The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music, Lent Week 1-C, 10 March 2019
Every year on this first Sunday of Lent, we always hear the story of the tempting of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness. According to St. Luke, Jesus was “filled with the Holy Spirit” when He went to the desert to pray and fast for 40 days. He was able to resist the temptations of the devil because Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit.
To be filled with the Holy Spirit means to be docile to the Holy Spirit. Being docile is not merely being obedient; from the Latin word docilitas, being docile literally means being “attentive”. Lent is the season that invites us to bring back the spirit of docility in our lives, that is, to be attentive to one’s self, to God and to others. How sad that in this world of advanced technologies, we have become more attentive with things and gadgets than with persons. Maybe if we are more attentive to our inner selves, to God and to others, we could have prevented the many disasters and problems we now have.
If we have been attentive to our self, to God and to others, we would not be “stuck in a moment we can’t get out” – the very same title of a cut from the U2’s 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. I have always loved that song – and that album which I feel is their second best after Joshua Tree – that I used it so many times in my talks and recollections with young people. According to Bono, it was written after his friend from another band committed suicide, of how he wished he had exerted more effort to prevent his friend from killing self, of being stuck in a moment you can’t get out.
The song perfectly suits our gospel today. Every time the devil tempts us, its aim is not merely for us to commit a sin. The devil’s ultimate goal in tempting us to sin is to destroy our lives, to get us stuck in a moment we can’t get out. The good news is that Jesus had shown us how we can get over every temptation by the devil. Moreover, He has filled us with the Holy Spirit so that like Him, we can be docile – attentive – to God, to others and to our self so that we avoid sins and avert destroying our lives.
You've got to get yourself together You've got stuck in a moment And now you can't get out of it Don't say that later will be better Now you're stuck in a moment And you can't get out of it
Photo above from Bing.com; music video from Youtube.
40 Shades of Lent Week I, Year C, 10 March 2019 Deuteronomy 26:4-10//Romans 10:8-13//Luke 4:1-11
Our gospel story on this first Sunday of Lent about the tempting of Jesus at the desert sets the prevailing mood and disposition we must have on this holy season: docility to the Holy Spirit.
Docility is obedience. A docile person is an obedient one who is also attentive which is the literal translation of the Latin root docilitas. On the other hand, “obedience” is also from two Latin words “ob audire” that literally mean to listen intently. Here we find that Lent is a season that invites us to be attentive God and with others. Most of all, Lent is the season that calls us to recover this beautiful trait of docility and obedience by submitting and surrendering our selves to God and those above us like our parents.
How ironic and unfortunate that in our highly advanced world, we have become inattentive with persons and more attentive with things and gadgets. We have not only become less obedient but even less caring and kind with others because we no longer care at all with persons next to us. We cannot listen intently to parents and teachers, friends and almost everybody because our ears are always plugged with earphones while our eyes are fixed on screens! And maybe that explains why we always find ourselves into so many disastrous situations in our lives that could have been prevented had we been more attentive with our selves, with others and with God. According to a study in 2015, the average attention span of audience is 8.25 seconds while a goldfish has 9 seconds. This maybe the reason why looking at fish in an aquarium can be therapeutic… at least a goldfish can spare you with more attention than anyone!
Going back to our gospel this Sunday, we sense this spirit of docility of Jesus in the introduction and conclusion of Luke’s version of the temptation in the desert that follows right after His baptism at Jordan.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry.
Luke 4:1-2
“Filled with the Holy Spirit.” What a beautiful expression to describe Jesus after His baptism at Jordan and in going to the wilderness to pray and fast, later to be tempted by the devil!
Docility in the Spirit is being filled with the Holy Spirit we first received in our Baptism, in Confirmation, in the Holy Communion and the sacraments. Every day like Jesus during His baptism at Jordan, we are filled with the Holy Spirit upon waking up because we are all beloved children of the Father. We have to claim the Holy Spirit who fills us, comes to us day in and day out. Docility in the Spirit is being attuned with God like a radio or any communication device that must be “connected” to a power or signal source. This is the reason we have to fast and do some sacrifices as well as pray during Lent so that we may be empty of our selves to be filled with the Holy Spirit and be docile to God. Without the Holy Spirit, there can be no docility.
Docility in the Spirit is entrance into the very person of Jesus Christ who is the beloved Son of God. The five Sundays of Lent are like doors that lead us closer into the innermost room of God. It is a journey that begins in our hearts. It is a journey we said last Ash Wednesday that is more about direction than destination. We enter the person of Jesus Christ, just like when He entered the synagogue at Nazareth to proclaim the reading from Isaiah that said “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” (Lk.4:14-21). The people were amazed at Jesus because He was so filled with the Holy Spirit that they really felt the part of the scripture fulfilled in His proclamation. Recall also the gospel last Sunday when Jesus said “from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks” (Lk.6:45) to remind us that whatever good or evil comes from us comes from what is in our hearts, from the kind of spirit that fills us.
Jesus was consistently filled with the Holy Spirit up to the end, was consistently docile to the Father that reached its summit at the Cross because he was also continuously tempted on many occasions by the devil up to His crucifixion. That final temptation at His crucifixion was first heard in the wilderness when the devil said “if you are the Son of God” very similar with the words of the bystanders at the foot of the Cross. Most of all, that final temptation at the crucifixion was foreshadowed in the desert when the devil led Jesus to parapet of the temple in Jerusalem, teasing Him to throw Himself down for the angels would surely support Him.
Every time the devil tempts us to sin, his intention is not only for us to sin but for our lives to be destroyed by making us turn away from God signified by jumping from the top of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus knew this so well that is why from the desert to the Cross, Jesus remained docile to the Father, remained filled with the Holy Spirit by relying on the powers of God than of Himself or of anyone else. And that is always the temptation we also encounter daily: to abandon God, to rely on ourselves and various forms of human powers. Every temptation faced by Jesus was always a temptation to abandon God’s plans, to be ordinary, to remain stuck in the level of the of the world.
The good news is not only that Jesus had overcome every temptation from the devil but most of all, enables us to do so by filling us with the Holy Spirit. Like Moses in the first reading, remember how God saved us in the past. He will never forsake us for as St. Paul reminds us today, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom.10:13). May we be attentive to the Holy Spirit always. Amen.
The imagery of the wilderness every Lent invites us to be docile, i.e., literally attentive in Latin, to the Holy Spirit, to the things of God and of the more sublime than merely human and material. Photo by author, Holy Land, April 2017.
A view from the inside of the Church of the Beatitudes overlooking the Lake of Galilee in the Holy Land. Photo by the author, April 2017.
The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe, 03 March 2019, Week VIII, Year-C 1Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23///1Corinthians 15:45-49///Luke 6:27-38
For the past two Sundays we have been listening to some of Christ’s most sublime teachings filled with paradoxes that may sound like a folly for us humans because they all run contrary to the ways of the world. Beginning with His Beatitudes, Jesus taught that true blessedness comes from being poor and hungry, when we are weeping and being maligned. More difficult yet most sublime of all were His teachings last Sunday when He told us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us.
They are very, very difficult but doable in Christ Jesus who have taken all these lessons directly from life. He knows very well how capable is our hearts in truly loving like Him.
And so today, Jesus turns His attention to us His disciples who shall act as guides in putting into practice all His teachings through the education of our hearts. It is in our hearts where all the good and evils around us originate from. All the problems and sufferings we have in the world today like wars and various forms of violence, hunger and sexual exploitation, human trafficking and all kinds of injustice first happen right in our hearts. Not in Syria or Jolo or the slums of Tondo or any other city in the world. Jesus perfectly hit it right when He said, “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks” (Lk.6:45).
In the first reading we find the same line of thinking during the Old Testament when Ben Sirach wrote, “When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when he speaks. As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace, so in tribulation is the test of the just. The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does one’s speech disclose the bent of one’s mind. Praise no one before he speaks, for it is then that people are tested” (Sir.27:4-7). Remember that in the Bible, speech and being always go together like when God created everything by simply speaking.
And that is the whole point of Ben Sirach: people reveal who they really are in the manner they speak as well as in the words they use to express their thoughts and feelings that all come from the heart. Of all the creation by God, it is only the human person whom He had gifted with the ability to communicate intelligibly with speech. Our ability to speak is in fact a sharing in the power of God who created everything by simply speaking. But how do we use this great power of speech and communication? Are we like the Spiderman convinced in our hearts that with great power comes great responsibility?
It is elections again in the country and sadly, it is more like a circus than a democratic process. And the great tragedy we keep on repeating again and again is how most people put into office candidates without any qualifications at all and worst, deeply mired in every form of immorality and scandals. Where is our heart that we allow blind people to lead us? Or, have we become heartless that we have no regard anymore for our country, for our future and the next generation?
Jesus is challenging us today to educate our hearts, to learn from Him, to come to Him and be like Him to have our hearts transformed like unto Him. Though we are all weak and have all the defects as a person, our readings today lead us to the Christ who revealed to us that ultimately, “communication is more than the expression of one’s thoughts and feelings but at its most profound level is the giving of self in love” (Communio et Progression, 11). It is the Lord Jesus Christ who had revealed in His very person and life of self-giving the paradoxical joy of discipleship, the transforming power of love gained in His own pasch that removed the sting of sin and of death in our weak humanity. May we persevere in our education of our hearts in Jesus, “firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in Him our labor is not in vain” (1Cor.15:58). 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.
Here is the link to one of my favorite songs, “One More Gift” by Jesuit Fr. Manoling Francisco that speaks eloquently of the need to educate our hearts. Sing it prayerfully.
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.
A paradox is a statement that seems contradictory but may be true in fact. From the Greek words para for beyond and doxa for opinion, a paradox promotes critical thinking and deep introspection or reflections. Christian living is a life of paradoxes as we often hear Jesus our Lord telling us to lose our lives in order to gain it. St. Francis of Assisi knew it so well that in his prayer to be an instrument of peace, he rightly claimed that “it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born into eternal life.” We shall have a taste of some paradoxical teachings by Jesus Christ beginning today until the next two Sundays before we get into the Season of Lent as we listen from the account by St. Luke of the Lord’s “Sermon on the Plain”. For this Sunday, we hear the centerpiece of His sermon on that day, the Beatitudes.
And raising his eyes toward his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven” (Lk.6:20-23).
Beatitudes are words of promise that have a strong link from the long line of tradition of Old Testament teachings like the one we heard from the first reading today from Jeremiah: “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord” (Jer.17:7). Recall how last Sunday Jesus called His first four disciples led by Simon whom He had asked to be “fishers of men” (Luke chapter 5). As Jesus went around Galilee preaching and healing the sick, He gained some disciples or followers. In chapter six, St. Luke tells us Jesus departed to a mountain to pray for the night and upon coming down the following morning, He chose 12 men among His disciples whom He called apostles. This is now the setting of our gospel today when a vast crowd have followed Jesus, many of whom are poor people with some pagans from Tyre and Sidon who all wish to listen to Him about the word of God and to be healed from their sickness.
Speaking to His community of disciples that include us now, the Beatitudes by Jesus express the meaning of discipleship which is paradoxical because they run directly against the values of the world. For Jesus Christ, true blessedness and the way of happiness for us His disciples is being poor, hungry, weeping, and hated. What a paradox indeed! Yet, we know deep in our hearts, in our love for Christ and for others especially to those dear to us, we are willing to live with these promise of trials and sufferings because it is the only way to follow Jesus who said “anyone who wishes to follow Him must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow Him” (Lk.9:23). The paradox becomes deeper and more paradoxical that we are willing to go through all pains and trials for our love for Jesus and others because we trust in the Lord’s promise that “He will provide us with wisdom in arguing with our enemies… and most of all, not a hair on our head will be destroyed. By our perseverance we shall secure our lives” (Lk.21:14-19). We forge on with the Beatitudes because we are convinced in the words of Jesus about the complete reversal of fortunes when that “day” comes for our “rewards in heaven shall be great!” (Lk.6:23) And that “day” is the “now” when the scriptures are fulfilled in our hearing, when despite the many hardships we go through, we have that firm assurance within of meaning and joy in life because like St. Paul, we firmly believe in our resurrection in Jesus Christ. Every day we die in our sins, in our sufferings, we share in the passion and death of Jesus; but every day too, we experience rising to new life in Christ in this little deaths we go through in daily living.
It is along this line that we discover how the Beatitudes reveal to us the mystery of Jesus Christ Himself who calls us into communion with Him and in Him. When we examine the Beatitudes, we find Christ being referred to as the one who is poor, hungry, weeping, and hated for He is the first to be so blessed and filled with God when we recall His baptism at Jordan. In His life, Jesus showed us true blessedness as prophesied by Jeremiah, the one “who trusts and hopes in the Lord… like a tree planted beside waters that despite drought, it shows no stress and still bears fruit” (Jer.18:8). Without doubt, Jesus was the first to go through all the sufferings and pains of the Beatitudes and the first to resurrect from the dead as St. Paul insisted to the Corinthians. In following the Beatitudes, we become true fishers of men who catch nothing all night without Christ; but, with Jesus, despite our many losses in life, we continue to cast our nets into the deep so our lives may be fulfilled in Him always. Life is a mystery, filled with paradoxes that make it so wonderful and beautiful in God. A blessed week ahead to you! Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Sanctuary and altar of the Church of the Beatitudes in Israel. Photo by the author, April 2017.
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.
The Cross of Christ atop the church of our Lady of Lourdes in France. Photo by my former student Philip Santiago during his pilgrimage, September 2018.
We had a rare weekend yesterday in the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord that wonderfully complemented our gospel on this Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Recall that last Sunday we were told how Jesus went home to Nazareth, entering the synagogue on a day of rest. Everybody was amazed with His “gracious words” in proclaiming the word of God that we ended the gospel with a very positive note when Jesus declared “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk.4:22). Our gospel today repeated this line as its take off point to continue the story of Jesus at the synagogue but, this time Luke tells us of a twist from the very positive “all spoke highly of him” to their skeptical “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” (Lk.4:22). The mood deteriorated further after Jesus had spoken so that “the people at the synagogue were filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong” (Lk.4:28-29)!
What and how did this sudden turn of events happen? Here we find the complementing Feast of the Presentation yesterday based on the infancy narratives of Christmas by St. Luke when Simeon told 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). See how Jesus at the inauguration of His ministry at their Nazareth synagogue last week proclaiming the word of God would now start to be seen as a sign of contradiction among His people as prophesied by Simeon to His mother yesterday. That would reach its highest point 33 years later in Jerusalem where He was presented to the Temple 40 days after Epiphany after resolutely going there to offer or present Himself to the Father on the Cross. This explains why Jesus merely “passed through the midst of them and went away” when the people at the synagogue tried to hurl Him down headlong because His time of final offering had not yet come. But very clearly here at the synagogue of Nazareth, Christ is indeed the sign of contradiction not only to His people but also to us in this generation when we would also speak highly of Jesus, shouting Amen with clapping of hands and suddenly hit people near us with harsh and nasty words or even brutal force. Most of all, like the Lord, we too have experienced being a sign of contradiction when people would speak highly of us then suddenly or over time, turn against us and speak ill of us, betraying us like what Judas did to Jesus on Holy Thursday.
My dear friends in Christ, it is our calling and our life too in living out the word of God through our life of witnessing His immense love in service and mercy for those in the margins. Every time we gather for the Sunday Mass like when Jesus entered the synagogue of Nazareth on a day of rest, He invites us to follow Him to be a prophet by entering Him more than merely the church building. Being a sign of contradiction like Jesus is our prophetic mission in Him. So unlike what most people think, a prophet is not a fortune teller or a seer of the future. As the spokesperson of God, a prophet is one who makes God’s word happen or fulfilled in every here and now. Keep in mind that one feature of Luke’s gospel is the pre-eminence of “listening and doing” the word of God like when he reported how Jesus declared Isaiah’s prophecy fulfilled in their hearing that led into the sharp and sudden shifting in the reaction of people against the Lord, from approval to rejection.
First of all, those reactions were most evidently from His claiming to be the Messiah referred to in Isaiah’s prophecy on whom the “Spirit of the Lord rests upon.” He was the one who proclaimed the word and if we have truly immersed ourselves into this beautiful scene in the synagogue on that Sabbath day, we would really feel Jesus is in fact the one Isaiah is speaking of as being “anointed to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, freedom to those oppressed, and to usher in a year acceptable to the Lord” (Lk.4: 18-19). Salvation decisively begins in Christ and through Christ whenever we enter Him in His words. That “today” in Nazareth synagogue is also the today of our own time that continues to provoke astonishment among others when we try to be Christ’s witnesses of authentic love for others. That is perhaps the sad reality of these days when it becomes big news when people do something genuinely good and beautiful like the woman who impulsively rented 20 hotel rooms in Chicago so the homeless could escape the deep freeze this week in the US Midwest; her deed snowballed into other strangers doing the same! That is essentially the meaning of Paul’s lofty words on love being the greatest of all gifts because it makes God most present in our midst. To truly love like Christ is essentially being a sign of contradiction in this world where the norm is selfishness and self-centeredness often masked in different in lofty terms and ideals bereft of any love at all.
Along this line of self-centeredness we find Luke reminding us in this scene at the Nazareth synagogue of the persisting problem self-entitlement among people then and now when we prophetically live out our mission of making Christ present. People always look down and frown upon those who try to be good and holy by striving to do what is right and just while the holier-than-thou sanctimoniously feel they are the only ones anointed to do such things because they are entitled. They are the modern Gnostics according to Pope Francis in his latest encyclical about holiness in our modern time (Gaudete et Exsulatate)” who feel as the only ones gifted in knowing what is right or wrong, true and good as if they are God. Like those people at the synagogue in Nazareth, they refused to accept Jesus of being more knowledgeable because He is the son of Joseph who was a carpenter. Jesus would strike at the very core of their self- entitlement when He told them “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his native place” (Lk.4:24), citing how Elijah and Elisha of the Old Testament days were both sent by God to help pagan peoples and not the Jews who have turned away from Him exactly like them. That filled them with fury against Jesus, wanting to hurl Him down the hill headlong. It is the same feeling those people around us experience like our relatives and friends who could not accept we are better than them that they start spreading all kinds of lies and nasty talks against us as they see their self-entitlement slowly eroding. Such is our life as a prophet like Jeremiah, always going against the flow of the people, choosing Christ to be a sign of contradiction and give way to the fulfilment of God’s word among us. Amen.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Sometimes when we look at our religious celebrations we get the impression that we as a people seem to be very ritualistic and even fanatics. But, on deeper examinations, we find in these feasts the expressions of our deep faith nurtured through our history and culture as a nation by God’s invisible hand. A perfect example is today’s Feast of the Sto. Nino celebrated every third Sunday of January that is proper only to our country in recognition of the important role played by the image of the Child Jesus in our Christianization almost 500 years ago. All the readings and prayers of today’s Mass are taken from Christmas Season even if we are already in the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time because the Sto. Nino is an extension of Christmas. Recall also that two weeks ago right after the Epiphany of the Lord we have celebrated the Traslacion in Quiapo featuring the adult Jesus Christ carrying the Cross more known as the Black Nazarene. They are the two most popular Christ devotions in our country that every region and province, town and barrio up to the smallest sitio has its own version of celebrating Traslacion and/or Sto. Nino. In both devotions we find the finest examples of our vibrant faith in Jesus Christ who became like us in everything except sin in order to save us, heal us, and bring us closer with one another as one big family with God as our Father. And in both devotions too, Christ calls us to continue living into our adulthood as God’s little children like Him the Sto. Nino and the Black Nazarene.
After three days of searching, Mary and Joseph found the 12 year-old child Jesus at the Temple and he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man (Lk. 2:51-52).
From His childhood into His adulthood, Jesus remained a child of His heavenly Father and of His parents Mary and Joseph. In this scene on His finding at the temple, we again see the centrality of Christ’s teaching of remaining like a child in order to belong to the kingdom of heaven. And it was not only Him who showed it in this short account by St. Luke but also Mary and Joseph who “both did not understand” what Jesus had told them but still took care of Him very well as “He advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” Here we find the importance of love in remaining children of God as shown by the deep love among the members of the Holy Family that is rooted in the Father’s love. Notice how in this age of so much advancement in technologies that we have become more technical than personal, love has also suffered so greatly. It is not only abused and misused but most of all, misunderstood. Love has become a commodity that people think could be had simply and instantly like anything in a store or a vending machine, forgetting that love is more than a feeling but a decision we must keep. Most of all, love is a choice we make by choosing what is most painful and most difficult because true love is found only on the Cross of Christ.
This is what I am telling you at the beginning, the seemingly funny or weird flow of our celebrations after Christmas: Traslacion and then Sto. Nino that are both anchored on love of God that did not merely happen in Christ’s birth and coming but most of all in His suffering and death on the Cross. Love is often symbolized by the heart but its total meaning can only be found in the great sign of the Cross where we can find the perfect expression of Christian “childlikeness” and Christian maturity. Recall how Jesus on the Cross remained a child of the Father to whom He entrusted His total self while at the same time remained faithful to His mission, resolutely going to Jerusalem to face His fate as a matured adult. That is love when we can be tender and docile to our beloved and at the same time stand our ground to keep our promise, no matter what or how painful it could be. It is a love until the end that is always willing to share and give, never thinking of anything in return.
To be able to love like a child and remain loving as a matured adult like Jesus Christ, we need to always live in the present moment. God revealed Himself to Moses as “I AM WHO AM” while in the gospels particularly in John’s, we find Jesus always declaring the great “I AM” as the Resurrection and life, the way, the truth and the life, as well as the good shepherd and the true vine. God is love because He is always in the here and now, the present, not in the past and not in the future. See how a child always has a time to take time as it comes, one day at a time, so calmly without advance planning and thinking or greedy hoarding of time. Unlike us adults, we need planners and schedules to follow, finding or making time like a sausage to be sliced into portions to be eaten at a desired time. Kids always live in the fullness of time like a cup of milk or water that has everything that for them, any time is a time to sleep, a time to eat, a time to play. And that is why they love all the time! We adults are so pressured and stressed that even in loving others and especially God, we always bargain with time as if it can be done. We love to postpone time because we are not yet ready, even refusing to move on as we dwell with our painful past. Remember the warning of Jesus that nobody knows the time when He shall come that we must always be on guard and ready for that time by always loving God and others all the time. Recall our quotation last week that says, “For people who rush, time is fast; for people who wait, time is slow; but, for people who love, time is not.” A child of God lives in the present because he knows, like Jesus Christ, every moment is the fullness of time we must receive with gratitude because in every present moment we have everything. This is totally different from the young people’s concept of “YOLO” that is actually about living in the future now being advanced without realizing the beautiful present moment.
To be a child of God like the Senor Sto. Nino is to walk in the “great light” of Christ, our “Wonder-counselor, God-hero, Father-forever, and Prince of Peace” (Is.9:1,5) who calls us to love every moment of our lives by living in the present. May Jesus “enlighten the eyes of our hearts that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones” (Eph.1:18).AMEN.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
*Photo is a painting of Sto. Nino devotees by Bulakenyo artist Aris Bagtas. Used with permission.
Today is the last Sunday of the Christmas season that closes with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. But that does not mean we stop celebrating the coming of Jesus Christ. In fact, this feast of His baptism reminds us of the great importance of praying daily to celebrate His coming the whole year through.
The people were filled with expectation… After all the people had been baptized and Jesus had also been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Lk.3:15, 21-22).
One thing we shall notice this year when St. Luke guides us in our gospel every Sunday is how he always presents Jesus Christ at prayer like here at His baptism. Only St. Luke records this detail that Jesus was praying after His baptism when the “heaven was opened.” That is the meaning of Christmas, the opening of heaven for us through Christ’s coming after it was closed when Adam and Eve were banished following their Fall. See how St. Luke situated the Lord’s baptism like his Christmas story to show us that Jesus lived at a specific time and period in history, that He had really come! “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas” (Lk.3:1-2).
The same is very true today in our own time. In this specific period when everything seems to be so dark and in disarray, when we are filled with expectation after a long period when God had seemed forgotten us, suddenly there comes a voice in the wilderness, not in the desert of Jordan but right here inside our hearts of new hope, new beginnings this 2019! Jesus had opened heaven with His coming to us more than 2000 years ago and He continues to call us to come to Him, to be one with Him and be in Him. He is here inside our hearts inviting us to open up with Him, to converse with Him, to speak to Him and to hear Him in the context of prayer. This feast of the Baptism of the Lord reminds us of that invitation from God for us to open up to Him too because He is now more accessible to us than ever in Christ. In becoming human like us in everything except in sin, Jesus brought God nearer to us that we can converse with Him to air our concerns and innermost feelings to Him. Most of all, experience in prayer God’s great love for us when we listen to His voice and heed His calls to discover far more great things in this life than we have ever imagined! Why waste this great grace in Him?
Second reason why we need to handle life with prayer is because it purifies us, cleanses us like the waters of the river. Jesus need not be baptized because He has no sins; but, He chose to be baptized by John to show His solidarity with us sinners. This is the main point of the prophecy by Isaiah in the first reading as well as the letter of St. Paul to Titus: Jesus is the mercy of the Father to us sinners who had come to expiate our sins by taking upon Himself – the sinless one – our sins. It is very sad that fewer people are now praying in the real sense because many of us have lost that sense of sinfulness. Everything has become relative especially morality as if everything is now acceptable and therefore, nothing is sinful. When people refuse to see and accept their sinfulness, when they feel being sinless, then they start acting like God, even claiming to be the Messiah and stop praying altogether. We pray because we are sinful, because we have failed in doing what is right and what is good. We pray to be cleansed of our sinfulness so we can be with Jesus to follow and imitate Him. Real prayer happens when we admit before God our sins to be purified in Him.
Most of all, we have to pray always because life is difficult. After the scene of the baptism of Jesus at Jordan, the next chapter tells us about His temptation by the devil in the wilderness. After the long Christmas vacation, almost everybody had gone back to “reality of life”, of work and studies, of constant struggles and sufferings as well as sacrifices. Jesus came to the world to help us in this life, calling us to come to Him for His yoke is easy and His burden is light. That is the beautiful symbolism of Jesus plunging into Jordan. For the Jewish thought, bodies of water like the sea, the lake and the river are symbols of the nether world, of the powers of darkness and evil. When Jesus plunged into Jordan River and when He walked on water, they both mean the power of Jesus over darkness and sins. That is why we pray to be purified, to be cleansed from our sins. Now, flowing river is symbolic of life in the Old Testament as attested by the Nile in Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates in Babylonia, and the Jordan in Israel. There is always the danger of losing one’s life in the river especially when it is swollen but at the same time, there is also the abundance of life from its waters that nourish plants and teem with marine life. Jesus choosing to be baptized at Jordan River tells us His coming to us in our lives marked with many dangers as well as with opportunities. In fact, right in His baptism at Jordan, Jesus was already giving us a hint at the inauguration of His ministry about His coming Passion, Death and Resurrection symbolized by the river. We all know this too for sure that great opportunities await us this 2019 but we all know we can attain these all if we are willing to take the plunge and meet head on the many challenges that would entail sacrifices and pains on our part. Life is very much like a river and the good news is Jesus is here with us to help us and assure us of being fruitful if we can open to God in prayer.
Every morning when we wake up, the heavens open with the Father telling us that due to the oneness of Christ with us, we too are His beloved children with whom He is well pleased. Noteworthy in this part how St. Luke inserted after Christ’s baptism his version of the genealogy of Jesus, starting it backwards to end up with Adam, “the son of God” (Lk.3:38). Aside from showing us the humanity of Jesus, St. Luke fittingly closed his baptism account of reminding us how in the Lord we have become God’s children too. And that is enough reason for us to always pray not only because God converses with us and we need to be purified of our sins but most of all because we are the children of the Father in Christ Jesus. With that in our minds and in our hearts, 2019 looks so promising indeed!AMEN.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
Metro Manila’s main thoroughfare is called EDSA for Epifanio delos Santos Avenue. Its namesake is a famous scholar from the province of Rizal whose name means “manifestation” or “appearance” from the Greek epiphanes. EDSA today may be considered as the epiphany of everything that is wrong in the country, from government inefficiency to people lacking in discipline and patriotism. Mention the word EDSA and you feel sad and gloomy all of a sudden. On the other hand, the Epiphany we celebrate today brings joy and jubilation because it is the manifestation of the universal kingdom of Jesus Christ to the pagans symbolized by the magi from the East. After the octave of Christmas, it is celebrated within this joyous season to remind us that while deep within each one of us is a natural search or inclination for God, it is actually God who looks for us and eventually finds us. Though it is God who appears to us or “epiphanies” to us, we have to be like the magi who must look and find Him as well as lead others to Him too!
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” (Mt. 2:1-2)
It takes a wise person to search for Jesus – and a wiser person to lead others to Him! How sad that so many people today feel so lost and could not find the right directions to Jesus because as we have reflected last Christmas, there are so many of us who pretend to be the Christ. When somebody comes to us, seeking comfort or counsel or simply company, do they find the newborn King in us? When people come to our homes, do they experience Jesus in our family? When people come to pray and celebrate the sacraments in our parish or chapel, do they find Christ present there among the people and the place itself? How sad that so many churches are desecrated in the name of finding Christ among the people that we have allowed everything and everyone to disregard their sanctity with so much pomp and pageantry that tend to manifest more the pride and ego, or insecurities of those in charge of these sacred places. People continue to search for that Bethlehem where they could find rest and comfort, solace and consolation in the newborn king Jesus Christ. The Epiphany of the Lord reminds us that Christ came to the world to be the fulfillment of everyone and He had become human like us in everything except sin so we can find Him easily. There are many symbolisms that may be gleaned from these wise men representing us today.
They are sometimes called as kings as attested from our first reading, “Rise up in splendor! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you… Nations shall walk by your light; kings by your shining radiance. Caravans of camels shall fill you, dromedaries from Midian and Ephah; all from Sheba shall come bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord” (Is.60:1, 4, 6). From this part of Isaiah’s prophecy we also got that picture of the three wise men travelling as kings from the farthest parts of the world of that time riding on camels to show that even the most powerful men of the world recognize Jesus as the King of Kings. In our responsorial psalm today, we heard ancient places that extend from the extreme west like Tarshish which is in Tartessos, Spain up to the isles off the coast of Africa and the Middle East which is part of Asia to represent rulers of the world who would come to worship Christ. Notice how these places mentioned in Isaiah and Psalms refer to the three continents known during that time, namely, Africa, Asia, and Europe symbolizing the whole world coming to Christ. Some Church Fathers even preached that the three kings symbolize the three stages of our life where Christ leads and guides us: youth, maturity and old age. In whatever state or stage of life we are, true wisdom and peace can only be found in Christ Jesus regardless of our differences.
But above all of these we find that with the wise men coming from the East where the sun rises is that they show us the Epiphany as a new beginning in our lives. The magi represent our inner journey in life to find and follow Jesus Christ. Last year, I have dwelt a lot in that realization that life is more of a directional than a destination. What matters most in life is that we keep on following Jesus Christ our light, our star. That is direction, where He is leading us. It never stops. We just keep on following Him until we reach our final destination in heaven for we are all “coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph. 3:6). This direction we have to follow in life never stops for the discovery of God is not the end but the beginning of a journey. And in this journey in Jesus Christ, we do not simply go as followers but are expected to eventually become believers too. Matthew noted at the end of the gospel today how the magi“departed for their country by another way” (Mt. 2: 12), meaning they have become believers eventually of Christ. Their lives have changed and must have never been the same as before after finding Jesus because they have believed. That is their big advantage and difference with Herod and the experts of Jerusalem who knew everything about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem but refused to believe Him. This is the danger with us today: many Christians today are mere followers but not wise enough to be believers of Christ.
Like those young people aspiring to follow their stars at GMA-7’s talent search program “StarStruck”, we also need to dream, believe,and survive. We all dream to be fulfilled in life. And every lofty dream is always from above, from God as Matthew told us this Christmas the dreams of Joseph and now the dream of the magi. It is said that those who dream with their eyes wide open are the real dreamers, the trailblazers who change the world. That is because they did not only believe in their dreams and with themselves but most of all, they believed in God. On this Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, He is inviting us to dream and believe so that we may live fully in Him. Every day is a new beginning to search and follow and believe Jesus Christ our light. Today we are given with over 350 days to begin anew in Jesus. Be wise. Search Him. Follow Him. Believe Him. Happy Epiphany of the Lord!AMEN.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan
