visible rhetoric

The mother of James and John is Salome.  It is said that when Zebedee her husband died, when she became a widow, Salome followed Christ together with her sons. St. John Chrysostom said that though she was very old she followed the Lord because faith never grows old and the desire to serve the Lord does not fade and does not falter.  Thus Salome is one of the women who followed the Lord caring for his needs and that of the disciples. But in this passage St. John Chrysostom asks, why is it that Salome was just corrected by Jesus but Peter was openly and even angrily rebuked by the Lord?  Salome was just told, you do not know what you are asking, but Peter was told get behind me Satan.  Why?

Today we celebrate the solemnity of St. Joseph, one of the two solemn feasts in the middle of Lent.  St. Joseph is referred to as Pepe, for in Spanish the double P stands for Padre Putativo, or the reputed father, not the real father but the reputed father.  That is why in the Philippines all Jose’s are nicknamed Pepe, not Joe I suppose.   St. Joseph is father because primarily he was the guardian of the Holy Family and thus, traditionally, he is also considered the guardian of the church. He is also considered the patron of a happy death because when he died he was graced with the physical presence of Jesus and Mary.  As a priest I have seen a lot of difficult deaths, damo hawid kag makangilidlis. Since all of us will die, we better have a devotion to St. Joseph so that our deaths will be peaceful, well-prepared and dignified.  To speak of St. Joseph however, only in this way is to belittle his role in the life of Jesus. ...

Be merciful just as your Father is merciful. There is one virtue, one characteristic which makes us like God – merciful, maluloy-on.  If Jesus is asking us to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect, then this characteristic must be present in us – maluloy-on. How can we be merciful?  The church provides us with some guidelines.  For example we have the corporal works of mercy – feed the hungry, drink to the thirsty, visit the sick, shelter the homeless, visit the prisoners, bury the dead, giving alms to the poor. Our parish has a feeding program every Saturday, providing food for at least 60 people – sponsored by two people.  I believe this is a good start.  Passing by Molo one gets the impression that it’s all beautiful houses and rich people. 

Several years ago, I was talking with an old woman, laon, in her house while her things were being given away – chairs, tables, chandeliers, plates, cabinets, tanan.  She was selling the house in the amount just enough to live off with the money for the remainder of her days.  We were seating on the two remaining chairs.  While she was talking I became distracted by the people packing her things, carting them away.   Maintiendihan ko kon patay ka na tapos partidahon imo gamit. Pero buhi pa sia kag makita niya with her eyes nga ginaputos kag ginabit-bit pagguwa literally ang iya kabuhi. Daw nagapin-ot ang akon dughan. Ano ayhan ang pamatyag mo nga buhi ka pa ginapartida na ang imo pagkabutang?   She noticed me and she called my attention telling me,  Fr. indi man lang amo sini ang kabuhi, this is not all there is to life.   I was a bit embarrassed then because I should have said that to comfort her. ...

Jesus teaches us to follow not the letter of the law but the spirit.  That is why Jesus expands the commandment thou shall not kill to include anger, or insulting the other by calling him raca, or worse by calling him a fool which in the Hebrew language means ining tawo nagbuang.   However, the expansion is not limited to the bad things one does to the other, but now it also includes the good I need to do.  Jesus said,  Go first and be reconciled with your brother; settle with your opponent quickly; these are positive expansions of the law. And this is how we live the spirit of the law.

The ending of the gospel which talks about prayer is asking us to develop a sensitive heart.  Having a sensitive heart is someone who can feel what others feel.  Because if we feel what others feel we would do to others what we want others to do to us.  And the opposite too is also true, we would not do to others what we do not like others to do to us.  That was the motive too of our fasting last week – we went hungry for a day so that we could feel what hungry people experience every day of their lives and hopefully the experience would develop in us compassion for those who hunger, and lead us to action. That is the content too of the argument on prayer – can a father have the heart to give his child a stone if he asks for bread?  Develop a sensitive heart.  How does it feel kon ikaw na dira?  

The timing of this gospel is crucial to our interpretation of the text today.  We are now a full week since we started the season of lent, the season of repentance and conversion.  This gospel seems to say, it has been a full week since we started lent, why is there no repentance yet, why is there a slowness to respond to the call of conversion, why are you delaying the response to God’s call?  The sign of Jonah is a sign for us to commit, a reminder for us to not delay, for when Jonah preached a call to repentance in Nineveh it just took him three days to make the people commit, it just took them 3 days to decide to turn once again to God and leave their sins behind.  For us it is already 7 days.

Notice again the gospel.  Jesus is not teaching us what to pray but how to pray, he is teaching us a manner of praying. And how do we pray?  Two things. First, when we pray we are addressing a Father not a deity, not a supreme being, not an unapproachable God, but a Father who knows what is in our heart even before we ask, a Father who knows what is good for us.  Is this also how we pray?  In our prayers are we addressing the Father?  In formulating our prayers, is this with the disposition of a son or a daughter?  

Today in the first week of lent we are reminded that the good we do to the least and the needy is a good not done for Jesus but to Jesus.  And it follows too that omitting to do the good to the least and the needy is an omission done not for Jesus but to Jesus.  This mystery of Christ in the needy and the least is further expanded in the experience of St. Paul when he was still persecuting the Christians, when on the road to Damascus, the Lord asked him, Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me.  Saul’s persecution was not against Christians, in fact Saul was persecuting Christ in every Christian he persecutes.

What is the goal of advertisements on radios and televisions?  How do they convince us to buy the products they sell?  This is the goal – they want to make us feel that we are lacking something, to make us feel inadequate.  That’s how they convince us to buy - ipabatyag nila sa tagpalamati nga may kulang sa aton kabuhi, kag produkto lang nila ang makasabat.  They do not say this directly but they would make you feel this – ngaa daw kaputi na sa iya, ako ya kaitom; ngaa kanami sang iya buhok, akon ya law-ay; kinahanglan ko man ina siguro ay.  Actually if you have not heard about it, you will never realize that you need it.  Have you noticed that? This is also how the devil tempts us – the devil makes us feel lacking, he makes us feel inadequate.  I feel I am not good enough but if I do this I think I will become better.  I feel I am not loved and appreciated enough but if I do this I will be better loved ...