god uses ordinary things - 19th sunday B

In today’s gospel, the logic of the Jews in their quarrel with Jesus is this:  How can a son of an ordinary carpenter claim that he can give bread from heaven?  How can an ordinary person whose father and mother we very well know claim that he is the bread that came down from heaven? How can Jesus whose family are our next door neighbors claim that the bread he gives will bring eternal life?

How can something so ordinary bring about these extraordinary claims?  Even today this same logic continues:

How can tap water, the same water we take a bath in, the same water we use to brush our teeth with, how can tap water wash away our sins and make us the children of God in baptism?  Or how can a bread made of only flour and water, how can ordinary wine, it’s not even first class and San Miguel beer tastes better, and yet, how can these ordinary bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus which is our food for eternal life?  Or how can I go to this ordinary man who is himself sinful, who himself makes a lot of mistakes like me, how can I go to a priest to confess my sins, and have my sins forgiven by God through him?

But that is what the sacraments are – God uses ordinary things, God uses everyday things we find around us in order to sanctify us, in order to forgive our sins, in order that he can come to us, to be with us, to save us.

Kita nyo sang nagligad nga mga tinuig damo natuntuhan kay may tawo nga nagpakuno-kuno nga pari tapos nagpati man ang iban nga pari sia.  Ang iban nagpamisa, nagpabless sang ila balay, sang ila awto.  Tapos may nagkadto sa akon nga nanay sang seminarista daw mahibi, Fr, nag-konpesar ako sa iya.  Sinunlog ko pa gid sia tapat, ay hala mo, basi iblackmail ka niya.  Even the rituals can be easily followed that one time kuno, and this happened in Manila, ang nagmisa sa isa ka funeral parlor amo ang sacristan sang pari and nobody suspected anything.

My point is it is so ordinary that all you can do is put your trust and faith that indeed Jesus is using the ordinary so that he can come to you, so that he can reach out to you, so that he can give life to you.  God uses the ordinary to reach out to us and to be with us.  Do not run after miracles and visions, and phenomena.  No.  Jesus comes to us through ordinary things, in the sacraments, in our humanity.

Allow me to take this principle a step further. St. Teresa of Avila has this beautiful prayer which says:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Jesus looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Today let us ask ourselves.  How can the ordinary that is me become an instrument of Jesus in the world?  How can the ordinary that is me become the hands, the feet and the eyes of Jesus to others and to the world?

In a documentary about the Catholic Church in Communist China today, it was asserted that it was because of the social programs of the church, it runs clinics and hospitals, it runs schools, home for the aged and for the orphans, feeding programs, helping those who suffer because of calamities and accidents  – it was because of these programs that the Catholic Church survived.  The communist did not totally obliterate the church in China because of the good things she did and does in society.  But a priest said, “we are not doing this in order to survive the communists.  No.  We are doing these because it’s what we do, it’s who we are, it’s what Jesus wants us to be.  It is for us the most natural thing to do.”

You may be ordinary.  But when we go home today, remember you are  the hands, the feet, the eyes of Jesus to others, for others.  It is for us the most natural thing for you to do.