is true God, the Creator of the universe.
• He is our Lord because, as God, He sustains us and the whole world by His loving omnipotence.
• He is our Lord because He continually provides for all our bodily and spiritual needs.
• He is our Lord because He governs the universe, including our own personal world, by His infinitely wise laws.
• He is our Lord because He is leading us every moment of our stay on earth to the eternal home which He has prepared for us in heaven.
Was Jesus conceived by the Holy Ghost? Mary conceived the child Jesus; the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. Therefore, God’s Spirit would be the Father of her child.
The life of Jesus under the Spirit’s influence is one of an unbroken Matre Dei mother of God was chosen by God to born Jesus to make us all Christian and become inhereritance of the power of the baptism which is the spirituality that we must altogether recall every christmas celebration. We must “unbroken” this through our own crosses and the blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ the resurrection of God and we must Re-born spiritually because I’m or we are called out of darkness and into his marvelous light.
According to the gospels, Mary became pregnant with Jesus through a divine spirit. The virgin birth isn’t mentioned in the earliest Christian writings, such as the letters of Paul and the gospel of Jesus. This has led some scholars to argue that the idea wasn’t part of the original beliefs about Jesus, but was introduced later. One possible explanation is that Mary didn’t tell anyone about it until she was near the end of her life, so the earliest followers of Jesus never heard about it.
We honor Mary because his children honor their parents, and Jesus, we have no evidence that we are the children of God. The Child in your womb, conceived by the Holy Spirit, began His work of the spirit of our Holy Mother Mary. We have Mary, conceived of the Holy Spirit, great with child, “You shall call his name Jesus” and then when the baby is born; it says the Jesus Christ according to St.Thomas Aquinas says: It’s the name above every name. At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, on heaven and on earth and under the earth, and all the nations will sing glory to him and glory to God his Father who begot him when he was born on earth of Mary. For he is God’s real, true, only Son.
We honor Mary because God honored her.
We honor Mary because good children honor their parents, and Jesus, Mary’s Child, honored and respected his Mother. How can we, who are children of God by faith in Jesus, do less? Who can plumb the depths of feeling in a child’s heart for a dear mother? With all affection, we, the adopted daughters and sons of God, gaze at the Mother of our Lord and call her blessed.
We honor Mary, for through her God brought an end to the bitterness of his people.
The Hebrew form of her name is “Miriam,” which means “bitter myrrh.” Does her name reflect her family’s circumstances or those surrounding her own birth? Or does it reflect the bitter exile of her people, their bondage under foreign domination, the dashed hopes of God’s Kingdom long awaited and nowhere in sight? Is her name evidence of her family’s faith, a lament crying out to God for his gracious intervention?
O blessed Mary, who brought joy to all people; we honor you for enduring the bitter pain of birth. You who represent the exiled people of Israel, we bless you, who found no room among human company in which to bear your holy Child.
It is likely that Mary was a young woman, perhaps thirteen years old. Engaged to be married, she found herself to be with child. How difficult for us to grasp the shame and fear this must have caused her! The embarrassment to her family! Did she hide away? Did she shed tears when the neighbors talked? How comforting the kind gentleness of Joseph must have been to her!
We honor you, Mary, for enduring disgrace that we might know the freedom of forgiveness.
She was a humble maiden from a small town. Can anything good come from Nazareth? Few would have expected she would ever achieve recognition or honor. God did not choose a daughter of wealth and privilege with promising prospects, but a lowly girl from a rustic village. And so his grace is magnified in Mary.
Blessings and laud to you, dear Mary. Beyond all expectation, God has lifted you up. Surely he has looked with favor on your lowliness! Surely, all generations will call you blessed! Surely in mercy he has set aside the powerful and rich in favor of the poor and needy. You represent all who have nothing to offer, who can only receive, who must be fed or go hungry.
Mary received a word from God that was incredible — she, a virgin girl, would bear a Son. With trembling heart she heard the angel’s message. In faith, she received that word: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And thus we learn that our Mother is a person of faith, and at her knee we learn to trust God’s promises.
We honor and bless you Mary, for leading us to salvation by grace through faith. We will enter heaven by trusting in the Child you bore. You have brought us the greatest gift of all, the treasure that all loving mothers give to their children — the gift of Life.
Blessed are you: Mother of our Lord, greatest of the Mothers of Israel, Mother of all who believe. Your children bless you!
Father, we thank You for this Christmas morning, but most of all for Jesus Christ.
Open our hearts and minds to see Jesus in a way that we have never experienced before; that we would never be the same again; that we would be more like Him.
And we thank You, Father, for being in our presence; for we praise and worship You.
Amen.