psalm 71: we are products of our past - holy tuesday

Our responsorial psalm today, psalm 71, invites us in a way to look back to the different stages in our lives and see how God has guided us through the years.  This invitation is most appropriate, for in this Holy Week we are invited to make a retreat.  Not probably a formal retreat nga may speaker gid kag may mga prayer exercises, but to spend a quiet time with God in one of the days of the holy week, to pray and to recollect, in your home, in the silence of a church or a park, just to be with yourself and with God.

I said the psalm is appropriate because it wants us to look back at God's marvelous hand, inviting us to examine God's mighty hand in the different stages of our life, starting when we were in the womb of our mothers, when we were infants on the lap of our parents, when we were very young at home and in school. Then it invites us to thank God for teaching us from our youth, for guiding us in the right path despite having to contend with the rebelliousness in our hearts that many times led us to mistakes, wrongdoings and sin.  And finally it invites to be always conscious of God's wondrous deeds that follow us through life.  We are never abandoned, we are never left on our own since everything begun for us in the womb until life on earth would eventually end in the tomb.

Who we are today did not just come out of the blue.  What we are today were not merely borne out of present decisions and circumstances.  The act of betrayal by Judas was as much a present decision as it was also a disposition formed way, way before his path and that of Jesus crossed.  His suicide was not just a present decision but probably a way of looking, a way of seeing himself, his life, his mistakes.  And we can also say the same to Peter's wavering loyalty and eventually his remorse and repentance.  We are also products of our past and our past in a way predisposes us to decide accordingly today for good or for ill.

If in the past we were formed to look at ourselves and whatever we do as stupid, stupid, stupid, then don't be surprised if we feel now the same about ourselves and the things and people around us.  But if from our youth we were already trained to appreciate the goodness inherent in us and in others then our outlook and response to realities also becomes different, it become more positive.

Our psalm says, "O God, you have taught me from my youth, and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds." A godly upbringing helps indeed but not all religious upbringing turns out positive all the time.  Kon ang outlook sang bata puro lang sala, sala, sala, then we may be forming God-fearing men and women in a negative way – always fearful and less trusting of himself and of God's love and mercy.

The point is as we look at our past let us become conscious of the goodness that is ours because of God's constant love and mercy.  "For you are my hope, O Lord; my trust, O God, from my youth. On you I depend from birth; from my mother's womb you are my strength."  We appreciate the good and at the same time we also correct the bad experiences that affects us even now.