visible rhetoric

Last Thursday I was invited by a group to talk about fasting and I gave them 4 reasons.  Today in connection with our gospel I would like to share the fourth reason why we fast.  So why do we fast?  So that I can know myself better. When you take seriously your fasting kis-a nagatakaw-takaw man kita, indi bala?   May upod ako anay sa parokya nga palakaon nga pari.   Sang time sang fasting, sang nagapamahaw kami apat gid ka pandesal ang kinaon niya.   Wala sia kabalo gina-isip sang parish priest ang iya ginakaon.   Gani namunuhan sia, Father, siling sang parish priest, puasa bala subong.   Siling sang pari, Msgr. tunga man lang subong ang ginakaon ko.  

Today with Ash Wednesday we start our 40-day preparation for the celebration of the Paschal Triduum – the paschal triduum is the highest feast celebrated from Holy Thursday and Good Friday to Black Saturday, to Easter Sunday.  Celebrating the anniversary of the paschal triduum allows us to renew its power and effect in our lives.  Jesus died 2000 years ago but every time we celebrate it in its anniversary its effects are renewed in our lives. And so, to prepare for this renewal, the church gives us 40 days beginning today and asks us to do specifically 3 things.   To pray, to fast, and to do almsgiving.

The disciples of Jesus find it difficult to understand what Jesus was saying.  Jesus was talking about the leaven of the Pharisees and the Herodians.  What is this leaven?  Jews at the time of Jesus believe that leaven or yeast though it makes the bread rise actually corrupts the bread.  Yeast is a fungus that feeds on the dough causing it to rise when they release carbon dioxide.  Pareho ini sia sa mga molds sa cheese nga in a sense nagapapan-os sa iya kag at the same time nagahatag sini sang sabor. That is why Jews used unleavened bread, bread which does not have yeast.   And this is the tradition we follow in the bread we use for the mass – it has no yeast, it is simply flour and water mixed together.   Unleavened bread is incorrupt bread.   St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians wrote, “Get rid of all the old yeast, become new batch of bread, unleavened as you are meant to be.”   Unleavened, in other words, uncorrupted by ev...

One cannot speak when one cannot hear.  That is why deaf mutes are deaf first before they become mute.  They cannot speak because they cannot hear. Today we are reminded of the primacy of hearing over speaking.   That is why today we have a lot of people speaking, a lot of people talking without depth, without content, without real substance.   Just words, just noise, just clutter.

Many of the laws observed by the Jews in Jesus’ time were somehow either an over-extension or a distortion of the original law.  For example the law of washing of hands.  Originally this was prescribed only for levites or for priests – that they wash their hands before offering the sacrifice to God.  The Jews however extended this law of washing hands before every meal so that they can give the meal also a religious significance.  So, that’s where this practice came from and began to be scrupulously observed.

Job in today’s first reading describes his life as a struggle.  He compares life with service in the military, a drudgery, he says.   Life is a warfare, a combat, an engagement in the battlefield, where the struggle to survive is intense and each man has to fight to endure. Then Job jumps to another comparison.   Our life can also become like the life lived by a hireling, Job says, a slave who has to labor each day longing for the shade and for rest from time to time, and a life where waiting for his wages is the only impetus and the only excitement.

Sa masami nagakadto kita diri sa Jaro ilabi na gid sa piesta ni Candelaria sa pagsimba, sa pagduaw sa aton Mahal nga Iloy, sa pagbakal sang perdon nga dal-on naton pauli, kag sa pagsindi sang kandila.  Nagasiling kita, masindi ako sang kandila sa Candelaria.  Apang tuloka ninyo karon ang nasulat sa guwa sang Chapel of Lights kon sa diin ikaw magasindi sang imo kandila.  Makita mo ang nasulat nga dinalan gikan sa Salmo 18 nga nagasiling "For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness."   Sa salmo we are not lighting our candles for God or for Mary.   Instead we are asking God to light our candles so that it will enlighten us in our darkness. And so we ask, what is light?   What is darkness?

Jesus was not accepted in his own town by his own bolanos because they knew him – they knew his parents, they knew his standing in their town, they knew his family’s source of livelihood, their income, even their character, and perhaps even the dark secret of the family tree.  Indi bala ang aton pamilya which is not a perfect family has also some dark side – ang tiyo naton nga palasugal, ang pariente naton nga may kerida, ang wala-wala gid naton nga utod, ang cousin naton nga drug addict, etc, etc.  And because the people of Nazareth knew the family of Jesus they were inclined not to believe in him.  Probably they have biases on Jesus because they knew his real family and they knew that it was less than a perfect family.  And because of this Jesus could not do miracles there because of their lack of faith in him.   Sang seminarista kami amo ini ang rason kon ngaa ang pari wala gina-assign sa iya mismo parokya.  Well this is still followed as a general rule...

There is something curious about this healing of the daughter of Jairus.  People were laughing at Jesus for they would not believe him when he said that the girl was only asleep.  Then Jesus did something unusual.  He brought with him the parents and the three disciples, Peter, James and John and entered the room of the girl.  All others were sent out.  But you will argue, tani gindala niya tanan ilabi na gid ang mga nagkadlaw sa iya para makita nila kon ano ang iya mahimo .  But Jesus kept things only to himself and his trusted disciples.  He does not want to be a show-off, he does not want to make a spectacle of what he can do.  He is the messiah, he is not a performer, he is not an artista.

"For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness." (Psalm 18:28 of the King James Version) We find these words as we look up at the façade of the Chapel of Lights.   It is located just beside the Jaro Cathedral a few steps away from the Shrine of Our Lady of Candles.   This is where we have been lighting our candles for a year now in her honor.   But what does it mean when we pray to God “thou wilt light my Candle”?   What does it mean when we say, “The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness”?  

I would like to count myself as somebody privileged when it comes to watching plays made by our seminarians.  I have been here long enough to see not just one or two plays made by a particular class but several, through the years.  And I always get excited believing that if they could do it like this, what would it be like 2 years from now.  It makes one look forward not that I’m planning to stay here forever, but you sense the growth in the depth of insight; one can feel the ever-widening creativity as they feel their way around, daring themselves to take the risk and the plunge; and one also sense the beauty in which they weave the story.  It does not happen all at once, but as they grow through the years they learn, as they are exposed they gain experience, as they age they become confident and spontaneous.

What we have just read in the gospel is what is called the universal apostolic mandate.  Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.   The verbs are in the imperative command from Christ himself – go… proclaim. Every vocation, priesthood, religious, single, or married, every vocation, wherever God calls each one of us is a vocation to an apostolate.   Vocation can never be only for the self.   Whatever the vocation is, one cannot remain in a purely passive role.   There has to be some kind of going, there has to be some kind of a proclaiming, perhaps in various ways and perhaps in different degrees, nevertheless all must share in the responsibility of fulfilling the universal apostolic mandate – to go and proclaim the gospel to every creature.

Why does the same message produce different results?  Why does the same formation produce different outcomes? Some commentators say that this parable read today should not be called the parable of the sower but should instead be entitled the parable of the soil - different soils, different growth, different fruits.

The family members of Jesus are described by Mark as “outsiders”.  This had been noted by Mark already twice.  “ Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside . . .”   Last Saturday our gospel reading from the same gospel also noted that when Jesus went inside the house with his disciples, the family who were outside wanted to take hold of him because “he was out of his mind.”   The disciples who were with Jesus inside the house were the insiders and the family of Jesus together with the scribes and Pharisees who were outside the house were the “outsiders”.   It is therefore clear that Mark is not describing a location here.   He is describing a kind of relationship these people have with Jesus.

What intrigues me is the reason or reasons why the disciple rebuked the parents for bringing their children to Jesus.  It is never mentioned why, but let us make some good guesses.  First, probably because Jesus is too important to be bothered by children.  It was a very busy day and Jesus must have looked tired.  And so the disciples thought that he should not be bothered further.

Today we hear vocation stories.  In our first reading we find the vocation story of Jonah.  Jonah was called by God to preach a message of repentance to the people of Niniveh.  In our gospel we find the vocations stories of the brothers Simon and Andrew, and the other set of brothers, James and John.  Jesus called these brothers as they were casting and mending their nets.

Most of the times the most difficult people to reach out when it comes to practicing the faith are our families.  This is especially true in the first centuries of Christianity when most often Christian converts found themselves in difficult family situations because of their faith and because of the priorities imposed on them by their faith in Jesus.  I believe this is the reason why Mark included this particular event in his gospel – the event which speaks of Jesus being misunderstood by his own family.  This is a form of encouragement to the early Christians and also to us that despite being misunderstood, despite being judged harshly we will not be discouraged in our faith.

Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted and they came to him.  It is God who calls, it is God who appoints. God is showing us that the calling, the vocation is God’s own initiative.   It is not through any merit of ours, it is not because of whatever qualifications we think we have, but only by virtue of divine grace.

The Venerable Bede said in his commentary on this passage in the gospel that not only the demons but also the persons healed and even the apostles were ordered to be silent concerning his identity and his divine powers “lest by the preaching of the majesty of His Divinity, the economy of His Passion should be retarded.”  

Again we find Jesus at odds with the Pharisees because he did something prohibited on the Sabbath.  Yesterday’s narrative told of hungry disciples plucking grain on a Sabbath so that they can have something to eat.  Today’s narrative speaks of the healing of a man born with withered hands.  Again this is done on a Sabbath.  The tension rises and so does the emotions.  Mark describes the scene saying “ Jesus looked at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart.”   This is a unique combination.   It’s usually anger and hatred, anger and dislike or anger and disgust.   But in Jesus it was anger and grief.   He was angry and grieved because of their hardness of heart.   As the saying goes those who have not known deep anger has not known how it is to truly love.  

What is God’s purpose in establishing the Sabbath?  What is it for?  This is an important reflex which Jesus is teaching us every time we encounter a law or a regulation and are asked to interpret. Why was it established?  What is it for? Probably in the time of Jesus the strictness in which Sabbath laws were interpreted went into the extreme to the point of rigidity thus creating this controversy of what to do and what not to do on a Sabbath.   In our day and age however, more and more the Sabbath as a day of rest has lost its meaning and importance.   Nowadays people continue to work on Sunday and many of this work are not even necessary.

The gospel is about compatibility and incompatibility, a match and mismatch, truth and pretension.  Fasting, like other devotions and rituals in our lives are outward signs of something happening inside us.  Fasting means there is something I need to let go, something I need to excise, something I need to confront within me.  It can be painful, it can be sad, it is uncomfortable.  One does not fast on a wedding day and neither should there be a wedding in a day of fast.  Otherwise there is a mismatch, the outward sign would not jibe with our innermost feelings and intent.  Rituals and real feelings become incompatible, there is a pretension that is happening.

In our gospel today Jesus sensing that he has company turned around asked them a question, what are you looking for?  And the two disciples who were following him, stopped on their tracks by the question, answered by asking another question, Rabbi, where are you staying?  Questions. Questions can elicit a response.   Sometimes though questions trigger more questions.   Either way questions invite people to participate, it draws people to get involved. That is why in modern pedagogy we are told not to lecture too much but to facilitate learning by asking questions and by encouraging questions and helping the person discover the answers for himself or herself.  

Our gospel today tells of people who make a lot of assumptions.  An assumption is something that one considers to be true.  However, this is unverified and there is no proof that the assumption is true.  It is simply a guess. Jesus is seen with sinners, therefore they assumed that he is also a sinner.   Jesus is eating with people considered unclean, rubbing elbows with the unclean and therefore they assumed that he is also unclean.   The Pharisees assumed that they were healthy people and therefore whatever Jesus said about the sick needing a doctor does not apply to them.

Immediately after the Baptism of the Lord which inaugurates his public ministry the gospel of Mark directs our attention to the expulsion of the evil spirit possessing the man.  It is the inaugural work of Jesus.  In a commentary of Jerome, he says that in arranging the events that transpired in the life of Jesus, Mark quits the order of the history of the events as they happened but follows the order of the mysteries.  Indi na sia pasunod as it happened in the life of Jesus, pero gin-una ni San Marcos kon ano ang makapahayag sang misteryo sang kabuhi kag misyon ni Kristo.  And what is this singular event that summarizes so to say the purpose why Jesus came into the world?  The expulsion, the driving away of the evil spirit or simply called the exorcism.  Jesus did this to free us from the grasp of evil and its power in us.  And this is the primary purpose and mission of Jesus.  And so also this should be a major preoccupation in our lives.

Psalm 72 is a royal psalm.  It is a royal psalm because it was sung when the king assumed power, when a new king was anointed.  In this psalm the people pray for the king saying, “ O God, with your judgment endow the king, and with your justice, the king's son; He shall govern your people with justice and your afflicted ones with judgment.”   There are two important words here, they are characteristics expected on a king and these characteristics are the very characteristics of God.   First, the king must have zedekah or judgement or righteousness, and the second, the king must have mishpat or justice.   To endow the king with judgement is to pray that the king will think and act like God, the king or leader should always be in sync with the ways of God.   And how can a leader be in sync with the ways of God?   By acting with justice, the second characteristic. In this psalm justice does not mean fairness, punishing the wrong and rewarding the good...

A day after the start of the new year our responsorial psalm invites us to sing a new song.  Actually since December 8 and throughout the season of Christmas we are invited to sing a new song.  This is not to be taken literally in the sense that we’re going to compose and learn a new song but a new song has to be sung because we are starting something new, or should we say God is starting something new not just in our world but in our lives.  What is that something new which the psalm is inviting us to start or allow God to start in us? 

Today we read psalm 67 in our responsorial psalm.  Last December 25 we celebrated Christmas, the Son of God became man in order that as man he can save us from our sins.  Christmas is God’s saving activity just as the major feasts we celebrate throughout the year like Lent, Easter, the Ascension and Pentecost – Jesus was born, he suffered, died, was buried and on the third day he rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven and then sent the Holy Spirit.  All these feasts which we celebrate with great fanfare are commemorations of God’s saving activity.

Today I would like to continue reflecting on the responsorial psalm of the mass, this time Psalm 96.  If you notice,   there are so many things in the psalm that are not   really true   at the time it was composed, and even now in our time.   "The LORD is   king,” the psalm says.  Not true.   If the Lord is king things would not be as difficult, things would not be as bad.   The psalm says, “the Lord has made the world firm, not to be moved;   he governs the peoples with equity."  What equity is the psalmist referring to?   On what part of the world does the Lord rule with justice and love and where his followers are loyal and true?   And so, many assertions of the psalms are not   really true, at least today.

Today we read Psalm 97.  The same psalm was on Christmas day at the dawn mass.  In fact the 3 psalms read on Christmas are psalms 96, 97 and 98 and they are called enthronement psalms for they focus on God's eternal kingship.  Psalm 97 begins with the call, "the Lord reigns, the Lord is king let the earth rejoice."  When the magi too came to Herod they told him the purpose of their coming saying, "we have come to worship the king."

Today we read Psalm 31.  Psalm 31 is a famous psalm because this must have been the psalm meditated upon by Jesus as he hung dying on the cross.  The same is true with St. Stephen, our Saint on this second day of Christmas.  This psalm must have been also in his mind when they were throwing stones on him and when, like Jesus, he too was in the brink of death.  Both Jesus and Stephen recited the fifth verse of this psalm saying, "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit."

Tonight has been regarded in ancient times as the longest night in the northern hemisphere.  It is the darkest night of the year.  The eve of Christmas is called the winter solstice. Although the church never discounts the possibility that Christ was born on December 25, St. Augustine calls this celebration of the birth of the Lord as a commemoration in contrast to the celebration of Easter which he called an anniversary.  In Christmas it is enough that we remember the birth of the Lord and recall the mystery of the incarnation, but in Easter there is a preoccupation as to the exact date of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

We read two hymns in today’s readings, the hymn of Hannah in our responsorial psalm and the hymn of Mary in our gospel today.  Both hymns have the same theme, the theme of reversal. In Hannah’s hymn we heard her sing - the bows of the mighty are broken, while the tottering gird on strength.   The well-fed hire themselves out for bread, while the hungry batten on spoil."   In Mary’s song we hear her sing: He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.   He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.   In the theme of reversal the world as we know it turns upside down, fortunes are reversed, the poor becomes rich, princes become paupers. What is the meaning of this.   Two things.

We have just read in our gospel what the Rosary calls the Visitation. Why did Mary visit Elizabeth?  What was the motive of her visit?  Why did she   feel the need to go to her cousin Elizabeth? Let it be clear that the journey from the home of Mary in Nazareth to the house of Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea is not an ordinary journey.  At present we could not even compare it to the journey from Iloilo to   Carles   and with our relatively good and safe roads it would even be incomparable to a roro to Manila.  The journey of Mary would   take   her 4 to 5 days.  It was a difficult journey and it was not safe.  And yet why the urgency, why the hurry, why   even   the need?

Today our psalm, psalm 71 to praise the Lord and to sing to his glory.   Several things come to mind. First, if I am sad, if I am burdened by so many concerns, by so many difficulties, if I have problems, do I have to praise the Lord?  Do I have to praise God?  Or do I bombard God with my hurts and sad tales?  No, we have to praise God, because praise is not determined by the circumstances of our lives.  Rather praise is determined by our faith that in whatever circumstances we are in, favorable or unfavorable, good or bad, our lives still belong to God and our future depends on God.  Praise is not just the celebration of those who are prosperous, praise is not just a celebration of those who experienced success.  Rather, praise is the celebration of those who believe that even amidst adversity, our lives still belong to God.  

Today, as I have been doing for more than two years now, we allow our responsorial psalm to lead us in our reflection on this Sunday’s readings.  Today our responsorial psalm is not actually a psalm but a canticle.  It is a song like the psalms but since it is not taken from the book of psalms it is called a canticle.  Specifically, it is the song of Mary, the magnificat taken from the gospel of Luke.

It is difficult to love a God who lives in an unapproachable light.  It is with difficulty that we approach a God who remains tremendum et fascinans.  It is not easy to embrace a God who appears to us in a burning bush and whose presence is signified by thick dark clouds and flashing lightning and loud thunder on top of a mountain.  His glory frightens us, his grandeur blinds us. And so God became a child so that we can accept him, so that we can approach him, so that we can love him, so that we can embrace him.

Today we our responsorial psalm comes from the book of Judith.  Judith was a Jewish widow living in Bethulia, in Israel which at that time was under threat from Holofernes, the commanding general of King Nebuchadnezzar’s army.  Holofernes was encamped near Bethulia striking fear in all of Israel.  Judith went to the camp of Holofernes and with her charm and beauty won the trust of the general so much so that she was allowed access to his tent.  Then one night while the general was drunk and asleep Judith went inside his tent and cut his head.  Then she brought the head back to Israel.  When the army of Holofernes realized that their general was dead, they dispersed and Israel rejoiced.  They praised Judith for her courage, for her virtue, for her sacrifice and for her wisdom. - Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth.   

Today we reflect on psalm 23.  The psalm involves three changes of sceneries, seemingly three journeys.   Journey number one involves going from one pasture land to another.  Remember this is still the desert.  This is not one vast pastureland but oases here and there amidst the barren landscape.  And the sheep have to depend on the shepherd as he looks for verdant pastures and restful waters travelling from one oases to another.  Getting lost is not a choice here.  Leaving the side of the shepherd is not an option.  You get lost you die. 

St. Robert Bellarmine in his commentary on this psalm, psalm 72, says that this is a prayer of King David for his son and heir to the throne, Solomon.  “ O God, with your judgment endow the king, and with your justice, the king's son.”   David did not ask for riches, or wealth or long life for him and for his son but that God would endow them with a mind and a heart like that of God so that they can render judgment just as God would render judgment, so that the king and his son will govern wisely just as God would govern his people.