Growing up as children of God

“What is sex?” the five year old asked her Father. Her father was hoping he heard wrongly. “What did you ask?” “Daddy, what is sex?” He sighed, sat beside her, pondered for a while, and measuring his words, tried to explain the birds and the bees to his puzzled daughter. When he considered his first lesson on the topic finished, he sighed again in relief and asked her, “did you understand?… but, why did you ask me that question?” The daughter was still trying to digest the confusing situation but explained to her father, “Mommy said dinner will be served in a couple of secs.”

A father may find it difficult to explain the mysteries of human sexuality to a 5 year old. It is not about terms or reasoning. Children simply lack the maturity and experiences that enables them to understand that. Now, imagine you are not someone trying to explain something so personal to someone who is 30 years younger, imagine you are God and you want to explain yourself to human beings. That is a challenge.

Honestly, if you were God, would you attempt to explain yourself to humans? It is difficult for them to understand each other. The curse of Bable has long lasting effects. God, however, tried. He became man, spoke a human language, and did not choose the intellectual elite of Jerusalem to communicate but the fishermen and peasants of the countryside.

However, understanding is not only a matter of speaking the same language. Children simply don’t have what it takes to understand adults’ matters. In the same way, it is impossible for humans to understand God. Jesus explains ”I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” (Jn 16:12). The Spirit of God is what we need to understand God’s matters.

God’s incarnation (Christmas) and even Christ’s resurrection will remain inaccessible mysteries for us without the Pentecost. We would only be mere spectators of God’s power and wonders unless that power works within us. Our God is not only the God above of the Old Testament, not only the God with us of Christmas, but foremost the God within us of Pentecost.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is expressed in our hearts with a new kind of life that comes from God. Understanding from the Spirit is different from human understanding. One is about human matters, the other about understanding God.  Filial piety helps to build a relationship with parents; the gift of piety helps us to live as children of God. Life is not just a human life, but maturing into a divine dimension of  the human life. It is about growing up to partake in the business of God.

The power of the God of the Old Testament is not anymore something to witness from a distance, but something to experience within. It is not an overpowering strength, but certainly, it enables those who experience it to “achieve whatever they presume to do.” (Gn 11:6). Speaking and understanding God’s matters means we have truly grown up.

The skills of engagement: Communication Sunday

This Sunday’s theme is “New technologies, new relationships and Promoting a culture of respect, dialogue and friendship.” Our religious authorities have requested that we do not use the pulpit “to engage in socio-political activities to canvass for or against the matter.” Do new technologies account as virtual pulpits? Technically no, I hope, and then that restriction would not apply to this post. But even if it does, I will not engage in a socio-political activity that canvass for or against the matter of AWARE. Still, can we promote a “culture of dialogue and friendship” by avoiding issues or by talking about them? Is this fear of debating well-founded or typical panic of control-freak institutions?

However, there are well-founded reasons for fear. The AWARE saga has escalated beyond prognostics. Emotions are high on both sides of the conflict and authorities fear that this may affect national cohesion. The danger is real. In fact, everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it.

However, what causes division is not the debate but the way it is debated. The scientific community does not seem to be threatened by an irreversible schism for or against the possibility of finding water in Mars. And it is not impossible to imagine two scientists of opposite opinions mutually explaining their reasons while sipping coffee amicably. What matters is not what we debate but how we debate about it.

Perhaps the first reason we should learn from this turmoil is that rules are not enough. The rules of engagement between the secular sphere and religion were respected. People have their right to express their reasonable opinions and act on them. Some suspect a religious conspiracy behind the “turn over”, others saw a “crusade for righteousness”. But the facts remain that this was just a group of people with two irreconcilable opinions about sexual education and both sides are equally entitled to defend and act according to what they believe is best. In other words, the rules were not broken. The question is, do rules alone suffice?

If you want to learn to play tennis, you can learn the rules in few minutes, but it will take you years to master the skills of playing tennis well. Rules do not make tennis players better players. Skills do. Integrating dialogue between faiths and secular societies needs more than just rules of engagement, it needs skills. So what are the skills of engagement? Many: sympathy, dialogue, truth seeking, etc. Today, we are specially challenged about one of them: dialogue.

Dialogue is a nice word. It sounds as enticing as the friendship that dialogue fosters. But we might have the wrong idea of dialogue or worse, we take for granted that everyone knows how to engage in it.

One issue the  AWARE saga has put on our laps is whether we can continue to ignore the issue of truth. If there is no truth that we are all suppose to pursue, dialogue simply means, “I want to know your stand, so that I do not step on it.” Dialogue without truth is merely information about other’s opinions to live and let live. In other words, indifference. Of course, indifference is not a nice word, so we call it tolerance and peace. And we esteem it a necessary condition for civilized life in a democratic society.

Dialogue with truth, on the other hand, tries to understand the other side. True dialogue is a skill because it needs to listen carefully to what the other has to say. If there is truth, I, the other party, or both can be wrong. I need to pay close attention to what I hold true, to what others hold true and to any other possibility of being true. If I cannot rephrase what the other side has to say, I am not listening, and if I am not listening, true dialogue, that is, dialogue about truth is futile.

This kind of dialogue is a skill because it entails hard training, continuous effort, lots of practice, acceptance of failures and short comings and indeed a special talent.

True dialogue requires that I consider that I could be wrong and how the other might be right. After all, if others hold a different view, there must be something that makes them believe what they believe. We do not only need to know the difference of opinions, we need to understand why the other thinks differently.

The truth about the shape of the earth is not simply about “flat is wrong” and “round is true”. There are serious reasons why people have believed for thousands of years that the earth was flat. The truth is not only that the earth is round. The truth is that the roundness of earth is so vast that it looks flat. Flat-earth believers were able to embrace the truth not because they were slapped with the facts, but because they were able to reconcile “their belief” with the “truth”. This truth did not satisfy one side of the debate only; it satisfied both.

Dialogue with truth moves people in the same direction; without truth makes people draw “untouchable boundaries” between each other. Tolerance without truth promotes a kind of indifference where the opponent is just an obstacle to avoid, rather than a companion to move along with. They also do speak about “moving on” but it does not refer to any particular direction, it simply means to stop the confrontation.

But truth alone is not enough. Truth without hope creates desperate fighters who figure that without their “truth”, the world will surely collapse. Dialogue, in this case, is fact a confrontation. It seeks to overpower the opponent. It often has recourse to caricaturing the adversary, distorting the weakness and then attacking the distortion they themselves have created in the enemy. It denies the dignity that true dialogue respects. It draws the same difference between street fights and noble sports where opponents salute each other before and after the fight. It is easy to understand why. Truth without hope despairs, and when we despair we explore any means to prevail.

This is where our skills for dialogue are most lacking. I would say that we suffer more from a crisis of hope than from a crisis of truth. Even if Jesus is not acknowledged as a religious authority, He mastered the skill of dialogue based on hope. The God of Jesus Christ is not here to fight against man. And Jesus fought not. He could have tried to avoid evil by running after sinners and screaming to them his infinite truth. Instead, He respected. In him, God respects the freedom of the victimizer, even at the expenses of the victim. And this is for us hard to swallow.

This is what was lacking in the AWARE case. When the new guard realized that they could take over leadership of the group, they saw their chance to stop people from teaching the wrong sexual values. They believed they had the truth and they took advantage of the opportunity to spare children from being exposed  to ”wrong sexual teachings.” The question is, was it done appropriately? It was legal, licit and certainly respected the “rules of engagement” between the secular and the religious. But, was it done with skills of engagement in consistency with the gospel they believed in? Did they exercise the evangelical cunning of serpents for the sake of the kingdom or did they fail to present the values of the gospel with the evangelical simplicity of doves?

Jesus did not impose His way. He proposed it. God does not force His way into man’s lives. He invites Himself to be invited. Only a fool or a hopeful person can afford to to that. Only a fool can do nothing in the face of evil. Only a hopeful person will know that forcing people to do well is not a durable solution. But the truth is that only a genuine change of heart in freedom and truth can solve the evil of the world. It is not about shouting louder than abortionist, or even about forcing paedophiles into chastity. We certainly must do what we can to prevent crime and evil. But, the ultimate goal is to move people into being willing to do good.

When the first Christians wanted to make sense of the death of Jesus on the cross, indeed about preferring to be a victim rather than a victimizer, they found the verses of Isaiah meaningful: “he does not break the crushed nor quench the wavering flame.” (Is 42:3; Mt 12:19). The gentleness of God’s ways is plain consistency with His love. God does not impose Himself nor imposes his ways. He introduces Himself as the one who yearns to be introduced into man’s lives by their own free choice.

Often we are tempted to stop evil no matter what it takes. Jesus’ approach is surprisingly different. In the parable of the Kernel and the wheat (Mt 13:18ff), Jesus suggests that in a world where good and evil are intertwined what matter most is not to be involved in uprooting the good, even at the cost of letting evil grow. The truth that sets ahead trying to eradicate evil at any cost for the sake of efficiency does not fulfill God’s gentle ways. Imposed truth is not the way of truth, because truth cannot possibly be imposed. It needs to be proposed. This is why the church as well, “proposes, she imposes nothing. She respects individual and cultures, and she honors the sanctuary of conscience.” (Redemptoris missio, 39).

Jesus could have avoided all the crimes of His time, He could have stopped the adulterous woman before she committed adultery and could have forbidden the prostitutes that ate with Him to commit any sin. The father of the Prodigal Son could have run after his son and nagged him to conversion, but he chose to wait for his son’s conversion in freedom. God’s truth must be proposed in God’s gentle, respectful ways.

Good and evil will continue to coexist. However, evil fights; good, instead, prefers to be crucified before forcing His way. This  can only be done in folly or in hope. The folly of the cross can only be reasonable in the hope of the resurrection. It is not our fight but God’s. God has the last word and we must hope in it. Truth without hope fights because it seeks to win no matter how. Truth with hope would rather wait, even if ignored or despised. The goal of the fight is to overpower. The goal of the dialogue is to draw people.

Training in the simplicity of doves is a key skill of engagement. As Blessed Mother Teresa put it, “God does not ask us to be effective, He asks us to be faithful.” What counts most is not how much evil we have stopped or how much amount of goodness we have poured out; but how faithful we have been to God’s ways, how consistently we show love lovingly. “The media is the message” even for God.

Truth is associated with totalitarian and intolerant attitudes and that is why it has practically disappeared from the social sphere. In fact, it might well be the very reason why religions are under suspicion in the first place. However totalitarian regimes were not dangerous because they believed in truth. Some were indeed right. They became dangerous when they started to believe that truth could be imposed.

If we should move on from the conflicts between the religious and secular realm, we need to remember this crucial lessons: dialogue is here to stay. It is up to us to engage each other in a dialogue with truth and hope or to just move away from any risk of tensions pretending that absence of confrontation is real peace. As we celebrate the day of communication, we should promote a culture of respect. Let’s do it by learning to dialogue, rather than assuming that everyone has already mastered the skill.

Being part of the mystery: 3rd Sunday of Easter

 A few years back…  I was attending a birthday party for an 8-year old. We had music, presents, family, friends and even a piñata which the birthday boy eventually struck after threatening to strike everyone else before that. And then came the final act. One of the family friends was a good magician and started to show off some of his tricks.

By far, the most popular of his tricks was extracting coins seemingly out of the children’s ears. We were all thrilled and entertained. But not equally. The way we were thrilled was very different.

As the magician started to withdraw money from the children’s heads as if it were a  mini-bank,  the crowd was instantly divided. On one side, there were those like me, on the other, those like the children.

I, as with the rest of the adult crowd, was intrigued. How did he do it? I know there was a trick somewhere, but where? We were paying close attention and waiting for a false move that would give the trick away. We were thinking, reflecting, analysing, wondering, and also keeping our distance.

The children, however, could not keep their distance. The magician became a living child’s magnet. In seconds, all of them were jumping around him and screaming “Do it to me. Do  it to me!” For them, that was not a mystery to be scrutinized, they just wanted to be part of it.

Magic disturbs the scientifically trained mind. It attempts to show that the immutable laws of physics do not apply. If money can grow out of children’s heads, I am sure there will be something we can do about it. Adults need to discover the trick to pacify their minds, to dismiss the event and go back to their daily routine.

Children, on the other hand, do not know yet that there are immutable laws, they are just drawn by curiosity to unusual things. For them, a TV is as magic as a disappearing act. We have learned to dismiss the TV magic because, even if we don’t understand the trick of how things that are happening in Iraq can also be shown in our living rooms,  we know that some technician knows how it happens and can give us a reasonable explanation. We know it is not magic, simply complicated technology.

The day the children used their thinking to dismiss the mystery, they would have become adults. Perhaps, that is what Jesus meant when He said, that unless we become like children, we will not inherit the kingdom.

When Jesus appears to His disciples after death, they are looking for the trick. Is He a spirit? Thomas would even ask for proof, “It is all a trick of your imagination, unless I see and touch by myself.” Jesus was very patient with them. He knew they were looking for the trick and tried to invite them to become like children again. This time, there was no trick. It is true, “It is indeed I”, He then invited them to be part of the mystery: “Stay in the city, until you are clothed from power from on high.” 

“He then, open their minds to understand the Scriptures…”, the gospel tells us. In the first reading Peter declares he is a witness to that understanding, that what the Scriptures (and Prophets) have been foretold is that God’s Christ would suffer. Lastly the second reading also speaks about knowing God: “Anyone who says, ‘I know Him’, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar.”

We constantly suffer the adult temptation of understanding God to pacify our minds so that we can move on with the “real” issues of our busy existence. There is understanding to dissect and dismiss, and there is understanding  to embrace and change. The children’s desire was to be part of the magic; the adult’s desire was to dismiss the magic. We need to learn to combine the maturity of the adult and the genuineness of the child. We need to learn to scream to God: “Do it to me.”

It is useless to try to understand God from a distance. The Jews had been reading the Scriptures for ages. We can go over the whole Old Testament word by word and we will never guess that the Messiah “had to suffer” and whoever it was all there, in front of their eyes. To understand the prophecies, the church will have to re-read the Old Testament, but only after God has made them experience the mystery… only when the church was part of God’s mystery… only then could God play the magic on them.

When we are part of the mystery, our understanding opens a new world in front of us. When our understanding is suspicious, we will be closed to any world that is not in our daily routine. To say that we know God but we are not part of Him makes us liars because we are only “trick-seekers”. The mystery of the resurrection, the mystery of why the “chosen one” had to suffer, the mystery of how God can love us so much as to become a victim of his creature can only be understood from inside -  when God performed the “mystery on us”.

May we learn to ask to God to keep doing His mystery on us.

Palm Sunday

Just once, Jesus allowed the people to take over. For a time He had been preaching and healing. He had to face misunderstanding and lack of faith while trying to assert His identity as the Son of God. Then, He allowed them to do what they wanted. Before He was active, then He was passive. No more corrections, no more plans, just submitting Himself to the errors of their decisions.

Their first error was to acclaim Him as a political liberator; the second, to condemn Him as a dangerous criminal. The liturgy today sandwiches us between these two mistaken decisions; between the gospel of the entry in Jerusalem and the death on the cross; between the mistaken “Hosanna to the king!” and the “Crucify him!”

Today, we look at those facts with the privileged eye of an omniscient outsider who knows the outcome of those events. But for the people there at that time, understanding who Jesus really was,  must have been difficult. However, practically all our mistakes can be reduced to acclaiming the wrong thing as our salvation and rejecting what saves us as dangerous. Proclaiming riches, success, manipulation, control and dominion as our tools for liberation is making the same mistake the crowds acclaiming Jesus made. Rejecting our brothers and sisters as an inconvenient obstacle would be rejecting our true means of knowing and loving the real God. We are no better than the inconsistent and changeable crowds of Jerusalem.

The ascent to Jerusalem was the moment of truth. The moment when Jesus let people be people and accepted the Father as Father. Because people wanted to be people, He let them condemn Him. Because the Father wanted His will to be done, Jesus struggled and yielded to His Father’s will. Palm Sunday is a meditation on the nothingness of the human spirit and the entity of God’s Spirit. Still, we wave our palms today, not like the ignorant crowd who didn’t know what kind of king they chose, but as believers who know that our king is the only one who can really and deeply liberate us.

Does God alone suffice?

It is easy to praise God, when we are blessed, but how about when we are in the middle of misfortune?
One of the most degrading misfortunes is loneliness. Jean Vanier tells the story of Claudia. In 1975, he welcomed Claudia into their l’Arche community New Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

“She was 7 and had spent practically her whole life in a dismal, overcrowded asylum. Claudia was blind, fearful or relationships, filled wit inner pain and anguish. Technically speaking she was autistic. Her anguish seemed to increase terribly when she arrived in the community, probably because in leaving the asylum, she lost her reference points. Everything and everyone frightened her. She screamed day and night and smeared excrement on the walls.

Claudia lived a horrible form of madness which should not be idealized or seen as a gateway to another world. Madness has a meaning. It is an escape from anguish. But there is an order in the disorder that can permit healing, if only it can be found.  20 years later Claudia was quite well. She still liked being alone but she was clearly not a lonely person. She would often sing to herself and there was a constant smile on her face. Jean Vanier asked her a question one day: “Claudia, why are you so happy?” Her answer was a smile and direct: ‘Dios’ (God).”

Loneliness can indeed become hell on earth. In fact, solitary confinement is the punishment most dreaded by prisoners. Loneliness has other side-effects like depression, self-destructing desires, lack of will to live, etc.

Today’s gospel tells us of the loneliness of Jesus. The gospel of Mark does not mention the details other gospels offered. But the few details are poignant. Jesus was in the company of angels and wild beasts. Wild beasts are not dangerous as we may suppose. Wild animals are understood as non-domestic animals– animals that don’t belong to the world of men. Jesus was accompanied by the whole creation except human beings. Jesus was having a taste of Adam’s solitude: “it is not good for man to be alone.” In a way, Jesus was fasting, not only from food, but from human company altogether.

Only after passing this test of solitude with God did Jesus come back to the human world to preach the Good News. His tested human experience that God alone suffices, gave him the authority and the content of the “GoodNews.”

We should ask ourselves if our joy comes from the assurance of being with God, or from being with people who like us? Does our happiness come from the little comforts of our life or from God alone? There is only one way to know. Testing it. Give up company, give up the little pleasures and see where your happiness goes?

Peter associated conveniently these waters of destruction with the waters of the baptism of new life: a new creation. Both the first and second readings are about new beginnings, just like the gospel is about the beginning of the public life of Jesus. In the Ark, Noah and his family begin a new creation. In the loneliness of the flood, what appears to be the end becomes the beginning, thanks to the seeds of life they spared (a pair of each species of animals). When loneliness carries the seeds of new life, it overcomes destruction with fertility.

The church invites us to fast and abstain for 40 days to remember the forty days of Jesus, and the 40 years of Israel in the desert. To accompany Jesus in this trial of being alone with the Father, we need to accept the invitation of the Church to give up our little dependencies to reach our inner loneliness with God. We need to search the seeds of life from which a new revival of faith will unveil the ever new aspect of Easter.

Teaching with authority: 4th Sunday of the year

I had a cold these past days. Nothing extraordinary. But it is a great way to check people’s wisdom. Everyone claims to have the perfect remedy, but of course no one has any authority in medicine. Since it is physically and economically  impossible to follow every one’s advice, I followed mine: very hot milk with honey and brandy. My mother used to give us that whenever my brother or I had a cold. That was the best part of being sick. We have a saying that goes, “a cold with medicine lasts seven days; a cold without medicines, one week.” The difference between my mother’s recipe and doctor’s medicines is that while both might be equally useless, my mother’s remedy tastes great.

But this is not about excuses to drink brandy; It’s about whom shall we listen to when no one has real authority over the best remedy for colds. It seems that when it comes to colds, not even doctors have real authority. The virus just seems to mutate too fast for vaccines to keep up.

We not only look for authorities when we have colds. We are constantly scanning what we hear and see if we can trust that information; if there is enough authority to guarantee that what was said is true.

The problem gets even more serious when it comes to guaranteeing God’s authority. Who can speak with God’s authority? The prophet? All prophets? Which prophets?

The book of Deuteronomy remarks that the problem is complicated. Not only are there true and false prophets; even a true prophet can prophesy a false prophecy. The bottom line is then that the true prophecy is not true because a true prophet pronounces it but because it is fulfilled. The authority of the prophecy does not come from the prophet but from God.

Jesus appeared in the gospel as this prophet that surprised everyone with His new teaching and authority. This authority was perceived during Jesus’ preaching and confirmed because “even the evil spirits obey Him.” But what was the authority they saw in Jesus?

Judging by the success and fame that Jesus had as a result of His preaching, we could conclude that Jesus possessed the authority we all like to listen to. Theoretical information, like the one the scribes may have provided, is good, but not good enough. What we all want to see is that the information is backed up by practical authority. That this teaching really works.

No one can teach about the Father like Jesus, because no one can experience the love of the Father as Jesus did. His teaching was not based in theories or conjectures, but on plain experience.

St. Paul was very careful in his letters to distinguish between the teaching that comes from Christ and those of his personal teachings. The church speaks with two authorities: her own, about the matters that fall under her domain; and Christ’s, about the matters that fall under the teaching of Christ. She is servant of the former and master of the latter.

Paul has received the teaching that marriage is good (1 Tim 4:3) but his own reflection leads him to advise the better option of celibacy for the kingdom based on the assumption that he believes to have also the authority of “the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 7:40)

As we journey through life, we might still continue to filter information about the remedies of colds and other matters, scrutinizing the vast amount of information we constantly receive and wondering if it is trust-worthy. Christ, and He alone, can teach with the ultimate authority. The authority of Christ cannot be reproduced. We, however can learn a trick or two in imitating Him by teaching with an authority backed up by our real experience of God.

The depth of the matter: 2nd Sunday

My grandmother never underwent plastic surgery. Not because she did not need it, but because I am sure she would have considered it a kind of cheating. A piece of silicone is not a piece of a person. It is like wearing 3-inch stilettos and say that one is taller. Today however, many people have come to accept that if they could improve how their bodies look like, they would. Why not? After all, it is a natural desire to want to look good.

In today’s first reading, Samuel had a problem of discernment. He heard a call in his sleep and, with good common sense, assumed it was a human call. Eli, with more experience in dealing with God, helped him in discerning that that was not a human call, but God’s. What is important for us here is to know that God knows us by our name and calls us personally.

The gospel illustrates how Jesus called his disciples. Jesus called like God. He borrowed some disciples from John the Baptist, showing a continuity with the Old Testament. John the Baptist gave way to the New Testament by giving up his disciples, who were unsure of what they were getting into. The invitation of Jesus should help them clarify their vocation: “Come and see”.

Most of us are more likely to find ourselves in the first situation than listening to God’s voice in dreams. Discerning human voices, psychological tendencies and personal inclinations from God’s voice is still difficult; but the invitation of Jesus still holds useful. Experiencing first hand how it feels like to follow Jesus is the best way to discern in order to give an affirmative answer.

But accepting the invitation is only the beginning, what happens next is  change. Peter received a new name with his new vocation. The practical question would then be, ”How great was the impact of Jesus’ call?” When Jesus calls, what does he want us to change? Is God’s call a new activity among the many we have? Is it a change of personality? Would His call imply a change of lifestyle as well? In other words, how deep is His call?

It is at this point when the second reading clarifies the nature of the call and at the same time receives clarification within the context of the call.

“We are not our owners” Paul tells the Corinthians (1 Cor 13:19). That is difficult to accept today. If we don’t own ourselves, who does? In a world where autonomy has become an unquestionable cultural dogma, the mere thought that we don’t own our bodies in property sounds simply unacceptable. “I can do with my life or my body what I want” has today become the first basic and most unalienable right. Is St. Paul’s discrepancy not only counter-cultural but also unreasonable?

Things don’t get serious until they get material. Let me explain it. In our dualistic world, we tend to take material things as superficial while we regard spiritual matters as crucial and essential. The spiritual realm becomes as it were the depth of the material surface. But is this true?

When the early church tried to define and concretise their mutual love, they did it in a material way: “they have all their possessions in common”. What is love? A feeling? A common delight in the company of the other? Or a willing and concrete commitment? The best way to find out is to translate the answer into, “how material is your love?” For the early church, loving had to be so deep that it needed to be material. They shared, not only their faith, ideals and sentiments but their material possessions as well.

How deep is God’s love? It is as deep as its material implications. As deep as becoming flesh and matter for us. God knows that the matter is the depth of the spirit. How true is it that we are the body of Christ and that God is still with us? As true as it is materially a fact. As true as the Eucharist is the material presence of God among us. If the Eucharist is a symbol, then God is still too spiritual for us. If the Eucharist is materially the body of Christ, then God’s presence is true enough. The resurrection itself affects not only our souls but our bodies as well. “Blessed the poor in spirit” does not mean that you can be materially rich while spiritually poor, but that you are so poor spiritually that it becomes material poverty (as a Spanish Bible translation suggests: “blessed are those who choose to be poor”).

We can now understand that God’s call, to be authentic, needs not only  a change in our activities, our ideals and emotions, but in every single cell of our mortal bodies. If we belong to God, then so do our bodies as well. This is not a case of God’s abduction. It is an issue of true transformation and conversion. God does not stop at the spiritual level, it continues until it reaches the whole person, that is, even the material person.

We want our bodies to be better or to look better? For looking better, we still have plastic surgery. But true conversion is not plastic at all. It is deep and true. It involves also our bodies, which truly become “temples of the Holy Spirit”

The mystery of the Baptism of the Innocent

The season of Christmas ends only today, even if  most people whose minds are already set on the Lunar New Year, think that Christmas is long over. However, there are good reasons to include today’s feast, the Baptism of the grown up Lord, within the festive, joyful and child-like season of Christmas.

Each gospel narrates the scene with different colors but all coincide in the scandalous historical nucleus of the event: the one who is sinless wanted to be baptised with a baptism that signified repentance. The question is why? Either Jesus thought Himself a sinner in need of baptism or He was making a statement. The gospel of Mark offered the driest and probably the most original version, while the other evangelists tried to deal with the scandal of the Lord being baptised with a clarifying dialogue between the baptised and the baptiser. The only clue that Marks gave us was the opened heaven, the Spirit and a voice from heaven that certainly pointed more towards a critical revelation than towards a genuinely needed baptism for sins.

So the question is what kind of revelation was that? In the words of Saint Paul, He became “sin” and the symbolic beginning of this ministry started when he joined the sinners in their attempt to purify themselves.

Without the baptism of the Lord, Christmas remains  purely a God’s walk in the park of humans. God would be a kind tourist who came to picnic with His creatures. With the baptism of the Lord, Jesus did not come to see or check, but to immerse Himself in the destiny of sinners. The whole mystery or our redemption can be paraphrased in this way: the sinless can undergo the destiny of sinners justly so that sinners may undergo the destiny of the innocent justly as well.

It may look strange that we celebrate the baptism of the Lord only one week after the Epiphany. Is this a case of Jesus jumping straight into adulthood? A way the liturgy parallels the silence of the Scriptures over the growing-up years of Jesus?

The revelation that the baby Jesus has to offer unfolds into the Epiphany as a revelation to all nations and into the Baptism of the Lord as the One who comes to deal with the purification from our sins.

This is the perfect setting of the stage to observe Jesus during ordinary time, doing what He ordinarily does best, rescue people from their miseries.

Happy Ordinary time to everyone!

Epiphany for dialogue

This was rescued from the previous deleted blog:

In ancient times, when I still combed my hair, we did not need mobile phones to meet people. We only needed to agree on two coordinates: time and space. You asked where and when, and you made sure you were there in time. That’s all.

 

Today’s gospel tells us of a particular encounter. Before GPS technology, people relied on the stars to know the times and the places. Some people were good at it, others not so. Today’s gospel tells us of some astrologers that were good at it. They saw a new star and they knew that a new king had been born. How to find him? They knew the time, but not the exact place. So they needed help.

 

They started to enquire about the place and they were helped by the most unsuspecting character: Herod the Great. Herod felt most uncomfortable with this new king,  but Herod was probably the only person who could summon the most knowledgeable scribes to find out the exact location. Still he did not know about the time when this was supposed to happen. So, with twisted intentions calls the astrologers secretly to his palace. There the fruitful exchange of information takes place. Herod tells them the place, the astrologers tell him the time. And voilá! It works, once you have the two coordinates, finding and meeting the baby Jesus is possible.

 

The prophecies were not enough. Science was not enough. Only the fruitful dialogue, albeit corrupted by the evil intentions of Herod, and vulnerable by the naiveté of the astrologers managed to be a fruitful dialogue that made due homage possible. The Second Vatican council has acknowledged that the world needs the Church but that the Church also is helped by the world. Thus,  only a fruitful dialogue can help both.

 

This dialogue started when the Baby Jesus was born and provoked one of the main endeavors of the first evangelization: the epiphany. Epiphany means manifestation. It is acknowledging that the good news of salvation is not for a few selected but destined to reach the ends of the world.

 

The gifts the wise men offered to the baby have been interpreted as symbols of Christ, gold for a king, frankincense for a priest, and myrrh for one who is dead. However the first reading hints to us that what Matthew is trying to tell us is that the prophecies have been fulfilled. That God has made his people the center of the world. Or, in more realistic terms, that the whole world is called to turn its gaze to this baby from the People of God to receive the fullness of the promises of old.

 

St. Maximus, the Confessor, took the star the astrologers discovered as a sign from God, another expression of the word of God. The whole creation speaks of the seasons and times to those who are attentive to read them. The astrologers did not know of the promises of Israel. However, they had the insight to read the signs of creation. They had the constancy to pursue their goal, the humility to ask for what they did not know and the devotion to “fall on their knees to pay homage”.

 

To discover the saving action and direction of our lives today we also need to work together, to learn to ask, to learn to respond. Anyone, even Herod, may have something good to tell us about God’s plan. Anyone, even we, have something good to tell others about God’s salvation plan.

New Year! Mary, the Mother of God

Just like a new person, the new year is full of great expectations. The liturgical year opens the civil calendar with the solemnity of Mary, the mother of God.

The primitive church had an interesting way of saying things. To claim that Jesus is one and God in an univocal way, they said that Mary is, not only the mother of Jesus, the man, but also, of Jesus, the God. In this way, what appeared to be a rather abstract concept becomes a “familiar” one.

At the council of Ephesus, the bishops commented that it was not the business of bishops to do philosophy or to debate with philosophers, but to speak like “fishermen”. Certainly, fishermen would speak of mother and children rather than of substance and divinity. In other words, to say that Mary is the mother of God, is not claiming that Mary is the mother of God the Father, but simply to say that Jesus is one person, one agent, who is both 100% human and 100% God.

Even in this statement, the true mission of Mary is clearly subordinated to her Son. To claim that she is the Mother of God is basically to reveal something about her Son. The Church can hardly say something about her that is not a profession of  faith in her Son.

Today we seldom have debates about the nature of Christ, or about any other philosophical argument for that matter. However, there is an underlying similar dilemma in our culture. Not about Christ, but about us, the human person. Is the human person a thinking autonomous entity, travelling in a material capsule we call body? Are our bodies mere external tools that our mind (soul, spirit) uses? When we say “I” do we include the body as part of the “I”?

The answer to that question is far from being abstract, because it permeates the ethical decisions of our age. If our bodies are extrinsic material characteristics, we should be able to deal with them as we please. In that case, selling human organs would not be very much different from selling any other personal possession. Terminating the life of a body in pain would be an act of mercy since what really counts is the liberation of that soul from than burdensome body. And sexual use of the body would not be a serious ethical concern when “no body is hurt”.

Although our age is not particularly keen in debating about abstract issues, we do engage in those debates unknowingly every time we express our opinion on the above issues. Only one of the two versions can be true. Either the body is an intrinsic dimension of the person or it is not. The big question is, which one is true?

A extremely efficient and speedily way to answer that question would be to ask a rape victim if what they did to her was something done merely to her body, or a extremely severe offence to her as a person. Any state that recognizes that rape should be punished more severely for that physical aggression, acknowledges that intimate dimensions of the body are intrinsically linked with the spiritual intimacy of the person. In other words, that our mind cannot inhabit a different body, because we are our bodies as much as we are our minds. This means, that a living human body is a living human person or nothing at all and that non-thinking or non-autonomous human beings are human persons from the moment their bodies become human bodies until their bodies cease to exist.

Dualism has haunted the history of human thinking for centuries. Today, we are not an exception. The church had found ways to express the unity of Christ with a single word, theotokos (the Mother of God). What are we going to use today to fight our dualism? Shall we start a campaign that says “we are bodies”, “what you do you to your body, you do to yourself”? We need creative thinking to continue the legacy the church has to be the  ”light to Gentiles” (Lk 2:32), even if the Gentiles feel more “enlightened”.

Mary could be the mother of God because she was her body. She did not loan her body to God for nine months. She gave herself to Him in the exclusive manner a wife gives herself unreservedly to her husband. This is why her virginity had to be “postpartum”, after birth as well. She could only do this with a total possession of herself through her gift of the immaculate conception, which, in turn, could preserve her body from the corruption that ensues material bodies not perfectly aligned with the spiritual soul. Virginity, motherhood of God, assumption and immaculate conception are all tied together.

This year, I received a picture of me sent by my mother along with a prayer she was given just after giving birth to her son on the day of the Immaculate conception. It helped me to look back and wonder what I have done to myself, and how much I still need to do before my life is over. New year, new beginnings. May the mother of God, the perfect integrity of body and mind, help us to see who we really are and show us how to live up to it.

Learning to “play God”, the good way: 33th Sunday of the year

How would you feel if someone gave you $200, 000 ? Would you start wondering how many things you could do with it? Today’s gospel tells how someone received that much money, not only did nothing about it, but was afraid and just hid the money in the ground. Strange? Why on earth would someone do that?

Before reading today’s parable, we need to get rid of some mistaken ideas we might have. Talents, in English, are qualities or capabilities a person may have. If we read today’s gospel with that idea in mind, the interpretation would go like this. Every one examines himself to see which talents he or she has, and puts them to work to avoid being the “wicked servant” who buried his talent.

If that were the case, this homily would finish here. But that is not what the word “talent” actually means. A “talent” is a coin that was 15 years worth of wages. We can do now a little math and conclude that the first servant was given 75 years of wages, the second 30 years, and the third 15.

We know nothing of this master, but certainly he was not a king, as in the parallel parable of Luke (19:12-17). This was not a king testing the fidelity of his servants. This was about a master leaving behind everything he had and entrusting it to his servants in hope that they would deal with it as he would.

Perhaps now we can understand better the harsh words the master had for the “wicked” servant, who seemingly in good reason, stores away the money for fear of losing it. His sin was not laziness, nor even paralyzing fear, but the fact that he missed the point. He received the money, not as a gift but as a debt. In his mind, the money was not “his business” but his master’s problem and he did not want it to become his problem.

The two worthy servants treated the master’s property as a gift, not as absolute property. But they dealt with the master’s property as if it were their own, or even better, because they knew their master, they could handle his property as if the master was still around. Intimate knowledge of their master’s ways helped them become better administrators. However, intimate knowledge of the master’s ways also paralyzed the “wicked” servant, precisely because he refused to assume ownership of the master’s gift.

The first reading does not describe the “perfect wife” as a servant to the husband, as we may expect of an ancient text from a chauvinistic society. The text tells us how the perfect wife is a good administrator of the household, the gift entrusted to her care according to her culture. In this sense, the same would apply for the “perfect husband” or the “perfect” mother or father – those who assume responsibility for the gift they have received.

The readings are not about “personal talents or abilities” but about responsibility for the gifts we received in life. In this sense, a millionaire is not more fortunate than a middle class citizen; just like the servant who received 5 talents was not more fortunate than then one who received two. The more you receive, the more responsibility is demanded of you. How much the servants possess is not an issue, just as the “beauty” in the wife is a fleeting matter.

Today, it would seem that God had travelled to a distant land and refused to interfere so as to allow us to deal responsibly with God’s matters. We could reject this responsibility, we could abuse it, or we could embrace it as if it were our own business.

We are given spouses, children, friends, opportunities, creation, material possessions, etc. What are we doing with them? To be responsible means to “respond” to the owner when he comes back. Can we say, of this “person” that God entrusted to me, ” I have touched his or her life in a way that made a difference”? Or are we shying away, saying that God’s business is God’s and our business is ours?

Up in our ivory tower of self-sufficiency, we might be tempted to say “Why should I bother?”. It is just too easy to become adverted versions of the “wicked” servant who refused to bother about his master’s business. Do we understand God’s business as our business?

Like the master of the parable, God gave us all He had. That is not a ingenious story. It is the most serious history. He entrusted his only begotten Son to his servants and from a distant region, He allowed them to do with Him as they pleased.

In every Eucharist, we have the chance to receive the Gift anew and learn from the Son how to make God’s work, our work. In a way, we are called to “play God” not “in the place of God” as, but “as God would play”.

One commandment, many implications: 30th Sunday

Do we really love God? How do we know? Just because we say we do? Just because we feel we do? Just because we think we do?

What is the difference between really loving God and loving our idea of God, which will always be imperfect? We can be praying for hours to the convenient fabrication of our imagination and making us feel like we have indeed loved God deeply.

That seldom happens with people of flesh and blood. When we love Peter and want Peter to be what Peter is probably not, reality bites back. Peter snaps at our presumptions or we simply get disappointed when we find out that Peter does not act as our image of Peter is supposed to act. We perceive with our senses the reality of Peter. The real Peter would always contrast with the Peter of our fantasy.

Relationships are largely about learning to make our images of people realistic. Sometimes it will happen through pleasant surprises. At times, through gentle reminders and other times, through bitter disappointments.

But God, how we do contrast our idea of God with the real God?

Our neighbour is the answer. We only love God as much as we love our neighbour. In fact, it may happen that we only really love God as much as we love our worst enemy.

Loving our neighbor is thus not a second commandment after the first, but the same commandment, even more, the realistic side of the first commandment. After all, can I say I love God if I do not love the people He loves?

Love cannot be forced. If we try to force ourselves to love we may end up acting as if we loved them, but that would not be a very honest performance. We would become sheer hypocrites.

Love is more than a duty. It is a commandment, because commandments are conditions for life. “Choose life, and you shall live.” That is a conditional sentence. If you love life, you will live.

Love is the condition for a truly human life. Without receiving it, we don’t have dignity; without giving it, we don’t have purpose.

Mission Sunday

In my days in Guam, a little spot in the middle of the Pacific, I used to sit down at one of the most beautiful of its sites by the sea: the Magella Bay. That was the bay where Magellan landed in his attempt to be the first to go around the world.

His fortune in arriving at this micro stop in the middle of the immensity of the Pacific ocean was like striking the lottery. By then Magellan and his crew were running out of fresh water and food and had not seen land until that day, they would most certainly have starved in their own ships.

What pushed them to jump into the unknown? With no maps and extremely primitive navigation systems, they had no idea of where they were going. Their adventures have more merit than the astronauts of our time who know exactly where they are going and what they are going to find.

Along with this adventurers came other kinds of heroes I have always admired. Missionaries. They too knew little of the place and the challenges ahead. They did not go to the extreme lands looking to be acclaimed adventurers or conquistadors, they did it simply because they thought the gospel should be spread to the ends of the world. As soon as they found out that the known world had new frontiers, they would go to make sure the gospel was preached there too.

Perhaps it is time for me to wake up. There is no unmapped territory now. Even if you want to climb Mount Everest, you have to line up and wait for your turn since the place seems to be packed with people eager to climb the highest peak in the world. All seems to have been discovered. From the comfort of our living room we can even google the remotest part of the world with a click of a mouse. There is no place in our world for explorers and old-fashion missionaries.

Or is it? Even as we watch the global village shrinking under the forces of technological communication, the new frontiers of humanity are not to be crossed geographically but technologically.

As the access to information becomes more and more readily available, there is perhaps no chance of presenting the good news as new news. It is perhaps time to learn to let go the new and focus on the good. Presenting the good news in a good way might well be the challenge of the new missionaries.

The agents of today’s missionary zeal, might not be today, the friars of the Old World who had the luxury of freedom from family duties and social concerns. Instead, the Christians of today are in touch with the world because they are in the world as the laity. They won’t have to sail to distant lands to meet the destinations of God’s good news. They meet their audience every day, in their office, in the work place, in their social relationships, in the families, in the new virtual communities, etc.

Missionary activity is suffering a revolution. The message is still the age old message — that God has fulfilled his promises in Jesus Christ. The way to communicate the message, how to reach out to the audience and who delivers the message, needs to be radically reviewed.

How to be a missionary today needs as much imagination as it needed courage in the age of the discoveries. Are we up to the challenge?

Taking for granted the gift: 28th Sunday of the year

I met someone who was given a computer, but he was not very keen to learn. He put it on his table and forgot about it. Pretty soon, he was oblivious to the gift and did not even notice its existence.

Today’s gospel makes us realize about the most regrettable experience of our life. An experience that might make us live in darkness and gnash our teeth in regret. The experience of having the gift and living as if we did not have it.

Of course, we could reject the gift. We could tell God we don’t care if He wants to share His joy and His life with us. We are always busy with what we think are important — our job, relationships, home, etc. However, Vatican II reminds us that people who don’t believe in God, those who reject God’s invitation are not entirely at fault. The church is also responsible when she preaches an incorrect image of God. An atheist does not really reject God, only a fake idea of Him.

We need to be careful with the invitation. Wedding invitations are serious things. People prepare them carefully, trying to find the best design to convey their invitation in a way that fits the dignity of the occasion. In the same way, the church should learn how to package the invitation that she herself has received, constantly creating new designs that would best fit her invitation to God’s celebration.

The other way to mistreat the gift is by taking it for granted, either by becoming oblivious to it or by accepting the gift, not as a gift but as a right.

My friend’s computer became buried under a layer of dust. Our gifts from the Holy Spirit are the invitation of God to partake from His life and joy. Not to be aware of them and enjoy them, is behaving like the man who wore street clothes. The invitation did not change his ways. He was in the wedding hall as if he were in the street. He, willingly or unwillingly, was despising the gift. Not using God’s gifts, not allowing them to change us and others, not clothing ourselves with God’s garment, brings us to darkness and the sad regret that we had the most precious gift but never enjoyed it.

Finally, we could accept the gift as if we had a right to it. We could live our lives as if God had the duty to give us His blessings or His gifts. Then we complain and claim our rights. However, in doing so, we forget that we were those at the crossroads, not meant to receive the invitation but blessed with the overwhelming generosity of God.

The one who knows he has no rights before God but only gifts, enjoys life as if he were in a wedding hall. Every minute is precious. Everything has some beauty, some goodness. He is not oblivious to the tragedies and evil that are constantly threatening our peace, but he is not concerned with it. He only considers what it is, the gift that exists in each person, in each moment.

The invitation to God’s wedding could either entail our acknowledging it, receiving it and changing our attire and style of life accordingly, to join in God’s happiness, or we could be rejecting it, ignoring it, or being aware of it as a right and not as a gift. There are many ways of being in the wedding hall without living as if we were in God’s wedding hall. Let us be mindful. Our happiness and joy are at stake.

God’s Meritocracy: 25th Sunday

Today’s gospel (Mt 20:1016) makes us feel that the landowner was unfair, we are the right audience because this gospel is meant to provoke.

We may feel like the first workers. When they saw the landowner being generous, they assumed that he would be generous with them as well. Instead, he was only just. We find hard to accept uneven generosity. Yet, we cannot deny that Jesus’ question hits the nail on the head: “am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?” (Mt 20:16)

Was the landowner unfair? How do we measure fairness? How do we allocate reward? According to effort? To results? To needs? We have to make up our minds before we can answer consistently the question of fairness.

The gospel does not mention of any difference between the late and early workers. One denarii was the fair wage of a day’s work and most likely the money needed to feed a family daily. Did the late workers not have families too? Did these families not deserve to eat?

The late workers were not lazy. They were just unfortunate. They have been willing to work from early morning, but no one hired them. They simply did not have the opportunities the earlier workers had. Does that make them less unworthy?

The landowner was a merciful man. He knew the plight of the late workers and he wanted to do something about it. He rewarded them according to their need; not according to their opportunity. He acted as a father to them. Parents do not reward according to equality, but according to need. Babies need a kind of attention grown-ups do not, sick children need more care than healthy ones.

But this fatherly landowner was more than just merciful. He was also concerned about the early workers. He wanted to give them what they needed. If his purpose was simply to be merciful, he would have paid late comers first. The early workers would have never known of the unusual payment to the late comers and they would have left happily with their denarius. They did not need more money, but the landowner thought they needed to be provoked. So, he expressly wanted the first comers to witness generosity, not from the receivers end, but from the other side of the fence.

What they received was a provoking lesson on true justice. A lesson that could not leave them indifferent. The right reaction is one of happiness. If the early worker had a son who had happened to be the late worker, he would have been happy for this kind of treatment. Love links us in a way that we learn to appreciate the true good of the other person. Only love for the unfortunate late comers would make them happy that their families would too have enough to eat for that day. Not rejoicing in the good of the other, places us on the side of the oppressors.

We may think that making a world where justice is based on need more than achievements or opportunities is an utopia. But it is not. It is very real. Families commonly apply that principle. Thousands of religious communities live by that principle. They all give back to the community according to their capacity and receive from the community according to their needs. You don’t need to be an angel to live by it. It is happening to normal, weak, limited, sinful people.

Nonetheless, we should be realistic about it. Only when there is a link between all the members of the community is this possible. This is why this is happening at the level of small communities but not at the national level with the communist ideology having tried something similar.

Only love rejoices in the good of the other. Indifference resents generosity. We certainly need a fairer world. We certainly could invent more efficient ways of satisfying the needy. But just as much as more equal distribution is needed, we  also need a change of mentality and a change of heart. And this is possible only at the level of small communities.

Ecologist often say, “Think globally, act locally.” That also works for justice. Think about the neediest in the world; behave accordingly with your neighbour.

Attracted to the Cross to bear our crosses: The exaltation of the Cross

There is a danger of echoing today the message of Good Friday. Good Friday is about redemption. Today we celebrate the consequences of this redemption.

Today we exalt the Cross, or better, the Crucified even if the cross was a cause of shame. The exaltation of the Cross can only happen after we have looked at the Cross with faith, namely, after we have understood that Jesus had redeemed us through the cross.

So this is our question today: What do we see when we look at the Cross? Jesus gives us a pointer when he refers to His exaltation as something similar to the exaltation of the Serpent in the dessert (Jn 3:13 and Nm 21:4).

The episode of the poisonous Serpent (Nm21:4ff) is in itself a paradox. The image of the very reptile that killed the Israelites, could save them. The Israelites asked Moses to take away the serpents. We are very familiar with that kind of prayer. What better solution than that which gets rid of our problems? But God had different plans. God did not remove the serpents but made them face and look at a serpent. Gazing at the very reptile that could kill them, cured them.

This paradox is how our immune system works, or at least how we make it work when we use vaccines. A vaccine stimulates the immune system by introducing a debilitated enemy into the system, so that the system learns to deal with this weak version and hopefully be ready to fight the real stronger version. Paradoxical but effective. Invite the enemy in, to win over your enemy.

Looking and believing are close ideas in the gospel of John. Believing is seeing deeper. Looking at the Cross, the believer sees beyond what it appears to be, to see what it really is. It appears to be failure, misunderstanding, torture, punishment, defeat. The believer sees something deeper.

As vaccines attract the antibodies of the immune system, Jesus attracted upon himself all the evil that dominates humans. St. Paul tells the Philippians that God had emptied Himself to the point of being ready to die. God became vulnerable. So the vulnerable Christ ended up on the cross. Precisely, vulnerability makes the vaccine effective. Vaccines should be vulnerable enough to be killed, strong enough to alarm the immune system. Christ became sin to vaccinate us from sin.

When we know that this attraction is just luring sin into its defeat, we like it, we admire it and we are attracted to it. The attraction of sin becomes attractive and this is way we exalt the Cross. Not only are we able to understand God’s plan, but also to celebrate it and even be happy for the Cross: Oh happy fault!

A volunteer who ministers to prisoners in death row once asked me why the presence of God is especially powerful in those infamous moments? “It is beautiful”, she said. I don’t know. God does like to be more present where His presence is most needed: among the poor, the outcast, the discriminated, etc. Of course that presence cannot justify poverty, oppression, discrimination, or even death penalty. But that paradoxical beauty this volunteer sees in the gallows, has something to do with the beauty of the Cross whose attraction we celebrate today.

At times we do not understand God’s plan. Like the Israelites, we feel like telling God how to liberate us. We give him instructions and when His plans do not match ours, we murmur and complain. Perhaps God’s plan is more intricate. It is difficult to understand how a fiery serpent could save you from serpents, how a condemned man could save humanity or how deadly bacteria could become medicinal vaccines, etc. All these paradoxes are more effective and more beautiful.

Next time we feel like telling God what to do, we should glance at the cross. St. Thomas Aquinas used to say that he learned more from looking at the crucifix than reading books, and he did read quite a few! Glancing at the cross we should be tempted to see something beautiful that illumines the paradoxes of our lives. The one exalted on the Cross becomes a lighthouse to guide us in the trials of life.

So… when we look at the Crucified, what do we see?

22th Sunday of the year: Betraying God’s trust

Are we happy? That’s the question. But that is not an easy question. What does it mean to be happy? Does it mean the same for all?

We have been made to believe in the past years that we will only be happy if we exercise our freedom by choosing among possibilities. In the past, arranged marriages were possible and some managed to be happy, even if they did not choose their spouse. Today that is unthinkable. I am not advocating a return to arranged marriages. I am merely pointing out that our culture has changed the way we think about freedom and happiness.

Today, not only are arranged marriages seldom possible, even chosen spouses have difficulty in living together. In some countries, divorce rates are getting close to 50 %. But this is not about family life. Today, even recently ordained priests leave the priesthood within their 5 first years.

Staying committed is hard. To decide to commit seems to be a luxury today. People decide to marry much later and less often. The much-talked-about vocation crisis has here its roots. Fear of commitment is not about marriage but is about our culture and the idea of happiness and freedom. Shall I stay if I am not happy?

The idea that I can walk out and my next choice will bring me happiness, is today’s way of understanding happiness and freedom. Happiness is measured in terms of freedom and comfort. If I like it here and I choose to be here, then I am happy.

Once upon a time there was a prophet that felt like quitting. Jeremiah had an intimate relationship with the Lord. A kind of intimacy that could only be compared with courtship and marriage. However, he found himself a laughing stock in return for his faithfulness. He promised himself not to think about God anymore. He tried quitting only to find himself unable to do so. In his own words, “there seemed to be a fire burning” in his heart that he could not resist. He had to speak in God’s name. It was a case of an irresistible force meeting a seemingly unmovable object. He tried quitting, but he could not.

Peter, in today’s gospel, did not plan to quit, but inadvertently misused his recently acquired power. We remember how Peter had received the “keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus had entrusted Peter with the power to act in His name: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Mt 16:19).

After such trust, Jesus was ready to leave not without first telling his disciples that he was leaving and how he was leaving. Peter, who just came to know that the power of the underworld, would not prevail under his direction, and could not accept such an end. But failing to accept such a plan, he became a source of temptation for Jesus, an invitation for Jesus to quit. In the words of Jesus, he was acting like Satan, tempting Jesus to quit.

However, Jesus rejected this temptation but not without caring for Peter in a surprising manner. Jesus did not send him away or punished him for his first attempt to use his power to deal with matters in his own view. Jesus put Peter in his right place: behind. Not away, so that he was diminished. Not in front, that he would keep leading with such mistaken ideas, but behind as a follower, and not as a leader.

In our daily lives, we all have our fair share of betrayals. At times we are the victims. In more disappointing instances, we are the victimizers. We are tempted to quit being faithful. To quit friendships, to quit marriages, to quit families, to quit commitments, to quit standing by God. We are not alone. Prophets, like Jeremiah, were tempted. Peter betrayed his mission of leading the church as Jesus would, by attempting to lead it according to “flesh and blood”. Jesus was also tempted by Satan and Peter to quit.

Jeremiah was saved by a mysterious zeal he could not even comprehend. Jesus was saved because of His unique intimacy with the Father. Peter was saved by Jesus’ rebuking correction. What would save us? When the moment of temptation comes, would we realize that running away is never the way? Would we find a zeal that overpowers our thirst to quit? Would our intimacy with God be enough.

St. Paul gave us a sound advice: if you want to know the will of God, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Rm 12:2). Do not be faithful to the ways of the world but dictate when you are happy or free. Life is not about having the capacity to run away from our situations but the capacity to choose a meaningful life even when it is not an easy or comfortable life. A life full of meaning like Jeremiah’s, Peter’s and Jesus’.

Invaluable things have no price! 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Some time ago, before we, the Dominicans friars, discovered that we could cater food for the friary, each one of us used to take turns to cook for the whole community until the days when we started to show the first signs of malnutrition. Monday was my turn. I have to admit that I had never enjoyed punishing the brothers with my culinary experiments. Neither did they it.

One Monday, I was on my way to the market, when I saw a Pizza place. Suddenly my mind saw the light. Two pizzas could solve my second course problem in a matter of minutes. I entered the place full of confidence, happy to have found a fast and cheap way to solve my Monday crisis. I took a look at my favourite pizzas and saw the price. All my hopes were shattered. Two pizzas would have cost more than twice the usual budget for Monday dinner. I turned back and headed for FairPrice Supermarket to look for anything edible that could be cooked in ten minutes.

Now, why on earth were those pizzas so expensive? I admit it. I don’t like to pay.

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 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.