Stewardship (25th Sunday Ordinary C)

In 2013, On National Heroes’ Day, Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle joined a protest march that called for the abolition of the Pork Barrel fund as it had been the source of scandalous corruption in the government. He exhorted all Filipinos to act collectively with heroism and with honor anywhere they are.  Few days earlier in a press conference, the Cardinal had addressed his challenge to those involved in the “intricate web” of corruption to visit the poor and slum areas in order to get a real feel of the suffering of the poor. The Cardinal said: “On my own, I just think those that are doing such things are capable because the poor is absent in their lives. Maybe they cannot see them or they don’t want to see them. But once they see them and even feel their suffering, maybe, they will at least be disheartened and moved by it.”

Indeed, the corruption of the country’s resources perpetuates the suffering of the poor.  The multibillion pork barrel scam, for instance, has been a great injustice to the Filipino people who, for long, have been struggling with poverty while those who are entrusted with power continue to enrich themselves at the poor’s expense.

Today’s readings lend themselves to a reflection on material stewardship. The readings allow us to focus on three aspects of stewardship: It is at the service of the poor, at the service of one’s legitimate needs, and at the service of God.

At the service of the poor.  Cardinal Tagle’s challenge to the politicians to be sensitive to the suffering of the poor echoes the message of the Prophet Amos in the first reading (Am 8:4-7) to those “who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land.” Amos decries the unjust practices of the rich, particularly the merchants who exploit the poor people in buying and selling—the scales were adjusted to the advantage of the agent, while the poor paid more or received less.  Amos warns them of the Lord’s justice. They will be held accountable for everything they have done against the poor.

A responsible stewardship is sensitive to the needs of the poor. Those who have been entrusted with power and with the resources ought to see that all these must be at the service of the suffering poor.  Hence, stewardship implies the commitment to put up socio-economic and political systems, policies, and practices which assure the material security of the needy and the empowerment of the poor.

In our present clamor for a clean government, we pray that the justice of God prevails, that the exploitative and corrupt systems be abolished, and that we all take seriously the invitation to address the cry of the suffering poor.   

At the service of one’s legitimate needs. Material goods are entrusted to us as our means of meeting our basic needs and those of our dependents.  Christian stewardship does not scorn material things but calls for detachment from them lest they might take the place of God in our lives.  Material things are means and not end in themselves.  They have to be utilized with prudence in order to serve our end. 

The parable of the fired steward in the gospel reading (Lk 16: 1-13) illustrates that in the moment of crisis, the steward prudently used the material things at his disposal to secure his future.  He instructed his master’s debtors to write a discounted amount on their promissory notes.  These reduced the charges owed by eliminating the “service charge” which is normally due to him as an agent. By deciding to let go of his share, he gained friends from whom he could ask help in the future.

Stewardship calls for prudence and a degree of freedom from material goods in order to serve rightfully our basic needs without falling into the trap of greed and inordinate love for created things.

At the service of God.  The gospel reading ends with this reminder: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (v. 13). The inordinate love for created things compels us to sacrifice our health, family, friendship, moral principles, and faith convictions in favor of material gains. This is serving mammon and not God. When we close our eyes to the suffering of the poor and enrich ourselves at the expense of the poor, we are serving mammon and not God.  

Christian stewardship is serving God, not mammon. A faithful steward knows that God is the master; God is the source of bounty; God is the ultimate owner of everything. It is God he serves not money; His will he follows.

If only we can manage our material goods and other human affairs according to His will as the Prophet Amos reminds us, we would see justice, peace, and true development flourish in our land. 

Hence, today we ask the Master to forgive us of our dishonesty and mismanagement as stewards.  We ask for forgiveness for causing the suffering of the poor, for our greed and selfishness, for worshipping and serving mammon. And we ask the grace of prudence and freedom to dispose of our material goods at the service of the poor, of our own legitimate needs, and of God.

Vigilance (19th Sunday Ordinary C)

What would you be doing if today were to be your last day?

Perhaps you would drop all your non-essential preoccupations and spend your precious time, instead, with your loved ones to tell them you love them. Or visit your friends and thank them for the joy and support they have given you throughout life. Ask forgiveness from those whom you have caused pain and forgive those who have hurt you. Donate your possessions to those who are in need. Entrust everything to God as you spend silent moments in prayer. Etc.

When we are given a deadline in life, we gain a new perspective. We see things—the essential things—more clearly. And we gain a sense of urgency to fulfill these essential things lest we end up with irremediable regrets. But the problem is we don't often have a sense of deadline in life. We peacefully live with the illusion that we always have more time to do what is important, so that many of us have developed a ma ñana habit, eternally postponing for tomorrow what we ought to do today. Still some of us resort to sloth, or the " Juan Lazy " way of life, having less and less enthusiasm and energy for life's purpose and mission. Still others wait for the last minute to act, so they are always panicky and stressed rushing things in order to beat the deadline as it comes.

Vigilance. The gospel today (Lk 12:32-48) gives us that sense of deadline by reminding us of the coming of the Son of Man. Biblical scholarship suggests two meanings of this coming: One is the Parousia which is the second coming of Christ as our Judge to put a conclusion to the narrative of history and the other is the coming of our Lord in our personal death to conclude our earthly pilgrimage. In the parable of the servants awaiting their master's return from a wedding (v. 35-38), the servants are exhorted to be vigilant and prepared for the hour of the master's coming. The subsequent parable of the unexpected coming of a thief (v. 39-40) makes the point clear that the moment of the coming of the Son of Man is unknown: "You must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come" (v. 40).

Hence, we know there is a deadline but we don’t know when exactly is that moment when we will have to face our ultimate Judge either as a people or as an individual. The message then is clear: We must be prepared at all times. This is what vigilance means. Our universal call to holiness, to goodness, to human responsibility, to integrity, to love must be heeded not at the eleventh hour of our lives. In the first place, we often do not know when the eleventh hour is. Our call has to be heeded every day. We ought to fulfill what kind of persons we are called to become each and every day of our lives.  We cannot afford to procrastinate and decide to be good, generous, honest, holy and loving when we are already old and about to die. Our invitation is to develop habitual dispositions of goodness, integrity, holiness and love. This is how we make ourselves prepared always for the coming of the Lord.

Our initial question about what we would do on our last day is after all not a good question to start with. For it is not what we do on our last days that we are asked to be concerned about. That we should hurriedly catch up on doing important matters on the eleventh hour just betrays our lack of enthusiasm, sincerity, and commitment to our responsibilities as we moved on with life. Rather, it is what we have become at the end of our lives that counts most as we face our Judge. The process of becoming is not done on a single day or on the last day. The process requires every day. We become the kind of persons the Lord calls us to be as we commit to the values of the Kingdom every single day of our lives. This is vigilance.

What kind of person you shall have become when the Lord comes? This may guide and inspire us better to be faithful to our commitments every day.

Faithfulness and Prudence of a Steward. The last of the parables in today’s gospel (v. 42-48) suggests that upon his arrival the Master looks for his faithful and prudent steward. If He finds him being so, the Master will put him in charge of all his property. But if that servant abuses his Master’s trust, the Master will come unexpectedly and will mete out severe punishment and will assign this worthless servant “a place with the unfaithful.”

We are asked to become a faithful and prudent steward. What have we been entrusted with by the Lord? It is important that we understand that whatever is given us is meant for the service of God’s people. The authority, wealth, talents, skills, and other charisms we may have been given ought not to be abused through irresponsibility and self-centeredness. All of these are entrusted to us that we may serve well. We have to develop them and use these gifts every day not only for our own good but for the good of others and for the greater glory of the Master.  

When the Master arrives unexpectedly, be it on Judgment Day or on our own personal death, may we be found ready and worthy to be entrusted with all God's heavenly treasures, ready and worthy to recline at the table of God's heavenly banquet.

Of Vanities and Foolishness (18th Sunday Ordinary C)

Somebody sent me this piece of thought via facebook : The three stages of life—Teens. You have all the time and energy but no money; Workers. You have money and energy but no time; Oldies. You have money and time but no energy.

If the meaning of life were to be sought in purely materialistic terms, there is the inevitability of ending up with a pessimistic conclusion: Life is absurd and tragic. When the Dalai Lama was asked what surprised him most about humanity, he said: “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

The pessimism of Qoheleth in the first reading (Eccl 1:2; 2:21-23) expresses too the meaninglessness of man’s toil and anxiety of heart, as he would just leave his property to another who has not worked for it. For Qoheleth, “all things are vanity!” This pessimism propels us to search further for the enduring meaning of life. If material things and preoccupation with them leave our life in vain, what, then, makes a meaningful commitment and occupation in life?

The gospel reading (Lk 12:13-21) further presents what comprises our human folly. Christians ought to be wary of these three related forms of foolishness: Greed, Hedonism, and Materialism.

Greed.  Jesus, in the gospel, teaches the crowd: “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions” (v. 15). Greed is a selfish insatiable desire for more material things, more wealth, more possessions. At heart, it is a disordered love for created things. It is not farfetched, then, for St. Paul to regard greed as a form of idolatry (Col 3:5). Greed is foolishness because it loves deliriously the wrong object. This disordered love leads to frustration and not satisfaction: “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction“ (Erich Fromm).

Hedonism. The parable of the rich fool alludes too to the foolishness of the hedonist philosophy in life. The character in the parable hoards his bountiful harvest in his new and larger barns and plans for a life of comfort and pleasure. The rich fool says to himself: “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!” There are people who subscribe to a philosophy that glorifies pleasure as the principle of a meaningful life.  Yet experience tells us that pleasure are passing and does not makes us truly happy. Making it the ultimate goal in life leads to suffering because it only ushers us to an endless cycle of frustrating attempts to satisfy our desires. The cycle can lead to destructive patterns of addiction and all of life may be wasted.

Materialism.  The parable concludes with the reminder of the foolishness of materialism: “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” (v. 20).  Our contemporary lifestyle is materialistic. We are made to believe, by way of advertisements, that a good life is one that has acquired the latest gadgets, cars, and stuffs. Hence, we get up every day pursuing “earthly treasures,” accumulating more and more of material things.  We ignore the deepest longing and spiritual yearning of our hearts, hence we are never happy. And we will never be, as long as we persist in our foolish quest: “Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God” (v. 21).

In both the first reading and the gospel, the death of the man whose life is preoccupied with material pursuit exposes the vanity and foolishness of such preoccupation. Death, indeed, reveals to us what is essential. It gives us a clear perspective. I would like to suggest two Christian perspectives discernible in our readings today as our invitation: Christian Stewardship and the perspective of freedom.

Stewardship.  Material possessions and wealth are not evil in themselves. Rather, they are gifts entrusted to us by the abundance of nature and God’s providence. They have instrumental value. They are a means to our end, not our goal itself. They help us fulfill our mission. When material things are entrusted to us, we are invited to be a responsible steward. In the spirit of gratitude and generosity then, we are to share what we have been given to those who are in need.  Sharing becomes our way of loving. And we don’t love things; we love God and neighbor.

Freedom.  In this materialistic era, Christians ought to heed the gospel’s invitation to grow in freedom—freedom from and freedom for.  We need to be freed from our greed which enslaves us to our material desires. When our possessions possess us, we become slaves and no longer responsible stewards. We need to grow in our freedom from our inordinate attachments to created things. This allows us to be free for the Creator himself.  Real freedom is freedom for God, that capacity to choose God as our fundamental option and to love God above all else with ease. We are invited to grow in this ability to commit to “what matters to God,” to expend our energies in toiling for what endures—the real treasures in heaven.

When life is unreflected, it is not worth living. But when it is lived according to the gospel values, life finds its enduring meaning. It ceases from becoming a pitiful affair of vanities and foolishness.

 

Squatters in Heaven (28th Sunday Ordinary B)

In 2009, several days after the wrath of storm Ondoy, the news on TV sent me deeply reflecting. The news was showing efforts to send the evacuees back to their homes. Several families, though, could not go home even if they were very eager to. They could not go home because there was no longer a place to go back to. They had been squatters for years. When the relentless flood forcibly drove them away, the landowner effectively secured his property and got rid of them.  “At long last,” the owner might have sighed with relief.

If you were in the shoes of the landowner would you have done the same? In times of dire need, when thousands of families, mostly poor, are displaced, hungry, thirsty, sick, afraid, and traumatized, would you do what the landowner did? Would you be so concerned about preserving your possessions that you would even thank heavens for the storm that shooed away the poor out of your sight?

I admit this is a disturbing concern especially for a serious follower of Christ. It is not that easy to let go of one’s possessions in favor of caring for the poor.  Alas! “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mk 10:25). With the realities cited above, it is not very difficult to understand another of Jesus’ unconventional aphorisms.

In today’s gospel (Mk 10:17-30), Jesus challenges the widely held belief of his time that the rich have the favor of God on their side which is precisely the reason for the material blessings they enjoy. The exaggeration Jesus employs is an effective way of calling the attention of the rich who have become complacent and enslaved by their material possessions. A well-meaning and religious rich man may fail to ‘inherit eternal life,’ like the rich man in today’s gospel, when he cannot let go of his material possessions to help the poor and follow Jesus. Discipleship does not consist only in a legalistic adherence to religious precepts and commandments like “Thou shall not do this” and “Thou shall not do that.”  For in this sense, discipleship would merely mean NOT DOING anything that is forbidden by God’s law. There is more to discipleship than this. Following Jesus means DOING something—“GO and SELL possessions,” “GIVE to the poor,” “FOLLOW Jesus” (v. 21). The rich man in the gospel went away sad; he could not do what Jesus asked of him “for he had many possessions” (v. 22). This is the essential sadness of the rich!

In plain and simple terms, the message of the gospel is this: Those who have riches have an obligation to care for those who do not. Failure to do this will bar them from eternal life. Material possessions are to be had in the spirit of stewardship.  God is the sole owner of everything. We are his stewards. We have to responsibly take care of whatever is entrusted to us for the good of all. A responsible steward delights in the abundance of material things only because it means greater capacity to share, to serve, to help, to save the needy from the evil of poverty. It means greater opportunity to exercise the responsibility he shares with the Creator in sustaining and providing for his creation.

In the Philippines, where poverty situation is becoming more and more scandalous given the fact of the concentration of the resources in the hands of a powerful few and the fact that this is a Christian country, Jesus’ teaching has clearly not been taken seriously. We are a Christian country which has gotten inured to the disturbing plight of millions of our brothers and sisters in sub-human living conditions. The poor are squatting as if God has forgotten to provide for them. No. God has not forgotten; He has endowed all humanity with the bounty of his creation so that all may have a share for all their needs. It is our greed for material possessions that has caused and perpetuated a greatly skewed distribution of resources in favor of the rich and powerful.

A story to end: A very wealthy man died and faced the gatekeeper of heaven. He was led to a shanty.

“This is your dwelling place,” the gatekeeper pointed out.

The rich man objected, “This is disgusting! This is like the houses of the squatters in my neighborhood!”

“Well,” the gatekeeper replied, “that is the house you prepared for yourself.”

He asked, “How come?! And whose is that fine mansion across the way?”

“It belongs to one of your neighbors.”

“How is it that he has a mansion and I get to live in this shanty?”

“Well, the houses here are made from the materials that people sent up. We do not choose them: You do that as much as you give on earth.”

If we continue to clench our hands because of greed for wealth and material possessions and refuse to heed the gospel’s imperative of making use of these for the needs of the poor, we might not have a place in the Kingdom of God and might end up as squatters in heaven. And it's only fair, isn't?

Talents and Accountability (33rd Sunday Ordinary A)

I remember Lynlyn, a working student my mother sent to school several years ago. While staying in our home and assisting my mom with the domestic chores, she diligently completed her college degree in Education. Lynlyn was truly admirable.  Instead of complaining about life’s poverty and deprivation, she faithfully faced every single day doing what she could with the little that life had given her.  I remember whenever I was home, I would notice her industriousness in doing the house chores and her capacity to endure extended hours of studying and completing her class requirements. Eventually, she graduated and took the teacher’s board examination. I was, by chance, at home on the day of the release of the result.  I asked her if she made it. She smiled sheepishly and nodded! Lynlyn is now a teacher.    

When life seems to have given us very little as compared to the abundance the others enjoy, it’s so easy to wallow in the mud of self-pity.  I think, Lynlyn stands for a person who has been given less in life but does not succumb to the temptation of defeat.  Instead, she rises above the seeming unfairness of life by capitalizing whatever little she has got.

Today’s gospel is the Parable of the Talents (Mt. 25:14-30). Three servants are entrusted with five, two, and one talent respectively to be invested in the master’s absence.  Talent was the largest unit of currency known at that time.  Other translations render a talent as a thousand silver pieces.  Hence, the first servant is entrusted with five thousand silver pieces, the second with two thousand, the third with one thousand silver pieces.  Today we understand talents as some skills and personal qualities we are gifted with.  While the parable does not intend to legitimize, much less glorify, the inequalities in life, it instructs us about our sense of responsibility especially in view of the final accounting at the end of time.  We are accountable to our Master.  Our accountability is in direct proportion to the abilities with which we have been entrusted. 

Much is expected from whom much is given.  Hence, the master in the parable is happy with the first two servants who manage to double the amount they have entrusted with. But while the master does not expect much from him who has been given very little, he still expects at least whatever enterprising spirit that could be harnessed with whatever little resources made available.  Hence, the third servant who just buried his talent out of his negative notion of his master is rightly met with his master’s anger and punishment.

In application to life, I submit the following lessons:

There is no use complaining about what we do not have in life. Focusing too much in what we do not have can lead us to self-pity and defeat. We would rather do well appreciating who we are and what we have, even how little it is. This appreciation brings hope and strengthens our determination to overcome the lack in our life.  To those who are given less in life, God does not expect much more than what He has given them. But He surely invites them to show that they can be trusted even in small matters: “Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities” (Mt. 25:21). Mother Teresa of Calcutta is known to have said this: Not all of us can do great things but we all can do small things with great love.” So, stop complaining. Be faithful with the small things entrusted to you. Carry it out with great love. You’ll see that the world is a little better because of you.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” To those who are blessed with plenty in life, it’s good to remember that much is expected from you.  Many people end up as underachievers because they do not put to use the gifts they have been blessed with. Or they recognize their gifts but they refuse to accept the responsibility. So they spend life wasting what they have been given unable to contribute to the transformation of society and the world into a better place.  Underachievers are, needless to say, a real disappointment to God, the giver of gifts. When we experience God’s generosity, let us be grateful. Gratitude is appreciation of what we have been endowed with and a commitment to return the favor.

Whether we have received plenty or little in life, we will all be held accountable. Again, our accountability shall be in direct proportion to the capacities we have been endowed with.  After all, we are invited to be responsible and trustworthy stewards.  We pray and hope, then, that our life shall be a proof that we can be truly trusted with small matters on earth and, hence, deserving of greater things in heaven.

God's Disappointment (27th Sunday Ordinary A)

As a young priest then, I had been given a rare opportunity to start a parish out of a rural community. The enthusiasm of the parishioners was its greatest asset.  But the material and financial resources needed to begin though gave me anxious and sleepless nights. I wrote to friends asking for help and, you see, the blessings came in pouring! Hence, the parish gradually took off quite decently. This privileged experience of being blessed with supportive friends awakened in me a deep sense of gratitude and faith in the abiding presence of God. Once in the silence of the night, I prayed in tears thanking God for the privilege.

Blessings are meant to stir up in us the sense of gratitude, service and worship. But I am aware too that blessings and privileges can lead us to opposite directions. They can be intoxicating like any other good things in life.  They can lead us to a sense of entitlement instead of gratitude. When this happens we begin to demand rather than serve; we crave for more blessings and privileges no longer as a gift but as a matter of right. We enjoy and love them even more than we enjoy and love the Giver Himself, the God of providence. If we allow this to happen, we end up a real disappointment to God.

Jesus, in today’s gospel (Mt. 21:33-43), narrates another parable to express his disappointment with the religious leaders and elders of the people of Israel.  The Parable of the Tenants is a criticism of their leadership. Symbolized by the tenants, they were the ones entrusted with the care of “the vineyard”-- the chosen people of God.  The privilege of being the guardian of the elect people of God intoxicated them.  They began to act as if they own the vineyard. They refused to give an accounting of their produce to the owner and worse, they rejected and killed the owner’s emissaries and even the Son himself.  The parable shows the fact that the Jewish religious leaders forgot their true mandate—to bring the people of God to authentic worship and fidelity to God’s covenant with them. They were so blinded by their revered religious position that they rejected the prophets’ call for reform. They rejected even Jesus and his proclamation of the Kingdom of God. In short, they were a real disappointment.  The privileges given them ought to be revoked: “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit” (v. 43).

The privilege of the special election of the people of Israel was supposedly a blessing that ought to bring out a grateful response that leads to faithfulness in God’s will.  But, alas, this did not transpire. They were so engrossed with the privilege and their sense of entitlement that they grew oblivious of the God who elected them and made them special.

Moving beyond the original intent of the parable, I believe we can appropriate its challenge for us today.  Are we not disappointing God with how we manage every form of blessing and privilege he has entrusted to us? Looking around, I’m afraid I have to say that God must be disappointed.

God shares with us his abundance.  Wealth is a gift and a blessing. It ensures that we all live in dignity. But people tend to hoard this blessing only for the elite few. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen. So that some are living in luxury while others are subjected to subhuman conditions for want of basic necessities in life.  God’s abundance is also manifested in creation. If we look at our natural resources, we have exploited it without qualms. Our unbridled consumerism and wasteful lifestyle are taking their toll on the sustainability of creation. Did we not hear it said that we need four planets like Earth for us to catch up with the on-going feverish demand of our consumption?

God shares with us his power and authority.  These are necessary for the service of the common good. But look how we have been misusing these blessings as the very force that sustains and builds up the culture of corruption in every nook and cranny of the corridors of power. See how we have transformed these very blessings into a Machiavellian principle of oppressing the weak in order to perpetuate self-aggrandizement. 

God gives us the blessing of human sexuality that we may have the capacity for intimate relationship and to be God’s co-creator.  But we have allowed this sacred gift to deteriorate into a lucrative commodity in pornography and prostitution.  We want to enjoy the pleasure it brings but we deliberately avoid the procreative responsibility for which it is naturally meant. And what more, our societies have enshrined into law the basis for contraceptive mentality and culture of “safe sex” in the guise of concern for the plight of the poor!  

We can go on and on with a litany of blessings and privileges God has conferred on us and come to an honest assessment that God is most likely disappointed with us. It’s good to ask this on a personal level:  What are the blessings and privileges that I am enjoying in life? Have these led me to a grateful disposition and hence to a loving service of God’s people and intimate relationship with God?

Let us not push God to the end of his rope.  When God is disappointed with us, we ought to remember that He who confers can take back the blessings and privileges when these no longer serve their rightful purpose.

Rainbow After the Rain (1st Sunday of Lent B)

There’s a rainbow after the rain. So we say along with the poets.  This poetic solace has done the trick since the time of Noah’s covenant until the dawn of global warming when climate change has apparently altered the rules: There are just more rain now after a downpour.  Luzon had Ondoy a few years ago; and a couple of years later, Mindanao was caught asleep as Sendong’s downpour caused a ravishing flash flood carrying along heavy logs from the mountains of Bukidnon.  

I had a chance to visit the “Tent City” in Cagayan de Oro during the Diocesan Clergy of Mindanao Convention.  Hundreds of families displaced by typhoon Sendong were temporarily relocated at the site. The night before our visit, it rained.  Once more, the families living in the tents were flooded!  When we arrived the following day, some men were digging canals around the area as the clouds were becoming dark again! Shouldn’t these people be given a rainbow to see instead of another dark formation of clouds?

What happened to the covenant made by God with Noah and those who were saved from the great flood?  The first reading today (Gn. 9: 8-15) reminds us of the establishment of the covenant that never again shall a flood devastate the earth.  The rainbow has been designated as the sign of this covenant. Has God forgotten the covenant?

Some people attribute the calamities to the “act of God.”  But biblical faith has proclaimed God’s fidelity.  God is a faithful God.  He remembers and upholds the covenant.  It is humanity, the other end of the covenant, who easily forgets.  We, the people of God, have consistently been unfaithful to Him.  The floods and calamities they bring are not from God but are the direct and inevitable consequences of our recklessness and mindless exploitation of the abundance of God’s creation.  We have become the greedy destroyer of nature and have turned our back to God’s invitation for us to be a responsible steward of the integrity and beauty of creation.

I consider them today’s prophets who defend our environment and call for a radical change in our lifestyle.  Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is a prophet’s voice shouting in the wilderness.  But like all other prophets, today’s prophets continue to experience being brushed aside.  We hear the message and the warning but we don’t truly listen.  This was the same dynamics as in the time of Noah.  People continue with their business-as-usual attitudes.  I’m truly afraid that unless we listen, unless we learn our lessons, unless we change our ways, unless we act collectively and with responsibility, there will no longer be rainbows. There will be just rain. Heavy downpour.  Calamities after calamities. As we are beginning to see in fact.

Lent is a season of repentance.  Once again we hear Jesus’ message in today’s gospel (Mk. 1: 12-15), “Reform you lives and believe in the good news!”  The season of Lent can be for us the time to really examine our lives and to honestly see how we have allowed sin and evil to dominate our decisions and activities. This is a season when we evaluate how much of our ways have contributed to this impending destruction, how much of our greed and our capricious demands have supported an obstinate drive to exploit the earth’s natural resources to the point of destroying her irreversibly.

It’s easier to see now that reform should be both in the personal and social levels.  The change of heart necessarily begins with individual and personal lives.  It cannot happen any other way.  However, salvation involves not just individuals but communities.  We need to reform as a people.  We need to change our ways as a society.  That is why we need to listen to prophets, to read the signs of the times, to discern God’s direction towards salvation.  We need conscientious leaders to galvanize reformed and committed individuals toward responsible change.  And we badly need this soon...  before it’s too late.

Lest we lose hope, we are assured by our readings that God has been and is always victorious against evil and sin in the world.  The 40-day flood in Noah’s time was God’s act of washing away sin and evil from the earth in order to forge a new beginning.  In the second reading (1 Pt 3: 18-22), Peter tells us that we are now saved by a baptismal bath which corresponds to the great flood: the waters of baptism washed away all that is sinful in us and we enter into a new life, a new covenant relationship with God. In the gospel, led by the Spirit, Jesus is tested by Satan in the desert for forty days.  And He is victorious over Satan.

We enter the season of Lent for forty days too.  Let us allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into this desert experience.  Like Jesus at the beginning of his messianic activity, let us be docile to the action of the Holy Spirit who demands an interior preparation for us to enter into a truly life-changing process of reform.  It is the Spirit who saw Jesus through his suffering, death, and resurrection.  It is the same Spirit whom we ought to allow seeing us through the challenging demands of this transforming desert experience.

The ultimate assurance of hope of course is when we look ahead after everything has been said and done, we see the glorious victory of Christ awaiting us and this cosmos.  God does not forget the covenant indeed. The Risen Lord and only He is the definitive and unfading rainbow after the long and heavy rain.