The Good Shepherd (4th Sunday Easter C)

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday.  Our gospel reading (Jn 10:27-30) describes our relationship with Jesus in terms of a mutual intimate personal knowledge between the sheep and the Good Shepherd: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (v. 27).

There is a certain Amazonian tribe which has baffled researchers and anthropologists because of its unique trait—the members of the tribe don’t know how to count, neither can they learn it after being taught. They simply do not have the concept of numbers or numerals.  Intrigued by this information, a curious tourist once put this fact to a test by asking a member of the tribe who was tending his flock how many sheep he was taking care of. The shepherd just smiled, perplexed by the question; he couldn’t answer how many. The tourist continued asking: “If you cannot count your sheep, then how would you know that a sheep is lost?” The shepherd smiled again but this time he had an answer: “I just know because I know each of my sheep uniquely.  When the sheep with the thickest fur, for instance, is not around, I worry; I go and look for it.”

Sometimes when we are good at numbers, it is easier to deal with people as numerical data or as statistical variable.  And we stop right there and fail to have a personal knowledge of the people and hence, understanding of what they are going through in their lives.  

On the part of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, He knows his sheep beyond statistics, beyond the numerical description as “the 99 and the lost one.”   He knows his sheep even 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. He knows us intimately because, as the Psalmist proclaims, “He made us, we belong to him, we are his people, the sheep of his flock” (Ps 99: 3). 

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 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).

Have I experienced the Lord as the Good Shepherd who knows me uniquely, loves me and takes care of me, making sure that nothing takes me out of his hand?

On our part, to be Jesus’ sheep to whom He offers life, we need to know his voice and follow him.  Knowing Jesus, the Good Shepherd, means hearing his voice in the depths of our conscience. It means recognizing His guiding and enabling presence in our daily lives, making his voice alive as we read and meditate on His words in the Scripture. It also means listening to him through the teachings of his Church. When we do this, when we truly listen to the voice of the Lord and follow him, we experience just what the Lord, the Good Shepherd, desires for us—life, a beautiful life, a blessed life, even eternal life.

But there are times we insist on doing things our own way.  We ignore the Lord and his voice by our decisions and lifestyle that are contrary to his precepts.  These acts of freely ignoring the voice of the Shepherd may eventually lead us to our own suffering and brokenness.  Time and again, we hear real stories of people in pain. Many times their stories end with a painful question directed towards God: “Where are you? Why do you make me suffer? Don’t you truly love me and care for me?”  

We tend to blame others and God for the consequences of our foolishness and hardness of heart. Our gospel today reminds us that God is always faithful to his goodness, to his loving nature, to his desire to bless us and protect us because He is the Good Shepherd.  He knows each of us uniquely and cares for us for we belong to Him. He is always true and faithful to the covenant, to our loving relationship with him. But He does not coerce us to follow him.  He invites. We need to hear his voice and follow him freely. Like Him, we have to be faithful.

Do I listen to the voice of the Shepherd and allow Him to be my guide in life? Were there times when I ignored Him and went my own way? Have I ever blamed the Lord for the misfortunes I brought to myself?

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we thank the Lord for loving us in a personal and intimate way and for caring for us as a shepherd tends his sheep.  The Lord is the Good Shepherd who desires that we may have life.  

All we need to do is to be faithful to Him, always listening to His voice that we may follow Him to where He leads us—the pasture where we find fullness of life.

Do You Love Me? (3rd Sunday Easter C)

Have you been seriously asked this question: “Do you love me?” When you are aware of the full implication of the commitment to love, this question is truly a daunting one.  Many find it a lot easier to be non-committal by responding, “perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.”

When I was making up my mind about getting ordained as a priest, I had to grapple with this question. And of course the question, in my particular context, is thrown by God.  I had to face the Lord in my prayer and give my courageous answer.  After all, the authenticity of following the Lord essentially rests on the love that binds one with him.  Today’s gospel episode (Jn 21:1-19) helped me arrive at a decisive affirmation of my vocation. Allow me to share my personal insights that emboldened me to say yes.  Two related insights: First, with the Risen Lord, there’s life; without Him, there’s emptiness.  Second, the Risen Lord fills up the abyss of our inadequacy in loving him.

A Life of Bounty.  Any sane person desires to live a bountiful life—a fruitful and meaningful life. We are all in search of this life. The gospel today reveals to us the secret path to such a life: It is only with the Lord’s direction that one can truly attain a fruitful life.

The gospel begins with the scene where Peter and those with him decided to go fishing— actually to go back to fishing, a life they had already left behind when they followed the Lord. Fishing was their expertise; they were good at that.  But that night, the whole night, they caught nothing. When it was already dawn, the Risen Lord was standing on the shore and directed them to cast their net over the right side of the boat. “So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish” (v. 6).

This incident reminds all of Jesus’ disciples, starting from Peter himself, that we cannot boast of our expertise, skills, talents and know-how. These do not guarantee that we can be truly fruitful in what we do in life. A “large catch,” a bountiful and meaningful life, can be achieved only when we humbly submit our expertise to the Lord’s directions.  Apart from Him our abilities may be disoriented, our life fruitless.

I met a businessman, for instance, in Makati. Despite his seeming success in his trade, he admitted of his emptiness. Not only that, his intoxication with his success was leading him to destroy his family! His own brand of success gave him more occasions to cheat his wife and robbed him of his time to be with his children. Fortunately, before he totally destroyed what really mattered in his life he came to his senses: He could not continue to do it his own way lest he would certainly lose everything. 

Sometimes, it is good to hit the rock bottom of our folly because it shakes off our arrogance. And only in that posture of humility that we can listen to God’s directions and eventually enjoy a truly blessed bountiful life.

Do I allow the Risen Lord to give directions to my life? Or do I stubbornly and arrogantly insist on doing things my old way even after the Lord has shown me the way? 

Do You Love Me? Anyone who wants to follow the Lord has to face this question squarely. This is the question I had to face myself. Do I love the Lord enough to be his ordained priest? Do I love the Lord more than I love myself? More than I love the significant persons in life? More than his created things?

An honest evaluation of ourselves will most likely render us incapable of giving a categorical yes. We love the Lord, but we know full well that our human heart is fickle, forgetful, unfaithful, and many times coward. While it is a total dishonesty to say no, to say yes seems to be a form of arrogance.

Towards the end of today’s gospel episode, Jesus confronts Peter with this hard question: “Do you love me more than these?” Peter has to answer this three times! The same number of times he has denied the Lord just before the crucifixion! What a grilling moment this is for Peter! But this is a moment of grace too. The triple question of the Master is to allow Peter to undo his triple denial with a triple profession of love. Such is the Lord’s graciousness.

Peter’s profession of love is no longer arrogant. There is so much humility in his answer when he says “Yes Lord; YOU KNOW that I love you.” I love you as you know me and my imperfect heart.

I find so much consolation in this realization that the Lord knows our heart. He knows its inadequacies in loving him. Yet He finds ways for us to come to terms with every moment of our imperfection in loving him. He fills up the abyss of our inadequacy to love. Simply put, He enables our incompetent heart to love him!

It is this love—a graced love-- that any follower of Jesus will have to carry with him/her in the journey towards the path of discipleship.  “Feed my sheep” is Jesus’ charge to anyone who braves to embrace the challenge of loving him.

On this third Sunday of Easter, we are invited by the Lord to answer bravely but with humility his question, “Do you love me?” We may be well aware of our inadequacies in loving the Lord. This serves us well because it humbles us. But let us be equally aware of God’s enabling grace allowing us to love him. Like Peter may we then say, “Yes Lord; YOU KNOW that I love you.”  As we fulfill our charge to serve in whatever capacity we are called to, let God’s directions always be our cue; then, trust that we are in for a great catch.

Listen & Proclaim! (23rd Sunday Ordinary B)

The Asian Bishops (9th FABC) who gathered in Manila in August of 2009 ended the conference with a challenge to the clergy to make the Eucharist a “transformative event” for Catholics. The source of this power to transform, as the bishops intimated, is the Word of God being listened to devoutly by the faithful and proclaimed relevantly by preachers in the Eucharistic celebrations. Simply put, the call is for priests and catholic families to listen to the Word of God and to proclaim it in a relevant and nourishing way. These two complimentary acts of listening to and proclaiming the word of God can “bear the fruits of renewal.”

The acts of listening and proclaiming are the very acts that a person who is deaf and mute cannot possibly do. A deaf person cannot hear. He can’t listen. A mute person cannot speak. He cannot proclaim. Almost always, a deaf person since birth has problem speaking too. This gives us an insight into the relationship of listening and proclaiming the word of God: We can proclaim only what we have listened to.

Today’s gospel describes how Jesus heals a man who is deaf and mute. Jesus puts his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touches his tongue; Looking up to heaven says aloud, “Ephphatha!” (Be opened!). And the man’s ears are opened, his speech impediment removed (Mk 7:33-35). My intention is not so much to comment on the detail of Jesus’ action as to point out the significance which the evangelist Mark gives to this narrative. For Mark, the miracle is a reminder of Jesus’ ministry to the gentiles and therefore a validation of the ministry of the early church among the gentiles. This is the point of Mark: Like the gentiles, the man is both deaf and dumb towards God. Once the good news is proclaimed to him, however, his ears are opened to the word and his tongue is loosed to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.

We need to reflect too on the import of this narrative to the people of today—to us. In what sense are we like the deaf and mute person of the narrative? In what ways are we unable to listen to God’s word and, hence, not capable of proclaiming it? Or to put it in another way, relating it to the call of the Asian Bishops, what are the challenges we are facing today that hinder us from truly listening to the word of God and proclaiming it effectively and relevantly for the renewal of our communities?

Let me suggest three challenges, three trends without promising to be exhaustive: Today we tend to be 1) activity-driven; 2) electronic technology driven; and 3) consumption driven.

Activity-driven. We always seem to be very busy. We spend all our days moving from one activity to another, accomplishing one project to another. Beating deadlines. We become addicted to achievements. We somehow tend to believe that our worth as a person is in “doing.” No more time for “being.” No more time to be still and to listen to God’s word. Much less, to proclaim it in words and deeds. No wonder, many of what we do end up as self-centered, misguided, conventional achievements that bloat our ego but have no prophetic power to change the ills of our communities. Too much of disoriented activities. Less and less of discernment. Despite the amount of energy we spent, we have not served!

Electronic technology driven. We have too much data to process. Too much information—from text messages, from emails, facebook, twitter, favorite websites, netflix, video scandals, video games, endless sites on pornography and what have you. Information come and go. We are a generation with so many distractions that we can hardly focus on the essentials. We are losing our capacity for depth and our capacity to enjoy relishing something of beauty and of value. We settle for what is fleeting and superficial. Thus, we no longer appreciate the depth and beauty of the word of God ever ancient, ever new. No wonder our lives are shallow. Despite so many data and information, we lack understanding; we lack wisdom.

Consumption driven. This consumerist society of today would have us find the meaning of life in “having”-- to have more and more of things… more shoes, more shirts, more cellphones, more of everything that is advertised. A modern credo captures this trend,  we read this sometimes on a bumper sticker: “I shop, Therefore I am.” In this consumerist trend, our capacity to listen is exercised on the endless TV advertisements. What guide our lives are no longer the truth of the Word of God but the subtle lies of advertisement and the lure of possession that we listen to day after day. Our capacity to discern is reduced to making choices among leading brands of shampoo for instance and among new fashionable gadgets that become obsolete in a year or two. And we simply become deaf to the interior promptings of the Holy Spirit--the gentle invitation of God to choose him rather than created things. Despite so many things that we possess, our life is empty!

We are like the man in today’s gospel—deaf and mute—in many and varied ways. If we Christians continue to be so, Christianity loses its power to lead people to conversion, to renew families and communities and to transform our nation because like everybody else we would just settle with the frivolity of what is conventional, superficial, and fashionable. Like the deaf and mute in today’s gospel, we need an “ephphatha experience.” We need God’s grace to open up our ears and lips for us to listen to his Word most devoutly once again and proclaim it convincingly in words and in deeds.

The message of the Asian Bishops may have been Spirit-inspired—inviting all of us to make our Eucharistic celebrations as transformative events for our lives by giving attention to the Word of God. Let us become contemplative listener of His Word. Only then we can become effective proclaimer of the good news both by our lips and our lives. We can only proclaim what we have heard.

“Lord, open my ears and loosen my tongue to hear you and proclaim your goodness in a complacent society that wants to settle only for what is conventional, superficial, and fashionable.”

Invitation to Intimacy (2nd Sunday Ordinary B)

Right after Epiphany Sunday which celebrated the joyful truth of God’s manifestation to all nations and to each and every one of us to assure us of his fidelity to the covenant, we can now move on and continue to reflect deeply on this invitation to a loving relationship with this God who communicates and reveals Himself.

This Sunday, we can speak of the invitation to intimacy with God.  For most of us believers, God is present in our lives but great are the odds that we see Him as a distant God watching us from afar or as a God of providence who becomes especially real to us in times of dire need. Today’s readings reveal a God who calls us, who initiates a loving relationship with us, who invites us to intimacy.

God calls us through the voice of restlessness. The young Samuel, in the first reading (1 Sm. 3: 3-10, 19), experiences some restless nights trying to discern whose voice it is that calls him. Twice, he mistakenly believes it is Eli’s voice. Only on the third instance, with Eli’s guidance, that he recognizes the voice of God calling him. In the gospel reading (Jn. 1: 35-42), the first two disciples of Jesus find themselves in a restless search, perhaps, for something to which they can meaningfully devote their lives.  Jesus confronts them: “What are you looking for?”

Restlessness is a universal human experience. At some point in our lives, we all find ourselves searching for something that can give us peace, contentment, and meaning.  This spurs us on to a frustrating exploration in life looking for happiness in money and possessions, in our achievements and honors, in power and influence, in pleasure and easy gratification. Some quite desperately and sadly settle with destructive addictions.  

But restlessness can be the voice of God calling us to Himself.  Like Samuel, we need to listen to God’s voice: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” Or like the first disciples of Jesus, we need to face him and answer bravely his question, “What are you looking for?”  We can be helped tremendously by spiritual guides—like Eli and John who led Samuel and the disciples rightly to the direction of God.  Spiritual directors, as we call them now, can assist us in discerning the voice of God in our experience of restlessness and sorting out the authentic voice of God from many other voices that are there to confuse and mislead us.

God invites us to intimacy with Him. Only in God can our search be over.  As the famous line of St. Augustine’s confession goes: "You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

God desires that we rest in Him, that we spend time with Him.  Again, after Samuel recognized God’s voice and came to Him with an open and listening heart, the first reading states, “Samuel grew up and the Lord was with him.”  In the gospel, the disciples received Jesus’ invitation: “Come and see.”  This is an invitation to intimacy... an invitation to spend time with God and to know Him quite personally... not as a distant God... not as a “spare-tire God” whom we remember only when we are running with a flat tire.

Amid the hurly-burly of our crazy contemporary lives, we experience a growing emptiness or restlessness. If we are not guided properly, we can be very careless and senselessly plunge into an ultimately destructive coping mechanisms and addictions that offer us nothing but bottomless pit of emptiness.

Today’s readings remind us of God’s standing invitation—“Come and see...”  “Be with me...”  “Whatever you do... you can do it with me.”  Our restlessness is but a longing for intimacy with a God who is just too happy to be known and be recognized.  May we sort out, from the many voices that drown us every day, the real voice of God inviting us to intimacy with Him.

Let's See What We See (15th Sunday A)

“Let’s see what we see.” This is a favourite expression of Virgil, a blind character played by Val Kilmer in the 1999 movie, At First Sight.  It’s quite amusing to hear a blind man say this, knowing of course that he cannot see. I think there’s deliberate humour in it that tips off a capacity for a different kind of sight. 

Virgil, a masseur, was blind since age three. He met Amy in one his massage sessions.  Amy, a divorcee, fell for him because he helped her to truly hear and sense the world giving her new spirit and a burst of creativity.  Amy took Virgil to New York for a radical eye surgery which proved to be successful but only for a while. Virgil regained his sight but eventually lose it again due to retinal disease.

There is so much insight into the gift of seeing revealed by Virgil’s struggle to make sense of the new images that overwhelmed him after the surgery.  His eyes could see images but could not give meaning to them.  Learning how to see things meaningfully with his eyes was as painstaking as learning how to speak for the first time.  Later, after his short-lived adventure with sight, he would testify that he was better-off without his sight.  He was better off in “seeing” what was real in the world without his eyes. What a paradox!

This has reminded me of the often-quoted book of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince: "What is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only through the heart that one sees rightly."  Virgil saw what was real not through his eyes but through his heart.  

Healthy eyes are not a guarantee of profound vision.  On the other hand, a blind man, with a sensitive and receptive heart, can actually say with humour and integrity, “Let’s see what we see.”

Today’s gospel (Mt. 13: 1-23) does not just tell a parable, it also tackles the Lord’s reason for using it. There’s so much to learn from the parable of the sower, but I wish to reflect on the reason given by Jesus when asked why he employs parables.  Jesus’ answer has everything to do with seeing and listening as he says:

“I use parables when I speak to them because they look but do not see, they listen but do not hear or understand... Sluggish indeed is this people’s heart... But blest are your eyes because they see and blest are your ears because they hear” (Mt. 13: 14-16)

The parables of Jesus are meant to enlighten us about intangible truths (the mysteries of the Kingdom, for instance) using metaphors culled from day-to-day life.  But it seems that the parables also become a hindrance to seeing the truth and a punishment to those with “sluggish heart” who faithlessly refuse to accept the message of God.

Jesus is challenging us to see with our heart.  Seeing with the heart allows us to grasp with clarity the essentials in life as the Lord has revealed them. 

But all too often we don’t see clearly.  Without trying to be exhaustive, I submit the following hindrances to real and meaningful seeing:

First, our habit of looking away.  Again, in At First Sight, when he was able to see, Virgil observed with astonishment that people look away.  Unbelievable! They don’t actually look with intent.  This can mean they don’t want to face realities about themselves and others squarely. Virgil concluded that the problem with sighted people is that they go on with life without seeing their real selves.  Ouch!  Do we just glance through the superficialities of life? And avoid confronting what really matters to our lives?

Second, our habit of turning a blind eye.  Most of the time, we are confronted with hard realities in life, personal, social or realities within our families, things that matter most but are calling for change.  We actually see but we just don’t care enough.  We don’t want to get involved.  So even if the truth summons for radical change, we go on life as if we have seen nothing wrong and pretend that everything’s fine.  We turn a blind eye in order to spare ourselves from the obligation to move out of our comfort zones.

Third, our “sluggish heart.”  Lazy, slow, listless, slothful, lethargic heart.  This is what Jesus sees, in today’s gospel, as the fundamental hindrance to profound seeing and understanding.  A person with a lazy heart does not see beyond what meets the eye.  He or she does not reflect.  Life for such a person is all about flashy externalities and frenzied activities devoid of depths and meaningful connections.  Such a person does not notice the “parables” embedded into the stories of his day-to-day life.  A sluggish heart refuses to see the hand of God in the events of life.

It’s so true; only through the heart that one sees clearly what is essential.  A blind man’s receptive disposition despite the total darkness that envelops his world puts into question not just our capacity to see with our eyes but essentially the openness of our hearts.

Today’s gospel again is an invitation to see clearly what truly matters in life. It invites us to shake off our superficiality, our cowardice, and our heart’s laziness and complacency.  Jesus is more like a blind man gently grabbing us by the arm and inviting us for a walk as he says with a smile, “Let’s see what we see.”