bring an umbrella: 2nd sunday of advent C

Last first Monday of December we had this recollection about this year which was marked by the Pope as the Year of Faith.  So after this whole day affair, just before we left, the Archbishop addressed us by asking, what is faith then?  We fell silent.  Then he said.  "What is faith?  Faith is when you pray for rain and you bring with you an umbrella.  When you pray for rain you already bring with you an umbrella.  That is faith."  Well, we smiled.

A week later Typhoon Pablo came.  It was forecast initially to cut through Panay with the intensity considered as a super typhoon.  So we have to organize everyone - sandbags have to be placed here and there, the classrooms have to be prepared in case our piggery gets flooded so it can become temporary shelter for our pigs - and some seminarians were heard commenting, “mayo pa ang baboy na promote sa third year high school.”  I even personally assigned two seminarians each for every cabinet in the library.  Then after all had been prepared, I gathered the seminarians and told them to take turns to pray so that that typhoon would dissipate.  And so they did taking turns praying the rosary and the litany of the saints and we have consumed a lot of candles just praying from midday till night.  Then I remembered the Archbishop - when you pray for rain bring already an umbrella.  What we did was we made sure that we were ready for the flood, then, when we were sure that we were ready, we prayed to God that we will not get flooded. 

 Isn’t it quite amusing that even before we prayed we were already preparing ourselves just in case God decided not to hear our prayers?  Probably that’s the trick in praying, no? - we hit the amor propio of God, if he has any by saying to God, we will pray to you ok, but we will do everything we can just in case you ignore us.  And so he gets insulted and decides to hear us anyway.  But anyway there is no harm in preparing and praying afterward.  As the Arabian nomads would say, “trust Allah but tie your camel securely.”

Last 2010 by some stroke of good fortune I got myself to New Jersey.  Being there I decided to pray for snow.  I have seen snow on TV but I have never in my whole life touched it as to know how it feels like.  And so there I was praying for snow in New Jersey.  Lo and behold God did not just give me snow.  He sent a blizzard to New Jersey and New York.  It was a terrible blizzard that stranded a lot of people.  And so I told some people there that now I have a reason to believe that whoever composed “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” was definitely not from New Jersey.

Many times I do not know how to pray anymore because if I prayed like I prayed in New Jersey and God will answer me the way he answered me in New Jersey mataya gid ko ya sa lotto.  Hamak mo pangayo ka snow gaan ya ka blizzard.  Sige da kay mangadi ko 1 thousand pila ayhan hatag niya?

I brought these stories up because sometimes in my sleep my mind would be wandering about, asking, Lord do you really hear my prayers?  Am I really that important to you?  Ok if I am not that important, am I at least relatively significant to you just enough to give me at least three seconds of attention in your too busy life?  I never really get answers to questions like these.  But just the same I asked them.  You see our gospel today tells us some characteristics of God which many times escape our notice.  It’s a characteristic which gets us a peek of how God takes care and works in and through ordinary, insignificant people like me, like most of you. 

Luke says in the gospel he wrote, "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas."  Have you noticed?  These are big time names, a list of who’s who in cosmopolitan Jerusalem, and if Jerusalem is Iloilo these are Cream Magazine materials, or at least their wives.  Then all of a sudden here comes a nobody, somebody insignificant, somebody so small masiling ka after the litany of big name, sino ni sia ya?  His name was John, the only son of, well nobodies in their time, Zechariah and Elizabeth.  He was an unlikely figure, too small to be noticed but what John started as this gospel is narrated, what he ventured into, shook the whole region, in fact it shook the whole country which beat a path towards him, and it will eventually shake the whole world, and even now when this list of who’s who are nothing more than just historical names.  Too small to notice, too small to deserve our attention and yet ....  These are just several of characteristics of God - he comes disguised in human weakness, he comes disguised in a vulnerable child, he comes disguised in a seemingly nobody, he comes disguised as bad fortune even.

This is the lesson of the season of advent - Last Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent  I asked a community during mass to recover the sense of the fantastic, to recover the capacity to be fascinated, to be amazed, to say wow because a virgin shall be with child, to get fascinated by strange and fantastic things ... of three kings coming from the east, of angels hovering in the sky, of shepherds adoring a future king, of Jesus coming again amidst trumpet blasts, of the dead rising and the heavenly court coming.  Kon indi ni fantastic sa imo ti bisan na gid lang kay Santa Claus.  Amo na galing ang diperensya.  Wala na kita naga-wow sa aton pagtuo.  Nagawow na lang kita kon wow iphone 5, wow Louis Vuitton. 

Second in the middle of the first week of Advent I asked the seminarians to get in touch with your longing.  What are you longing?  What is it that you hunger for in your life?  What are you looking forward to?  What are you dreaming for each other and for the community.  Just get in touch with these. They are important for the answers to these questions give meaning and sense of purpose to life ... why you go to school, why we have to struggle it out each day.  Advent is about finding a reason to believe.

In this second Sunday of Advent I encourage you to get into the excitement of getting surprised.  Be prepared for the surprise.  Be open to surprises.  Why?  Because God comes in disguise, redemption comes in disguise, blessings come in disguise.  Be prepared, for somebody dressed in camel’s hair and eating locust and honey has just become the precursor of the long-expected Messiah; be surprised when fishermen become apostles and pillars of the faith; be ready for a big surprise when the number one persecutor of Christianity by the name of Saul just became its number one promoter, this time as Paul.  Prepare yourself to be surprised.  They are in your families, probably somebody beside you now, or somebody whose hands you held a while ago.  They might be insignificant for the moment and many times we will miss them.  Precisely be prepared to be surprised.  We are filled with joy because many times, God is doing great things without our knowing, God is doing great things without our recognizing, but when we do, we get surprised. 

As we gather in this family day let our thoughts be filled with the great possibilities of each one here present.

Surprise us Lord, surprise us by the marvelous things you will do in each one of us and for all us.  Amen.