Knowing Jesus, Following Jesus (12th Sunday C)

A sheep was leisurely grazing on some patches of green grass in a village when suddenly a dog eyed it and chased it ferociously. The sheep fearfully scurried for dear life while the dog pursued it resolutely barking and catching the attention of other dogs in the village. In no time, a pack of dogs joined the chase. As the chase went on, the dogs which did not really see what they were hounding gave it up easily. Eventually, what persevered tirelessly was the dog that had seen in its own eyes what it was after.

This is true to Christian discipleship. It requires personal encounter with Jesus Christ. To go after the Lord and persevere in following him presupposes a personal knowledge of him. No one follows a stranger much less an unseen ghost or an abstract idea. But one may even lay down one’s life for a friend.

Today’s gospel reading (Lk 9: 18-24), reveals the essential link between knowing Jesus and following him. Let this be our matter for reflection.

Knowing Jesus. “But who do you say that I am” (v 20)? Jesus’ follow-up question shows that he is not contented with the disciples’ knowledge of him that is based on mere opinion of others. The disciples have got to know him quite personally. This is very important.

There are two levels of knowing. One is conceptual, the other is experiential. Conceptual knowing is knowledge by the head. This is the process of understanding data and information about someone or something from different sources like books, lectures, researches, etc. This enhances understanding and satisfies curiosity. But the object of knowledge is nothing more than cold, abstract concepts that our minds formulate. It’s a real pity if we Christians relate to Jesus in this level. That would mean relating to a concept of Jesus. My sad suspicion is that a great number of us do religiously follow Jesus as an undoubtedly beautiful concept!

The experiential knowledge, on the other hand, involves knowing with the heart. This is knowledge beyond concepts. This is getting to know not just some information and data about someone or something; this is encountering the person himself or the thing itself. To know a person, for instance, in this level is to have a personal relationship with him, to experience the person himself, to be moved by his values, to be awed by his vision, to be contaminated by his joy, to be brought to tears by his deepest sorrow, etc. It is this experiential knowledge that has the power to draw one to a real friendship with another. It is this knowledge that elicits loyalty, love, sacrifice.

Do I know Jesus with this kind of knowledge? Do I know him with the heart? Can I give a confident answer to his question, “And YOU... who do YOU say I am?”

Following Jesus. Knowing Jesus with the heart is of utmost importance for discipleship. Again, no one follows a stranger and no one sheds his own blood for a cold concept. To follow Jesus requires that one identifies with his values, share with his vision, and embrace whatever that matters most to him.

Anyone who knows Jesus with the heart cannot but see the cross and its essential place in the life and mission of Jesus. The cross matters most to Jesus. To follow him, then, means to embrace his cross too! His declaration of this fact is as clear as daylight: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (v. 23).

To take up the cross “daily” does not mean suffering a one-time crucifixion like Jesus did. Instead this refers to the challenge of a day-to-day denial of oneself and of consistent obedience to the Father’s will. To take up the cross daily means to make the cross and everything it represents a way of life. A Lifestyle.

A cross-less Christianity is, therefore, an abysmal emptiness! It’s nothing but vanity!

Christianity without the cross breeds these familiar kinds of discipleship: “the feel-good discipleship,” cheap discipleship, curiosity discipleship, prosperity discipleship, discipleship of privileges and benefits, discipleship of convenience, discipleship of power, and the like. All of these prosper because of a lack of a real and personal knowledge of Jesus. The cross is consciously or unconsciously given up because it is difficult, it is inconvenient and not seen as essential.

Can we then liken this cross-less band of followers of Jesus to the pack of dogs barking and chasing a sheep which they themselves did not see?

The Grace of Forgiveness (11th Sunday Ordinary C)

No doubt one of the most profound, liberating, and even life-changing human experiences is the joy of being forgiven. We just have to recall our own experiences of being forgiven in order to realize that the greater the offense we acknowledge to have done, the deeper is our sense of gratitude for being freed from its burden through forgiveness.

Today’s readings invite us to reflect even more deeply on our experience of the grace of forgiveness. We shall focus on three things: The recognition of sin as essential to the experience of forgiveness shown in the story of King David; the heart-warming tears of repentance illustrated by the sinful woman in the Gospel reading; and gratitude as our loving response to being forgiven as taught by the parable of the two debtors.

Recognition of Sin. The first reading (2 Sm 12:7-10, 13) recalls how the Prophet Nathan reminded David of God’s goodness to him—anointing him as king, rescuing him from the hand of Saul, giving him the house of Israel and Judah, and many other countless blessings. At the same time, Nathan reminded David that despite God’s graciousness, David had spurned the Lord and done evil in God’s sight by plotting the death of Uriah and ultimately taking the latter’s wife, Bathsheba, as his own.

The fact that David needed a prophet to be told of his sins shows that He had been spiritually blind. While, as a king, he had been enjoying the favor and blessings of God, he was practically unaware of the evil of his maneuverings in the sight of this gracious God.  Sin blinds. Our habit of sins renders us incapable of seeing the evil in what we do. The worst situation is precisely what’s going on now in our contemporary milieu—the loss of the sense of sin. People just want to do whatever they please without regard to moral principles.  We hear this being said too often: “How can this be wrong when it feels soooo right?”

It is only when David recognized his sins that he was assured of God’s forgiveness. “I have sinned against the Lord” (v. 13). To this confession, Nathan responded with assurance of God’s mercy. The grace of forgiveness abounds.  It is given, however, only to those who have recognized their sinfulness.  In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the penitent names and confesses his offenses. It surely is embarrassing to oneself but it is at the same time empowering. By naming and confessing, the penitent get holds of his sins and not the other way around. Recognizing our sinfulness, naming and confessing our sins liberate us from our spiritual blindness and enables us to see the graciousness of God and hence experience the grace of forgiveness.

The Tears of Repentance. The gospel reading (Lk 7:36—8:3) presents an illuminating contrast between the gate-crasher sinful woman and the Pharisee, Jesus’ host for the dinner.  The woman came in weeping and started to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears! She wiped them with her hair, kissed them and anointed them with expensive perfumed oil; while the Pharisee had not offered this customary hospitality to his guest. The lavishness of the woman’s expression of sorrow and devotion to Jesus is reflective of both the depth of her repentance for her great sins and her faith in God’s mercy; while the coldness with which the Pharisee received the Lord manifests the Pharisee’s self-righteous stance—a stance that rendered him incapable of seeing his own need for repentance and forgiveness, much like the blindness of David to his sins.  This same stance gives him the self-endowed right to condemn and distance himself from sinners.

Like the sinful woman in the gospel, we are invited by the Lord to a genuine repentance of our sins.  If we should weep, so be it. The tears of repentance reveal both the sincerity of our acceptance of our sinfulness and the depth of our yearning to experience the mercy of God. At the same time, the Lord warns us against self-righteousness because it is the surest way to forfeit by default God’s abundant offer of the grace of forgiveness.

Gratitude as our Loving Response.  The parable of the two debtors--one with a large debt, the other with smaller debt—who experienced being forgiven as both of them are unable to pay, illustrates the point that the degree of gratitude and love evoked by the experience of forgiveness is directly proportionate to the amount of the debt forgiven.  Between the two debtors, the one whose debt is much larger expresses greater gratitude to the creditor who forgives. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.

We should not fear approaching the Lord for mercy as we realize how great a sinner we are.  The greater the burden of sins lifted, the greater is our gratitude, our joy, our yearning to love God in return.  No wonder most of the saints consider themselves as great sinners and their lives have shown the greatness of their love for God.

What is our invitation? We are invited to overcome our self-righteousness which hinders us from experiencing the abundance of God’s mercy and to acknowledge our sinfulness with tears of repentance. This is not, however, to make of us a community of guilt-ridden Christians but a community who can love lavishly because of the freedom experienced through the grace of forgiveness.

Life is a Gift (10th Sunday Ordinary C)

Years ago as a seminarian, I used to visit a sickly widow who was taken care of by her only son.  I would read her the Sunday Gospel, share with her my reflections, listen to hers too, and give her the communion for the sick. One Sunday morning, after a short Christmas break, I went to visit her. To my bewilderment, she wept vigorously on her chair as she saw me came.  Her neighbor, who was taking care of her that day, informed me that her only son died in an accident during the Christmas season. I was shocked and dumbfounded. How could this thing happen to her? I could only sit in silence beside the grieving widow wishing I had the power to bring back her son.  My heart was moved with pity but I felt my own helplessness too. I just kept on visiting her every Sunday until she overcame her grief and wept no more.

Today’s gospel reading (Lk 7:11-17) tells of a similar situation in the city of Nain where the Lord encountered a widow whose son died.  The Lord was moved with pity.  He revived the dead to life and gave him back to his mother. The first reading too (1 Kgs 17:17-24) is a parallel story: the Prophet Elijah called out to God in order to bring back the life of the son of the widow in whose house the Prophet was staying. And God did bring back the life of the child.

Allow me to dwell on the gospel reading (Lk 7:11-17) and bring out three things for our reflection:

“Do not weep.”  The Lord, in his compassion, could not stand the grief of the mother who was a widow.  As a widow, she was already poor for there were no job opportunities for women then.  Losing the only son, would make her the poorest of the poor having no social security system to lean on.  The widow could only weep because of her pitiful plight, losing her husband and now her only son. With the death of her son, she just actually lost everything.  The Lord sees the grief of the poor widow and with compassion told her, “Do not weep” (v. 13).

It is helpful to note that in this incident the initiative came from the Lord. The widow was not begging or asking him to bring back her son. She was just lost in her grief weeping. Unlike other but similar incidents, this one did not mention about the faith of the widow as requirement to God’s grace. This allows us to see the initiative and gratuitousness of God’s merciful and compassionate acts.  Somehow, this assures us that God sees, even before we formulate and articulate our prayers, the intense yearning of our hearts, the longing to be freed from our deepest grief and sufferings.  This is the prayer of the heart.  God sees through our hearts and acts out of his compassion.  Haven’t we experienced God’s gracious interventions in our lives even if we feel undeserving of his grace?

“I tell you, arise!” Jesus commanded the dead man to rise! The young man sat up and began to speak. Jesus gave him to his mother (vv. 14-15). What Jesus did was resuscitation of the earthly life and not yet the resurrection of the dead.  But this event certainly foreshadowed the definitive victory of life over death in Jesus’ resurrection through which He won for us the gift of eternal life.

Life is a precious gift.  God is its author. Only God gives life.  We ought to be grateful for our lives. In the spirit of gratitude, we ought to protect and celebrate life. We need to be wary of the misleading secular philosophies that views life as liability rather than as gift and resource. We need to overcome the “culture of death” that is conspiring against life, espousing measures that both oppress and suppress life in favor of economic gains and maintenance of the concentration of wealth among the powerful and the rich. Life is of the highest value; all social systems ought to be at the service of life, not the other way around.

“And they glorified God.” When life was brought back, both in the incidents involving the prophet Elijah and Jesus Christ, God’s power was acknowledged. In the first reading, the mother, upon seeing that her son was brought back to life through the prayers of Elijah, acknowledged that indeed Elijah was a man of God and was speaking of God’s word (1 Kgs 17: 24). In the gospel reading, all who witnessed the revival of the dead man’s life, glorified God exclaiming that “God has visited his people” (Lk 7:16).

God’s power is felt wherever and whenever death is overcome and life triumphs. He is the sole author of life and no one else.  We all died because of sin. But God in his compassion and great mercy gratuitously endows us with the gift of life and, in Jesus’ resurrection, has overcome death and has assured us of eternal life.  Indeed, we are a people who have seen the visitation of God; we have experienced God’s compassion and love.  Let us then be the people who glorify God—the God who hears with compassion the prayer of our hearts and tells us to stop weeping because death is no more; what He gives us is life as a precious gift.

The Good Shepherd’s Way (4th Sun Easter C)

In the tiny book, “The Way of the Shepherd,” Kevin Leman and William Pentak suggest seven ancient secrets to managing productive people. Couched in the imagery of shepherding, they propose the first secret: Know the condition of your flock. This means following the status of your people and the work; getting to know your flock, one sheep at a time; engaging your people on a regular basis; keeping your eyes and ears open, questioning and following through (Leman, 2004:15-28).

While Leman and Pentak use the biblical image of a shepherd to bring out certain effective leadership and management skills, I doubt if they have given effort to interpret it according to the paradigm of the leadership of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Nevertheless, the first of the seven secrets comes close to Jesus’ way: Know the condition of your flock.

Knowing the Sheep. In today’s gospel (Jn 10:27-30), Jesus declares intimate knowledge of his sheep: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (v. 27). Jesus’ knowledge of his sheep goes beyond knowing someone’s name or characteristics. He knows his sheep deeper than their external realities. He knows their hearts; he knows their joys and sorrows, their hopes and anxieties. Such knowledge is intimate and personal, one that inevitably forges a strong bond of love and loyalty. While Leman and Pentak’s suggestion offers a pragmatic approach in terms of managing people, the Good shepherd’s way of knowing goes beyond pragmatism as it is essentially aimed at fostering intimate and enriching relationship between the leader and the followers.

Caring for the Sheep. Only this depth of personal knowledge elicits on the part of the leader a totally selfless commitment for the well-being of the followers. So we hear Jesus declare, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand” (v. 28).

What a consoling statement from a leader! Jesus, the Good Shepherd gives us, his beloved sheep, life. He takes care of us. He protects us. He does not allow anyone to snatch us from him. As the book of Isaiah has it: “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care” (Is 40:11).

With Jesus as our shepherd, we experience total security. We are lovingly taken care of. No wonder we are attracted to him. We listen to his voice and we follow him.

Pastoral Implication: Charity over Policy. Is this how we feel now as a community of disciples in the church? In our parishes? In our religious organizations? Do we still experience that personal love and care in our communities? Or have we not become a rule-oriented community whose life revolves around policies instead of being animated by love and concern for one another?

Just as I was quietly reflecting on the implications of this gospel to our contemporary Christian communities, a member of a parish council informed me, being a guest priest in a parish, of a standing policy: There shall be no celebration of the Eucharist in the chapel communities on their fiesta when chapel leaders failed to attend the parish assembly. And next month, three chapel communities will not have Eucharistic celebrations on their feast day if I go by this policy! While I understand the importance of policies in any community or organization, I cringe at the idea of depriving the people of the grace of the sacraments as penalty for some organizational lapses. This turns us into a policy-driven community—a far cry from the community forged by the Good Shepherd out of intimate knowledge and pastoral love.

This Good Shepherd Sunday is an excellent reminder of the way of the Good Shepherd. We gather people not through the force of authority and policies; we gather people by the sheer power of attraction. When people are recognized, loved, and cared for, they come with joy.

Search for Public Leaders. Another relevant implication of this reflection on the way of the Good Shepherd is obviously on our search for our national and local leaders. Honestly, when I look at the list of those who are aspiring to become our leaders, my heart bleeds. As far as my own appraisal is concerned, very few are worthy of our trust and loyalty! Worse, these few trustworthy leaders are in danger of being out-manoeuvred by the crooks. What have become of us as a people? Why do we make it terribly difficult for good people to become our leaders and comfortably easy for the crooked to have their way?

We badly need a leader after the image of the Good Shepherd—one who goes out of his/her way to really know the condition of his flock, understand their world and empathize with them in their struggles and aspirations. We need a leader whose heart is for the interest of the people and not for himself or his selfish agenda. We need a leader who truly cares, who promises life and well-being, a leader whose voice we can trust and follow.

I believe this has to be an essential part of our constant prayers-- that the merciful God send us such a leader, one who will love and take care of his people the Good Shepherd’s way.

Faithfulness to God, Faithfulness to the Family (Santo Niño)

At the vigil mass of the Solemnity of Christmas, a bishop, the presider, was amazed at how the people had decorated the cathedral with so much lights that glow with festivity and joy. But as he was about to intone the Gloria, he approached the Belen to get the image of the baby Jesus to be raised for veneration. Only then he discovered that the baby Jesus had a broken arm. In his homily, he mentioned something like this: “We have exerted so much effort to make the cathedral look like a five-star hotel on Christmas day that we’ve lost our grip of the very reason we celebrate.”

Amidst the hurly-burly of Christmas festivity, it was not really difficult to lose our focus on Jesus. Great was the possibility of us being consumed by the external preparations it demanded, the fund-raising schemes that went with it, the collection and distribution of gifts here, there and everywhere, etc.

Today’s celebration is another chance to fix our eyes on Jesus and open our hearts to the message and the challenges the child Jesus has to offer us. The feast of the Santo Niño is particularly significant to us Filipinos because it was the image of the child Jesus that was first instrumental to the introduction of Christian faith to us. When we dance the sinulog step, we recall the joy of Hara Amihan, wife of Rajah Humabon, the ruler of Cebu in 1521, as she danced upon receiving the image of the Santo Niño as baptismal gift from Magellan.

The disarming charm of a child could have made the introduction of faith a lot easier perhaps. But the child Jesus that we Filipinos have venerated and loved for centuries now is the same Jesus who emptied himself on the cross and who demanded that his disciples carry their crosses too. Hence, the devotion to the child Jesus has to move beyond and deeper than merely recognizing the Santo Niño’s charm.

Popular piety has tended to flock to the image of the Santo Niño for its supposed ‘lucky charm,’ or ‘miraculous powers.’ While it’s a function of faith to trust in God’s providence to answer our human needs, it is bordering onto fanaticism to assign the divine power to the image of a divinity. This aspect of the popular piety surely needs purification. This is also true, so I think, to the unchecked popular devotion to the Black Nazarene. Authentic devotion draws people closer to God. Fanaticism misleads people and brings them to falsely trust in images—whether black, green, red, or what have you! Misled people flocked to an image oblivious of the fact that they have been trampling one another to death.

Today’s gospel reading (Lk 2:41-52) can guide us to an authentic and meaningful devotion to the child Jesus. The incident portrayed in the reading is the losing and finding of the child Jesus in the temple. This is the only story about Jesus’ childhood that shows the beginning of his consciousness about who he is in relation to God, the Father, and to his human family. Here, the child Jesus begins to recognize his calling. “I have to be in my Father’s house” (v. 49). Or “I have to be about my Father’s business.” The child Jesus does not mean to demean the value of his relationship to Joseph and Mary. He is just beginning to understand and assert that his relationship to God, the Father, is of utmost importance to his life and mission. To show perhaps that he does not mean to disrespect or disregard his human family, he obediently follows Joseph and Mary back to Nazareth, grows in wisdom and age with them waiting for his adulthood before beginning his ministry.

The Santo Niño then shows us the way to faithfulness: Faithfulness to God and faithfulness to the family. This, I submit, can bring real substance to our devotion to the child Jesus. A true devotee is asked to be faithful to God and to be faithful to the family.

Faithfulness to God. This means prayer, obedience, and commitment. A true devotee, like the child Jesus, gives time to be in the house of God. To be immersed in the presence of God. To be silent so that God can speak and let his will be known and be heard. A true devotee who prays accepts and obeys the will of God. He/she is therefore obedient. Many a times, this calls for real sacrifice--to let go of one’s own will and desires and embrace God’s. A true devotee, like the child Jesus, is committed to carry out what God has sent him to do and accomplish. He/she has to be about the Father’s business. A true devotee who is faithful to God is a person of prayer, of obedience, and of commitment to his/her vocation and mission.

Faithfulness to the Family. The child Jesus submitted himself to the formation offered by the family. He “advanced in wisdom and age” with Joseph and Mary. Pope John Paul II once said that the family is the fundamental structure for human ecology where “a person receives his first formative ideas about truth and goodness, and learns what it means to love and be loved, and thus what it actually means to be a person” (Centesimus Annus, 39). Our devotion to the child Jesus then ought to promote our faithfulness to the family. A true devotee of Santo Niño will always commit to the strengthening of our families and will untiringly work to defend our families from forces that undermine their unity and formative function.

Filipinos lavishly love the Santo Niño. May this devotion lead us and our country closer to God and translate itself into an active commitment to arrest the disintegrating trend so much felt today by Filipino families.

Señor Santo Niño, as you have introduced faith into our land, may you abide with us and help us grow in that faithfulness to the Father and build a strong society faithful to the values of Filipino families. Amen.