psalm 86: knowing god - 16th sunday A

Do you know who God is?  Kilala mo bala ang imo Dios? 

Our psalm today gives us a list of who God is.  It is a rundown of the characteristics of God - what kind of God is my God; who am I dealing with each time I pray; what kind of God am I worshipping in Church; what kind of God am I following; what kind of God am I teaching my children; what kind of God am I talking about or showing about in my words and in my works.  Remember what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman when he compared the faith of the Samaritans to that of the Jews?  Jesus said, "you worship what you do not understand, we worship what we understand."

Do you know who God is?    Do you know the kind of God you are worshipping? 

God is good and forgiving; God is abounding in kindness to all who call upon him; God is great and does wondrous deeds; God alone is God and there is no other; God is merciful and gracious; God is slow to anger, abounding in kindness and fidelity.

How did the psalmist come to know God?  How did he come to know that God is merciful and gracious, that God is abounding in kindness and fidelity?  How?  Because he knew himself.

He calls himself a servant in relation to him whom he calls Lord.  He is one who followed the footsteps of his mother calling himself a devoted a faithful and holy servant of the Lord.  And not only is he in touch with who he is and his roots, he is also in touch with what is happening in his life – that he is lonely, he feels abandoned, he feels oppressed by so many needs, and he is desperate.  He knows what is happening within.  He is in touch with himself.

One can only come to know who God is when one knows who one is.  Makilala mo ang Dios kon makilala mo man ang imo kaugalingon.

And this is the lesson of the gospel.  You cannot understand why the owner of the field would allow the weeds to grow with the wheat when you have not seen that in your heart too there are weeds in the midst of the wheat, weeds that you wanted pulled out now and thrown away, but God allowed instead to grow with the wheat, with the good that is in you.

Being a rector of the seminary I always wanted my community to be perfect – all are obeying the rules, everyone is going to mass, all are eating their meals, everybody gets a grade no lower than 83.  Everything is perfect.  But this does not happen.  There will always be failures during the year, there will always be violations of the rules here and there every now and then, there will always be conflicts and problems, and difficulties.  Did this make us a less than perfect community?  Yes.  Did this make us a bad community?  No.  It made us instead a compassionate and a forgiving and a caring and a loving community.

Many times you will complain, why do I have to care for an ailing mother, why do I have to forgo my dreams to stay at home and care for a brother, why do I have to do this and that because of this black sheep in our family?  And yet many times the wheat becomes what it is because of the weeds and imperfections in its midst. 

We can only see the wisdom of God, the goodness of God's ways when we have come to really know ourselves.