the kingdom of god - 17th Sunday A 2014

The kingdom of God is not what you expect in terms of political clout.  It is not about gleaming big cities with the homes of the rich, with the offices of the powerful, with magnificent edifices.  The kingdom of God is not about some fierce and powerful army that can crush anything that opposes it

Instead, Jesus in our gospel today affirms first and foremost that the kingdom of God is here in our midst.  But it is modest.  In fact it is hidden.  It is quiet.  Those who discover it sometimes would just simply stumble upon it almost by accident, and it surprises them almost always.  Even the person who owns the field won't even know it is there.  But once it is found, joy will be so great that one will do whatever it takes to buy that field.

Remember the surprise expressed by those placed on his right at the day of judgment when they aske, when did we see you hungry, when did we see you naked, when did we see you homeless and helped you.  They were caught in surprise by the hiddeness of Jesus and his kingdom, expecting it instead and grandeur and in the awesome only to realize that it is in the small, in the unnoticeable, in the little.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the term kingdom of God for it is in the little acts of goodness that many times escape our notice.  It is in the kindness that we show to one another, in the good that we say and do, in the extra mile we walk for people in need, it is in saying sorry and in forgiving; it is in caring, in our being considerate, in our sensitivity to others and in the anxiety for the other’s good.

In the past days and months we heard a lot of bad news and yet we will be surprised at the tremendous graciousness of these events, how these events affects us, what they create in us, how they affect the people concerned.  It is in this silent, muted and unnoticeable events and circumstances, it is in the unexpected that the kingdom of God is taking shape.  We just hope and pray that we become part of its taking shape.  We hope and pray that we do not become obstacles in its growth.

Today our parish is launching a project we feel necessary.  We have delayed it for many years for the sole reason that it will directly benefit us priests and we feel that it may be too self-serving.  And so we finished the church first – with you taking the lead, with you raising the needed help, and we rededicated this church to the glory of God in honor of the mother we all love, the Candelaria… in 2010.

And then we set our hearts and minds for the improvement of our cemetery – making it fit to honor the memory of our loved ones not simply for aesthetics and order but because we believe in the life to come, we believe in the resurrection of our bodies, we believe that our separation from them is temporary and on the appointed day we will see each other again.

Now we are presenting to you the last and the least – the kombento.  Regardless of how we would want you to refer to it as …. balay sang parokya, you would always refer to it as . . . balay sang pari.  Yes, you are correct it is balay sang pari for it provides a roof for priests who are serving you, priests you don’t want to stay too far in case you need them.  But there is more to this balay sang pari which would make it balay sang parokya.  It is the center of our continuing education for our faith and our spiritual formation.  It is a venue for meetings and get-togethers.  It is the center where our remembrances are kept, where records and files from our most distant ancestors down to the present day are secured.

It is also the place where every Candle Light is born, where our school and barangay catechists prepare and are prepared, where parish pastoral workers are assembled and recharged for their volunteer work in our barangays and MKKs, where indigents get a little hope, where the sick who could not afford are cared for free, where the burdened seek counsel, where scholars see a brighter future, where marriage love is deepened, where the young get their first experience of belonging to a greater family which is the parish

This is our meeting place, a place where we gather – it is more than balay sang pari . . . it is also and even more so balay sang parokya.

Today we are inviting you for an open house.  You get to have a final look at the convent that served us for more than 50 or even 70 years since the time of Msgr Jaime Sin.  It is a final look before they fence it off so that construction can start, - to appreciate how it contributed to our growth as a parish, forming us perhaps silently, quietly without fanfare to become a tiny part of God’s kingdom. It is a final look to revisit our common experiences in the convent, to feel it one last time before it makes way for a new one and perhaps to revisit the hidden mysterious ways of God at work in our own personal history associated with this structure.  It is a final look to pay homage perhaps to a building that has served our community for more than half a century.  Just this morning a lady in her late seventies went up to see the building she last saw when she was a teenager. 

We are a parish, a community and someway, somehow that building meant a lot for many of us.  And I believe it is not presumptuous to say, and many will agree with me, that that building has contributed its fair share in forming us little by little into God’s kingdom in this part of the world.