FOUR-FOLD EASTER BLESSING

Four-fold Easter Blessing from:
FR. SAM MEDLEY, SOLT (United Kingdom), FR. JASON WORTHLEY (United States), FR. CHOI GLIPONEO, SOLT (The Philippines)  and FR. VLADIMIR ECHALAS, SOLT (Australia).


BLESSED EASTER TO EVERYONE!

(Please share the link to your friends and families so more people receive the Easter Blessing. Thanks)

EVANGELIZERS OF THE RESURRECTION

EASTER - B

John 20:1-9

PODCAST
http://cradio.org.au/shows-and-audio/easter-sunday-3/ 

         THE LORD IS RISEN!  ALLELUIA!

        The Resurrection is the seal of God the Father as He accepted the ultimate sacrifice of His Beloved Son on the cross and transformed that sacrifice into New Life.  He did it by raising His Son from the dead.   Easter is the reward of the Father to the unwavering obedience of His Son; it is also the gift of God to all his children so that henceforth we are called an Alleluia People living the Resurrection life!

         Through sensus fidelium (sense of faith), we believe that our Blessed Lord first appeared to His Blessed Mother after the resurrection although the Scriptures is silent  on this.  Because the Resurrection is an historical fact, the evangelists needed people to testify to the event who were not blood-related to Jesus.

         The certainty of the resurrection is not totally based on the empty tomb which was only a sign, but rather to the apparitions of the Risen Christ.  These resurrection appearances enkindled in the apostles and the believers the belief in the Risen Christ.  One of the earliest traditions is the appearance to Mary Magdalene who visited the tomb early in the morning of Sunday not to greet a Risen Christ but to anoint the dead corpse of Jesus.  When she saw the stone had been moved away from the tomb she went to Peter and John to report the incident; they went in to investigate the empty tomb but only found the linens inside the tomb. Until that moment they did not yet understand the Scriptures. 

During the encounter between the Risen Christ and Magdalene, she did not recognize Him because she was stricken with grief.  Her eyes could not see clearly because they were flooded with tears.   It was only when Christ called her by her name that she was able to recognize Him.  Hearing her name called opened for Magdalene such familiarity and intimacy with the voice of Her Master.  That voice brought her back to the healing experience given her by her Master.  Like Magdalene, we think that God is absent in our lives when we are in deep pain most especially in the loss of a member of our family, a friend or a beloved.  Our tears may help us to ritualize our grief but sometimes over-grieving also hinders us to recognize the presence of God  hence we fail to meet Him in the encounter.  When we return to the those moments of being touched by God in the past, then we are able to move forward away from the tombs of our grief towards the light of the new day.

In this beautiful encounter, Christ announced a new relationship with His disciples when He called them “my brothers”.   The resurrection made us truly the children of God most especially when Christ says “I am going to my Father and your Father…”

After the encounter, Magdalene went to announce to the disciples “I have seen the Lord.”  She became the first evangelizer of the resurrection.

Two thousand years after the resurrection, we celebrate it not just as a commemoration of  an historical event but rather we are re-living it as a memorial.  We may not be privileged to have actually encountered the Risen Christ like the early disciples but we believe that we form a “continuum of the resurrection story”.  That is why even in the present time, we are the new witnesses of the resurrection through our faith in the Risen Christ.   Like the early disciples, we also gather as a community of believers most especially every Sunday because each Sunday is called a “mini-Easter.”  Like Magdalene, we are the new evangelizers of the resurrection!

ABANDONMENT

 

PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD’S PASSION

Mk 14:1 – 15:47

PODCAST: 
http://cradio.org.au/talks-and-resources/homilies/palm-sunday-3/

         As the Church enters the holiest days of the year, She does not only commemorate the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem but also enters with Jesus into His Passion.  This year St. Mark is our guide in our reflection as we ponder on the earliest and shortest account of the passion narrative.  Jesus’ passion according to the account of St. Mark was an expression of ABANDONMENT.

         After the arrest of Jesus, all His apostles “abandoned him and fled” (14:50.) They who had been with their Master for the past three years witnessing all the miracles, having heard all His teachings suddenly fled because of fear. Two of His most trusted apostles Peter and Judas betrayed Him.

         All the players in the passion narrative: the religious leaders and the Jews all gave false testimony until “all of them condemned Him as deserving death” (14:64).  Then they started to spit on Him, to blindfold Him and to strike on Him and the guards took Him over and beat Him” (v. 65).  Pilate being weak gave in to the pressure of the mob and handed Him over to be flogged and be crucified.  No one helped Jesus except Simon of Cyrene, a stranger who was forced to carry the cross.  Being the time of the Passover when the streets of Jerusalem were filled with people, Jesus became a huge spectacle of shame carrying the cross.  All those who had seen and the recipients of the miracles of Jesus, those who ate at the multiplication of loaves and fishes, those who shouted Hosanna when He entered Jerusalem few days earlier, all abandoned Him.

         “When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon” (15: 33).  Jesus the creator of the cosmos was also abandoned by nature when the sun refused to shine in shame.  The Light of the world for a time was abandoned by the light He had created.

         When everyone had abandoned Him, He knew His Father will be there for Him.  But when everything became total pitch black He could not see nor feel the presence of His Father then He knew that even His Father abandoned Him.  In this total experience of utter abandonment, He cried out “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani”.  Preserved in its original form, it is believed to be the very exact words (ipsissima verbi) of Jesus which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (v. 34).  It may sound a questioning desperation for the bystanders but the Christian readers and believers know it was the height of Jesus’ profession of faith, clinging to His Father who seemed to have abandoned Him.

         This is the height of the Passion of Jesus when nothing is left of Him to hope for: His family, apostles, friends, the people, nature and His very own Father!  The paradox is that the Father never abandoned His Beloved Son most especially during that moment when He needed Him the most.  And yet the best that the Father could do was to let His Son experience the maximum emptiness, loneliness and abandonment there is.  The Passion gives a us a glimpse of the inconsolable pain of the Father and Son who were caught up in the web of man’s slaughter of God.  

         The tragedy of man's sin consumed the very being of God to the point of annihilation.

        Jesus, the joy of the Father, is now His inconsolable sorrow.  Yet the Father's greatest pain would be the overture of His deepest joy.  The Passion did not end in vain because in the great silence of the “Eternal sob” the Father accepts the sacrifice of His Son.  Easter would be the divine vindication and the final justice of God in the foolishness of man. 

          Since then there is no pain in man that is never felt by God.  Having experienced total abandonment Himself, God will never ever abandon us. 

As we journey with Jesus through His passion, let us pray for that abandoning faith to our God who will never abandon us when this same God brings us to our personal Passion.

THE PARADOX OF LOVING

5^TH SUNDAY OF LENT – B

John 12:20-33

Podcast:
http://cradio.org.au/resources/homilies/5th-sunday-of-lent-2/ 

Let us imagine this scene from the classic movie Fiddler on the Roof:  Tevye and his daughter are waiting for the train at the railway station:

Tevye: And he asked you to leave your father and mother and join him in that frozen wasteland Siberia? And marry him there?

Daughter: No Papa, he did not ask me to go. I want to go.

How can I hope to make you understand

Why I do, what I do

Why I must travel to a distant land

Far from the home I love?

There were my heart has settled long ago

I must go, I must go

Who could imagine I’d be wand’ring so

Far from the home I love?

Yet there with my love, I am home.

Somewhere in our journey through life, each one of us must have stood in that railway station responding to the radicalism of love.  In one time or another, have we not left our home, said goodbye to our friends and long cherished dreams or careers?  Have we not died to ourselves… all  for the sake of the one we love? It takes more than courage to let go of our comfort zones and enter into the unfamiliar and the unknown… because of the call to love.  When we love another person, we take the risk of exposing not just our goodness but our vulnerability as well.  We lay down our cards and surrender ourselves to the other person in the hope that in giving ourselves, we will find happiness.  Although some end with broken hearts, others continue to love in spite of pain while many are rewarded with the joy of being loved in return.        

         When the Greeks came to Jesus, He reminded  them of this paradox: “Unless a grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.”  That grain was Jesus who died and became the Living Bread for humanity.  “Whoever serves me, must follow me, and my servant will be with me wherever I am.”  Now we understand why in the course of time there have been countless people who left everything in following Jesus.   Only known to God, once they leave their homes, many would never see them again.  Like Tevye’s daughter, we are ready to go to any place like Siberia because we want to be with our beloved.  Can we not do the same for Jesus?

 To some, they give up their lives for a worthy cause like Mother Teresa of Calcutta who served the poorest of the poor in India and now her Missionary Sisters doing the same ministry around the world.  Some even ended up their lives in tragedy like Martin Luther King and Ninoy Aquino who fought till the end for the liberation of a nation.

         Our deepest joys come from loving.  But it comes with a price: to embrace many forms of dying to self moment after moment for the sake of those whom we love, knowing that they live from our heroic deaths.

         St. Francis reminds us:

For it is in giving that we receive

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life….

THE ANTIDOTE

4^TH SUNDAY OF LENT (LAETARE SUNDAY)

John 3:14-21

Podcast: http://cradio.org.au/resources/homilies/4th-sunday-of-lent-2/

      Have you ever wondered why the snake has been a symbol for medicine?  How can a poisonous animal like a snake be a symbol for healing?  In the ancient time, snakes had been part of the temple worship among the Canaanites most especially in fertility cults. Snakes were being worshiped as gods. The monotheistic belief of Israel destroyed this idolatry and turned it into a remedy. 

      In our gospel this Sunday, the dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus brought us back to that moment in the history of Israel when they were on their way to the Promised Land.  God sent fiery serpents to the Israelites in the desert as a punishment for all their complaints and rebellion.  After they repented Moses was commanded by God to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole; those who were bitten were saved by looking at the serpent.  Just like the serpent, Jesus in the same manner will also be lifted up so that anyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.

      “To be lifted up” was the crucifixion of Jesus.  But for St. John, “to be lifted up” had a double meaning, namely his exaltation on the cross and his exaltation in glory at the same time.   In biblical exegesis (interpretation), it is the continuous movement of  ascent by Jesus towards His Father, namely 1) his crucifixion 2) his resurrection and 3) his ascension.   For St. John these movements comprise one single event: the glorification of Jesus!  This is the reason why the crucifix has always been the icon of our redemption.  It is not just about the death of Jesus but most especially his glorification which is different in the understanding of other Christian denominations.  That is the reason why we have the crucifix in our churches while the other Christian denominations have only the cross.

      Just as the serpents represented the rebellious attitude of the Israelites, this time sin is the expression of our rebellious hearts.  Just as the serpents poisoned and killed the Israelites, sin is the present-day poison that continues to plague humanity.  Just as the bronze serpent was the antidote for the venom by just looking at it, Jesus is the only antidote for our sin, if only we believe in Him.  But the cure is useless unless the poisoned victim accepts it.  Jesus’s death on the cross has no meaning for those who do not believe. 

      Next time we look at the crucifix, we simply don’t see a dead body hanging lifelessly fixed on wood but the love of the Father giving up His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. 

       What are the serpents in our lives that continue to poison us?  Are we ready to accept the antidote to get the venom out of our system? Do we let the cure be  wasted away?