Life, sometimes, is a series of “good news-bad news” situation like the Beatitudes preached by Jesus during His sermon on the plain last week: the blessings are the good news while the woes are the bad news.
But, wait…! Such a view is the way of the world, not of Christ’s disciples!
As we have reflected last Sunday, the Beatitudes are the paradoxical happiness of the disciples of Christ because they all run directly against the ways of the world. Today we hear more paradoxical teachings from Jesus that are actually His “win-win” solution for our many problems like wars and other forms of enmities. Unfortunately, we have never given them a try because we always complain the ways of the Lord as being far from realities of life, impossible to imitate because He is God and we are not.
Today let us set aside all these reservations and arguments to reflect on this new set of paradoxical teachings by the Lord: Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies.od to those who hate you, bless those who curse, pray for those who mistreat you… But rather, love your enemies and do good to them. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you” (Lk.6:27-28, 35, 36, 38).
It is very striking that Jesus repeated twice His call to “love your enemies”.
Does He not care about us who have to bear with the sins of evil people? What a good news to those who hate us, curse us, and mistreat us! Suwerte sila! We would surely say they must be so lucky, even blessed with us who strive to heed the calls of Jesus to love them our enemies.
But, on deeper reflections, we are actually more blessed when we try to love our enemies because that is when we elevate – or “level up” as kids would say – our hearts to be merciful like God. Experts claim that the best way to exact revenge against people who have hurt us is to shower them with good deeds and kindness from us they have offended. According to these experts in counselling and psychology, evil people get disappointed and angrier with themselves when their evil plots fail especially when their targets do not react negatively. They sound understandable because evil people derive joy in making people miserable. So, why be miserable?
Far from being their “punching bag”, the Lord simply wants us to teach our enemies to respect us, to be kind to us by not being like themselves. In loving our enemies, we teach evil people that more powerful than sin is the power of love. Sin and evil consume a person while love and kindness make a person grow and mature and bloom to fullness.
Far from being passive, to love our enemies by returning evil with good is always the most active method in fighting sins. When Jesus asked us to offer the other side of our cheeks to those who slap our face or when we give them our tunic when they demand our cloak, we are showing these evil people that love is never exhausted unlike evil. Love is boundless and the more we love, the more we have it, the more we keep on doing it. Evil, on the other hand, reaches a saturation point that we get fed up with it, then we we stop doing it because it is exhausting and worst, consumes us within that in the
process destroys us. Think of the most evil person you have known and surely, you find that person so ugly, so zapped of life and energy, eaten up from within by a festering wound. Evil people will never have peace and joy within, glow on their face and skin because they are rotting inside like zombies.
In the first reading we heard how David as a type of Christ foregoing vengeance by holding on to God, trusting Him completely that he chose not to strike King Saul who was then trying to kill him out of jealousy. As disciples of the Lord, we have to trust in the Word of God that can transform our hearts of stone into natural hearts filled with love and mercy like Him. This is the point being explained by St. Paul in the second reading wherein Christ as the “second Adam from heaven” had made us bear the “heavenly image”despite our “earthly image” that is weak and sinful having come from the “first Adam from earth”. Through Baptism, we have been endowed with all the necessary grace from God, transforming us into better persons of heaven.
One of my favorite sayings came from the desk of a friend of mine I used to visit in their office that says “If you have love in your heart, you have been blessed by God; if you have been loved, you have been touched by God.”
See how God has loved us so immensely without measure! Remember that scene two Sundays ago when Jesus borrowed the boat of Simon as He would do with our voice, with our hands, with our total selves? Who are we or what do we really have and own that the almighty God would borrow from us? Nothing! Yet, Jesus comes to us daily with all His love without measure to bless us with everything we need. So, who are we now to love by measuring everything, loving only those who love us, lending only to those who could repay us?
Imagine how astonishingly disproportionate is the love of God with our kind of love. It is in this light must we see the meaning of Christ’s final lesson this Sunday: “For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you.” So paradoxical and provocative yet so true! This Sunday, may we share God’s love in our hearts with others, especially with our enemies so they may also experience the loving and merciful touch of God. Then we begin to realize too the “win-win” solution of Christ to humanity. Amen.Have a blessed week!Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Side garden of the Church of the Beatitudes with the Lake of Galilee at the background. Photo by the author, April 2017.
During His Last Supper, Jesus rose from His seat to wash the feet of His apostles to show them what position is all about: loving service to one another. See in this icon from Google there are only 11 apostles present; Judas left the Last Supper to “unseat” the Lord. Above is the word “mandatum”, Latin for “command”, Christ’s command for us to love by leaving our seats of power and comfort to stand with Him at His Cross.
Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 22 February 2019
If you are a Catholic and a regular Mass-goer, most likely you always follow the “Roman seating position” – that is, you always sit at the back, avoiding the front seats even in other gatherings outside the church.
According to Msgr. Gerry Santos who used to give us retreats and recollections while we were seminarians, the “Roman seating position” is a carry-over from the martyrdom of the early Christians who were always seated at the front rows of the Colosseum in Rome who were forcibly pushed to be devoured by hungry lions and beasts below.
Of course it is a joke but it holds so much grain of truth because we often refuse to take the front row seats for fears of being put on the spot, of making a stand. How ironic that in this age when seating positions matter so much for us, we have forgotten that more important than the position and prestige that come with the seats we occupy – literally and figuratively speaking – is the stand we take in every issue we face. Protocols dictate in so many occasions how seats indicate power and authority; the throne is always reserved to the highest in rank like kings and presidents. And the closer one is seated to the one in command, the wider is one’s sphere of power and influence too. Unfortunately, this is not everything because every seat of power and authority is always a call to serve, to make a stand for what is true and what is good.
Jesus Christ showed us the true meaning of our seating positions during the Last Supper on Holy Thursday evening when He rose to remove His outer garments to wash the feet of His apostles (Jn.13:1-15). It was a task left for slaves only but Jesus used it as a gospel parable in action to show us that what matters most in life is not where we are seated with Him but where we stand with Him. It was exactly what He meant when He said that anyone who wishes to be the greatest must be the least and the servant of all.
Recall my dear readers how during that evening of the Holy Thursday when John the beloved disciple sat not only beside Jesus but even rested his head on His chest to signify their intimacy as friends (Jn. 13:23). That touching gesture of friendship and love took its summit the following Good Friday when John the beloved was the only one of the Twelve who remained standing with the Lord at the foot of His Cross with the Blessed Mother Mary. In that scene we see how John literally stood his ground as the beloved disciple by remaining faithful and loving with the Lord from His Last Supper to His Crucifixion. Peter, the prince of the Apostles, was nowhere to be found on Good Friday after denying Jesus thrice during His trial before the Sanhedrin the night of His arrest. Very interesting was Judas Iscariot who committed suicide after realizing his grave sin in betraying the Lord. See how he had left the Lord’s Supper to deal with His enemies for His arrest. What an image of the traitor who could not stay on his seat during the Lord’s Supper was the same one who could not stand to face Him again at the foot of the Cross. See how those people who refuse to sit with us are also the ones who never stand with us, stand for us like Judas, a traitor!
I tell you these things even if Holy Week is still more than six weeks from now but in the light of the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter which is about the Primacy of Rome or the Pope as Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter. We celebrate this Feast to remember St. Peter and his successors love and service to the Church as examples we must all emulate. In 110 AD, St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote the Christians in Rome to describe to them the Church of Rome as the “primacy of love” and the “primacy of faith”. Every power and every authority signified by the chair or cathedra in the Church as well as in the world when we speak of “seat of power” must always be seen in the light of Jesus Christ’s example of loving service at His Last Supper. This is especially true for us priests who are united in Christ and with Christ in the Eucharist.
This festering problem of sexual abuse in the Church is largely due to our deviation from this primacy in love for Jesus as priests. We have been so focused with our seats – positions and titles – that we have forgotten to stand with Christ at the foot of His cross, standing for what is good and true, just and right. We have been so focused with the “party” of the Supper of the Lord and have forgotten Jesus Himself. Seminarians have been so focused with the vocation and the call, with ordination, forgetting the more essential, the Caller Jesus Himself! And that explains why some in the clergy and those in the hierarchy come up with so many excuses and alibis for the many things we do in our ministry, in our churches, in our parishes, and in our lives because we are only concerned with our office and position but never the Master.
When we love Jesus or any other person, we do not have to justify our actions. Love that is true and pure does not need justifications. But the moment we start making justifications, something is wrong like when we justify our special relationships, no matter how deep or shallow it may be for clearly, there is no primacy in love for Jesus and the Church.
When we justify our vices, our lifestyles, our business endeavors that Canon Law prohibits, clearly there is no primacy in love for we cannot be poor for Christ.
There is no problem with having advocacies as priests but when we are aligned with ideologies contrary to Christ, or when we play in partisan politics, there is neither primacy of faith nor primacy of love. It is the Lord who changes the world, not us, not our programs, not our ideas.
It is our duty as priests to love like Christ but to adopt children and raise them as our own children using our names, there is no celibacy, only stupidity.
Like Jesus, we need money to get our programs going but when we lack transparency and accountability, that is stealing and banditry.
When all we have is the ministry, the priesthood without prayer periods, without the Eucharist, we only have the call but not the Caller Jesus Christ Himself.
More than ever, today Jesus Christ is asking us all His priests to make a stand for Him, to stand with Him, to suffer with Him and to die with Him by leaving our seats of comfort and seats of power.
The Chair of St. Peter at the high altar of the Basilica of St. Peter at the Vatican flanked below by the two teachers of the East, St. John Chrysostom and St. Athanasius with the two Latin Fathers of the Church St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. All four saints showed us how love stands on faith; that, without both love and faith, everything falls apart in the Church. Photo from Bing.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Friday, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, 22 February 2019
1Peter 5:1-4///Matthew 16:13-19
Glory and praise to you, O Lord Jesus Christ as we celebrate today a most unique feast, the Chair of St. Peter!
It is so unique O Lord especially in this age when the world is so concerned with seating arrangement whether at home, in school, in offices, in buses… everywhere seats matter these days because every seat is about position, rank, power and convenience.
And we have forgotten that more important than our seating position is where we stand.
On this Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, remind us Lord especially your priests of that beautiful example you have shown at the Last Supper when you left your seat to wash the feet of the Apostles.
How sad and shameful, O Lord, when we your priests fail to realize that the throne of the Eucharist is not a seat of power or prestige but a seat of loving service to everyone.
So true were the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch in his Letter to the Romans in the year 110 that the Primacy of Rome is the Primacy of Love because primacy in faith is always primacy in love, two things we can never separate.
May we your priests heed the call of St. Peter, the designated “owner” of that Chair, that we “Tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly, as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly. Do not lord it over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock” (1Pt.5:2-3). Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
A street performer at the Tamsui Fisherman’s Wharf in Taiwan must have tried and failed so many times before getting his permit from Taipei officials to perform in public. Photo by the author taken last January 29, 2019
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Wednesday, 20 February 2019, Week VI, Year I
Genesis 8:6-13, 20-22///Mark 8:22-26
Lord Jesus Christ, yesterday you taught me of your great love and mercy through your fidelity and patience in my being too slow in understanding your signs of presence.
Thank you very much, Lord, for bearing with my mindlessness.
But today, I praise and thank you twice, even thrice, in giving me the grace of being patient like you in my persevering to keep on trying and hoping for your love and mercy, healing and grace.
Like that blind man in Bethsaida you have healed gradually, you have taught me how things are not that clear right away at your coming. Sometimes, everything seems to be so blurred when “I see people looking like trees and walking” (Mk.8:24).
Like Noah in the first reading after the rains and the floods, it takes time before plants sprout and bloom again. So many times, I just have to be like Noah, always waiting, always trying until the floods have subsided.
Let me offer you a sacrifice of praise today O Lord through my kindness and patience with others just like you. Amen.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Lover’s Bridge in Tamsui Fisherman’s Wharf, New Taipei City, Taiwan opened on Feb. 14, 2003. Photo by author, 29 January 2019.
Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 15 February 2019
I thought last year’s Valentine’s Day was the most interesting in recent years because February 14 fell on an Ash Wednesday, a beautiful juxtaposition of the secular and the sacred that both remind us of love and death. It happened again to me yesterday very early morning when I drove with my brother down south to visit a beloved aunt who is our late father’s favorite sister sick with Parkinson’s for the last seven years. It was the closest experience I ever had with the realities of love and death intimately related.
Unlike my previous visits to her in the last two years, the latest last January 03, Tita Neneng has always looked so sad and depressed with her situation, choosing to be left alone than be seen in her plight. She used to be bursting with life, so busy with her career and family that upon retirement, she spent it going almost everywhere especially to visit her children in the US. Yesterday, Tita Neneng was so different, almost like back to her old self as she smiled and talked a lot. Her face was radiant, exuding with her beauty that had captivated so many men until her 50’s! She was bubbling with joy as we reminisced the good old days when my father was still alive along with her older siblings, our many family reunions, and of course, our Lola Queta. After anointing her with Holy Oil for the Sick and giving her the Viaticum, she told me something that made me cry so hard after: “Father, I am ready.”
Of course, I knew what she meant but I had to lean close to her to ask her again what she just said. “Father, handa na ako mamatay,” she told me with a smile on her lips while her eyes lovingly looked at me. I asked her if she had told it to her husband, Tito Terry and she replied, “hindi pa.” I told her she must tell it to Tito Terry so he would also be ready. She then looked down, then faced me again and told me, “yung mga anak ko umaasa pa sa milagro. Ayaw pa nila ako payagan.” I looked at her and asked permission to inform her children in the States of her feeling ready.
She just smiled. And I cried. Very hard.
I had to excuse myself to run for some tissue in her bathroom as I could not contain myself crying and sobbing beside her. Once in a while, a lesson from our pastoral psychology crossed my mind that as a pastor or minister, I should not cry in front of a patient, but, what can I do? She’s my dearest aunt who had made me feel so loved and special even before I ever thought of becoming a priest in high school?!
Deep inside me, I also felt some joy amidst the sadness because I felt my Tita Neneng is indeed ready to go anytime soon because she was so composed without any tear in her eyes and always with that sweet smile on her lips. Before, Tita Neneng would always cry to me, begging me to pray that God would take her as she could not endure her sufferings anymore. That was before when she begged for death out of desperation as a way out of her pains and sickness. But yesterday, she simply told me she was ready to die maybe because she must have found her direction in life already.
Yesterday was actually a déjà vu for me, having experienced it before with my bestest friend from high school seminary, Gil who was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in January 2013. He would always cry to me whenever I would visit him, asking “why me” with the Big C? Seven months after undergoing surgery and some chemo treatment, his doctors gave up. It was time to face the inevitable as his cancer cells were so strongly active; but, surprisingly, my friend Gil accepted it gallantly, even with joy on his face! I visited him thrice on his final week before he died. And there I was, breaking into tears before him, crying like a child. A reversal of roles had suddenly happened with Gil assuring me with everything, explaining things I should know more as a priest. The most remarkable thing I have discovered with Gil as he approached death was the inner peace he head when he told me how he had forgiven his wife who had abandoned them, telling me how much he still loved her, vowing to keep his marital vows until his end!
The beloved disciple of Christ wrote, “No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us” (1Jn.4:12).
Have you ever noticed how when our loved ones were diagnosed with serious illness, they always cried to us while we tried to assure them that everything would be fine? Then, as our loved ones slowly embraced their mortality and faced death, we in turn cried before them who also assured us that everything would be fine? There seems to be a reversal of roles when our loved ones embrace death because their love has been perfected that they no longer fear anything at all. They must be so assured of where they are going to in life, unlike us who are still uncertain of what awaits us and that is why we cry when they go. We not only cry for them but we cry more for ourselves because we have not seen the bigger picture yet that we still love imperfectly. The great love stories of literature like Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” show us that death and love always go together not only for a beautiful story but precisely because death shows the depth of one’s love. It is in suffering and death love is perfected. A heart willing to suffer and die for another is the heart that truly loves. Though love is symbolized by the heart as we have it on Valentine’s day, love is best expressed by the Cross of Jesus Christ who showed us the way of true love. Coming to terms with life is coming to terms with death and vice versa. So, let us have Valentine’s day every day!
Image from Google: Open ears, Open hearts, Open minds.
The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Friday, 15 February 2019, Week V, Year I
Genesis 3:1-8///Mark 7:31-37
Our dearest God and loving Father, thank you very much for this month of February when we celebrate Valentine’s, the day of hearts.
It must had been your Holy Spirit guiding us these days when we prayed the other day that we may look inside our hearts to see you and follow your holy will; yesterday as we celebrated Valentine’s, we prayed for the grace to see with our hearts.
Today we pray for the grace to listen with our hearts so we may not repeat the sin of Adam and Eve when they listened to the voice of the serpent who misled them into believing that the moment they eat the fruit of the tree of in the middle of the garden, “their eyes would be opened and they would be like gods who know what is good and what is evil” (Gen.3:5).
Give us the grace to separate ourselves from the crowd, from all the noise and different voices of the world, to listen with our hearts in silence with Jesus Christ like that deaf man brought to Him in Decapolis.
“Ephphatha!” (Mk.7:34)
Let our ears and our hearts be opened to you O Lord.
Let us be “deaf” sometimes to the cacophony of sounds in the world, competing for our attention, listening intently with our hearts to your tiny voice deep within us, telling us to love freely and truly by avoiding sins and doing only what is good. Amen.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
A blessed day of the hearts to you O God our loving Father!
Everybody is greeting happy Valentine’s in honor of your saint who found ways of bringing together in holy matrimony lovers forbidden by so many circumstances. On the other hand, our liturgy reminds us on this day the holiness of two brothers, St. Cyril and St. Methodius who preached the gospel among the Slavs.
All three saints showed what true love is, a love that is rooted in you expressed in their love for others. This is the love that your Son Jesus Christ had concretely showed us, to make us experience anew that we are all one, brothers and sisters in you our Father despite our different colors and beliefs.
On this day of hearts, remind us O Lord to always see with our hearts so we can be filled with awe and joy in seeing one another like the first man, saying “This one at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen.2:23). Give us also the courage of that Syrophoenician woman who came to beg Jesus to heal her daughter possessed by the devil by admitting her being a foreigner and different in race yet the same in stature as a child of God (Mk.7:28).
Like the first man and the Syrophoenician woman who saw with their hearts the other persons and Jesus, then we can destroy the walls that separate us from one another and build bridges of love that bring us together in kindness and respect.
May we always look with our hearts, O Lord Jesus, because it is only with the heart that we can truly see. Amen.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music, 10 February 2019
It is a very lovely Sunday despite the very warm weather. Perfect for listening to the music of Seawind with vocals by Fil-Am Ms. Pauline Wilson who would surely touch your heart and delight your soul with “Still in Love” from their self-titled album “Seawind” released in 1980.
How lovely to realize that after all these years, you are still loved by someone you have loved. Exactly the kind of love of Jesus Christ to us all. In the gospel today, we find Jesus calling His first apostles while preaching by the shores of Lake Gennesaret after being rejected at their synagogue in Nazareth. That is how true and faithful Jesus is with His mission to reach out to everyone proclaiming His good news of salvation. Jesus is the only one who would always still be in love with us no matter how often we turn away from Him or reject Him.
Are you still in love with someone special? Or with Jesus?
Rejoice because most likely, you are still loved by that someone.
For the past three weeks we have seen how Luke had been true to his intent of writing in an “orderly sequence” the events in the life of Jesus Christ so we may realize the “certainty of the teachings” handed down to us by the apostles (Lk.1:3-4, Jan. 28). Taking off from the scene at the Nazareth synagogue, Luke showed us how Jesus is the “word who became flesh” when He told the people, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk.4:21). And like those people in the synagogue, we too are so amazed with the words of Jesus but likewise disturbed, even mad when He hits a soft spot within us. That is how Jesus does His mission, always inviting us to listen and act on His word that is fulfilled in the “today” like in the calling of the first four apostles, the brothers Simon and Andrew, James and John. After driving Him out of their synagogue, Jesus went to preach to the crowd who followed Him along the shores of Gennesaret.
While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat (Lk.5:1-3).
What a lovely sight to behold, my dear readers, of Jesus Christ borrowing the boat of Simon to preach to the people. Imagine the Son of God, through whom everything was created, borrowing the boat of Peter? Imagine how that boat of Simon must have looked like. It must be so ordinary and most likely, even with some holes with nothing so outstanding – just like us! Yet, here is the King of kings borrowing that boat from Simon. Luke is showing us here a “parable in action” of how the Gospel is to be preached to all people with no exception. It is a beautiful imagery of the Church gathered around our Lord and Master with Simon – like us – in supporting role. Today, it is the boat of Simon being borrowed but later on, it would be his voice, his total self that Jesus would borrow, very similar with us too.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him (Lk.5:4-6,8,10-11).
This is the climax not only of our gospel scene today but also of the whole series these three Sundays that started on a day of rest inside the synagogue of Nazareth when Jesus came to proclaim the word of God. The actualizing power of the word of Jesus Christ fulfilled in every “today” when proclaimed and heard and accepted. See how Simon was filled with fear that he fell into his knees after seeing the bountiful catch after obeying the words of Jesus, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” Of course, the fish is always in the sea; the key to their great catch was the presence of Jesus Christ. It is the same with our own lives when we work so hard in our jobs or career and in our studies and other pursuits but we are still left empty. But after finding Jesus, we are so overwhelmed with so much blessings not really in material form but something more deeper and lasting. The word of God is His very presence and its effect is always in the here and now, not later. Like the other Sunday, we said it is not enough to enter the church but we enter the person of Jesus Christ. And the moment we enter Jesus, we then become like Simon, filled with His presence that we no longer address Christ as Master or Teacher but also Lord. Like Simon, we also experience a deepening in our recognition and relationship with Jesus: at first, we relate to Him more as a Master and Teacher but later, we realize that He alone is our Lord.
See how by placing the miraculous catch, the call of Simon and his companions, and their response at the beginning, Luke is teaching us the spirit that must guide us in proclaiming and listening to the Gospel Jesus Christ. In these three Sundays, we have seen Jesus Christ as the central figure for He alone is our Master and Lord. He alone is the one calling us all to be fishers of men and to follow Him means to leave everything behind like Simon and company.
Here lies our problem today when we forget Jesus our Master and Lord. So many times we in the Church, especially us priests and those in the hierarchy as well as some laypeople forget Jesus, usurping His Lordship that we speak and act like God. Luke reminds us in this scene at the Gennesaret that we do not replace Christ! In the first place, remember that people come for Jesus in the first place and only Him, always Him whom we must share to everyone. How sad that so often, consciously or unconsciously, some priests create cults around their very selves, we become the standard of everything, we claim everything that people look up to us more than to Christ. Like Simon who would be called as Peter later, our job is to lend our boat and our voice to Jesus and not to replace Him. Like the prophet Isaiah, we are being sent forth by the Lord to bring Him among people, to make Him present among them. As Paul explained also these past three weeks in his first letter to the Corinthians, the Church is the living body of Christ that we all build together. There is the diversity of graces, gifts, and ministries that come from the Holy Spirit to complement each other. Most of all, in proclaiming and listening to the word of God, there must always be love for without it, nothing would have value at all. And that alone proves to us the centrality of Jesus Christ who alone is our Master and Lord, who calls us despite our many defects like Simon. Jesus alone is the one we must love and serve, His very person and not only His call and teachings. A blessed week to you! Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Photo by Mr. Raffy Tima of GMA-7 News, Sampaloc Cove in Subic, Zambales, 20 January 2019. Used with permission.
The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music, 03 February 2019
As I was telling you in my last blog, we had a unique weekend yesterday when we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple because its gospel reading complements our gospel this Sunday. Recall how yesterday we have heard Simeon telling Mary the Mother of Jesus, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted – and you yourself a sword will pierce you – so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Lk.2:34-35). Today in our gospel we have seen the fulfillment of Simeon’s prophecy of Jesus being a sign of contradiction when people at their synagogue were amazed at His “gracious words” in proclaiming the word of God on a Sabbath. Then suddenly, the same people became skeptical of Him, wondering where or how He got such wisdom, asking “is he not the son of Joseph the carpenter?” This deteriorated more when the people became furious of Jesus, trying to hurl Him down headlong a ravine after He had explained to them the meaning of the word of God that revealed their hypocrisies.
So many times we go through the same experiences like Jesus in His own hometown when family and relatives and friends would speak highly of us but later put us down with their gossips and nasty words. Like Jesus when we try to be true and just with everyone, there are those would feel insecure that they would backstab us and even worse, betray us like Judas to Jesus. These are all a part of our being a prophet like Jesus Christ. A prophet is more than being a spokesman of God but someone who makes the word of God happen and fulfilled in every here and now like Jesus declaring in the synagogue on that Sabbath day, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk.4:21). Sometimes, the more we try to truly love, the more we try to truly care and be kind with others, the more we are maligned and disliked by others. Indeed, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
And that is why I remembered this beautiful song originally sang and recorded in 1970 by the Chicago soul family group called the Five Stairsteps. This song was originally meant to be the B-side of the Five Stairsteps’ version of another song but due to its meaningful and soothing message of hope and love, it became an instant hit at that time. There have been so many versions of this song that has become timeless as it assures everyone in every generation of how things would get better despite the many obstacles and setback in life. It is the very same assurance of God to us all who try to follow His Son Jesus Christ in being a sign of contradiction in this world where the norm nowadays is selfishness and self-centeredness masquerading as love and service. A blessed Sunday to you!
