With Hearts Burning (3rd Sunday of Easter A)

(image grabbed from https://www.gerhardy.id.au/)

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the Master calls a butterfly.” This quote from the American writer, Richard Bach, echoes our Easter faith. We look beyond the sorrow, the seeming defeat of the cross of Christ and see the glory, the joy of the victory of Christ’s resurrection. Particularly in this time of great fear and anxiety, loneliness and possible depression all over the world brought about by COVID-19 pandemic, it provides all of us this much needed hope to see what’s going on through the eyes of our Easter faith.

Like the caterpillar, we can be oppressed by our short-sightedness and hence allow the darkness of the present situation to completely envelop us. Our faith in the Risen Lord, however, is the ray of light that cracks through the darkness of our cocoons and help us realize that we are destined to fly with wings of adorable colors.

The account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in today’s gospel (Lk 24:13-35) provides us this Easter hope. It recounts to us how these two disciples have been overcome with disappointment and discouragement because of the event of the death of Jesus Christ whom they had hoped to be the Messiah, their deliverance from oppression. With crashed hope, they walk away from Jerusalem finding it hard to believe what has transpired-- even the news of Him rising from the dead. They have given up on their aspirations; and their journey to the village, Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem, speaks volume about their decision to have nothing to do anymore with this failed Messiah. This is their “caterpillar view.” But the Risen Lord does not let them stay in this short-sightedness and hopelessness. The account continues to show how the Risen Lord enlightens them with a short course on the Scriptures and with the breaking of the bread until they finally realize how their hearts are burning within them with new zeal and joy so much so that they have to set out right away back to Jerusalem to tell others that Jesus is risen!

This “Emmaus account” is our Easter assurance that in our moments of darkness and hopelessness we can count on Jesus to walk with us, to stay with us, and to bring us back to our feet running with hearts on fire!

Jesus walks with us. As the two discouraged disciples walk away with heavy hearts, Jesus, the risen Lord, walks with them. Jesus accompanies them through their darkest hours, helping them see some rhyme and reason amid their hopelessness. Jesus points out through the Scriptures how faithful God is to his promise. He shows them how his suffering and seeming defeat on the cross leads to his victory, how his humiliation leads to his glory, how his death leads to everlasting life as promised by God.

Jesus walks with us during our difficult journeys in life. His Easter victory is always our strength and assurance of God’s faithfulness. Many times we cannot fathom the mysteries of life—its pains, sorrows, meaninglessness at times. But the Lord invites us to live by faith. God is good. He is faithful. The resurrection of our Lord is God’s fidelity to his promise. This we can take to the bank.

In moments of discouragement, disappointment, and hopelessness let us allow Jesus to walk with us. He is God’s Word; let us find consolation and enlightenment as we reflect on the word of God giving us assurance of his goodness and grace. Let us invite the Risen Lord to cast away the darkness and fill our hearts with his shining glory, making them burn within us as it did those of his disciples at Emmaus.

Jesus stays with us. The Lord indeed accepts the invitation of the two disciples: “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over” (Lk 24:29).  The Lord takes this opportunity to join them at table and break bread with them. ‘Breaking bread’ is the early name for the Eucharist. And indeed, we see Jesus taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread to them. It is exactly during this moment that they recognize him as the Lord.

We experience the abiding presence of our Lord in our Eucharistic celebrations. When we do the breaking of the bread “in memory of Him,” we are not just recalling his sacrifice done in the past; the Eucharistic celebration makes present among us who participate in the meal the one and the same sacrifice of Jesus Christ in his last supper. Just as the two disciples recognize the Lord during the breaking of the bread, we also experience the presence of the risen Lord in all our Eucharistic celebrations.

When we are down and our days seem dreary, where can we go? We look for Jesus. In the Eucharist we hear his Word and we experience his living presence. We invite the Lord to stay with us. And he’ll make our hearts burn within us.

Jesus brings us back to our feet. Hearts burning with zeal and new found joy cannot be contained. The two disciples, upon recognizing the Lord, cannot wait for the next day. They have to set out at once. Now! The good news burns inside them; they have to be back on their feet, aching to tell the others back in Jerusalem who may still be reeling in their own hopelessness too. As they arrive though, they join the Eleven and other disciples affirming with joy that the Lord has been truly raised. This is the first Easter community!

We are Easter people. We carry with us the good news that brings hope to the sorrowing, the anxious, the discouraged, the depressed and anyone who sees the darkness of their cocoon as the end of the world. We may have been once in the same darkness but we now have the risen Lord with us whose glory has broken through our own experiences of hopelessness. Then, as Easter people, we have to be on our feet. We have to set out and proclaim that God is always true to his Word; that He abides with us, and He brings life to all.

The Lord is alive! This we proclaim with hearts burning.

Facing Death Smiling (5th Sunday Lent A)

Nong Titoy was my favorite Kaabag (Eucharistic Lay Minister).  I admired him because of his selfless and uncomplaining manner of serving the Church in many and varied ways. In him I witnessed how, in poverty, a man can still be very generous with his time and the gift of himself. He was old enough to be my own father yet he had shown me deep respect. When he knew he was dying of cancer, he asked for me.  While lying on his bed, he took my hand and brought it to his forehead saying, “Bless me, Father… I’m dying.” Then he sobbed silently still holding my hand. I asked him if he was in pain. He looked at me and told me he was afraid. He continued sobbing.

A little later while I administered the anointing, I told him how much I admired him as a faithful disciple of Christ, that I was really grateful for his generosity in serving the Church, that I was very proud of him.  Jesus was even more proud of him and would certainly not lose him for the Spirit of the Lord had always been with him as manifested in the way he lived.

With the assurance of Christ’s mercy and love, Nong Titoy realized he had no reason to be afraid. As we continued chatting a little bit more, his sobs gradually turned into laughter, albeit, faint and weak. He was smiling when I left. And that was my last picture of him.

Helplessness in death.  Without Jesus Christ in our life, death is frightening.  It could mean the end of everything that we have and are.  As we die, we can be filled with anxiety and fear because, without Christ, everything we have valued and cherished in this life will turn into nothing.  Without Christ, death is the end of everything for us. Period. That’s frightening.

And what is even more cruel is the experience of our helplessness in the face of death.  Death comes, like it or not. While we may be able to postpone it, we cannot do anything to stop it. In the gospel reading today, Martha expressed such helplessness in the absence of Christ: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn. 11: 21). But it seems, in the gospel reading, Jesus allowed the feeling of helplessness to be experienced by Lazarus.  He came four days too late.  Rather than do a miracle for his friend’s sake, He seemed to have allowed death to claim Lazarus.

Why so? Perhaps, helplessness brings forth humility to accept our total dependence on God’s life-giving Spirit.  Without this source of life, we die and that’s it. Helplessness in the face of death makes us realize the power of what Jesus claims in the gospel reading: “I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live” (Jn. 11:25). In helplessness we realize that only God can open our graves, as promised by the Prophet Ezekiel in the first reading, and have us rise from them. Only God can put his spirit in us that we may live. In helplessness we realize, as Lazarus’ family did, that only in and through Jesus Christ that death is vanquished and new life may flourish.

Life in the Spirit.  Lazarus symbolizes the Christian, the believer, who has died in the flesh but has been given life in the spirit by the Risen Lord. Lazarus stands for all the members of the early Christian community in Rome addressed by St. Paul in the second reading (Rom 8:8-11) in these words:  “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. “  St. Paul explains to the Christian community in Rome that they now have the life in spirit through the indwelling of the Spirit of the one who raised Christ from the dead.

Lazarus symbolizes you and me today. Because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we now possess the eternal life of the spirit. This gift of new life is realized in us sacramentally through our submission to baptism. In baptism, we celebrate our faith in Jesus.  Through the ritual act of immersion into the baptismal water, we symbolically experience our helplessness in death; and by emerging from the water, we joyfully rise with new life, the gift of the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us.

Invitation to Live Fully.  We easily think of eternal life as a future gift. By thinking so, often we miss to appreciate the gift of that same divine life—the life in the spirit--already given to us through our baptism. Jesus is the resurrection and life. Anyone who believes in him, even if he dies, will live. This is so because we already possess here and now the life given by Christ. Our physical death is only our passage to the fullness of eternal life.

Easter is approaching.  The joy of Lenten anticipation of Easter looks forward to the celebration of the triumph of Christ over sin and death.  The joy reminds us to live out fully every day the gift of new life that Christ has won for us and has given us in baptism. When we have lived out fully our life in the spirit—characterized by our love and service of God and neighbor--we can face our own death smiling as Nong Titoy did.  For with the spirit of the risen Christ already dwelling in us, death is nothing but a passage to the consummation of the gift of life well-lived.    

Children of Light (4th Sunday Lent A)

I see trees of green and red roses too; I see them bloom for me and for you;
And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world!”

I see skies of blue and clouds of white; Bright blessed days, dark sacred nights;
And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world!”

Louis Armstrong’s distinctive gravelly voice caught my attention and led me, for the first time, into an appreciation of this beautiful song. Much later, with Michael Buble’s contemporary rendition, I fell in love again with this song a second time. And again, a third time, when I heard a local artist in Zamboanga City, sang this with his dark shades on in a restobar. What’s amazing in his performance was not that he had a superior quality of voice compared to the two great singers who popularized the song. No. What’s incredible was the fact that he was a blind man. When he joined us at table after his performance, he allowed me to witness a great irony in life. Here was a blind man who, I presumed to be living in the dark, but surprisingly, had a way of seeing and celebrating the beauty and wonders of life; he could honestly proclaim at the top of his lungs, "What a wonderful world!" Whereas I had been with many people with perfect eyesight but, alas, stuck in the unfortunate dark side of life, grumbling, unable to celebrate with joy the gift of light and life.

(grabbed from http://junialeigh.wordpress.com)

A similar irony is depicted by today’s gospel reading (Jn 9:1-41). A blind man since birth is healed by Jesus. Not only is he enabled to see, he also grows in his faith. He begins to know Jesus Christ and accepts him as the Son of Man. In this gospel incident, the blind, who has been in darkness and believed to be under the curse of sin, embraces the light of Christ and is freed by Christ’s saving grace and becomes a believer. Ironically, the Pharisees who are known for their strict observance of the Law of Moses and who pride in their holiness turn out to be the ones suffering from serious form of blindness as they refuse to see God’s saving grace at work in Jesus. They refuse to embrace the light of Christ. They persist in condemning the blind man to his state of sinfulness. They are incapable of celebrating the joy of liberation from sin and darkness. They refuse to believe in Jesus as the savior.

The healing of the blind man proclaims that Jesus is the light of the world.  He frees those who accept his grace from the darkness of sin. The blind man’s washing in the Pool of Siloam hints at the cleansing ritual of baptism where we embrace our faith in Jesus and accepts him as our savior. Like the blind man, we used to be people of darkness but through the light of Christ received in baptism we become children of the light.

St. Paul, in the second reading (Eph 5:8-14), admonishes the Christian community in Ephesus to live as children of light: “Brothers and sisters, you were once darkness, but, now, you are light, in the Lord. Behave as children of light.” The Ephesians lived once without faith but through baptism have been enlightened. They must now live according to their new life in the light. The admonition to behave as children of light is an invitation towards two things: To do only what is good and to expose the works of darkness as here explained by St. Paul: “You, yourselves, search out what pleases the Lord, and take no part in works of darkness, that are of no benefit; expose them instead.”

Like the blind man and the early Christian community in Ephesus, we too have become children of the light in Christ. The season of Lent is our invitation to behave as children of the light. This may imply a lot of things but allow me to suggest three things in the light of our readings:

Exposing what remains in the dark. Behaving as children of light means exposing whatever is done in the dark as St. Paul reminds us. This season, we can expose to the light of Christ the remaining darkness in our lives. We can allow the light of the Lord to shine in us as it dispels the darkness of our sins. In our examination of conscience let us invite Jesus to enlighten us and lead us towards sincere act of contrition. In the Sacrament of Penance and reconciliation, we can bravely expose our sins by confession and allow God’s mercy to embrace us.

Celebrating the triumph of grace. Behaving as children of light also invites us to celebrate with joy the truth of God’s saving grace working in our lives. Rather than grumbling over the imperfections within us and around us, let us, with the eyes of faith, see the triumph of the light of God’s grace over the darkness of sin. Let us think to ourselves, “What a wonderful world!” for this world is truly blessed by God. Let us acknowledge God’s blessings. Let us be grateful for our blessings and be joyful when others are blessed too by God’s grace.

Becoming the light of the world. Finally, behaving as children of light is becoming the light of Christ to others by our good works. Our goodness is the light of Christ shining in us. St. Paul reminds us that “the fruits of light are kindness, justice and truth, in every form.” We can be a light to others, especially to those suffering from different forms of misery, when we reach out to them with kindness, when we commit ourselves for the cause of justice, when we relate to others with sincerity and work with honesty.

As we continue with our Lenten journey towards Easter, we strengthen our conviction that we are no longer a people of darkness. We have Jesus who has given us his light and liberated us from our disoriented groping in the dark alleys of sin. Let us behave, then, as children of light.