Three Lovely Moments with God (Trinity Sunday)

An atheist was walking through the woods. 'What majestic trees! 'What powerful rivers! 'What beautiful animals! He said to himself. Suddenly, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look... and saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charge towards him! He ran as fast as he could along the path. He looked over his shoulder & saw that the bear was closing on him... He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer... and then ... He tripped and fell. Rolling over to pick himself up, he found the bear was right on top of him reaching towards him with its left paw and raising the right paw to strike! At that instant the Atheist cried out, 'Oh my God!'

Time Stopped ... The bear froze ... The forest was silent ...

A bright light shone upon the man, and a voice came out of the sky ... "You deny my existence for all these years, you teach others I don't exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament?" "Am I to count you as a believer?"

The atheist looked directly into the light. "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now... but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?"

A pause ...

"Very well," said the voice. The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right arm, bowed his head and made the sign of the cross... “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Bless, O Lord, this food which I am about to receive...”

To be a Christian believer is to accept as a central mystery of faith God’s self-revelation as a Triune God. Our God, as revealed through Jesus Christ, is Trinity. Or as the17th century English poet, John Donne, would have it in his Holy Sonnet XIV, “Three-Personed God.” Or better still, as any newly-converted-Christian bear would have it, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Today is Trinity Sunday. The most dreaded Sunday by preachers… because of the daunting task of illuminating the people about this central mystery of Christian faith and because such a task somehow brings the preacher back to those confusing days of classical and metaphysical discussions on the subject from which he managed quite triumphantly a barely passing grade after all the migraine attacks!

Today need not be a migraine day for us. What I would like us to have is an enjoyable way of approaching the mystery of the Trinity and allowing God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to become a vital force that animates and directs our Christian living and prayer. Allow me then to share with you a way of praying that weaves the fabric of our daily lives into the matrix of our relationship with the Three-Personed God. I call this method “The Three Lovely Moments with God,” a method I’ve learned from my Jesuit spiritual directors. This is fundamentally an Ignatian examen of consciousness with a Trinitarian twist.

Granting that we have found a sacred space where we can enjoy peace and quiet for a few moments, and granting we have assumed a comfortable posture for praying, we begin by asking the grace of God’s presence and enlightenment in the three lovely moments with Him. Then we enter into the three moments.

The first moment is the moment with the Loving Father. In the silence, we go over our lives and, with God’s enlightenment, seek to see where we have experienced the loving presence and action of the Father. To the Father we attribute the beauty and bounty of creation. He is the source of every being and their sustenance. He is our Abba and from him overflows goodness on which we totally depend for our well-being as his children. How have we experienced this goodness and love? Acknowledgment of the significant moments of God’s goodness in our lives leads to a grateful heart. This first moment then is a moment of thanksgiving and praise to a loving God whose Fatherly (for some, Motherly) love sustains us.

The second moment is the moment with the Son. Much as we want to see our lives filled with nothing else but God’s grace, we do see traces of sin that sadly mars our beautiful relationship with God. Sin lurks and strikes like a poisonous scorpion in our most vulnerable moments. But the sting of sin and death has been vanquished by the Son, Jesus Christ, through his passion, death, and resurrection! We can courageously face, then, our moments of weakness and, with tremendous sorrow for having rejected God’s love, turn to Jesus, our Saviour, for the grace of forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. This second moment therefore is a moment of true repentance and celebration of God’s mercy through the Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour.

The third moment is the moment with the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives as individual and as a Church is the fulfilment of the Easter promise. The Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit to abide with us as the Paraclete, our Advocate. He is the Spirit of Truth who guides us to all truth (Jn 16:12). At Pentecost, the Spirit emboldened Jesus’ disciples to preach without fear the Good News to the ends of the earth. The Spirit empowers us and enables us to do what God wills us to do and accomplish that which brings greater glory to God’s name. This third moment then is a time for us to listen to God’s directions. What is God’s invitation for me to do? Do I have plans and projects? Are they mine or God’s? How am I to proceed? In this third moment, we then let the Holy Spirit guide us to the path where God wants us to take. This is the moment of empowerment and direction.

What a lovely life it is that we have as Christians! Baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19), we share in the life of the Trinity. In the second reading (Rom. 8:14-17), Paul explains this sharing in the life of the Trinity as our spiritual adoption by the Father by which we become sons and daughters of God whom we call Abba! This makes us co-heirs with Christ as the Spirit united in our spirit bears witness that we are God’s children. 

Hence our life is a life of intimate relationship with the Triune God. A life dependent on a love that never fails, a life that tends towards perfection through the grace of forgiveness, a life that is directed and empowered to share in God’s creative activity.

This Trinity Sunday then, far from being a dreadful day, is a lovely day... a day to remind us to enjoy the three lovely moments with God as often as we can. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit!

Life in the Spirit (Pentecost Sunday B)

(grabbed from https://www.antiochpeople.org)

Today, Pentecost Sunday, is the culmination of the Easter Season. The commemoration of the event of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles occupies a very important place in the Church’s life and liturgical calendar. Pentecost is said to be the birth of the Church as it marks the beginning of the church’s missionary endeavor. Pentecost day is a day of empowerment and transformation as promised by Jesus before He ascended to heaven:

 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere - in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

To become effective witnesses of Jesus we need to be empowered and transformed by the Spirit. This is exactly what we commemorate today. At Pentecost, the disciples experienced transformation. From being fearful, they emerged as bold and courageous proclaimers of the marvellous acts of God. From being doubtful and confused, they gained clarity of their understanding of what Jesus taught and its implication in the life of the early Church.  From living according to the desires of the flesh, the disciples were continually transformed into a community that lived by the Spirit.

Let these transformations be our experience too as we open our hearts to the power of the Holy Spirit whom we have received by way of our baptism and confirmation.

Fear to boldness. The first reading (Acts 2:1-11) accounts for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles in the form of tongues of fire. It tells of the transformation that happened in the apostles.  We know from the gospel reading (Jn 20:19-23) that they were hiding because of fear after the Lord’s crucifixion.  But at Pentecost, these nervous apostles were empowered by the Holy Spirit as they went out of hiding and began to speak of “the mighty acts of God” to all peoples. They no longer feared any possible persecution. They were transformed into bold proclaimers of the good news, confidently proclaiming the greatness of God revealed in the passion, death, and glorious resurrection of Christ.  Since then the Apostles feared no more. They would face even their martyrdom with courage and fortitude--clearly the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Do you live in fear? What are you afraid of in life? Fear can be paralyzing. It can imprison us and rob us of the freedom and joy of Christian life.  It can put us to silence and render us unable to witness to Christ and His values.  This Pentecost Sunday, let us acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit already in us. Let us allow the Spirit to empower us, to allay our fears, and to set our hearts on fire so that we can truly live out our prophetic mission. Let us be bold in proclaiming the truth about God’s work in our lives.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be freed from the shackle of our fears and live our Christian life boldly, confidently, courageously.

Confusion to clarity. The Lord Jesus, despite being the best teacher ever, acknowledged the incapacity of his disciples to understand fully what he had taught them and what he had to go through to fulfil his mission as the Messiah. But He reassured them that the Holy Spirit will enlighten them so that they may understand. When Jesus died on the cross, many of the disciples were so confused and discouraged they didn’t know what to do next. One ended his own life; some stayed in hiding; some walked away to Emmaus discouraged; some went back to fishing; Thomas doubted. But at Pentecost, these confused disciples would become ever sure of themselves and what they believed in. The Holy Spirit empowered them with the gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel. They began to preach boldly and with clarity, even tourists understood them. And whenever they were faced with important decision-making for the good of the early Church, they relied on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Since then the Church would always invoke the Holy Spirit for guidance and enlightenment in every aspect of her life.

Our contemporary life can be confusing too. We can be bombarded with too much information… too many questions… too many choices…  too many answers. I read a post on facebook saying: “I am currently in this long confusing process of figuring out who I am and what I want to do in my life.” “My life has become this one big ‘I DON’T KNOW!’” “Should I turn left where nothing’s right or should I turn right where nothing’s left?” Life can indeed be confusing especially perhaps in our present generation when the clear objective norms and standards we had held for centuries have given way to a relativist outlook where truth depends on anybody’s opinion. “Respect my truth. I respect your truth… his truth… her truth… their truth.” What is true then? It is precisely in this predicament of confusion that the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit is much needed. Again, this Pentecost day reminds us of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that can transform our lives from confusion to the clarity of what we believe in and its implications in our choices and moral decisions in life. Let us always invoke the Holy Spirit for guidance every time we discern. He will show us the way, the truth, and the life.

Life in the flesh to life in the Spirit. St. Paul is very clear about this transformation in the life of Christ’s disciples through the power of the Spirit. In his letter to the Galatians 5:16-25, he instructs them to live by the Spirit so as not to gratify the desire of the flesh. He warns that the works of the flesh are immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, selfishness, factions, envy, drinking bouts and orgies. And those who live by these will not inherit the kingdom of God. So, he exhorts them to live by the Spirit whose fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The world continues to allure us to gratify the desires of the flesh. There is so much hatred, violence, greed, desecration of the sanctity of life around us and so on. Do you by chance find yourself at the heart of this moral decadence? Then let the message of Pentecost awaken you. Allow the Spirit to transform your life. Live by the Spirit and learn to forgive, to live in peace, to share to the needy, to sanctify your family, to be a loving person. There is just so much joy in life when we are transformed by the Spirit.

Allow these transformations to transpire in your own life as we end with this prayer: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth. Amen.

Spirit-Filled Evangelization (Ascension Sunday B)

The Acts of the Apostles reports that after the Lord has been lifted up in a cloud before the eyes of the apostles, the latter were left standing still gazing up into the heavens. Then two men dressed in white stood beside them and asked them: “Why do you stand here looking up at the skies? This Jesus who has been taken from you will return, just as you saw him go up into the heavens.”

On this Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension, we look up heavenward because we acknowledge in faith that the Lord has completely been victorious against the alienating power of sin and evil.  Nothing separates now the human being from God for in the person of Jesus, the human being has charted his way back to God and now definitely shares in the life of God.  We look up to heaven because where Jesus is now we will all be.

However, as we keep that flame of hope alive in our hearts, we should not just stand looking up heavenward.  We need to do our task, a great task left by the Lord to his disciples as we read now in today’s gospel (Mk. 16: 15-20): “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation.  The man who believes in it and accepts baptism will be saved; the man who refuses to believe in it will be condemned.”

After two millennia of proclaiming the good news, the whole world has indeed heard of the gospel.  Christianity, we can say, is now all over the world.  But this assertion is no reason for the Lord’s disciples to stop proclaiming the gospel.  This generation, some claims, is the era of de-Christianization.  The increasing secularization of societies beginning from the West (where Christianity had flourished) results to abandonment of faith or, at the least, taking faith for granted.  We see Christian societies, which had their faith in God enshrined even in their constitution, now abandon their religious values and norms to make way for human’s egoistic claims of rights—surprisingly, even those which smack of perversion.  We now see that when God is put aside, everything goes.  No more sense of sin; no more conscience to discern what is right and what is perverse.  And what is immoral can now be the norm. Sadly, many Christians are no longer bothered by this. 

The beloved Pope, now Saint John Paul II, had started the call for a new evangelization in the face of this alarming situation.  His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, rightly continued this agenda as priority concern for Europe, for North America, and for the whole world.  He established the Council for New Evangelization at the Vatican. In October of 2012, the Synod of Bishops in Rome took up the theme of New Evangelization which, according to the Pope, “speaks of the need for a renewed method of proclamation” to effectively address the heavy traces of the developments of secularization. Moreover, Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, exhorted the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelization marked by joy.

In the Philippine context where people are still religious enough to embrace Christianity (at least in name) but not Christian enough to make a difference in the social ills that beset the nation, the new evangelization is in order too.  Since the early 90s, the Philippine Church has called for the process of a renewed integral evangelization—renewed catechesis, renewed worship, and renewed social apostolate.

What makes for an effective proclamation of the good news? Difficult question. Experts in the different but related fields of disciplines may suggest new approaches.  But as far as the first reading of today suggests, two essential elements have to be there in whatever approach we try:  the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of witnessing.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes down on you; then you are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, yes, even to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1: 8).

The Power of the Holy Spirit. Clearly only by the power of the Spirit can anyone proclaim the good news effectively.  Before the Lord ascended to heaven, he allayed the fears of his disciples and assured them of the Advocate.  And on Pentecost, the apostles were emboldened by the power of the Spirit to proclaim the good news to all peoples.  Techniques in public speaking and in the use of modern gadgets now may indeed be of great help but without the Spirit that moves the hearts and enlightens the minds, any proclamation will not have its transforming power.  May the Church’s efforts for new evangelization be led and inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is what Pope Francis called the Spirit-filled evangelization. For him, the spirit-filled evangelizers are fearlessly open to the Holy Spirit like the apostles and they must pray for the Holy Spirit’s help to proclaim the Gospel not just with words but by a life transfigured by God’s presence (EG, 259). 

The Power of Witnessing.  Words well said may be pleasing to the ears but will soon be exposed as empty when these proclaimed words do not come from a true witness—one who speaks of what he truly believes in and of what he lives by.  For Christianity to make a difference once again in our world today, it needs not just preachers and teachers (and bloggers).  It needs more importantly witnesses of Jesus Christ.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta, for instance, had effectively proclaimed the love of God to the poorest of the poor and touched the heart of the whole world, believers and non-believers alike, because of her life and how she lived it as a disciple of Christ.

As the Lord commissioned the first generation of Christians to proclaim the good news to the whole world, the same Lord reminds us of that same task today.  More than ever, the world today needs to be evangelized... effectively.  On this Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension, it is not enough that we gaze heavenward to enkindle our hope for the Lord’s ultimate victory for all creation.  We need to look around us and see the realities that call for transformation through the gospel values.  In the words of Pope Francis, we are all invited to become "spirit-filled evangelizers" with “enthusiasm for a new chapter of evangelization full of fervor, joy, generosity, courage, boundless love and attraction!” (EG, 260).

The Joy of Being Loved (6th Sunday Easter B)

We all tend to accept too readily the fact that, between the acts of loving and of being loved, the former is a lot harder.  We uncritically believe that being loved is a lot easier as it entails, so it seems, just being in the receiving end of the relationship.  However, the contrary may be true.  Fr. Joseph Galdon, SJ, in one of his reflections in the Mustard Seed, made this point too.  The position of being loved is more difficult because, contrary to the position of the lover, one is not in control of the decision to love.  While the lover may be certain about his love and knows well the depth, the height, the breadth of his love as all these spring from his own will,  the beloved—the one being loved—has to grapple with uncertainties regarding the authenticity of the love, the purity of the intentions, the duration of the commitment, etc.  While the former is in the position of control, so to speak, the latter is in the position that requires trust and hope.

This allows us to see that in our loving relationship with God, we may have been very concerned about our inadequacies in loving Him, when in fact our more fundamental difficulty is allowing ourselves to be loved by Him. All too often, our unhappiness springs from our realization that we have not loved God enough.  But the real problem is actually we find it hard to trust enough to allow God to love us the way He wants—and that is unconditionally. And when we fail to really experience the joy of being loved by God, where else do we find the strength, the inspiration, the desire to love God enough? Nowhere.  So we persist in our unhappiness.

Today’s first reading, from the first book of John 4: 7-10, reminds us of the real nature of loving: “In this is love: Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins” (v. 10).  God loved us first, even when we were sinners, even when we did not have the capacity to love him.

It is important then to ask ourselves, do we trust God’s initiative of love? Are we convinced that even if we are every inch undeserving of God’s love, He does love us anyway?

Hence, we see quite clearly that prior to the problem of our disappointing inadequacies in loving God is our inadequacies in allowing Him to love us in his terms.  We ought to remember that we love God only as a response to his initiative.  It is of paramount importance then that we be in touch with the way God loves us and experience the joy of being loved by Him.

The gospel reading today (Jn 15: 9-17), reveals three ways with which God loves us.  Let us reflect on these:

The way of sacrifice. God, through his Son, has given up everything for our sakes.  The greatest test of loving is total self-giving. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (v. 13).  Knowing how much God has sacrifice for our sake certainly can help us trust in such a love.  How come we have persisted in our doubts about the greatness of God’s love for us?

The way of friendship.  God has freed us from slavery of sin. We are no longer slaves.  God invites us to friendship with Him. “I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father” (v. 15).  What a great privilege to become privy to the “secrets” of God. God is offering us intimacy, the opportunity to know him and to remain in him as friends!

The way of preferential love.  God has chosen us to be his own.  It is not even us who chose him. In the words of the gospel today: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you” (v. 16).  God has chosen us to bear fruits and has promise us his providence. 

God loves us this much. And we have to allow ourselves to be loved by God this way.  We need to experience in life the full extent of God’s love for us... for only then we gain the power to respond to God with great love too.

“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete” (v. 11). In saying this, the Lord may have known that the surest way to disappointment and despair is for us to focus our awareness on the feebleness of our love for God.  But the surest way to great joy is relishing the experience of being loved by God and trusting that despite our unworthiness God loves us just the same. It is God’s love that makes us worthy of Him.

This is the joy of being loved!