DOWN AND OUT, BUT LIFTED UP!

4^th Sunday of Lent (B)

March 18, 2012

This Sunday, in true Biblical fashion, is a day of reversals, a day of seeming contradictions, and a day of apparently clashing images and realities. Like our lives here in mortal earth, the readings talk about seeming defeat, about being dead, yet being made alive. They talk about being thrown into exile, but also about a glorious homecoming. They speak about justice, but also about the triumph of mercy over judgment.

The Gospel passage clinches it for good measure … It speaks of being smitten and being dashed to the ground, and yet in the same vein, it talks about looking up at the very symbol of seeming defeat, and finding new life!

I am in absolute and dire need of this powerful reminder. I am dry in the mouth and longing for the regenerating and refreshing waters of newfound hope, at a time when I feel there is no other way but down, and deeper, into the labyrinth of hopelessness as far as our nation and people are concerned. I feel that Christian faith has been so far powerless at changing the dysfunctional political culture of revenge, partisanship, personalities, and patronage.

We are no doubt smitten dead by the serpentine and wily ways of the world, so immuned now to objective good and objective moral standards. We are not just smitten; we have thrown ourselves into a veritable exile – far from moral and ethical reasoning, far from God, far from the ways that lead to peace, despite the protestations from very comfortable leaders, who talk about the “good” and “welfare” of their constituents.

How true the words of the Second Book of Chronicles are for us. Priests, princes, and people alike are guilty of “infidelity upon infidelity.” Hidden dollar deposits to run away from the law, manipulative lawmakers who are really the first lawbreakers, judges in robes but who are really wolves in sheep’s clothing, and leaders who lead by bombastic speeches, belied by the same evil ways and machinations, sicut erat in principium, while brandishing the weapons of righteousness!

This is the sad backdrop of my reflection on this fourth Sunday of Lent … the reality of death, both personal and social. Personal … for we are all guilty of personal sin, like those who are on trial in the latest telenovela that we have in our society. But we also experience social death, for our social institutions, including the machinery called government is really caught up in a culture of death, and backroom deals and briberies, that are so commonplace, the Senators, and the so-called honorable men and women of Congress, are no longer scandalized about. Social, also because the personal sins that we all commit individually and secretly, are the same sins that become social, the same sins that all have a social dimension, that translate into sinful structures, that lead to the reality of politics of a sinful kind – the sinful structure of Philippine politics!

I am sad. But today’s readings are clear. They don’t call me to be sad. They call me to be sorry. And being sorry is not something that institutions can do. The Senate and Congress as bodies cannot be expected to be sorry and sad and repentant. But individuals like you and me are … Individuals are called to life, new life, that can only come from an experience of death – dying to sin, and rising to new life of holiness!

The great scandal of Christianity, one writer said, is that it has proven powerless to obliterate social sin, structural sin, sins that we all do as a collective body and as a people, but tragically sins that no one of us feels responsible for.

Christian faith, to which most of our politicians subscribe to, has proven itself powerless and helpless to change the culture that leads to death and more selfishness and greed. Yes, Christian faith has failed you and I, when you see the flagrant and shameless indifference of honorable people to the equally shameless double-dealing and bullying and bribery being done in the “hallowed” halls of the legislative, judicial, and executive departments! “All men have fallen short of the glory of God!” and we all are in it together! We all are sinful. We all create those structures of sin that we all complain about.

But I am a priest … one of those the first reading harps against, thrown in together with the bunch of princes and people guilty of infidelity upon infidelity.

Yes, I am a priest, and let me proclaim today, as good a day as any other … “Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you!”

And this is a humble supplication addressed to the Lord, “the God who is rich in mercy,” “who brought us to life with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions.”

“We are his handiwork,” St. Paul says. We are loved such that “he sent his only Son, so everyone who believes in might have eternal life.”

There is hope. But that hope has to begin with you and me. Bodies and institutions find it hard to repent and say sorry, even as big ships like the Titanic hardly are able to change course drastically. But individuals like you and me can do that.

Today, all of us, individually can do precisely that. Bitten and smitten by sin, we can look up to the Lord, up on the cross … He did not die in vain. He died for you and me.

And let me add this… A big man, equivalent to a Senator, Nicodemus, came by night … He wanted to ask a question or two, curious and inquisitive … The night, an old song says, “has a thousand eyes.” But it also has thousand ears, a thousand dreams, and a thousand possibilities. For one, it is the best backdrop to speak about light. And Jesus did precisely that … “the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light.”

The backdrop I began with was dark. I talked of evil. I talked of sin, personal and social. I am part of this backdrop. I am part of this world for which the Lord has come!

And this is the light … God so loved the world that He sent His only Son. Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget this!

Don Bosco Seminary

Canlubang, Laguna

March 12, 2012

11:30 AM

Written while administering personality tests to a group of young seminarians who are the hope of the future for me and for us!

SIGN, WISDOM, OR PROCLAMATION?

3^rd Sunday of Lent (B)

March 11, 2012

I generally don’t prefer eating out and patronizing big restaurant chains, even if they pass themselves off as “family restaurants” that offer sit-down dinners a la carte. Reason, you might ask? I don’t like having to choose from so many options, from starters to main courses; from sides to sauces and dips, to drinks and what appears to be an endless array of concoctions galore. Being basically of simple taste and simple, humble origins, I would rather go for simple dishes that already boast of everything in one, simple, uncomplicated platter.

Postmodernity, they say, is a world caught up in an infinite variety of choices. Everything has become a fruit of a choice. One does not take things as given. One decides to have it, chooses to hold it, and opts to keep it. Cable TV has become the epitome of what the postmodern world of choices, and unbridled freedom devoid of any parameters, stands for. Truth also becomes a matter of choice, or preference. Nothing objective holds sway over people’s minds and hearts. The band named Boyzone more than 15 years ago, already clinched it in one of their more popular songs: “No matter what they tell us, no matter what they do; no matter what they teach us, what I believe is true.”

Nowhere is this unbridled freedom that is separated from any objective standard more true as in the arena of personal and collective morality. There is no more objectively and intrinsically evil act, for many people. If everything is a choice, then what one chooses is really indifferent, morally speaking.

And yet, the first reading today puts us face to face with the reality of the Decalogue, or the 10 commandments. Whilst I submit it is hard to put all imaginable moral cases and scenarios under any one of the 10 “words” or commands, Exodus chapter 20 does remind us that there is an objective standard of right human behavior out there, and these ten words are “signs” that point to that objective moral order.

But it takes more than just a set of commands to establish the need, or to posit the reality of an objective moral order and standard of right human behavior. We need something more than just commandments. The ten commandments cannot vouch for themselves. They are signposts, yes, but before they are a listing of what to do and what not to do, they are first and foremost a set of signs that are best understood in the context of a bigger, wider, and more encompassing backdrop. And that background has to do with WISDOM.

For many, many people, that wisdom is primarily understood as something that has to do with REASON, with man’s innate capacity to use his intrinsic and inborn intelligence to pore through life and reality in the world in order to see a cogent, convincing bases for the said rules. This is the wisdom that even the Bible posits as starting from a truth – the truth of God, first of all, and the truth that He is behind that natural law written in the heart of everyman, and in everything that exists in the world of nature.

But many, many people, too, are not aware that in the Old Testament tradition, wisdom also stands for  Someone. Biblically, wisdom is often personified, and is taken to stand for God Himself. Wisdom, long hidden from the understanding of humanity, is gradually revealed, and that unfolding revelation points to no other than God Himself.

What the, does all this have to do with the Decalogue, or the ten words of command that we now have before us? The answer then leads me to the third word for today, which is PROCLAMATION. Yes, the ten commandments, at bottom, before being prescriptions for good behavior and proscriptions against bad behavior, are first and foremost about a relationship with that Someone. They first have to do with Someone that the whole history of salvation and the history of revelation proclaims – God and His will and desire to relate with us meaningfully and fully as His creatures, as His sons and daughters.

No, dear reader, the ten commandments are not primarily about prohibitions. Yes, dear reader, the ten words primarily have to do with signs that point to wisdom and to Wisdom – that is, to right understanding coupled with right behavior and right attitudes, and to Him who is Wisdom personified. They are signs that point, furthermore, to a way that leads to a right relationship. They are a proclamation of a God who has come to save us in Christ, and through whom He has revealed the Way towards fullness of life.

This essentially, is what the Church proclaims today. The old law and the new law are summed up in no other than Christ. In St. Paul’s words: “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” But let us hear it, too, from St. John: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.”

Need we say more?

BENEDICTION, TRANSFORMATION, TRANSFIGURATION!

Second Sunday of Lent (B)

March 4, 2012

The readings today are all so rich a separate reflection for each one is in order. But one of the tasks of the homilist is to tie up all three in the light of the bigger mystery that the Catholic liturgy celebrates in all the liturgical seasons, Lent, most especially.

I would like to begin with the obvious – the call to perfect obedience of Abraham, who was not just called to get out of Ur. A train of other calls came his way, from no less than the same God who called him from his ultimate “comfort zone” that was Ur. This time, though, the call pierces through the roof of reason, and asks him to do the unthinkable … that is, sacrifice his very own son Isaac. The fact that he had to go up the mountain definitely was no accident. The very call at this particular instance, is all an uphill climb, much more difficult than his journey through the plains from Ur to the land of promise.

Moriah, the same mountain on which the temple would much later be built, already this early, symbolized what the call from God was meant to be right from the outset … No guts; no glory … No pain; no gain … no cross; no victory! I don’t know about you, but even a celibate like me, with no son of my own, cringes at the thought of a loving, doting father having the unthinkable task of giving up a dearly beloved, just because God said so.

But the first reading is a story of divine benediction. “All because you obeyed my command,” said the Lord, “I will bless you abundantly” … and “all the nations of the earth shall find blessing.”

A first important lesson juts out straight from the first reading. Yes, dear reader, there is a blessing attached to being obedient. Divine benediction awaits the one who is willing to give up all for the sake of the God who calls. Let me tell you a little vignette of a story from my own life. When I was much younger, I never wanted to work in the seminary. Back then, I was doing further studies in Rome and I thought I would get back home with the much coveted three letters after my name, but to work as part-time teacher, and not as formator. But then, my superior called me back home, and told me to cut my dream short. I was needed at the formation house. I needed to get back home in time for the new school year coming. I hemmed. I hawed. I howled in protest for a while. But then obedience had to take primal place. I spent the next ten years of my life where I originally did not want to be … the most productive of my young priestly life. And when it was time to go, I did not want to budge once again. I know I did much. I know I loved every minute of it. I was blessed, because I obeyed!

The prayer that constitutes the response after the first reading applied to me then, when I did not want to budge, when going out of my comfort zone was the most difficult thing to do. But again, the idea of being in pain, being “greatly afflicted,” of having to “offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving,” and of having “to pay vows in the presence of all his people,” – exactly what Abraham did, was attached to an unfolding benediction, a blessing a-blossoming: “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living!”

Right now, I am not in the best of spirits. I am sad for so many reasons, both personal and otherwise. I am again being sorely tested to the core of my deeply ingrained values and beliefs. I am suffering once again, not on account of the wrong things I did, but on account of the convictions I stand for, and in the presence of people who impute bad will to all I do.

Many times, people who suffer innocently, are not just called to receive benedictions and blessings from the Lord. The more important thing they are called to is towards transformation. This, I would like to think, is what the second reading tells us today: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” We are called to renew our minds, and see blessings, including those that hide behind pain and suffering. And what is that ultimate blessing that is powerful enough to lead us to a personal and social transformation? Paul’s answer is unequivocal: “Christ Jesus [who] died, or rather, was raised from death – who also is at the right hand of God, and who indeed intercedes for us.”

But all this that Paul says would have remained mere meaningless words, were it not for the fact that this same Christ Jesus eventually walked his talk, and did what He, too, expects us to do on our own. Mark’s gospel was careful enough to tell us the telling detail – “Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain, apart by themselves.”

We all are in it together. We are all climbing uphill. Life, as I said last week, is not a “walk in the park.” It is a journey upwards. It is a call to benediction, yes … but there won’t be any benediction unless we are also willing to pay a high price, like Abraham did. His blessing, the same blessing we now share in, happened all because “he obeyed.” And that was when transformation happened!

The Lord’s transfiguration did not just happen without sufficient cause or reason. According to biblical commentators, it was all in view of the coming event of his passion, death, and resurrection. It was all, if you will, a prefiguration, a sort of an “advanced notice” of better and more things to come, a sign of what eventually and ultimately, He who became man like us, had come to lead us to – to become God like Him, the ultimate transfiguration and transformation that awaits us all believers and followers.

This is the good news that we need to focus on, even in the midst of all this bad news that surround us. I am personally suffering right now, threatened by certain events I have no control of, a potential victim of misinterpretation and rash judgment. In my desire to educate and form young people under my care, I incur the ire of certain personalities who don’t want things changed, who would not hear of leaving their own comfort zones, and who desire at all cost, to maintain the status quo.

I am one, too, with the whole Filipino people, now caught up once again in so much strife and disunity, mainly in the political arena. For the nth time, the ugly monster called partisan politics of personages and personalities is rearing its despicable head, as forces are realigning in view of next year’s elections. In the process, some individuals, and certain concerns that have to do with the common good, are waylaid, or destroyed, as collateral damage. We are back where we were prior to the February peaceful revolution of 1986.

The lesson seems clear from the gospel today. Yes, we are called to benediction. And yes! We are called to transformation. And Jesus’ transfiguration shows us two things: first, we, too are called to the same glory, courtesy of his passion, death, and resurrection. Second, we need to first go up the high mountain, and go down from the mountain of meeting, the mountain of glory, the mountain where even the three disciples wanted to build tents and stay therein.

For blessings to become actual and meaningful, for our own transfiguration to become real and personal, we need to go down the mountain, and live where God wants us to, to bloom where we are planted, and believe in His promise: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

PROMISE, PACT, POWER!

First Sunday of Lent (B)

February 26, 2012

As is my wont, I summarize today’s three readings in three succinct words. The first goes by the one word, PROMISE. We hear a heartwarming story of a God who is willing to start on a clean slate, no matter what happened before, no matter what men have fallen into – grievously, I might add. The Lord makes a promise … no more flood, no more waters to bring chaos on the earth. Mercy triumphs over judgment, and God makes a NEW Covenant with no less than a rainbow for sign and witness to this new covenant.

I choose the alliterative PACT to represent the second reading. Whilst a reference to the flood is also alluded to in Peter’s first letter, the focus is really on the fulfillment of what that pact between God and His people meant: “Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.” The PROMISE was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, our Savior, the personification of the whole NEW COVENANT, prefigured in the Old Testament.

The Gospel, for its part, speaks of POWER. The desert, being the symbol of everything bad and despicable in Jewish culture, the repository of all sorts of refuse, the hiding place of all bad elements in society, the habitation of wild animals … there is nothing glamorous about being in the desert!

But this is precisely what Jesus did! … He went right into the heart of the wilderness … right into the lair of the mythical dragon of evil that haunted mankind since time immemorial. Power is what the Lord exudes. Power is what he wields. And Power is what he possesses as he holds fort for forty days “tempted by Satan,” and being “among the wild beasts.”

I have, therefore, three good reasons to hold you captive for today: God’s Promise, the undenidable Pact that that same promise contained, and the Power that is in us as followers of Jesus Christ.

Let me begin by telling you an equally undeniable fact … We live in our own brand of wilderness in our times. We move in a situation rife with conflicts and all sorts of trials. We seem overpowered, in fact, by a multiplicity of “wild beasts” and “demons” that make life like pushing the mythical rock of Sysiphus! Let us face it … life is not exactly like a bowl of cherries. Life is not even close to being a “walk in the park.” I have it on the authority of Scott Peck in his first two bestseller books of more than 40 years ago, that “life is difficult,” and 

that “life is complex.”

Dianne Bergant suggests that one theme that the readings tend to point out to, is that “we live in the midst of conflict.” It does not take too much for us to identify with such a theme. Floods seem to wreak havoc everywhere in the world. The typhoon “Sendong” just before last Christmas left a wide swath of destruction and indescribable grief to tens of thousands of Filipinos in the southern island of Mindanao. Our political lives are once more being tested to the core with our fractiousness, divisiveness, and disunity as a people. Political allegiances and alliances seem to occupy a whole lot of our waking and sleeping, and resting hours. Last thing I heard is, sin, is still very much entrenched in our hearts, my own, first of all, and in the hearts, minds, and hands of everyone honest enough to admit it. We live and move in the midst of conflictuality and confusion.

But my three words are meant to be good news. My three succinct words are supposed to be a summary of what we need to reflect on, and live in our own life contexts. And the reason why we are here, once again, Sunday in and Sunday out, is because we find it in our hearts, filled with faith and trust in a merciful God, whose mercy triumphs over judgment, that He stands to fulfill His Promise of old, that He is a God of promises and a God of fulfillment, that we as a family of nations and peoples, were not meant for chaos, but called to order, to grace, to unity and peace. Biblically and culturally speaking, water, inundation, and  floods all stood for the original chaos that Genesis originally spoke of, where God breathed life and meaning into!

But that promise bore fruition in a pact that led to the coming of the Messiah and Savior – Jesus Christ. Peter tells us: “Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit.” The ultimate experience of conflictuality, the epitome of conflict, sin and its product, death, was defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ. The rainbow that filled the firmament as symbol of the Promise, became the crucified body of the Lord that hung against the firmament of Calvary, and, by His stripes, by the crimson colors of his wounds, we were all healed!

I got more good news for you … no, not mine, but the Lord’s!

He goes into the heart of our conflictuality, the symbol of everything that is wrong in our society and in the world at large. He goes right into the chaotic world of the wilderness that seems to always overpower us and always seems to keep us at bay. The Lord meets sin and its effects headlong, and goes right into the desert. No … he did not just “dwelt among us.” He lived in our midst, even in the midst of evil, suffering, sin, and all allied negativities flowing from it.

He came to the desert – and to the world – with power and might! He came to a world filled with conflicts wielding the rainbow and sword of power and victory! For forty days, he was “tempted by Satan.” He was “with the wild beasts” in that not-so-secret world of evil and darkness.

He came. He saw. He triumphed!

I would like us now to claim this PROMISE. No more chaos, no more floods, no more of the same old dirty tricks department in our midst!

I would like us now, too, to claim this PACT. Jesus came to make it real. Jesus lived to make it concrete reality. Jesus our Lord dwelt in our midst to fulfill everything that that pact stood for. He does no less in our times. He will do no less in future. He is Lord of history and Lord of glory.

But above everything else, I would like us to claim this POWER! Enough of all this dysfunctionalities, I say! Enough of all discouragement, dejection, and despair! Enough of all this disunity, disappointments, and moral debilities!

We have the Lord with us on our side. We have him beside us, and even as He tells us to “repent and believe in the Gospel,” He also tells us the whole object of this promise, pact, and power: “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!”

PROTECT US IN OUR STRUGGLE AGAINST EVIL!

Ash Wednesday

February 22, 2012

Lent is once more here. Once again, the Church, through the liturgical year, is educating us, reminding us, helping us move on to “higher ground,” sort of, and seek for higher things. Ash Wednesday ushers us into the holy season, a forty-day period of preparation for the Paschal Triduum, that leads to the “highest point” of our moral and spiritual striving – the Resurrection of the Lord!

But before we can reach for the stars, we need to look at where we are. We need to do a reality check, and realize where our feet are planted. And in case you have forgotten it, they are planted solidly on terra firma – on earth, that tradition calls the “valley of tears.”

But there is more than just tears to deal with as we enter into the holy season of Lent. Let today’s readings tell us … The prophet Joel reminds us of the need to “do penance,” on account of our sins. But he takes pains to define that penance … It is not just for show, not just for compliance. He tells us to “rend our hearts, not our garments.” And what is the spirit behind such an act of penance? Our response after the first reading clinches it … No other reason but our sins, our own, and that of others: “Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.”

We are in terra firma alright. Just look at us now … so broken and divided by so many issues. We are once again a fractious people, torn by so many conflicting interests, so many contradictory allegiances, and loyalties. Like the Corinthians of old, we take sides. We form cliques. We form alliances.

But though there is nothing inherently wrong in taking sides, the problem that we see as we journey through this valley of tears, is simply this: sin enters the picture. Selfishness comes into play. Self-centeredness and all sorts of personal agenda get factored in. Just look at our dysfunctional politics of patronage and personalities!

We are a sinful people. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God!

But today, Ash Wednesday, as shown by the symbol of the ashes, we are reminded: “Be reconciled to God!” “We beg you not to receive the grace of God in vain … Now is the day of salvation.”

Today! … Here and now … Here below, in this valley of tears. We cannot think of going to higher ground unless we deal  with the reality here below. And what do we see here below? Let the Lord Himself remind us …

He talks about the need to be “on guard against performing religious acts for people to see.” He reminds us about not “blowing a horn when giving alms.” He tells us about not “behaving like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray in synagogues or on street corners in order to be noticed.”

Guess what He speaks about … He talks to you and me, all prone to merely scratch the surface, and just go for the externals just for show. He reminds us of our tendency to be superficial. In such a state of affairs, there seems to be no point in reaching for the stars, when we are really down here in the dumps and caught up in the mud of sinfulness and selfishness.

The ashes are there to remind us … that we are dust, that we are nothing more than lowly humus – soil, and that to this same dust, we shall all return one day. And when we do … when we acknowledge the state we all are in, and when we do our best to reach out and cry out for help and forgiveness, that is the time, God’s mercy and compassion in Christ Jesus, our Lord, comes to lift us up, onwards to the stars, onward to the higher things, onward to heaven that is our true home.

And so we pray the Lord, “protect us in our struggle against evil.” (Opening Prayer)

GOD WILL MAKE A WAY!

7^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

19 February 2012

Today’s liturgical readings remind me of the popular saying, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” The Lord, through Isaiah, declares something so heartwarming, so encouraging … something we all need so much in these times … a pat on the back, a gentle push from behind, a loving nudge from above … “In the desert, I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers!”

God be praised! For this is something I, and I dare say, all of you, very sorely need now. At a time when one typhoon after another, one earthquake after another, and trials upon trials mar and tar the social fabric of our lives everywhere, we are all sorely tried … we are tested in every way.

I will be the first to confess … I am!

There was a time in my younger life when things seemed simpler, life less complicated, and the future appeared rosier. But as I get older, I realize that things also get more difficult … The air is more tainted, the water more impure, and most situations surrounding our lives more embroiled in all types of confusion … moral, political, or otherwise.

I write even as I watch portions of the raging impeachment case going on in my country, with sadness, utter frustration, disappointment, and even, at times, anger, peppered once in a blue moon with laughter. But beyond the shallow and fleeting feelings associated with the current “telenovela” going on for the whole world to see, I confess that I get despondent over a slew of bigger issues … climate change, for one … the cycle of violence and looming persecution against Christians, for another. But the list is growing longer, as far as I am concerned. The “contours of hopelessness” that Robinson (2004) wrote about, “dotting the landscape of our lives,” make me cry out in pain, as does the psalmist: “Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.”

But my plaint already gives a clue to my existential pain. And it is simply this …  the root of all this pain is nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else but SIN.

Sin is ultimately behind all the malaise we are talking about, including the world’s tendency to prevaricate, to vacillate between truth and untruth, the uncanny capacity of us all to say “yes” while me mean “no” and say “no” when we mean “yes.” We are a sinful people, no more, no less. And we all are children of Adam, who denied responsibility but projected everything to the Eve, and Eve, who, herself, projected responsibility on the serpent.

I am sad … sad and sorry at what is going on everywhere … the abuse of power of those in authority … the arrogance of those who wield positions of authority in and out of government … the graft and corruption that people in high (and low!) places do with impunity.

But today’s good news leads me to be more sorry than sad. For the sorry state that we all find ourselves in, according to Scripture, really all boils down to, and is reducible to, sin … one’s own, and the sin we all take part in, by commission or omission, directly or indirectly, personal or social, for “all have fallen short of the glory of God!”

Because of sin, we live in a desert place. Because of sin, all we see is wastelands. Because of sin, we vacillate from “yes” to “no” and vice versa. Because of sin, we are not faithful … not to God, not to others, not to ourselves!

Today, in the midst of so much uncertainty and sadness, I praise God for the timely reminder that comes to us by way of the same readings. There is hope. There is light at the end of the dark tunnel of disappointment. There is a little opening that allows entry from the high ceiling of our frustrations.

The Gospel clinches it for us. If there is anyone who should be discouraged, it should have been the paralytic and those who cared for him. He was helpless to start with. But that helplessness bloomed into full blown hopelessness when they saw the house chock-full of people who all were probably equally helpless, equally needy of the Lord’s mercy and healing ministry.

But at this point, I will not repeat what I said at the start of this reflection, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” No… that is not good news, but a mere statement of human self-reliance. The Good News I am referring to, and holding onto for dear life is what Isaiah established first hand: “God will make a way!”

I say more … He tells us to open more than just the roof. He tells us to open the way to hope, forgetfulness, and to write off past records of our disappointments. He tells me, personally, today, to not allow myself to be imprisoned by past hurts, bygone events, and former frustrations and disappointments. “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not.”

But there is more … The Lord opens more than just the roof! The Lord opens the floodgates of hope from above, but He does so through the human efforts of those who brought the paralytic to him. He did not discount human effort. He allowed them to use their God-given strengths and capacities. He cured the paralytic. But He did so, only once his handlers brought him right in front of the Lord.

But I am not done yet! Early on, I laid down the basis of our despondency. I said it all boils down to SIN.

And this is the ultimate good news that today’s readings tell us. The bottom line … the ultimate foundation, the real basis of our malaise is sinfulness in all guises and forms and manifestations.

The Lord is healer. In answer to our plaint, “Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you,” he takes the bull by the horns and, at the risk of resorting to mixed metaphors, he goes for jugular, sort of, and tells the paralytic: “Your sins are forgiven. Rise, pick up your mat and walk.”

God, thus, indeed, makes a way. But the more important question might simply be this … Are we following the way he shows for us to follow?