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.

Climbing Our Sycamore Trees (31st Sunday Ordinary C)

(visiting the legendary sycamore tree in Jericho)

I recall my pilgrimage experience to the Holy Land visiting significant holy sites of our faith—first, around the Galilean region and, then, in the southern region where Jerusalem is. One significant itinerary was the city of Jericho!  It is said to be the oldest in the world. And of course, among the many significant sites we visited was the legendary “sycamore tree.” It was not the actual tree which Zacchaeus climbed; nonetheless, the sight of it lends to a vivid contemplation of the encounter of our Lord and the tax collector—an encounter which led to a joyful embrace of faith. 

Allow me to offer the fruits of my reflection straight from my actual visit to Jericho. Three things: On seeking the Lord, on climbing our sycamore tree, and on rediscovering the joy of believing.

Seeking the Lord.  Anyone who listens attentively to his heart’s yearnings will recognize, among a complex web of desires, his hidden longing for God.  In today’s gospel reading (Lk 19:1-10), Zacchaeus, described as a tax collector and a wealthy man, found himself seeking the Lord. He was probably in possession of what the world had to offer him but still deep within him lurked either, at the least, a  curiosity about Jesus or, at most, a nudging longing to meet and know Jesus. Despite the well-off socio-economic stature that he enjoyed, Zacchaeus was obviously restless. Maybe Jesus represented what would finally give him serenity and joy.

Despite what we have and who we have become in this world, we can still be restless like Zacchaeus. This restlessness gently prods us to seek the only treasure that gives ultimate meaning to our lives. Rather than drowning this restlessness with many and varied activities or with our hi-tech gadgets which effectively divert our attention outwards, the story of Zacchaeus invites us to listen inwardly and courageously to the restless yearning of our hearts. Like Zacchaeus, we are to face it squarely and do something about it—seek the Lord. As St. Augustine puts it: “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until it rests in you.”

Climbing our sycamore trees. This refers to our positive commitment to overcome the obstacles of a genuine encounter with the Lord. What hinders us in our search for God? What makes our encounter with God difficult or even close to impossible? Zacchaeus knew what, for him, was the obstacle to seeing the Lord. He was too short to see the Lord as He passed by through the crowd. With great humility, he accepted his predicament and, throwing caution to the air, he climbed the sycamore tree to overcome his handicap.

In his apostolic letter, Porta Fidei, the Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI clearly identified what consists as the great obstacle to the faith of the modern era. It is the materialist and secularist philosophies in life. These worldviews compliment and support each other in effectively convincing people that God is unnecessary in the affairs of human beings. Human beings are ultimately responsible for and in-charge of giving direction and meaning to his existence. How do we overcome these? What may represent for us the sycamore tree that we have to climb? Could it be our commitment to know Jesus through our Scripture reading and reflection? Through a meaningful celebration of our sacraments and liturgy especially the Eucharist? Pilgrimages? Or could it be the daily invitation to witness to our faith by our loving service to the poor?

The joy of believing.  Once we overcome the hindrances to faith by climbing our own sycamore trees, we discover, maybe as a surprise, that it is not only us who seek God. It is God who first seeks us and intends to stay with us.  Zacchaeus was really surprised that Jesus, instead of passing by, looked up to him perched on a branch of the sycamore tree and instructed him: “Zacchaeus, come down quickly for today I must stay at your house” (v. 5). He came down quickly and “receive him with joy” (v. 6).

a typical edifice in Jericho

Receiving the Lord and allowing him to stay in our hearts which have been yearning for His presence can only result in abundance of joy. There is joy in receiving the Lord in our lives; there is joy in truly living out our Christian faith. There is joy in surrendering our possessions for the sake of justice and charity to the poor.

Or have we gradually lost such joy like sand slipping bit by bit between our fingers?

Like Zacchaeus, let us listen to the yearning of our hearts for God; let us seek Him by climbing our own sycamore trees; let us be ready to surrender everything to God to give way to true and lasting joy. Let us be brave to take one step toward God, only to discover that God has taken a thousand steps toward us.

The Quest (17th Sunday A)

Three years ago I started to write a blog sharing my reflections on the Sunday liturgical readings.  I entitled it Pearl of Great Price in direct reference to today’s gospel reading (Mt. 13: 44-46). Needless to say, the parable of the pearl of great price is significant to me.  Hence, I would like to share what it is to me hoping others would also find spiritual inspiration from it.

“Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it” (vv. 45-46).

Life is a search.  Always we search for the good like the merchant searching for fine pearls.  Oftentimes we have the feeling that the search is endless.  Our hearts are never satisfied by what we find.  One day we feel like we’re happy with what we have; only to find out another day that we’re losing interest in it and we’re eyeing another object of our excitement.

 I finally bought a digital camera after a long and arduous process of canvassing making sure I got what I wanted.  I started taking pictures which brought me as far as China! But after a while, I felt like I needed something more powerful to allow me to take more pictures as candid

 as possible without the subject noticing it.  To cut the long story short, I got a camera with 12X optical-zoom specification which allowed me to shoot from afar.  What I didn’t understand was, when I already had it and even as I brought it with me anywhere, I lost interest in taking pictures altogether!  What I wanted to do was to pose!

There is one discovery in life though that liberates us from this pointless meandering search. It is the discovery of the pearl of God’s love. When we experience in our life the love of God, we gain a new perspective. Everything else that we deemed valuable and even essential takes a relative significance. A person who has in his or her heart the love of God no longer clings to whatever possession for he or she knows now what is truly essential. A person who discovers the pearl of God’s love sells all that he or she has in order to possess the one thing that the human heart truly longs. In the words of St. Therese of Avila: Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta. Solo Dios basta ( He who has God does not lack anything. God is enough).

Interestingly, for the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, the search of the human heart still does not stop at the discovery of the treasure of God’s love.  On the contrary, finding God is the beginning of a true and deeper search for God.  But this time, we know what we truly ache for—the only necessary thing.

Let me share Henri Nouwen’s words hoping they would make your hearts smile too in joyful agreement. Culled from The Only Necessary Thing:

“You can be truly happy that you have found the treasure. But you should not be so naive as to think that you already own it.... Having found the treasure puts you on a new quest for it. The spiritual life is a long and often arduous search for what you have already found. You can seek God only when you have already found God. The desire for God’s unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched but that love.”

“Because finding the treasure is only the beginning of the search, you have to be careful. If you expose the treasure to others without fully owning it, you might harm yourself and even lose the treasure. A newfound love needs to be nurtured in a quiet, intimate space. Overexposure kills it.... Finding the treasure without being ready yet to fully own it will make you restless. This is the restlessness of the search for God. “

Wow. What more can I say?

Maybe to sum up the point:  There are two levels of searching—one for the useless things and another for the only necessary thing.  Both seem to propel us to restlessness. The former elicits restlessness because of the growing emptiness that gnaws at our being. The latter makes us restless because we can’t wait to fully possess what truly matters—the pearl of God’s love.

What search makes me restless?