Dust to Dust

Once again, we go through the annual ritual of Ash Wednesday: we approach the priest or his representative to place ashes on our foreheads while we listen to the words: "Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return." A reminder, a warning, an invitation.

It is a reminder: a statement of an undeniable fact: that in the beginning and in the end, we are dust. We are mere earth. The Scriptures attest to this. Genesis tells us how Yahweh formed the first human being from clay, how He breathed life into it, making it a human being. Experience attests to this. We see how a dead body decomposes and turns into a mound of earth after cremation. There is no fable or fiction here: pure fact. From dust to dust.

It is a warning: a warning precisely against making a fable or fiction of who or what we are. Don't we spend much money, much energy, much time turning the fact of our mortality into a fiction? Think of age-resisting creams, death-defying technologies, forever young vitamins peddled to us by media. And we are all-too willing gullibles. In the end, it all comes to dust, inevitably! What a waste, in the end, it all is!

It is an invitation: to turn to God in Jesus Christ, for the real meaning and purpose of human life. Not in the dust, not in the decay, not in the dead, but in Christ, alive and risen. And it is for the joyful celebration of the Easter of His Resurrection that we are actually preparing for in Lent. We are invited "to turn away from sin and believe in the Good News!" The Good News is that the dust of death is not the dead end of the story of our life. The end is the glory of life, with Jesus Risen...

...but only if we follow Him on His way to the Cross!

For Our Beloved Country

These days, our thoughts travel back to memory lane to reminisce the first EDSA which happened 20 years ago. There has been efforts by various people to retell the story of EDSA from the point of view of those who really made it possible, the countless and nameless ordinary people who trooped to EDSA, unmindful of the real possibility of being machine-gunned by the military men deployed by the dictator. They are the real heroes of EDSA. Them we salute and for the future generations of Filipinos, we continue to renew, even if only in our hearts, the spirit of EDSA.

The readings at Mass for Sunday, Feb. 26, answers the question raised by many people after having observed how our beloved country hasn't seem to have moved forward after the first EDSA? Where have we gone wrong? What should we do/ have to be able to move on? The readings tell us: consistency, accountability, Christocentricity.

Consistency: The Gospel suggests that if you have a new wine, you put in new wineskins. If you have a new element, you put it in a new container as well. The product and its environment should be new, too. Internally and externally, there should be renewal. This did not happen in our case. After a few months or years after EDSA, people of the old regime were back in power. Corruption and nepotism have stayed. The change was only on the outside, not in the inside. Or inside, but not the outside. There has to be consistency.

Accountability: The first reading tells us how Yahweh plans to lead Israel to the wilderness and there to speak to her. In the context of Israel's story, this means starting with the relationship all over again, but not without testing and purifying, not without making Israel responsible and accountable for her sins and crimes. The same thing should happen to our country. It's not enough to be sorry and to apologize. One has to take responsibility for one's wrongs and crimes. Wrongdoers have to answer for their misdeeds, which is not happening in this country.

Christocentricity: This seems like a pious word without social import. This is not about more rosaries or more novenas or processions. This means centering one's life on Christ, and in the process imbibing his worldview and values: one that stands for fairness and justice, one that cringes at the sight of hungry and sick people, one that is angered at hypocrisy and pure showmanship. To be Christ-centered is to think and act like Christ. While the Philippines is predominantly Catholic, it is a stinging irony that we are in the list of most corrupt countries.

May this 20th year of EDSA be an opportunity to rekindle love for our country, especially among young people. As Rizal, through Padre Florentino, exclaims in El Filibusterismo:

“where are the youths who will dedicate their innocence, their idealism, their enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who will give generously of their blood to wash away so much shame, crime and abomination? Pure and immaculate must the victim be for the sacrifice to be acceptable. Where are you, young men and women, who are to embody in yourselves the life-force that has been drained from our veins, the pure ideals that grown stained in our minds, the fiery enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, come for we await you!”

A Big Heart

Someone asked, "What does Valentine's Day mean for celibate priests (and nuns)?" Indeed, if priests and nuns do not expect to give and receive roses and chocolates and heart-shaped balloons on Valentine's Day, then what is Valentine's Day for us?
I guess it's a day to remind myself/ ourselves of the importance of having a big heart which is necessary if one is to live a truly fruitful celibate life.

While physiologically, a big heart or enlarged heart will certainly lead to death, spiritually, a big heart brings life. This is because a big heart enables a priest or anyone who wants to truly love inclusively to receive and accommodate every person who comes to him/her or who is entrusted to him/ her...a priest his parishioners, a formator his/her formands, a teacher her students, a parent his children, a physician her patients.

Not all parishioners, formands, students, children, patients are like-able, pleasant, easy to handle. Not all the time will they be passionate and enthusiastic. Sometimes, they will be lost sheep or black sheep. But with a big heart, the priest, the formator, the teacher, the parent, the physician can always welcome them anytime, and they know they can always come home for this is always a place for them in their heart of the one who loves them truly.

Love That Heals and Restores

It's a terrible thing to experience being avoided by people. If it is because of some perceived contagious disease, the pain of being excluded by people is perhaps more painful than the physical illness itself.

When Jesus heals the leper in this Sunday's Gospel, Jesus instructs him to show himself to the priests so that they may give him a "clean bill of health" and officially reinstate him to the community. This is because a sick man, more so a leper, is considered unclean and is not to join the community.

Jesus, then, not only heals the physical pain of the leper, but also the psycho-emotional pain involved in his being excluded from the community. Jesus' healing restores him not just to physical wholeness but into the community as well. Hence, Jesus heals not just one aspect of our life, but all the other areas of our life that need to be touched by His grace. May we allow Him to fully restore us to health...totally, fully, lovingly.

Jesus: Food for the Hungry

On the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (Feb. 11), the daily Gospel happen to be the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Mark 8:1-10). A gospel passage like this makes us reflect on the reality of hunger in the world. Maybe we ourselves do not experience hunger, but certainly someone in our neighborhood is hungry this very moment. In Africa, a child or perhaps hundreds of children are dying because of hunger. The recent Ultra stampede which killed 74 people is just another instance of how hunger has become a life-and-death situation in this country.

How can a feast like this spur us to address this urgent problem? How can devotion to the the Blessed Mother move us from pious rites and rituals to a real concern and concrete action for our hungry brothers and sisters? Perhaps we can ask how Mary has become blessed by all generations and among all women. What has she done for the millions of hungry children and people all over the world?

I don't know if the answer: "She has brought Jesus to the world" will convince you. But isn't it true that if, like Mary, we bring Jesus to our hungry brothers and sisters, we can not but give them something to eat, or teach them to find something to eat. Because when Jesus Himself saw the crowds who were exhausted and hungry, He had compassion for them and He did something to feed them.

What to do in the face of hunger in the world? As Mary did, bring Jesus to the world that is hungry, yes for physical food, but more so, for spiritual food, Jesus Himself.

Jesus, the Healer, A Man of Prayer

Where does Jesus' healing power come from? Today's Gospel seems to highlight Jesus' healing activity: he healed Simon's mother-in-law who was suffering from a fever; he cast out demons from those possessed by them; he cured all other sickness in people brought to him. Jesus seems to be a wonder worker, a miracle worker, with supernatural, spectacular powers. But where does his healing power come from? From himself, from his own authority? The answer lies in one seemingly insignificant detail in the Gospel: that of Jesus taking time to pray very early in the morning.

This is where Jesus' healing power comes from: from his prayer. He is able to heal because he is a man of prayer. His communion with the Father is the source of his power. Were he not receiving strength from His Father, He could not heal. Were he not strengthened by the love of His Father, he could not have absorbed all the "negative energies" from all the sick and possessed people brought to him. Jesus is the healer because He is a man of prayer.

In various ways, we are called to be healers, whether as physicians or as ordinary people: to heal broken bodies, broken hearts, broken psyches, broken relationships. But where shall we get the power and the strength if not from prayer? May we make prayer an essential and non-negotiable element in our daily life.

Blessed be the Lord who heals the broken-hearted!