we are in transit

Our hiligaynon dialect is less specific when we refer to Christmas and Easter. We call both paskwa although the meaning we attribute to it leans heavily on Christmas. Thus when we say malipayon nga paskwa we refer to Christmas, and so as not to confuse both seasons, during easter we simply resort to the English greeting happy easter. But the real paskwa is Easter. It comes from the original word in Hebrew which is pesach. This was translated into Latin as transitus and later translated into English as the passing through or the passing over or simply the Passover. The Passover by the way does not just refer to the meal on the night the angel of death killed the first born of the Egyptians. The passover refers to the whole experience of Israel in the book of Exodus unto the book of Deuteronomy beginning with the passover meal. From that meal the passing over commences and would end only 40 years later when they crossed the river Jordan to enter into the land promised to Abraham. This journey will be marked as in a refrain by two important elements. First is water, the need to cross two bodies of water namely the Red Sea and the Jordan River, al the need for water which has been an incessant complaint all throughout their journey in Exodus. Second is the meal specifically the need for a meal, the need for food. Today we hear the Jews recall that their ancestors were given manna by God to sustain them for the journey - the manna which they call bread from heaven.


This travelogue, if you can call it that way, is what we call in latin the typus, the type, the model that prefigures the passover of Jesus and also our own. The Paschal Triduum, remember, where we celebrated the anniversary of the Paschal Mystery a month ago, also started with the meal, specifically with the last supper and ends with the resurrection. This was the pesach of Jesus - his transitus, his passing over, the passover of Jesus from this life to the next. Again two things are called to mind - water which flowed out from the side of Christ. Jesus provides us with water for the journey. It reminds us that in this journey an only be complete with water not just to quench our thirst but we need to cross the waters in order to reach our destination. This is baptism. The second is the meal. He gives us bread and wine in the last supper which on the cross becomes his body and blood as food. This is symbolized by his torn body and the blood that flowed from his side.
What is my point then in this reflection. First we are reminded that ours is a journey, we are fellow travellers, fellow pilgrims along the road going towards our final destiny, the land promised us which is to be with God forever. This morning I told the seminarians that I started here in the seminary when I was your age of 12. Now I am 45. Ten or twenty years from now I will be gone forever, and somebody will replace me here on this altar as I have replaced someone else before me. Our life here in this world is a transitus, a pesach, a passing over in order to reach our true home.
Some of us here pray for a long life. They want to prolong their journey, they want to wander in the desert for as long as it takes. They don’t want to reach and enter the promised land just yet. Well if you want to prolong your agony that is very well within your rights, but I would rather have you pray for a quality life, however long or short provided it is a meaningful life that creates and would create a lasting impact to the people around you. We are in transit. We are just passing by - lumabaylabay nga daw aso, aso pa lamang.
Second, in this journey we need two important provisions - water and bread. Give us this day our daily bread. We pray this prayer several times a day. Let us value the water of our baptism, the living water that is in us, the rock as St. Paul has said that provided the Israelites with water in the desert was Christ. Value too the Eucharist, the bread from heaven. Most often when I ask people why they go to mass everyday, I hear some of them say, Father daw indi kompleto akon adlaw kon wala misa, kon wala ako nakasimba. Let that also be our attitude. We are provided by mother the church these two provisions on a daily basis - we have Christ in his word to quench our thirst and in our re-appreciation of our baptism, and we have daily communion to satiate our hunger. May you come to value truly your daily Eucharist as provision, as food for our journey along our pilgrim way to our Father in heaven.