visible rhetoric

How does one know that what you are seeing is a real ghost or not?  First, the feet of a ghost do not touch the ground. According to ancient beliefs ghosts do not leave footprints when they walk.   What other proofs that what one is seeing is a ghost or not?  According to Tertulian you have to check the extremities, check specifically his hands and his feet.  This time you have to touch them – do his hands and feet have bones. Can you feel the bones in them? In ancient beliefs ghosts have no bones. 

In his dialogue with Nicodemus who was a learned Jew and a member of the highest ruling body of the Jews, Jesus told him that to become a son or daughter of God is no longer determined by the flesh or by the lineage of Abraham, or by race. To become a son or daughter of God now depends on the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  To be reborn into becoming a son or daughter of God is dependent on the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives through water, that is through baptism.

Our gospel today narrates that when the resurrected Christ revealed himself to the apostles, Thomas was not in the room.  He was not with his fellow apostles.  We really do not know why and the gospel is silent on his reasons?  Probably he was out on an errand or probably he went out to soothe his pain and loneliness.  Probably the room with all those sorrowful and desperate men were just too depressing, too stressful for Thomas.  The point is he separated himself from companions.  He was alone, he was on his own.  And probably this is the reason why Thomas doubted, why he could not believe that Jesus has risen from the dead. But after a week we see Thomas once again but this time he is with his community and when the risen Lord appeared it was not as hard to believe that indeed Christ is risen and because of that he was the first to utter and acknowledge that indeed Jesus is my Lord and my God. 

Our liturgy tonight is so all encompassing.  Whoever created this ritual tonight made it sure that he misses nothing.  Our theme is from psalm 136 for his love endures forever.  Our gospel however is from Matthew 28 go therefore and make disciples of all nations.  And our ritual recalls the command of Jesus in Matthew 5 to become salt and light for the world.  This is a preacher’s nightmare and at the same time the congregation’s confusion.  Gin-ubos ya gid ang tanan, wala ya gid ginbinlan para sa next year nga graduation.

The resurrected Christ appears in the midst of the apostles as they locked themselves inside a room.  The question is how did Jesus pass through the locked doors?  How did he enter the room where the disciples had locked and hidden themselves? Today we meditate on the qualities of a resurrected body. Remember when we resurrect, we resurrect with the body we died with.  So kon mag-resurrect si Mandario he cannot resurrect with the body of Abalorio.  Indi puede, although I think Rodolph would want a slimmer body, but that would no longer be resurrection but possession.

Our gospel today clearly shows that our eyes can fool us, our eyes can be a prey to illusions. And so is our hearing, even our logic, our thoughts and eventually our conclusions.  Mary Magdalene saw what she thought was a gardener who took away the body of the Lord.  Be wary of what you see, hear, think and conclude.  We are in still in a world where truth can be apparently true, where goodness can be seemingly good, where ugliness can be beautifully wrapped.  

Tonight, we have come to the last day and the peak of the holy triduum.  Triduum means three days.  It is the feast of the paschal mystery and it takes 3 days to finish, from Holy Thursday to Good Friday to Easter Sunday which we begin tonight with this Vigil. It is the pascha, the crossing over of Jesus as much as it is also our crossing over from our old life to a new life. Tonight, the last day of the triduum we are invited to become the young man in our gospel, dressed in white robe whom the women found in the tomb seated at the right side. If you have listened to last Sunday’s gospel at the beginning of the Holy Week, also from the gospel of Mark, there was also a young man in the garden of Gethsemane with Jesus.  He was a follower of Jesus, and Mark described him as wearing only a linen cloth.  When the soldiers arrested Jesus in the garden a commotion ensued and the disciples fled for their lives including this young man....

Yesterday in order to do our pascha, our crossing over from slavery to freedom, from this world to the Father, from our old selves to the new, Jesus invited us to have our feet washed and also to wash each other’s feet.   Today another invitation is given to us, this time it is an invitation to stand beneath the cross, to stand beneath the cross of Jesus with John, the beloved disciple, with the women close to Jesus, and most especially to stand beneath the cross with Mary, his mother. Jesus, if you have not yet noticed already, Jesus never called his mother mama or nanay.  Instead, Jesus calls her “woman”.  There is a reason for this and it is not a belittling of nor a disrespect to Mary his mother.  In fact it is to honor his Mother that Jesus called her woman, for by calling her woman he invested on her the dignity of being the new Eve, the first woman in the book of Genesis.

Pascha means to pass over, to cross over.  We remember in these three days of the holy triduum the crossing over of Jesus. By his suffering, by his death and by his resurrection Jesus is crossing over from this world to the Father.  But even before Jesus, Israel had its own pascha, they have their own crossing over from the land of Egypt to the promised land, from slavery to freedom.  They too have to make a crossing.   But this is also our pascha, this is also our crossing over from slavery to freedom, from this world to the Father, from our old life to a new life. To help us cross I am proposing three invitations, one for each day of the triduum. The first invitation is for feet washing.  The second the invitation on Good Friday is to stand beneath the cross.  And the third on the Vigil of Easter is to become that young man whom the women saw in the tomb sitting on the right side clothed in white. 

Today in the gospel we see how Judas betrayed our Lord for 30 pieces of silver.  When a slave is killed accidentally, the master is compensated with 30 pieces of silver. It is cheap.  In fact 30 pieces of silver is the same price paid to Zechariah who acted as a shepherd and he called it sarcastically a handsome price. It is cheap.  And this is what precisely what the gospel is reminding us of – how cheap can we become when it comes to money.  It shows us what people will do for money.  And it is not only Judas.

In our gospel today when John the beloved disciple asked Jesus for the identity of his betrayer, Jesus answered by saying,  "It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it."  Breaking the bread and handing it to another person is a sign of friendship and this highlights all the more the betrayal by Judas. Jesus knew that Judas will betray him and yet he handed him the morsel, he handed him a piece of bread to eat, he offered him his friendship.  

Two points.  In the first part of the gospel John says that many have come to believe in Jesus because of what he has done for his friend Lazarus.  And yet, John also noted, that some people, in their hatred for Jesus, went to the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin to report him to religious authorities. This is our experience from time to time, the experience of getting pulled from side to side. There are those who would side for us and there are those who would go against us.  If Jesus was a pleaser he would have ended up pleasing no one anyway. For in the end what matters is not what others think.  In the end what matters is what you think, what you believe, what you stand for. Credo means I believe.  It is in the singular first person personal pronoun. In the end you get to decide.

Jesus said that he is not of this world and that he does not belong to what is below.  And so we ask, who belongs to the world like the Pharisees, how does one get counted to belong to what is below? In the gospel of John world, and tinaga nga kalibutan has two meanings.  The first meaning of world is everything that God created.  We are inserted in the world, we are part of this world created by God, we live, we work in the world.  This is not the world that Jesus condemns.  All God’s creation is good and that includes our wealth, our resources, our business, our work, our house – all God’s creation is good but only when we allow these to help us become better persons. 

There are a lot of accusations hurled against Jesus:  he constantly violated the Sabbath laws, he claimed that he is equal to God, he drove out the merchants from the temple, he is the prince of demons and so many others.  But there is one accusation in our gospel today that may come to us as shocking and even mindboggling.  And what is the accusation?  He is a Galilean.   There are accusations which one can engage, wrestle and argue with.  But how do you argue a charge that people should not believe in you, people should ignore all the miracles that you did, all the fine words that you said, all the good deeds that you made, because you are a Galilean.   There is one article I read which asks, is racism taught, is regionalism taught, is gender bias taught?  No, it is not actively taught by parents or by communities or schools, the article says.

On Black Saturday we commemorate an article of the faith, the catholic faith, which we seldom remember much less celebrate.  It is called the descent of Jesus to the dead. What is this article of faith about?  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the gates of heaven were closed even to those who have done good on earth.  Yes even to Moses, Elijah, Isaiah and all the prophets, and all the holy men and women of the old testament.  Heaven was closed waiting for the coming of the messiah who will open again by his death and resurrection the gates of paradise.  Only the messiah, only Jesus can open the gates of our Father’s house.

There are two reasons why things did not turn out the way people would want things to turn out in Jesus. First, his family wanted Jesus to go to Jerusalem for the feast of booths. It was a big feast and people from all over the world would come to worship in Jerusalem.  His family must have thought that this was an opportune time to make Jesus popular, to show off to the crowd this miracle worker and become a success.  But Jesus did not go.  Most of us know from experience that our families may have the best intention for us, no doubt about that, but most often they would miss the mark when it comes to discerning our vocation, our mission, the design of God for each one of us. Jesus’ family too never fully understood the vocation and mission of Jesus.  They were probably also grappling, trying to understand.  That is why Jesus had to struggle too with his family and with what they thought was appropriate for him.

Jesus in our gospel today is citing the testimony of John to the Pharisees who came to question his authority.  Jesus said  John was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light.  The contentment, Jesus said was for a while, the hearing which was on going was interrupted.  Something made them stop listening to him, something made them discontented with him, something made them turn their backs on him.  Probably something that he did, something that he said.

Today we are made to see the oneness of Jesus and the Father. When he was accused of violating the Sabbath Jesus insisted saying, My Father is at work so I am also at work. In the same gospel passage Jesus also said,  the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also.

Whenever we read the gospel of John we find two levels of meaning.  The first level of meaning are the facts of the narrative, it narrates what is taking place.  And so in the gospel we see first the facts.  First, the place was filled with the blind, the lame and the paralyzed. Second fact, we also have a man who was sick for 38 years, mark the number – 38 years. Then this man was asked “do you want to be well?”  This is the first level of meaning in the narrative.   Now to understand John we have also to go to the next level of meaning, to the second level of meaning.  This is often times called the spiritual meaning of a narrative.  

In our gospel today Jesus heals from a distance.  He simply told the royal official that his son is healed, without touching him, without drawing near to him, without being there.  And so it happened, that his son was healed as attested by his slaves at exactly the same time when Jesus said your son is healed.  

Two things this Sunday. First, Jesus compared his death on the cross to the bronze serpent lifted up by Moses on a pole.  People in Moses’ time were told to look to the bronze snake lifted high on the pole so that those who were bitten by the snake may be healed.  In comparing his cross and the bronze serpent, Jesus is telling us that his cross is not punishment, his cross is not just an expiation or payment for sins, but his cross is healing.

In our dialect we have a word for it, maisip, kaisip sa imo a. And this is not just referring to forgiveness.  It may also include generosity, love, care, kindness or just plain goodness.   Kaisip means tit for tat.  I am expecting something in return, which means, since I have been kind to you, I expect you to be kind to me in the same measure.  If not, then we have another term for this kind of ingratitude – manumboy – sang sia gani may kinahanglan nagbulig ako, karon kay ako may kinahanglan tinalikdan niya ako.  TI sang una ako man, gin-amo mo man ako sina.  And what is that?  Nag-isipay na sila. In our gospel today, through a parable narrated by Jesus, we are told that this is not the characteristic of God.   Ang Dios indi maisip in his relationship with us.  And in the same parable it is shown to us what would happen if God is maisip, which consequently leads to a bad end. ...

Many times we are impressed by the wrong things.   In our gospel today everyone is impressed by the temple, the physical temple in Jerusalem.  Construction already took forty six years.  The building must have been a sight to behold.  It was one of the most beautiful buildings in the world then, even Jesus had not failed to notice people stopping to admire the temple from afar as they passed through the Mount of Olives.   And here was Jesus, now in the middle of the chaos after throwing out the merchants and their livestock, and after overturning the tables of money changers, saying,  "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."

Our gospel today forbids us to call each other Rabbi which means teacher, it forbids us to call each other Father and it forbids us to call each other master – for there is only one teacher, there is only one Father in heaven, and there is only one master who is the Christ. St. Jerome in his commentary on this passage of our gospel says, “ It is one thing to be father or master by nature, another by sufferance.”  By sufferance we mean amo na ina ang naandan ta nga itawag sa ila, amo na ina ang convention in referring to them.  But the more important note here is this: our fathers are fathers not by nature because they did not create our being.  God created our being, we owe our existence to God, we could not have existed, we could not have been born if God did not allow it.  Now since God according to Jerome is our real Father to whom we owe our existence, we therefore owe God our primary allegiance.  This assertion is loaded.

It may be translated as trespasses in the Our Father, but in the original Aramaic, sins, trespasses offenses and debts or utang use the same word.  In fact Latin use the word debts in the Our Father instead of sins or trespasses.  The fact is when Jesus composed the prayer, sins and debts are the same words.  Sin therefore carries with it a connotation that like debt it needs to be repaid.  Ang utang dapat bayaran gani ang sala dapat man bayaran.   That is why we believe that because of God’s tremendous love for us, God himself in the person of Jesus paid for our sins.  The term we use is redemption – Jesus redeemed us, he bought us at such great price, the price which is his life, his blood.  We cannot fully repay for our sins.  Even a lifetime of good deeds cannot pay the price for our transgression.  Jesus has done that for us.  He paid for us and for our salvation.