Change of Heart and Mind (3rd Sunday Ordinary B)

One Sunday afternoon, a wife was startled with what she was seeing at home. Her husband was all geared up repainting their house!

“Honey, what are you doing?”  She asked rather tentatively.

“Well, you see, I’m painting our house.”  

“I can see that.  But why? I mean, why this sudden decision to repaint?”

“Well, I figured the preacher at the Church this morning made sense. Don’t you agree with what he said?”

“What part?”

“How could you miss that! He kept on repeating his point: ‘Repaint! The Kingdom of God is at hand!’”

We do have a sense of the imperative to prepare when we are expecting important and great events to come to pass.  Often we tend to bring our full attention to things external to us, keeping them spick and span as much as possible.  Maybe because that’s easier.  But we are missing the point.  We don’t see that what need real change are ourselves and not the color of our walls.  This is all the more true in our social life; we can easily point an accusing finger to others as if to say that there is nothing wrong with us and everything has got to be their fault.  Often we uncritically take it for granted that we are fine; it’s them who need a lot of changing to do.

Today’s readings zero in on the urgent call to repentance.  We may do well to look within us this time and open our hearts to the invitation to a real change in our lives.   

The call to repentance is an invitation to a change of heart and mind. There’s a lot in this line. In the first reading (Jon 3: 1-5, 10), we hear the story of Jonah who was sent by God to the enormous city of Nineveh in order to warn them of an impending destruction.  The Ninevites, who were considered enemies by the Israelites, believed in God and responded to Jonah’s call with penance, fasting, and mortification (v. 5).   Thus, the Lord extended forgiveness to these people as they had manifested what the Lord wished to see, a change of heart.

No matter what our past is, we can find favour with God when He sees our resolve to change our ways. 

The gospel reading (Mk. 1:14-20), allows us to understand what this repentance really means and show us how we can truly change.  The word for repentance in Greek is metanoia which means change of heart and mind. This is not cosmetic change which deals only with the superficial. This is neither selective change which allows only one or more aspects of ourselves, a bad habit for instance, to change and all the rest remain to constitute the same old unhappy self.  

Jesus said, “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (v. 15).  This means two movements: One is to turn away from sin.  “Sin,” in the singular, represents not just one sinful act, but everything that it stands for, in a word, the rejection of God’s love and the mindset and structures that support such a rejection.  This radical turning away is only possible when we embrace the second movement which is the turning toward God.  This means embracing the gospel of love. 

Existentially, we can even say that the turning toward God and his love is the first impulse of change.  Only when we experience and realize first the great value of God’s love and the incomparable joy that the Good News brings that we are empowered to leave behind whatever we have gotten used to as our way of life in this imperfect world. That means, in simple terms, that we abhor our sinful ways only when we discover first the beauty of God’s love.

The first disciples of the Lord were fishermen (v. 16-20).  Fishing was their means of living. They surely lived in such a world—the mindset and value system of fishermen.  But they decided to leave this world behind, the world they were very familiar with, only because the Lord manifested to them a far greater value, a better world where they would no longer be catching fish... but men and women for the Kingdom of God.

In the best-selling Seven Habits of Effective People, Steven Covey’s presentation of his concept of “paradigm shifts” resonates well with the gospel’s radical change of heart and mind. Paradigms are models of our worldviews.  We think and act, or even feel, according to this encompassing mould or map.  Real change happens when we finally change our paradigms.  Covey explains that “if you want to make small improvements, work on your behaviour and attitudes; if you want to make major improvements, shift your paradigm.”

Hence, we can see the call to repentance as an invitation to a paradigm shift in our lives.  Real change happens when we decide with God’s grace to put on the worldview of the gospel and leave behind the seemingly attractive way of life espoused by this sinful world.  Once we do that, our lives, like those of the first disciple of Christ, will never be the same again.

Again, today’s readings invite us to a real change in our lives.  But nothing really changes in us when what we can dare are only the cosmetic and selective changes.  We need to have the courage to surrender ourselves to God’s grace so that we can have a change of heart and mind. The call to repentance can well be our invitation to take a leap from one paradigm to another—from the paradigm of sin to the paradigm of God’s grace.

Gratitude for our Giftedness (Santo Niño)

This year 2021 we are celebrating a great jubilee for the Church in the Philippines—the 500^th year of the coming of Christianity to our beloved land! Already in 2012, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines issued a pastoral letter on the new evangelization to help prepare Catholics for this jubilee year.

“We look forward with gratitude and joy to March 16, 2021, the fifth centenary of the coming of Christianity to our beloved land,” the bishops said in their July 9 letter. “We remember with thanksgiving the first Mass celebrated in Limasawa Island on Easter Sunday March 31 that same blessed year. We remember the baptism of Rajah Humabon who was given his Christian name Carlos and his wife Hara Amihan who was baptized Juana in 1521. Our eyes gaze on the Santo Niño de Cebu, the oldest religious icon in the Philippines, gift of Ferdinand Magellan to the first Filipino Catholics that same year. Indeed the year 2021 will be a year of great jubilee for the Church in the Philippines.”

To prepare the faithful for this year, the bishops announced “a nine-year journey for the New Evangelization,” with a different theme for each year: Integral Faith Formation (2013), The Laity (2014), The Poor (2015), The Eucharist and the Family (2016), The Parish as a Communion of Communities (2017), The Clergy and Consecrated Persons (2018), The Youth (2019), Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialogue (2020), and Missio ad gentes [mission to the nations] (2021)

This year then is dedicated as the Year of “Missio ad Gentes”, the Latin for “mission to the nations”.  And we have as an over-all theme during this 500^th anniversary celebration—“Gifted to Give,” which recalls the mandate of Jesus: “What you have received as a gift, give as a gift” (Mt 10:8).  This “giftedness” had motivated the missionaries over the centuries to share the gift of faith to us. This same experience of giftedness should also inspire all of us today to engage in mission.

Given this context, the Feast of Santo Nino this year takes on a very special flavour and poses a great challenge to our devotion. In the light of this theme, “Gifted to gift”, let me suggests three invitations for all of us: Gratitude for the gift of faith, Growth in maturity of Faith, Becoming a Missionary in Sharing the gift of faith.

Gratitude for the gift of faith. Today’s second reading (Eph 1:3-6, 15-18) should inspire us to be grateful because of the faith we received. St. Paul writes: “Therefore, I, too, hearing of your faith in the Lord Jesus..., do not cease in giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him” (v.15-17).

Our devotion to the child Jesus has to nurture our gratitude for the gift of faith. 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.

We are celebrating the 500^th anniversary of the Christian faith this year! How can this realization not move us to heartfelt thanksgiving? Let our celebration of the Feast of the Santo Niño, then, express our gratitude to God for the gift of our faith.  Gratitude is a sign that we just don’t take our faith for granted but we appreciate it and we are conscious of its value and influence in our personal and communal lives. Gratitude for the gift of faith is recognizing the gratuitousness of God in loving us sinners. When we thank God for the gift of faith, we thank Him because we have Him in our lives. Let our devotion to the child Jesus remind us of this.

Growth in Maturity of faith.  Since the first Holy Mass and baptism in 1521, the seed of Christian faith has blossomed into a strong and gigantic tree of faith.  This year, there are 80+ million Catholics in 16 Archdioceses, 72 Dioceses, 7 apostolic vicariates, 1 Military Ordinariate, and 2,127 parishes!  What a blessing! Yet we continue to take on the challenge of cultivating a mature Christian faith by purifying our popular piety.  Popular piety may have led some people 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. While we love the image of the child Jesus, for whatever reasons, it is perhaps a form of fixation to see the person of Jesus only as a child.

Our devotion to the Santo Niño has to help us encounter the whole person of Jesus.  In Luke 2: 41-52, the incident of the losing and finding of Jesus reveals that, as a child, Jesus is already concerned about his relationship with his Father. “Why are you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”   His concern as a child to be in His Father’s house tells a lot about Jesus’ commitment to do his Father’s will.  When we see the child Jesus asserting the utmost importance of doing His Father’s work, it should not be difficult for us to see that this is the same person who reaches out to serve the poor, the destitute, and the oppressed.  He is the teacher who teaches us to love one another and instructs us to forgive as the Father in heaven forgives, i.e., seventy times seven times. He is the same person who agonizes in the garden of Gethsemane as He chooses the path of self-sacrifice that His Father’s design may be accomplished. The child Jesus whom we love so much is the Jesus who has saved us through his total obedience unto death on the cross and His glorification in the resurrection.

Beyond the excitement of dancing the Sinulog steps, our devotion to the Santo Niño has to lead us to the joy of mature discipleship and the challenge of being his witnesses in this changed and increasingly secularized milieu.

Becoming a Missionary in Sharing the Gift of Faith. “The Christian faith arrived and prospered in our land through the dedication and heroic sacrifices of thousands of men and women missionaries from various parts of the world. They treasured the gift of faith they had received and desired to share this gift with others. As the theme chosen by the Catholic Bishops‟ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) for this fifth centennial notes: all Christians are “gifted to give.” This “giftedness” motivated generous missionaries over the centuries; it must also enflame the hearts of all of us today to engage in mission here at home and in other countries (mission ad gentes). Indeed, this is part of Jesus‟ mission mandate to his disciples: “What you have received as a gift, give as a gift” (Mt 10:8). We pray for a missionary renewal of our Church—both at home (ad intra) and beyond our borders (ad extra) during our celebration of the 500 years—and into the future! (excerpt from CBCP Pastoral Letter, BECOMING MISSIONARY DISCIPLES).

We are challenged to a heightened awareness of and commitment to our 3-fold mission: prophetic, priestly, and kingly. Let us be missionary in the family, in our neighbourhood and BECs, in our parishes, offices, institutions we are serving either in private or public service, in our businesses and even in the market place.

We recall the challenge of Pope John Paul II during his 1981 visit to our Church: “I wish to tell you of my special desire: that the Filipinos will become the foremost missionaries of the Church in Asia.” This is a clear invitation to engage in missio ad gentes!

May this year of Missio ad Gentes bring us all into a deeper commitment to becoming missionaries. As Pope Francis exhorts: “Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples‟ and “missionaries,‟ but rather that we are always “missionary disciples‟” (EG 120).

Identity and Mission (Baptism of our Lord B)

(grabbed from http://elcaandy.blogspot.com)

After an exhausting hectic schedule of activities during the Christmas season, a parish priest and his parochial vicar felt they needed a break like going, perhaps, to a place where they can enjoy their peace and quiet. So, they talked about their options. To cut the story short, they ended up in Boracay! Not bad. To maximize their resting experience, they decided to be anonymous. So they sported clothes usually worn by tourists. When they were there lying on the beach with their sunglasses on, a gorgeous lady in a sexy two-piece red bikini was passing by. But they were surprised because the lady hesitated but greeted them: “Hello there, good morning… enjoy the day… FATHERS.” They were taken aback! How did this lady recognize them as priests! They thought of changing their outfits. So they rushed to the nearest store to buy new sets of more daring clothes! The next morning they were again seated on the sand enjoying the lovely view. Again this same sexy lady was passing by. The two priests were confident that they would no longer be recognized. The lady passed by. Greeted them: “Have a nice day… FATHERS!” The parish priest called out: “Hey, miss. Yes, we are priests but how on earth did you recognize us?” The lady smiled. Took off her sunglasses and said, “Oh… Fathers… you didn’t recognize me… I’m Sister Rebecca.”

Where does our identity lie? Is it in the clothes we wear? Or more precisely to the point I would like to make, where does our Christian identity lie? Is it in the Christian name we carry? Is it in the documents we bring along with us? Perhaps the baptismal certificate?  Or in the fact that we are present in the festive church activities like the Misa de Gallo perhaps? Or later, holy week activities?

Several years ago, I participated in the tabulation and analysis of the result of the survey done in Mindanao in preparation for the Mindanao-Sulu Pastoral Conference (MSPC). And one of the significant observations that came out of the survey was the phenomenon which had been brought out by PCP II already in 1991-- the phenomenon of nominal Catholicism. Nominal. Nombre. Name. In other words, Catholics in name only! These are baptized Catholics. They are baptized but, alas, not evangelized. They bear Christian names and documents but they have not allowed the euangelion--- the gospel-- to shape their lives. No wonder, the Philippines enjoys the dignity of being the only Christian country in Asia, while all at the same time topping the ranks of the most corrupt ones!

The Feast of the Baptism of our Lord today allows us to realize that there is more to baptism than just receiving a name and that if we just all understood the meaning of our baptism and we live by it, we would not be confronted with this phenomenon of nominal Catholicism.  Let us then examine the event of the baptism of our Lord and see what it teaches us as regards our own baptism and identity as Christians.

In today’s gospel (Mk. 1:7-11), Jesus was baptized by John and a voice was heard from the heavens, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (v. 11). This is a confirmation of Jesus’ own discernment about who he is. In Mark's gospel, which does not have Jesus' infancy narrative, it is on Jesus' baptism that Jesus' divine sonship is manifested for the first time. His baptism. therefore, is the moment of revelation about his true identity. On his baptism, Jesus confirms that He is the Son of God.

Connected to this identity is his mission as the Messiah.  On this same event of his baptism, Jesus was anointed by the Spirit who descended upon Him like a dove (v. 10).    He was anointed as the Messiah who would bring the good news of the Kingdom of God. In Luke's gospel, after Jesus' baptism, Jesus would stand in the synagogue and proclaim that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him and anointed him to bring good news to the poor. To give sight to the blind, to set the captives free… (Lk 4: 18).

Jesus baptism reveals to him both his identity and his mission. My dear friends, our baptism is a baptism after that of the Lord’s. Hence, like the baptism of our Lord, our baptism confers us with identity and mission. In baptism, we become sons and daughters of God in Christ. What a great dignity! An identity that will always be there whether we are on vacation or not. Have we lived up to such greatness of dignity? Do I show in my way of living the fact that I am God’s son or daughter?

Connected to this dignified identity is the Christian mission. Our baptism confers us with the threefold mission of Christ--priestly, prophetic, and kingly missions. As priests, we are sent to sanctify our families and communities through our prayer and worship, As prophets, we are sent to proclaim with joy to the whole world the Good News of God’s love and to denounce with courage the destructive influence of evil. As kings, we are sent as humble servants to journey with the poor, to help provide for the deprived, and to work for the empowerment of the oppressed. Have I embraced my mission with joy and dedication?

Today we start the first week in ordinary time. I think this is the real challenge: Our baptism has to be lived out not just in the peak moments of our Church life. We have to be faithful to our identity and mission day after day! And this is because our Christian faith does not take a leave. Christian faith is not contained in papers. Christian faith is a lifestyle. It is a way of life--whether we are at work or we are enjoying our peace and quiet in some exotic place.