Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 28 March 2024
As we now enter the holiest parts of the Holy Week called the Sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil beginning tonight with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, please find time to have some silent moments of prayer and reflections.
Do not let this Holy Week pass as one of those days so unique because of the great sights and sounds that have filled our cameras with so much photos and videos but have ironically left us empty inside. Don’t you notice the more we fill ourselves with photos and videos on the pretext and excuse of keeping memories and remembrances, the more we are left empty, lost and alienated because we have missed experiencing the moment itself?
The reason images are covered and no flowers adorn our church altars during Lent until Holy Saturday is for us to focus more inside ourselves than outside.
Lent and the Holy Week remind us that basic truth in life that what is most essential is the inside not the outside we aptly call in Filipino as palabas.
How ironic that despite all the technologies and comforts they have brought humans, we are more lost and empty these days than before with more suicides, more depressions, and more social problems and issues.
Lent invites us to return to our very first love of all, God who patiently awaits us always, right in our hearts. Pray as much as possible today to experience God and your very self this Holy Thursday. Just pray. Very often, the most difficult prayer is also the most meritorious.
And when you pray, I strongly recommend Jesuit Father Eduardo Hontiveros’ classic Buksan Ang Aming Puso, the most beautiful and touching church music that is a prayer in itself during this season of Lent and the Holy Week.
Buksan ang aming puso
Turuan mong mag-alab
Sa bawat pagkukuro
Lahat ay makayakap
Buksan ang aming isip
Sikatan ng liwanag
Nang kusang matangkilik
Tungkuling mabanaag
Buksan ang aming palad
Sarili'y maialay
Tulungan mong ihanap
Kami ng bagong malay
I love its progression from opening of heart, then of mind, then of the hand which signifies our whole person.
Our hands is a microcosm of our very selves that is why we shake hands, with give high fives to signify the giving of our total selves in friendship. Fortune tellers read our palms because they signify our whole person. We Filipinos have a beautiful expression during pamanhikan when parents of the groom meet their future balae to ask for the hand of their daughter in marriage, “hihingin namin ang kamay ng inyong anak.”
What is in our hands?
Remember the word betrayal that literally means to hand over from the Greek word paradidomi? Again, our Tagalog translation renders its deepest meaning especially when we recall how Jesus was handed over by Judas to the soldiers who handed Him over to the Sanhedrin who then handed Him over to Pilate who finally handed Him over to the people to be crucified. That repeated handing over of Jesus – or betrayal – is perfectly said in our own expression of “pinagpasa-pasahan si Jesus.”
That is how dirty our hands are with sin and evil when we repeatedly hand over Jesus through our own family and friends whom we take as things to be passed on for something or someone else more useful.
Opening to God becomes complete, from the mind and the heart, when we are able to open our hands to Him, the only One we can really hold on in this life. When we die, we cannot hold and bring anything from this life. Like Jesus, we die with hands opened to God, praying, “Into your hands, I commend my spirit.”
You will notice this afternoon when you come for the Mass, the tabernacle is opened and empty. The Sacred Hosts we shall receive later in the Holy Communion are the ones to be consecrated during the Mass.
Are we also empty to receive Jesus? That is the beauty of Communion by hands when we hold nothing else, we open our hands positioned across our heart supposed to be clean to receive Jesus wholly and responsibly.
As you receive Jesus in the Holy Communion tonight, pray Buksan Ang Aming Puso and ask God to give you a new consciousness (bagong malay) that you are loved and forgiven so you can love and forgive others too.
Ask Jesus to empty your heart of pride so He would reign there to fill you with more of His humility, justice, and love.
Most of all, ask Jesus to dwell in your heart so that every decision you make may come from your heart not from the hatred and bitterness that have covered it all these years.
Be the new person tonight in Jesus as He wash you clean of sins. Amen.
*Usiginanga… you may open your phone to listen and pray Buksan Ang Aming Puso.
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