visible rhetoric

I came tonight and people did not have a hard time convincing me to celebrate this mass because I can claim that I was once a heir, I was once an heredero.  I say it in the past tense because it happened 3 years ago when she sold her house in Comision Civil and she realized she could not bring everything with her to her new but much smaller residence.  For the record in the more than 30 boxes I received for the seminary and the countless cabinets, and the hundreds of figurines and objects nothing is really of value if value is measured monetarily.  If I decided to accept these from her, especially the bound literary works of Magdalena Jalandoni, it is because of the heritage and cultural value these things have for future generations.  

The 8 th article of the faith says, We believe in the Holy Spirit.  What is the Holy Spirit?  The Hebrew word for spirit is ruah , meaning breath – the holy spirit is the breath of God.  Remember when God created Adam and Eve, when God created us, human beings.  God got clay and breathed on it.  We have life because of the Spirit of God, we are created because of the Holy Spirit.  Without the breath of God we are nothing but dust or earth. 

What is the source of our greed?  What makes us greedy?  What makes us accumulate more than we can use?  What drives this insatiable feeling of never having enough?  What is it in our life that seduces us, like the farmer in the gospel, to want to build ever bigger bodegas to hoard, to amass, to grab what we can?

Your Excellency, on this feast of St. John Marie Vianney, we are with you today our parish priest to celebrate your birthday and the anniversary of your ordination to the episcopate.  By celebrating your birthday we affirm not just the fact of your existence but we celebrate who you are to us, your existence in relation to us.  In other words we celebrate your purpose, the reason why God created you in love.  In the bible, particularly in the book of Genesis, the holy authors affirmed that each one of us is created on purpose and with love.  That when God creates a human life it is not some machinery that creates in random, that it is not some haphazard or arbitrary setup that creates accidents and indiscriminate results.  Each one of us is created on purpose.  Each one of us has been prepared for.  Each one of us has a reason.  This is what we celebrate today in our seminary community – who you are for us, what you are for our community, who you are in our calling to become priests

As we gather this afternoon to commemorate the martyrdom of St. Pedro Poveda in this Eucharist, we reflect together on the importance and necessity of prayer – “prayer as the only strength.”  St. Pedro said that if any one of you places her trust in something other than prayer – “if our strength is rooted in talent, or in status or in something merely human - she does not know the work, she does not possess its spirit.”  And so today we make the prayer of the disciples in our gospel our own – Lord, teach us how to pray.  We ask the Lord to teach us how, to show us the way, to give us a sample, a pattern, perhaps; to discover what attitudes to bring in prayer, what words to use, what emotions to arouse, what values to keep in our hearts when we pray.

After God gave the ten commandments and after Israel agreed to observe them, God made a covenant with Israel symbolized by the blood of young bulls.  A covenant is unlike a contract.  In a contract when one party violates the terms, this violation frees the other party from his obligations.  A covenant however is different. 

Today in our first reading we read the ten commandments.  These commandments are very short and yet they can be expanded to mean and imply a lot of things.  It came to be written in stone but they expressed what is already written first in our hearts.  Thus it is called the natural law for everyone of us, believer or not, Christian or pagan, sophisticated or primitive, take these as laws to be followed.  We don’t have to be told that taking what is not ours is wrong, we don’t have to be taught that we should honor father and mother.  These are already written in our hearts.  In fact in the book of Deuteronomy Moses would tell the people that these things are already written in our hearts, that all we have to do is to carry them out.

Our gospel in this feast of St. James the Greater tells us three things about how Jesus reacts to our prayers and petitions.  First Jesus is very interested in what we would have him do for us, even, as in the case of James and John outrageous things, or things we would be too embarrassed for other people to hear.  Just the same Jesus is interested with them. 

The exodus experience of Israel goes deeper now.  In our first reading today the Israelites are made to confront a stronger temptation in their journey to God – the temptation that is intrinsically connected with the basic needs of a human person – in our reading it is about food, but it can also be about health, and it can even be about companionship.  Unlike the other temptations these kinds of temptations are stronger.  They are not easily shaken off. Remember, when Jesus was tempted the first assault by the devil was immediately a temptation on food. The devil probably thought that Jesus would fall prey with one easy swoop when you tempt him on something as basic as food.   Because when somebody is deprived of something as basic as food, it is easy also to take away hope and sow despair in the heart of the person.  That is why during lent part of the Lenten exercise is to say no to food – through fasting and abstinence.

In the eighth article of the faith we profess our faith, saying, I believe in the Holy Spirit.  We believe in the third person of the Blessed Trinity.  We believe in the Spirit or the breadth of God, the giver of life, the advocate, the helper, the comforter.  The Spirit goes with so many names, in so many descriptions.  The Spirit cannot be seen but he makes his presence known by the gifts he bestows on us and by the fruits of his presence in us.  There are seven gifts of the Spirit and there are 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  It might be good to dwell and reflect on each of these in the future.  But for purposes of our reflection today I would like to cite just one proof that the Spirit dwells in us.  St. Paul says that it is the Spirit dwelling in us that makes us cry out “Abba,” which means “father.”  Abba is an Aramaic word for Father but used only as a term of endearment.  In other words it is not the formal, the reserved, the prim and proper term “father” or in Hi

The experience of Israel at the time of the exodus, when they journeyed from Egypt to the land of promise, has always been used as an image of our own journey to God.  Our first reading for example is required reading for the vigil of Easter, for the crossing of the Red Sea is an image of baptism.  To cross from the slavery of sin to the land of freedom we have to cross the water, meaning we have to be baptized.  The crossing is an image of our baptism. 

The Egyptians were in pursuit and the Israelites where in a state of panic.  They even blamed Moses for bringing them out of Egypt. They even taunted him saying, “Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert?”  But Moses answered them saying, “fear not, stand your ground.”

In Rome almost all religious congregations honor their founders with a monument usually by erecting images of their founders.  The Carmelites also honor theirs with an image, underneath of which one can read the words of dedication saying: “The entire Carmelite Order erected this statue to its founder.”  And who is the founder?  The Prophet Elijah, aka St. Elijah whose feast Carmel celebrates every 20 th of July.  That is one claim to fame of the Carmelite Order – having Elijah as its founder . . . unless of course some Jesuit or Mill Hill father can also come up with a story that would relate them to Joshua or Solomon or to Moses perhaps.  As it is, the Carmelites are unbeaten in this regard.

The second part of the 7 th article of the faith states that Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead.  In our gospel today the Lord speaks of the day of judgment.  He speaks of the consequences of our decisions in the future, in the day of judgment.  How he is received now, how we respond to his invitation and call, how we respond to his commandments will have consequences in the future, in the day of judgment.  Very simply put there is accountability in everything that we do in our lives.  Accountability.

Today we start our meditation on the 7 th article of the faith wherein we profess in the Apostles Creed that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus will come again in glory - in this article of faith we affirm that Jesus is already with us, Jesus is in the church and he comes to us daily in his word and in his sacraments, he comes to us in the poor and in the needy, he comes to us in the different events of our lives, but a time will come when he will come to us in glory.  It is a different kind of coming – it is a coming to us in glory.  It is different from his other comings to us for the coming in glory is the fulfillment of everything that Christ promised us, all evil in the world and also in our personal lives will finally be defeated, everything will become subject to Christ.  We do not know exactly when, for Christ said that only the Father knows exactly when.