is your eye evil? - 25th sunday A 2014

A recent and most important scientific finding was the Higgs Boson or just simply the Higgs.  It was the costliest experiment and research involving so many scientists, physicists especially, trying to find out why atoms stick to one another.  Thus this discovery, the Higgs Boson is also called the “God Particle” because it is the building block of the elements from which everything starts.  But here’s the hitch.  When they made an announcement about their findings many people even those in the scientific world did not cheer or congratulate but instead they dismissed it initially with a stifled laugh.  Why so?  Because they, the scientists involved in the research chose to present their findings using a typeface or a font called Comic Sans MS.  If you are using Microsoft Word you are familiar with this font, Comic Sans MS.  The findings were initially dismissed because what they were using was not a believable font.  So this too is a warning to students.  Do not use Comic sans for your term papers.

Because of this hullabaloo the New York Times made an experiment as to what is the most believable, what is the most credible font.  And the findings are Comic Sans create in most people contempt and summary dismissal, while Baskerville and Georgia create the most credible.

What is my point here?  Immanuel Kant was right.  It is not only the mind which conforms to things.  Things also conform to the mind.  The mind sees what it wants to see.  We can compare it to a mind wearing red eyeglasses.  Everything it sees is red.  It is not the things that are red.  It is how the mind sees them.  And we act and react because of how we see, in the same way that scientists initially dismissed one of the most important scientific finding in our day and age because it was written in Comic Sans MS.

In the parable in ur gospel today the landowner who was God replied almost sarcastically to the workers who felt cheated saying, “Are you envious because I am generous?”  I have given all of you a day’s wage, there is no injustice done, are you envious because I am generous?

The original Greek used by Jesus is literally translated as, “Is your eye evil because I am good?”  Mala-in bala ang imo panan-aw tungod kay nagpakita ako sing kaayuhan?  It is in how we see things, it is how you look at things and in many ways the way we look at things comes from how we were raised and formed.  Pareho sa ebanghelyo naanad kita sang panan-aw nga ginahatagan kita, nagnangin maalwan ang isa ka tawo sa aton tungod kay may ginbuhat kita nga maayo.  Quid pro quo, we learned that early in life – kon may star may premyo - tungod kay maayo ka ginpakitaan ka man sing kaayo.  Ang Dios iya sa ebanghelyo la-in.  I am generous not because you have done something good, no.  I am generous because I am generous period. 

Aton iya panan-aw ta balos, to assume that we did something to deserve God’s generosity – ano pa nagalala-in ang mga obreros sa ebanghelyo.  This is the kind of seeing, a way of looking which the Lord wants to correct.  In the same gospel in chapter 5 Jesus said that we must be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect, and the Father is perfect “for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” “Is your eye evil because I am good?”  Are you envious because I am generous?”  It is how we were trained to see things, it is how we were trained to see God and this parable of Jesus is like a corrective glasses.  He wants us to see the real God, the real Father. Not our idea of the Father, but Jesus’ idea, Jesus’ experience of the Father and his love.

Now let us talk about our occasion today.  Your sons will be invested with the sign of their service on the altar.  The grade 7 will be invested with the alb of an altar server and they will join their grade 8 brothers in serving the altar most especially the bishop.  The grade 9 will be invested with the sudarium, a ritual handkerchief which will be a sign of their duty to read the word of God in the mass.

Why are we doing this?  This is because we want them to see differently, to acquire another perspective, to look at things, to consider things from another point of view.  Children nowadays get their definition of happiness and personal fulfilment in their surroundings, from you perhaps, from advertisements, from the prevailing culture in television and in their neighborhood.  For many to be an OFW is an ideal, to follow the profession of the father is an ideal, to be able to earn more, to become a doctor and nurse.  But here we also want them to get another perspective, to give them a view of how it is from the altar rather than just the usual view from the nave and the pews.  To make them experience the kind of service the priest does.  The pay may not be at par, not even comparable to that of their fathers or mothers, but surely it can very well compensate in terms of personal fulfillment.  It’s how you look at things.  And before they decide what to do with their life at least they are given a chance to look at things differently, to consider personal fulfillment and happiness beyond material compensation.  Look at things differently.

My experience was different.  All my life at least more than half of it then was in the seminary and all my seminary life was serving the mass.  Then one day when I stopped, for the first time I found myself no longer on the altar but there on the bench.  It was a holy week.  I was there on the pews for the first time in so many years and I saw my brother seminarians serving the mass.  I cried. In that dark corner sitting on a pew I cried silently for I have never felt so in love with the altar until I was deprived of it.  I was looking at things from a different perspective, and there and then I knew what I wanted.