Wasting our lives: Monday of the 5th week

I have just finished preaching about today’s gospel, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39). Basically, I compared life with money. If you save it, it devaluates. If you invest it, it increases in value. So we need to be very careful and choose what is really worth investing in our lives.

After reading the good news of the gospel, I have the habit of reading the “other news”, the newspaper. In the article “Marry now? It’s quite contrary.”, Tessa Wong ponders on how the median age of marriage has been raised in the past few years. Should someone marry early, like they used to do, or just delay the big date for better seasons?

Her answer is a reaction to a young mother who married early. To this lady, motherhood has changed her life drastically. Now her blog has “tediously boring updates about picking up kids from school and cooking dinners for six.” According to the writer, “that happens when you have kids before you turn 30.”

In other words, according to the wise advice of our author, if you have boring entries in your blog, your life is worthless. But did she ask this “boring” mother, whether it is all worthy? Is an apparently monotonous life the criteria to determine what is world pursuing, what gives true meaning to our lives?

I truly hope that the young journalist’s blog is excillarating and that one day, when she looks back at her life, she truly thinks that having being entertained was worth her life-time. I think that the young mother of boring blog-entries finds more fulfilment in her life, devoted to real loved ones in the apparent monotony of a daily life, than if she spent her days writing juicy blog entries to satisfy someone else’s thirst for entertainment.

Perhaps, deep meaning, daily commitment, fidelity and constancy, do not make impressive blog entries, but do feed human life with true meaning. Perhaps, Jesus is right, if you lose your life and invest it in others, you will find it!

We will resume in July!

After 5 intensive months of daily postings, much uncertainty and a great deal of learning, we will take our home leave. Hopefully, a time of reflection is also good to try to think of ways of improving this weblog.

God bless!

fr david

Doing after listening, 9th Sunday of the year

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’23 Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’” (Mt 7:22-23)

Few texts of the Scripture sound so intimidating. One can spend one’s life doing what Christians are supposed to do, only to find that God does not even know him. How can that happen? Are these the words of a merciful God or the words of a strict slave-driver? Where is God’s mercy in these words? How does one pass from driving out demons in God’s name to “evildoers” that the Lord does not even know? If good activity does not define the good follower, what does?

We can only understand these words if we continue reading the passage of founding our lives on a “rock”. Both sections are the two sides of the same coin. It is easy to accept that listening and not doing is not enough. It is indeed like building a house on sand. We cannot found our lives on mere ideals or a simple doctrine. A view of life, no matter how true, does not become fully true until it takes up flesh and history in our lives.

God did not allow Himself that luxury either. His Word was not only ideas and teachings, it took flesh in our Lord. And His love took flesh in His deeds. In the same vein, we need to walk to talk, lest we leave the talk unfinished.

But alternatively, we may fall into the opposite error: Doing and not listening. We may assist in all the religious activities and engage in the deepest social commitment, but if it does not spring from a attitude of listening, it is not even weak, it is empty. One does not even need faith to do what Christians are supposed to do. But that is not really doing, it would be just imitating or acting.

Listening and not doing is not really listening. Doing and not listening is not really listening. Contemplation without action is mere discipline. Action without contemplation is mere human activity.

St. Paul says something similar, “For we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Rm 3:28). At the end of the day, it is not the works, the activities, no matter how frenetic and stressful they might be, that have enough power to justify our existence. Only God gives true meaning to our activities. Only God’s grace justifies. Only God’s friendship makes us more just.

The verb “to know” closes both the gospel and the first reading. In the first reading idolatrers are said to follow gods they don’t know, “a curse if you (…) follow other gods, whom you have not known.” (Dt 11:28). . In the gospel, God does not know the “activitists” nor the devout prayerful people who spend their lives in the unilateral prayer, “Lord, Lord”.

A friend in need is a friend in deed; but the first task of a friend is to listen. Friendship needs both the listening and the actual commitment. A friend who does not listen, even if he does what he thinks his friend needs, is not a real friend. He is just someone who projects his needs and solutions onto others. Doing favours can also be a way of avoiding taking the person seriously.

To be friends of God, to enjoy His favor, we have to be make ourselves known to Him, by truly listening. That is how grace works. Christian living is not a bunch of activities we have to fulfill. It is a relationship we need to establish. A relationship that becomes flesh in our relationships with others.

The Visitation, a matter of hope

We include this episode of the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth among the mysteries of the Holy Rosary. And indeed there is something mysterious about the way Elizabeth interpreted her baby’s leap in her womb. Most pregnant women experience their babies jumping in their wombs. Not all of them understand why.

This first encounter of Jesus and John while still in the wombs of their mothers symbolizes the continuity between the Old and the New Testaments. The last of the Old Testament and the first of the New recognize each other and rejoice in each other’s presence. The promises and the prophecies of old are already fulfilled. This is the core of the joy of this event. The four protagonists acknowledge it. John the Baptist leaps for joy. Elizabeth understands this joy and salutes Mary, and Mary exalts God and understands that all generations will call her blessed.

Promises are not only matters of the Old Testament. Every hope we harbor in our hearts appears to us in a way like a promise. We hope that this and that will be fulfilled. Our journey through life is marked by the frustrations and the fulfilment of these hopes.

We know that only God will fulfill the right hopes while clinging to our false hopes will lead to disappointments. Purifying our hopes is learning from Elizabeth and Mary, who recognized and rejoiced at the fulfilment of her right hopes.

True eyesight: 8th Thursday of the year

The episode of the blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10:48ff) is an expresssion of Jesus walking the talk of the previous episodes. Jesus had been saying that the least are the greatest in the kingdom. The rich man (Mk 10:17ff) did not have the courage to follow Jesus, but this blind beggar, an insignificant member of the society, followed him immediately.

Interestingly, the gospel records the name of this beggar and that of his father, but says nothing about the rich man. In a way, this beggar is more free than the rich man. He, unlike the young man, did not need to sell anything, nor was he attached to anything. As soon as his eyesight was restored, he was free to follow Jesus.

This blind beggar became the model of a disciple. He was asking for mercy and eyesight, but he was able to see the giver beyond the gift. Once healed, he did not just go on with his then normal life. His eyesight was now for following Jesus.

8th Wednesday of the year

“Jesus summoned them and said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt.” (Mk 10:42)

We are so used to reading this passage that we hardly realise how revolutionary it can be for people who hear it for the first time. While everyone recognizes the value of service, most people naturally look at ruling as a more desirable thing to possess.

Leadership can be both dominion or service. Dominion, in the sense of becoming a lord (dominus) over the other does not make much sense. A fight for more dominion brings only suspicion and brings antagonism. It also brings anxiety since power is a difficult thing to hold on to, when it is desired by so many.

Once we have discovered that there’s only one Lord (dominus), it is an absolute injustice to try to become a lord to the other. Discovering that there is only one Lord equals to discovering that we are all servants, and therefore, equal in dignity. Human rights can only be guaranteed with that assurance in mind. Only where we are all equal in dignity, can we have peace and harmony.

Evidently, only when we are all servants, leadership becomes a kind of service and not a kind of dominion.

The reward of suffering: 8th Tuesday of the year

“Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”(Mk 10:29,30)

Indeed, I do not know of anyone who can believe the issue about the recompense. All who have left everything for the sake of the gospel, can attest that they have received a hundred times over.

Perhaps the curious peculiarity of Mark’s gospel is, not only the detailed mention of houses, brother, sisters, etc, but the interesting addition of persecutions.

The kingdom of God is not something that brings more advantages if it is pursued. We do not pursue the kingdom of God so that we can have a hundredfold reward of earthly securities. If we did that, the kingdom of God would be a means to an end: A trade of momentary insecurity for the guarantee of a hundredfold recompense. Persecutions come with the package.

We do not weigh the advantages with the disadvantages of leaving everything for the kingdom of God. The kingdom is in itself the recompense. The hundredfold is a foretaste of the future reward and the persecutions the toll of the world.

After all, the world is not yet ready to receive the message of the Gospel. The world resists the gospel, and its preachers receive that opposition completing the sufferings of Christ (Paul)–not because those sufferings lack in any thing, but because the world is lacking in readiness. Suffering comes in the package.

Philip Neri

One of the most celebrated members of the Oratory, Cardinal Newman, said of him,

“he contemplated as the idea of his mission, not the propagation of the faith, nor the exposition of doctrine, nor the catechetical schools; whatever was exact and systematic pleased him not; he put from him monastic rule and authoritative speech, as David refused the armor of his king…. He came to the Eternal City and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually grew up around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials from without. He did not so much seek his own as draw them to him. He sat in his small room, and they in their gay, worldly dresses, the rich and the wellborn, as well as the simple and the illiterate, crowded into it. In the mid-heats of summer, in the frosts of winter still was he in that low and narrow cell at San Girolamo, reading the hearts of those who came to him, and curing their souls’ maladies by the very touch of his hand…. And they who came remained gazing and listening till, at length, first one and then another threw off their bravery, and took his poor cassock and girdle instead; or, if they kept it, it was to put haircloth under it, or to take on them a rule of life, while to the world they looked as before.”

The Edible God: The Body and Blood of Christ

Christianity is the most “materialistic” religion. It is not materialistic in the sense of denying the spiritual realm or putting the importance of matter over the matters of the spirit. However, christianity certainly believes that matter is important. Mainly because we are material beings and God knows that and takes that very seriously.

Because God knows we take matter seriously, He becomes involved in human history. The history of the people of Israel is not a mere succession of events. Everything that happened to them was understood as an intervention of God. God could be “seen”, so to speak, in the historical facts. This capacity to “see” God is what we call the sacramental presence: A material presence of the spiritual God; a tangible eruption of God in the human realm.

However, these historical interventions are not enough. They often caused confusion as to what events came directly from men’s wills and which ones were directly willed by God. Human freedom irremedibly contaminates history with sin, blood and betrayal. By the same token, human freedom plagues human history with God’s divine sin of love, beauty and life. However,  God is still the God up above, and men remain the creatures down below.

A bold step came from God when He himself became flesh. Not only matter, but human flesh, so that He could speak to us in a human way, in a way that we can understand. After the Ascension, this fleshy presence is substituted by a real presence in the hearts of the believers. It is the abiding of the Holy Spirit that is received by all who are baptized. But this presence, although marked in a material way through the waters of baptism, remains again a spiritual presence. Something we can neither see nor touch.

But what else can God do? Is there a way to become closer to us besides becoming one of us? Could God invent a more tangible way of being with us? Yes, Christ can still be with us if He becomes food for us.

If Christ is the ultimate sacrament because He alone is God’s human presence, the Eucharist is our ultimate sacrament because it continues this bodily presence among us. When the priest invites us to receive Christ with the words, “the body of Chirst”. His body did not vapourize when He was taken into heaven. His body continues in the Eucharist making the church as the church continues to celebrate the Eucharist.

Christ becomes edible for us making true the statement, “we are what we eat.” Because we become Christ-like, Christ’s body expands into the world through the church, which is the “other body of Christ.” As we make ours the bread of life, Christ makes us His, hence, He and we make the church.

The sacramental material presence of God today is the eucharist and the church. God still allows us, not only to see or touch Him, as He did in the past, but also to eat the body of His Son. God couldn’t possibly become closer or more human than that.

But why all this divine effort? Aquinas wrote on occasion of the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ: “the Son became man so that he could make men gods” [my translation]. That we became divine is the inner secret desire of our hearts. This is why the Serpent tempted Eve with eating from the forbidden fruit.

The inner secret desire to become divine is not an impossible dream but a reality that God makes possible everytime He invites us to his table.

Translation of St. Dominic

Today we celebrate the translation of St. Dominic. It has nothing to do with languages. We celebrate that on May 24, 1233, the relics of St. Dominic.

Before he died, he expressed his wish to be buried “at the feet of the brothers”. According to his wishes, he was buried at the entrance of the church. Those wishes were very pious but not very practical. The tomb was soon covered with rain, snow and mud, so the friars decided to move the remains to the new Church.

This translation gave new momentum to St. Dominc’s process of canonization. The brothers feared that unearthing the body will discourage devotion to St. Dominic because of the presence of the smell and sight of the corrupting body. They were all surprised when they found the body incorrupt and a pleasant aroma invaded the Church and lingered long afterwards.

Learning from children: 7th Saturday of the year

“Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” (Mk 10:15) The original Greek text allows for two interpretations: like a child receives, and the second interpretation, like a child is received.

Both are supported by parallels in the gospel. Mk 9:36 advises us to receive people who are like children because that is receiving Jesus and the Father themselves. Mt 18:3 advises us to “become like children”. So, it seems that children have a double lesson to teach us. One, to learn to receive them; the other, to learn to welcome the Kingdom as they welcome it. Which begs for a second question. How do children welcome the Kingdom?

Adults have learnt to develop a fear of gratuity, a fear of receiving freely and gratis. Once they receive something, they feel they need to pay back and don’t feel good until they do. A kind of shame prevents us from accepting with total simplicity and humility.

Children accept things from parents with a total different attitude. Once I heard an adult ask a child why he couldn’t do things by himself and the child answered with total naturality: “… because I am only a child.”

The reason why we need the kingdom is only because we are children. We cannot deserve it. It is a free gift for which we cannot pay. We certainly must be grateful, but must learn to receive it with total simplicity and humility.

Daily Wisdom

“When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.”

St. Jerome

Purification or punishment? 7th Thursday of the year

“And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ Everyone will be salted with fire.” (Mk 9:47-49)

A serious interpretation of these words does not equal a literal interpretation. The church has never advised self-mutilation as a means to salvation. Obviously feet, hands or eyes do not make us sin. Rather, we practice either  virtue or sin through their use. But  if we are not take these words literally, then how should we interpret them to take them seriously?

Gehenna is probably a compound word derived from Hebrew ge-hinnom, for Valley of Hinnom, the dumping grounds of Jerusalem where a continuous fire consumed everyone’s refuse. Popularly the imagery of fire has been associated with punishment because burning is painful. But that is not what the Biblical language suggests.

Fire, in the Scriptures, is often linked with purfication. Fire burns what is flammable, and often impure, but respects what is inflammable. And so gold is purified through fire because fire will burn the impurities leaving behind only pure gold.

Amputation is, however, an image of punishment in the Old Testamen (Dt 25:12). In other words, what this text seems to imply to someone familiar with the Jewish practices and the customs of Jerusalem is, it is better to be punished in time (even if it is through mutilation) than to be definitively wasted (like Jerusalem’s refuse).

The symbol of salt seems to be linked, according to some scholars, to Lv 2:13 where salt that accompannies sacrifices is described as “salt of the covenant with your God” and similarly in Ex 30:35, salt is associated wit the qualities “pure and holy”. So, how should we read “to be salted with fire”?

It seems to point out to the fact that if the sinner has to be pure and holy (salted), which is a necessity (v. 50), one must either enter the Kingdom of God through timely punishment or through a fiery purification that will eventually purify us, although through a more regretable process.

No middle way, freedom or suspicion: 7th Wednesday of the year

“For whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mk 9:40) That one cannot be for Jesus half-way cuts both ways. It means that those who are not against him are for Him, but it also means that those who are not for Him are against Him: “he who does not gather, scatters.” That thinking alone makes us wonder on which of the two sides are we.

However, in today’s gospel, Jesus was teaching a lesson on humility. The disciples felt that they had the monopoly of the kingdom of God because they had been elected and they were followers of Jesus. Immediately they felt invaded by this “stranger” who claimed a share of their privilege.

Truth is not something we possess and must zealously defend for fear that it will be taken away. Strictly speaking, truth does not need defendants: “Truth,” said John Wycliffe, “in the end always triumphs.” What truth needs is sharers. The more it is shared, the more it shines. There was no reason for the disciples to feel jealousy. There was only the reason to rejoice that their mission was being shared.

“Every truth comes from the Holy Spirit” no matter who claims it, because the Spirit is free, or even better, the Spirit is freedom personified. Posessiveness enslaves in suspicion, conversely, sharing frees to welcome.

Loving God really: 7th Tuesday of the year

Welcoming someone insignificant, as a child maybe, is welcoming Christ and the Father. God, the most supreme Being, compares Himself with the most socially meaningless human being, which is the socially voiceless child. That comparison is only to help us understand our own love for God as He really is, as opposed as loving Him as we think He is.

No matter what our lips say, we can only love God as much as we love the most insignificant of the persons we meet. Nothing discerns our love for God, like the last of our brothers.

Daily wisdom

“I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.”

Dorothy Day

The God in Us Must Be Three

It is just impossible for the human mind to comprehend God. But we do need to know something about God, or else He would remain just an empty word with no meaning. The only way to express this is through a mystery. God remains a mystery because we cannot comprehend Him totally,  like other mysteries of the universe acts, like an attention magnets that keeps producing questions and eliciting presumably better and better answers. Because mysteries are intelligelible, we keep thinking about them. Because mysteries never have fully satisfying explanations we keep pondering on them.

When our faith claims that something is a mystery, it is not for us to suspend our thinking and leave it for theologians or experts in the Catholic doctrine. It is for us to think and, in thinking, loving. None of us, no matter how enlightened a theologian one can be, is going to scream, “Eureka! I solved the puzzle!” Still all of us are called to ask “Who is God really?” because how we live will depend on the answer we give to that fundamental question.

If God is just one more member of a god’s club that tries to enjoy his divine life in the Olympo, chances are, we will understand our life as a survival feat, trying to get the best out of the gods and trying to get away from the wrath and whims.

If God is just one powerful being out there and He permits evil without moving a finger, I, in my freedom, have the possibility to reject an almighty but inconsiderate God. I could choose to live and die away from that God, rather than constantly living in fear of Him, or associated with His merciless power.

If God is compassionate, but He still permits evil in the world, it seems that He is less powerful than evil, and I would also have the possibility of not associating myself with such a weak God.

So, who is God really? Again, we cannot know. No wonder the church took some three centuries to be able to formulate in a more precise language who God needs to be, to be both powerful and compassionate.

In fact, we do have clues that help us understand Him better. And the first clue comes from His Son. Perhaps the question of the nature of God is profound, but it seems that the question of Jesus Christ is more accessible.

So, who is Jesus Christ? If he is one more prophet who died, setting a good example of ultimate fidelity, we could be inspired by His example, but ultimately abandoned to our own strength to be faithful to God. Our salvation would still be an Old Testament salvation.

But if Jesus Christ is God made man, who became a victim of all the evil in the world: betrayed, misunderstood, abandoned, etc, things would be totally different. If His dying on the cross is not just one more error of justice condeming an innocent man, but a true sin against the God hanging on the cross, a cruel way of telling God, “Get out of our lives,” then God is not outside the history of evil. He is compassionate enough to endure our own evil with us.

However if God is not defeated by this sin, but powerful enough to conquer it by rising from the dead, then God is powerful. Powerful enough to conquer evil when the Father raises the Son, and compassionate enough when the Son is killed by sin.

So, we see how God is powerful because God is outside us, overcoming the greatest effect of evil: that of exiling God from our world. At the same time, we see that God is compassionate because compassion is “suffering with” and this is what Jesus Christ did– to suffer with us the effects of our own sins.

We can only reach these inevitable conclusions because we discovered Jesus Christ as God. So God, is not a solitary mind, but a Father and a Son, at the same time, powerful Creator and compassionate companion to humans.

But is this enough? Is compassion effective? If I have cancer and someone in the name of compassion, decides to have cancer like me to “accompany” me, does he rescue me from my cancer? Would not his compassion just create one more victim of the evil of cancer? Is God’s compassion, a feeble attempt or saving power?

Only if the power to raise Jesus from the dead is transfered within us, is our salvation something effective. Only if the power to overcome evil, is not only a kind of energy that circulates between the Father and the Son, but springs up overflowing into our hearts, making us adoptive children in the way the Son is son, then this compassion becomes a real divine power in us and for us. We call this power, the Spirit of God.

In other words, because God is three, our salvation is true. Because God is Father outside us, He can create and rule with power. Because God is Son with us, He can feel what we feel, and suffer what we suffer. Because God is Spirit in us, He can touch and transform our hearts giving them the power to actually conquer the evil that springs from them.

We do not know what God really is. Our feeble minds cannot comprehend him, but this much we need to hold: that for our salvation to be effective, God must be one, must be outside us, besides us and inside us: a Father creating and begetting, a Son redeeming and accompanying, a Spirit inspiring and restoring. Our faith is indeed a faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Daily wisdom

“It happens that one man eats more and yet remains hungry, and another man eats less, and is satisfied. The greater reward belongs to the one who ate more and is still hungry than to him who ate less and is satisfied”

St. Anthony of the Desert

Serving while speaking: 6th Saturday of the year

Speaking is such an easy thing to do that we often ignored how important it is, not only for the listener but also, and perhaps mainly for the speaker. While  we might think that we control our speech, in a subtle way, at times, our speech controls us.

” Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you realize that we will be judged more strictly, for we all fall short in many respects”. (Jm 3:1,2)

With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility. That is true. But with the mission of speaking, every greater responsibility is attached to it. Not only teachers may mislead others, they are also bound to make mistakes because “the tongue” is nearly impossible to control.

With the ministry of teaching, both humility and courage are required. Humility to accept a service that entails constant failing and at the same time, the courage to face the challenge of trying to control “the tongue.”

Our world is learning to use more civilized means of interaction. Where in the yester years we had wars, today diplomacy substitutes, and only when the latter fails, do the weapons take over.

With greater power comes a greater responsibility. With greater power to speech today comes the greater responsibility of leading the world to more peaceful waters.

Our lives deserve a good investment: 6th Friday of the year

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life?” (Mk (8:35)

 There is an interesting sentence in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, “man cannot find himself fully except in the sincere gift of himself” [my own translation] (GS 24). This to you and me simply means that we are called to jump a leap of faith towards giving ourselves to others. It is a leap against fear. In a world where others can take us for granted, giving ourselves is running the risk of losing our lives. Therefore it appears that the reasonable strategy is the defensive position of preserving our lives by keeping it to ourselves.

But what if our world were full of trustworthy people? What if giving ourselves would not entail any danger? In itself, it would be a joyous experience. We love to be loved and we love to love. It is only when the environment becomes suspicious that the giving becomes caucious.

Jesus says that trying to save our lives only leads to wasting them, but “letting go” of our lives (the verb apolyo means literally to release) is the way to be alive. This paradox is not a logical contradiction but a historical one. It is only because in this history, we are dangerous to each other that we have learnt to become afraid of each other. Being stingy in love is not the way to live. It is simply a wrong strategy to try in vain to preserve ourselves.

Just like money, if we only conserve it, it devaluates but if we invest it, it increases.