Preparation (1st Sunday Advent A)

In November of 2013, the monster typhoon Yolanda devastated the portion of Central Philippines. In the face of the rising casualties of the strongest typhoon ever recorded in history and the apparent initial lack of efficiency in responding to the needs of the survivors, it was said that no amount of preparation could have forestalled the magnitude of the impact of the supertyphoon.  So that even if the supertyphoon was rightly predicted to be one of the strongest in history and warnings had been alarmed, when it actually landed, the people and the government just the same were ill-prepared for its monstrosity. In the aftermath, rescue and relief operations struggled to get through the wreckage causing great delay in responding to the emergency needs of cities and towns directly hit. This meant more deaths and more suffering.

Whether we bought such assessment or not, still the lesson was clear: We cannot belittle the value of preparation.  Now that we had a taste of the wrath of a cataclysmic typhoon, we have to learn how to prepare better.

Our gospel reading (Mt. 24:37-44), on this first Sunday of Advent, has a clear single theme—preparation. “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come” (v. 42-44).

Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of our Lord.  We understand the coming of our Lord in three ways:  First, historically. Jesus came to us at a specific point in history at Bethlehem about 2000 years ago.  Second, majestically. The Lord, Alpha and Omega, will come to judge the living and the dead in the Second Coming.  And third, mystically. The Redeemer comes to us in grace. He speaks to us in our consciences; he comes to us in the Eucharist and in the Word of God proclaimed. He arrives in the person of the beggar, the needy, the suffering, the oppressed, and the imprisoned.

Our advent preparations, then, may be expressed in three distinct characteristics—that of a joyful commemoration of Christ’s incarnation, that of a hopeful anticipation of the glory of the Lord, and that of a faithful daily commitment to the Lord’s presence.

Joyful Commemoration.  Advent is preparation for Christmas. As such, it leads us to look back to the time in history when the longing of the people for the Messiah was finally answered. The Savior was born. Joy to the world! The season of Advent commemorates that sense of longing and the joy of the fulfillment of God’s promise.  This preparation is an act of remembering and of keeping alive such longing for the Lord and such joy of having the Lord with us.  Therefore, despite our present hardships in life, the season of Advent reminds us to give room for joy in our hearts as we keep alive our memories of the Lord’s birth.

Hopeful Anticipation. Advent is preparation not only for Christmas. As today’s gospel reminds us, we need to “stay awake” and “be prepared” for the coming of the Son of Man. This particularly alludes to the glorious Second coming of our Lord. This preparation ought not to be out of fear but out of hope. The Day of the Lord is God’s justice and God’s justice is the vindication of those who have been faithful to his words. As hopeful anticipation, Advent reminds us that there is sense in being faithful to God despite increasing lack of faith around us; there is value in always choosing the good amid the predominance of sinful situations we find ourselves in; there is a point in upholding the truth even if I sacrifice my life in the process. These are all meaningful because we trust in the majestic coming of the Lord; we anticipate his justice with hope.

Faithful Daily Commitment.  Advent invites us not only to look back with joy and to look ahead with hope; it also allows us to prepare for the Lord’s coming each day.  I believe that this is the key to authentic preparation: Our faithfulness to our daily Christian commitments. When the gospel calls for vigilance in preparation for the unknown hour of the Lord’s coming, in effect it calls for moral alertness every single day of our lives.  As for St. Paul in the second reading (Rom 13:11-14), he has this to say:  “It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep… let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” Advent invites us to be faithful to Jesus each day.

Today, we start another liturgical year with the first Sunday of Advent. Both our traumatic experience and the season of Advent teach us an important thing:  the value of preparation.  May this grace-filled season of Advent, indeed, be for us a meaningful preparation for the coming of the Lord whom we welcome with joy, with hope, and fidelity.

The Crucified King (Christ the King C)

From day one up to now, believers and non-believers alike have been inspired by Pope Francis. On The Washington Post, Kathleen Parker wrote about Pope Francis:

“Pope Francis continues to delight and surprise as he pursues his radical pilgrimage across the global psyche - inspiring with his humility while also sending shock waves with his subversive spirit. Yes, make no mistake, this humble man from Argentina who describes himself first as a sinner and prefers simplicity to the opulence afforded by his station is, like Jesus Christ himself, a radical. He washes the feet of the poor while eschewing the ruby papal slippers for his own holy feet. He lives in humble quarters among colleagues rather than in the isolation of the Vatican suites where his predecessors have slept. He immerses himself in humanity while urging a greater pastoral role for the church and a de-emphasis on the harsh judgments of institutional authority.”

What makes Pope Francis tick? I think, as Kathleen Parker somewhat hinted at, it is that his ways remind us of Jesus Christ. And the world longs for a leader who is a living witness to Christ.  

In today’s gospel reading (Lk 23:35-43), Jesus is portrayed as the crucified King. In this reading, it is possible to bring out three traits of Christ the King that people of today somehow recognize in the ways of the present Pope: These are humility, compassion, and servant-leadership. These must also be our own, if we are indeed disciples of Christ the King and are edified by the leadership example of our Pope. 

Christ the King is a humble King. While he was hanging on the cross, the rulers, the soldiers, and one of the criminals beside him all sneered at him. Each of them challenged the crucified Lord to prove himself as the Messiah of God by saving himself from defeat and death on the cross. But He did not succumb to the temptation to use his power. On the cross, He remained humble and “powerless.” His way is the humble obedience to the Father, not the triumphalistic and egoistic display of power to show his greatness. He died utterly humiliated. But such humility was the very power of God that brought salvation to the world.

Pope Francis reminds us of the humility of Christ. He inspires us because he believes that humility attracts people to the Church, not power and pride. He once told the cardinals that the strength of the Gospel “is precisely in humility, the humility of a child who lets himself be guided by the love and tenderness of his father.” As he himself chooses to reject the opulent trappings of the papacy, the Pope invites the Church to leave behind whatever remaining vestiges of triumphalism it has gotten used to over the centuries. He invites the Church to be humble just as Christ the King is humble. This invitation touches the hearts of many people and deeply inspires them.

Christ the King is compassionate. The gospels have all recounted the many incidents when Jesus manifested his compassion for the least, the last and the lost. But today’s gospel reading highlights even more the compassion of Christ when, as He hanged on the cross facing his own death, he listened to the prayer of the thief beside him: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus recognized the implicit repentance in the prayer of this thief. Right there and then, Jesus’ compassionate heart granted the promise of eternal life to him. Herein lies the true power of the crucified King: not in casting harsh judgment on sinners but in showing compassion and mercy to the repentant.

Pope Francis too has been moving the hearts of thousands of people by his simple gestures of compassion. Once, he met a man covered in boils from head-to-toe, instead of recoiling from this man as some doctors even do, Pope Francis embraced him. In yet another instance in Saint Peter’s Square, the Pope noticed a man in the crowd with a severely disfigured face. The Pope approached him, embraced him as well and prayed with him. Pope Francis is showing the world the compassion of Christ the King. And more importantly he invites the Church to change focus. The Church, he said, should emphasize compassion and mercy instead of “small-minded rules.”

Christ is a servant-king.  To the world, a “servant-king” is an oxymoron, a combination of two contradictory concepts. But for Christ, the former fittingly defines the latter. As he had declared early on in his public ministry, the Son of Man “did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:28). Hence, as a King, he rules not by domination but by serving even to the point of laying down his life for his people. He is not a king sitting pretty on a majestic throne but one awkwardly hanging on the cross bruised, wounded, and dying—all for the sake of whom he was sent to save.

Pope Francis too understands his leadership in terms of service just like Christ.  On his installation he proclaimed: "Let us never forget that authentic power is service…  The pope, too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service, which has its radiant culmination on the cross." And he calls the Church to rise beyond her tendency to be “self-referential” and to take the risk of reaching out to the poor in service. The Church, like her King, must be a servant Church.

With Pope Francis leading us in the spirit of Christ the King, we continue living out with joy and enthusiasm our Christian faith. Pope Francis has begun pointing us to Christ once again by his examples and exhortations on humility, compassion, and service. Just as Christ the King is humble, compassionate, and a servant, so his Church must be, so each of us must be.

The Day of the Lord (33rd Sunday Ordinary C)

The Dome of the Rock

The oracle of the Lukan Jesus in today’s gospel foretold the destruction of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem: “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down” (Lk 21:6).  Indeed today in Jerusalem, what stands very proudly on the very site of the glorious temple is a Muslim mosque with an eye-catching golden dome that stands out when one takes a panoramic view of the city from afar. It’s the “Dome of the Rock” which now houses the foundational stone of the Jerusalem temple where the Jews used to worship God. What remains of the temple is the Western Wall. It is on this site now that the religious Jews pray. On this wall, also called the Wailing Wall, they continue to mourn and weep over the loss of the temple of God.

In today’s gospel reading (Lk 21: 5-19), Luke blends the historical event of the temple’s destruction and the apocalyptic description of the end times. The Lukan Jesus pronounces the oracle and, when asked about the time of its happening, responds with the description of the end times and what will presage the end—calamities, wars, and persecutions. Likewise, the first reading (Mal 3:19-20a) describes the end time as the day of the justice of God.

Each time we come to the end of the liturgical year our readings are those of the apocalyptic writings describing the end times. This is not to frighten us but to give us the opportunity to set our sight beyond the present concerns in this earthly life. We may have been too engrossed with either the pains of our life struggles or the joys of our temporal successes, too enmeshed in the magnitude of our contemporary concerns to see with hope what lies beyond this earthly pilgrimage.

Reflecting on the end times is not meant to scare us or to lose heart; it is not meant to paralyze us with fear. Today’s readings in particular allow us to face the end of time well prepared by heeding these two calling: The call to repentance and the call to steadfastness in faith.

The call to repentance. The first reading describes the end as the day of God’s justice. It is a day “blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble” and will be set on fire. But for those who fear the name of God, “there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays” (Mal 3:19-20a).  

The end is when we experience the definitive justice of God. While on earth, life seems to be unfair many times. Evil doers seem to prosper while good people suffer persecutions. But when the day of the Lord comes, God will set all things straight. Indeed, our moral life has repercussions on the afterlife. We cannot do evil and not be held responsible for it.

We may do well then to heed the invitation to repent and to “fear the name of God.” This can mean rising up from our complacency and self-centered way of living. This can also mean shaking ourselves out of our pride and conceited sense of self-sufficiency as if we do not need God. Repentance can also take the form of turning away from our evil deeds by committing ourselves to actively help dismantle the structures of sins which we may have participated in.

The "Wailing Wall"

The call to steadfastness in faith. It is very easy to create our own wailing walls where we can continue to mourn and weep for our losses. With the super typhoons mercilessly buffeting our cities and towns, with the earthquakes leaving our homes, churches, offices, bridges, and other infrastructures in ruins, with wars dashing our hopes for harmony and peace among peoples and cultures, it is very easy to lose heart, to doubt in God’s goodness, to be paralyzed by hopelessness, and to give in to evil means of survival.

Yet the message of Luke to his people then is the same message we need to listen to now. The apocalyptic writings of Luke in today’s gospel, announces hardships, sufferings, calamities, and tribulations as presage to the coming of the end. While there is no telling of the definite time of the end, we are called to face whatever hardships and tribulations with steadfastness in faith.

To be steadfast in our faith is to have the courage to give testimony to the goodness of God amidst seeming contrary evidences of destructions around us because we know that it is sin that causes these havoc and not God. God only has grace to see us through all the sufferings.

To be steadfast in faith is to persevere in the face of hatred and looming death because we trust that God will protect us as he has promised: “not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your lives” (Lk 21: 18). Even death cannot harm those who have been faithful to God.

As we come to the end of our liturgical year, let us see our lives, our important commitments, our endless concerns, our joys and sorrows, our successes and failures in the light of our eternal destiny. Everything will pass away. Great temples we have built can easily crumble leaving us only ruins where we can lament and wail. We look beyond this earthly life without relinquishing our responsibility to make this a beautiful place to live in. As we do, let us always be reminded of our call—to repent and to be steadfast in our faith.

Mount of Olives (32nd Sunday Ordinary C)

Among the several things that caught my attention during my visit to the Mount of Olives (the Garden of Gethsemane being my favorite) was a prominent feature that covers the entire western and almost all of the southern slopes of the mount—the Jewish cemetery.  From what I gathered, since antiquity Jewish burial continued to be done there interrupted only between 1948 and 1967 when Jerusalem was divided. According to tradition, the Jewish cemetery on the sacred mount is where the resurrection will begin when the Messiah comes. ​ Legend has it that in the end of days people will tunnel underground from all over the world to rise up there.

For a believer in the “God of the living,” death is seen in the light of hope for the triumph of life.  Mount Olives has become a symbol of that hope for resurrection. 

Jewish belief in the afterlife was a late development in Israel.  The earliest afterlife belief of a promise of resurrection appears in the book of Daniel written in the second century before Christ. Today’s first reading from the second book of Maccabees (2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14) is also a second century B.C. writings. It expresses the belief in afterlife as vindication of those who have been faithful to God.

Today’s first reading is an excerpt of the story of the heroism of the mother and her seven martyred sons. The faith-filled family was persecuted by the Seleucid king for their faith in God.  They were forced to eat pork in violation of God’s law. All of the sons resisted to the end, professing before death their fidelity to God and their hope for resurrection. The fourth son, for instance, when nearing death after being tortured said: “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life” (2 Mc 7:14).

The willingness of all the sons to endure torture and death depended on their belief in subsequent resurrection of the righteous. 

On the contrary, the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection as they only adhered to the Pentateuch and refused to give weight to oral tradition. Hence, in the gospel reading (Lk 20:27-38), the Sadducees presented a ridiculous case to Jesus to press him on the afterlife issue.  The case is based on a teaching of the Book of Moses on the responsibility of a man to marry his deceased brother’s widow and bear progeny to his name.  By presenting the case of a widow who married the seven brothers who each died without leaving a progeny, the Sadducees wanted to illustrate to Jesus the implausibility of resurrection, as there would be confusion as to whose wife will she be.

In his reply, Jesus did two things: First, He asserted the vast difference between our experience in earthly life and that of the afterlife.  One cannot compare the two. The resurrected life cannot be understood in terms of our earthly experience as the Sadducees were trying to do.  The afterlife is far superior to our earthly experience, as Jesus attested: “… those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming of age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God…” (v. 34).

Second, Jesus clearly upheld the belief in resurrection by citing Yahweh’s relationship to the three patriarchs. Only life would continue to bind the patriarchs to God after their death: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead , but of the living, for to him all are alive” (vv. 37-38). God is the source of all life; He is the cause of resurrected life.

Our Christian invitations:

Invitation to gratitude. God is not the God of the dead. He is the God of the living. We must always be grateful to the source of life. We can do this by taking good care of our lives, by celebrating life, by our commitment to promote and protect life. Our earthly life is passing. But “no longer must we fear and disguise the reality of death. We will die, but live ever more fully in Christ” (PCPC II #2059).

Invitation to hope. A clear grasp of the afterlife is not possible. Any attempt to describe it and to discuss its details is futile for it is always beyond the terms of our earthly experience. Yet our faith in Jesus allows us to cling to this beautiful belief as our hope for a future superior existence as children of God.  It is this hope that we should bring into our world which is always on the verge of despair because of the violence of conflict and war, of the devastations wrought by earthquakes and supertyphoons, of the suffering due to destitution, of fear and insecurities due to sickness.  It is the hope of transformation.

Invitation to fidelity. Good people many times suffer a lot. Those who are on the side of justice and truth are persecuted by the evil of this world. All the more that, as disciples of Christ, we should continue to be faithful to His words by announcing his message of salvation and by denouncing whatever is evil in God’s sight.  We must fear not. God is on our side.  Resurrection is God’s vindication of those who have been faithful to him.

Should the legend about Mount of Olives come to pass, let us be among those deemed worthy to rise up there.