Ang haba nito but you dont need to read it one go. He has a piece in the end about The devastation by Yolanda. Oh, this is the Priest we all miss too much. 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time November 10, 2013 The Living God “He is not a God of the dead, but of the living for everyone lives through him.” Last week, on our way back to Milan on an-11 hour trip from Medjugorje, the members of the pilgrimage group was so animated that they started to sing Marian songs, and then afterwards some shared their memorable experiences visiting the pilgrim site. One of them said that God that she would like to testify that God is really alive. She narrated how God snatched her child from the grip of death and aided her on that very difficult moment. Not only did God manifest himself as alive on that alone, but has not ceased to reveal himself as somehow continues to influence her life. She said, “talagang totoong buhay ang Diyos!” To this everyone in the bus chorus “Ameeeennn!!.” I cannot recall (to my shame) if I have ever said those words, with the conviction of that fellow pilgrim, who in her simplicity, perhaps have taught me one of the most profound theological truth: that God is alive! It was not said because she had understood the “Summa” of St. Thomas Aquinas or finished a doctorate in Systematic Theology. Of course, I had to do theology and speak to people about God in a more systematic and logical way. But I too realize that sometimes, the most highfaluting language does not mean anything, while simple words strike the heart and capture the truth. She knew God was alive because she experienced Him; He influences the events that happen in life and God had something to do with every bit of good things in this world. God can be spoken of the way we do with someone who is doing something good on our behalf and in that way he is known to as both personally and mysteriously. Let us speak about the living God by pointing to His qualities. The story of the seven brothers in the first reading (2 Maccabees 7: 1-14) points to the transcendence towards which life here is directed. The king tortured the seven brothers because they refused to eat pork (which is more of breaking God’s law). At the point of death, each one professed that God “will raise them up to live again forever”. Confronted with sure death, they understood God would not deprive them of the life that they had to lose, and would grant even something better. That direct statement is eloquently telling us that there is life, hereafter and we can commit ourselves into it. The Living God guarantees that he will give us life. He gives its fullness to us. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). If God were dead, could He give what is not His? Could it even be conceivable to ask this if the living God is not presumed? He is really alive because he can generate and regenerate life to others. Only that who lives can give life. Time and again the Living God manifests that He has power over death and holds all life together in His hands. He breathes upon the clay and man lives (cfr. Gen. 2). Here we can the pattern by which we must look at ourselves, and the way God has dealt our basic need to live. He breathes upon us the breath that we could not have given to ourselves, because we were dead (as St. Paul) and are totally unable to make effective our own existence. St. Paul speaks about which has its sole source in the living God. He said that God “has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope though his grace” (2 Thess. 2: 16). We must remember that Paul had to endure many forms of suffering while preaching the Gospel. What is more difficult was not only the cross he had to carry, but also the discouragement that he and his community often experienced in the midst of pain and ridicule. The uncertainty they faced seemed like a huge insurmountable wall, where there was nothing else to go than go back to their old way of life. But he said, God gives us everlasting encouragement and hope. The Living God is the giver and source of our hope. While discouragement is something that seethes within, making it a profound experience which not so many have power to overcome, what can remedy it is something that address how deeply this troubles us. The hope and encouragement that lifts us out of our gloom cannot be just human. It has to be divine. Encouragement and hope, if they are truly remedies to our deepest despair, should be sourced on courage and hope itself. False hope and empty encouragement come from a source, which does not have what it offers. Only God then can finally cure us of discouragement and despair because its depth is something, which alone can penetrate. I hope that, in spite of what I have said, God becomes clearer for you as one who lives. Even amidst the difficult language that we languish to explain the simplicity of God, (to explain God simply is sometimes to underestimate, and to explain Him profoundly is to lose sight of Him) rather look for him in the experiences where He makes himself available, palpable and truly personal. He does something, His own way, that tells of his ability to help us find where fullness of life dwells and gives us voices to sing songs of hope in the world that thinks that its despair was generated by a God who is absent and dead. In stead, we say with the faith of Jesus these words, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Luke 20: 38). Postscript: Someone asked me to offer something through the rubbles to reflect on after what befell Tacloban City, (in fact the whole of Eastern Visayas,) last weekend. It was a massive disaster, as we all know, that reduced the whole city into a wasteland. If the photos we saw were accurate and the reports were faithful to the events that occurred, we share the grief that not only people from Tacloban, but the Leyteños and Warays (from the twelve coastal towns of Leyte and the eastern towns of Samar) languish even as we now speak. With no food and with no home, many have lost their love ones to the tragedy. With their past totally wiped out, their future is rendered more uncertain. There was not even something, literally, to pick up for some to begin their lives again and move on. I am not in any capacity able to explain this. Simply, there are no words. With everyone, I too ask many questions, hoping that they are the right ones that lead to the right answers. To think that it was not even a month ago, when the earthquake in Bohol struck, and our hearts are still bleeding, this catastrophe added insult to our injury, as the saying goes. The efforts of those who are supposed to help have not been effectively enough, and this compounded our exasperation and misery. The helplessness of our people rubs on us, and even from our safe places we cannot but have hearts broken. We are broken hearts asking deeper questions. When disasters like this occur, everyone becomes concerned with the ultimate question, “Does God exist?” “If he does, then, why did this happen?” One feels that if God were truly benevolent and all-powerful, the events of recent days contradict this presupposition and seem to negate Him altogether. There is no love and goodness when an entire city, almost 95%, wiped out in hours. There is no benevolence in the death of thousands. If one mayor was correct, God must be somewhere else when this disaster struck. This event makes many atheists, and those who already are become more confident of their convictions. God is tried in the court of public opinion, where he does not usually get justice to his side. It is convenient to point blame on something, or someone. God usually takes that brunt. He has always been the convenient scapegoat and fall guy. We love him to be our punching bag. (The whole story of God as we know is like this, just look at what happened to Jesus!) But are we not blaming somebody whom at the same time we are negating? If he IS not (non-existent), surely the blame cannot fall on Him. This leaves us where we started off, without anyone to hang on too, not even anyone to blame. On the one hand, it is more convenient to come to the defense of God. On behalf of God, we are the ones who give him excuses, as if he needed any. We come to the “rescue” of the idea that there is God. On the other side of the pole, are people who will “defend” God at all cost, even if they have neither pondered the depth of the question, nor thought if this required an answer. Of course, we have to give testimony to God. This is not the point here. Rigorous religiosity offers formula, which fails to stimulate faith and sometimes betrays the whole idea of God’s goodness and love—the very foundation one tries to guard. I am not speaking of the creeds or Catechism, for they remain our surest foundations. People in agony look for God in the immediacy and urgency of the moment, and how to translate Him in the language of sorrow as one who deeply involves himself in it. In the midst of the painful events, would we not want to stimulate deeper faith than lying at the surface of religiosity, by less generalizing the concept of God and offer Him as a personal savior in our tragedies? People have the capacity to discover God innate to them. All we have to do is everything but to be too preachy about their conditions. Certainly, we will be of more help if we didn’t say it that the explanation was easy, because it was not. The problem of pain, good and evil best finds their synthesis in the story of Job. Job’s friends were so easy in concluding that his misery was all because of his doing. God has not anything to do with it. They exonerated God of any hand in Job’s misfortune. They dismissed easily any feeling Job might have had in the face of his misfortune. To all Job’s questions they readily give an answer, without understanding that the lament was very true. This miscalculated the plight of Job, and neatly arranged everything between good and evil, and Job’s sufferings. But they failed to see how God would himself have wanted participation in the fate that fell on his servant Job. From Job’s three friends, we find a bad counsel we sometimes give to our suffering friends. In defense of God we say, “God has nothing to do with it!” It is really saying to them that, “the blame falls on you!” Job deep in his heart asked, “Where are you God? Who are you, that you keep silent?” (cfr. Job 23: 8-9). I think before we rush to the answer, we must realize that the question itself is of utmost importance. We ask this too and in fact we always should. We look for him in our daily experiences. We find Him in places where we He seems absent. We search for his loving presence, in the aching parts of our lives. We wished Him to sit beside us in prayer. The longing for God of the just person finds their ultimate expression in the prayer said by Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27: 46; Psalm 22). This could be the painful cry uttered by people swept by the storm surge, crushed by the strong wind and drowned in the raging waters of the sea. So too, did those who survive questioned God, probably everyday since. The question can be distilled into a single word, “Why?” This is the same one we are trying to find answer now, because we believe we need to understand the reason, and make conclusions out of it. In the meditation of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, said, “Only God himself can reply. He has not done so in a conclusive manner. He has not done it in such a way that one could lay the answer on one’s desk and check the calculations. But nor has he been completely silent. It is true that his final word has not yet been spoken; in the Resurrection of Jesus, it has only began” (J. Ratzinger. The God of Jesus Christ, pp. 51-52). We will really have to patiently wait for him in order to completely understand how our loving God, who is all-powerful, could have allowed our terrible calamities to devour us. On the part of Job (and for us too), “He is only made aware of his littleness, of the poverty of his perspective from which he looks at the world. He learns to be still, to be silent, to hope. His heart is widened—and that is all. This humble act of falling silent as the first step of wisdom should concern us, too” (Ibidem, p. 52). While, we attempted to make conclusions and answer our questions, God remained silent and instead explained by an action that is even more confounding by allowing his Son to share our suffering. He allowed him to say what is truly in our hearts, every time we feel forsaken in our pain, in his own groping for an answer to his question on suffering. It is not easy. No one can say it was not painful. I saw pictures of people walking through the rubbles, attempting to find something to salvage. It might be a missing loved one, parents, children, wife or husband, friends and neighbors. It could be faith that they are searching, an explanation that can breakthrough the confusion. It can be something more immediate: that will make them survive each day. I pray that find it. I pray more than they may have patience especially as they wait for help and the answer to their question why. We should appreciate that question that comes to us now and then. It trains us to be like Job, to place ourselves as a people in pain, not denying that we are shattered, not looking the other way but deep into our misery where we can try to salvage our deeper hope. It widens our hearts to be more capable of God’s mystery. With them may we learn to walk through the heaps of what was left, believing that we shall find God there, this time not just through tested formula, but through something more surprising, in the silent suffering God has chosen.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 22:48:31 +0000
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