Faith in the Father

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!

Today, the Lord says, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” The Lord Jesus assures us that God loves us and that we are important to him. Because of this, he will take care of us. The Father feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field with splendid colors. “Are you not more important than they?”

Because God’s love assures us that he will take care of us, he asks us to trust him. The reason for trusting God is the certitude of his love and care. The Lord sets before us both worry and trust. Choose only one because they cannot go together. If you worry, then you do not trust. If you trust, you do not worry.

People who worry about what to eat and what to wear do not trust the Father. “All these pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” People who worry about tomorrow forget that the Lord has gone there ahead of us. And that Father who has gone ahead of us anticipates all our needs. People who worry too much about the future deprive themselves of the joy of the present.

The Father assures us of his tender love. The prophet Isaiah asks, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even if she forgets, I will never forget you.” I have carved your name in the palm of my hand. We write on our palms to avoid forgetting what we need to do. God did not simply write our names on the palm of his hand. He carved them to make sure that we will not be erased from his memory. The Lord does not forget us. All he asks of us is to trust in him.

Padre Pio said, “Don’t spend your energies on things that generate worry, anxiety, and anguish. Only one thing is necessary: lift up your spirit and love God…Don’t worry to the point of losing your inner peace. Pray with perseverance, with faith, with calmness and serenity…Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.”

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Midnight Mass 2013: The Christmas of Essentials

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

“Do not be afraid! Behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the city of David, a savior has been born to you who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” The words of the angel tonight tell us of a Christmas that seems to be so far from what we know of it today. Indeed we all acknowledge the fact that this night is a night of great joy. But for many people, joy would mean merrymaking: food, wine, shopping and revelry. We all come here to church in our best look: new clothes, and even shoes. There is great expectation for gifts and of course, lots of love…love as in hugs and kisses.

But the good news of great joy is not about food, gifts and good company. It is about the birth of a savior, who is both Christ and Lord. The angel does not invite us to attend a grand Christmas ball. He tells us to go to the City of David, not to search for some celebrity wrapped in finery but for a new-born baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Christmas is not about glitter and tinsel. Rather it is about the darkness of the night made radiant by choirs of angels praising God as they sang: Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests! Christmas is not about parades. It is about a procession of shepherds to Bethlehem to see for themselves whatever the angel told them. And it would all be in accord with what they were told: a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. They would behold him: Savior, Christ, Lord, Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. They would behold him not wrapped in finery but in swaddling clothes, not in comfort but in a manger.

Padre Pio said: "The heavenly Babe suffers and cries in the crib so that for us suffering would be sweet, meritorious and accepted. He deprives himself of everything, in order that we may learn from him the renunciation of worldly goods and comforts. He is satisfied with humble and poor adorers, to encourage us to love poverty, and to prefer the company of the little and simple rather than the great ones of the world."

Christ made himself poor to be close to the poor. Pope Francis wrote: “ God’s heart has a special place for the poor, so much so that he himself “became poor” (2 Cor 8:9). The entire history of our redemption is marked by the presence of the poor. Salvation came to us from the “yes” uttered by a lowly maiden from a small town on the fringes of a great empire. The Saviour was born in a manger, in the midst of animals, like children of poor families; he was presented at the Temple along with two turtledoves, the offering made by those who could not afford a lamb (cf. Lk 2:24; Lev 5:7); he was raised in a home of ordinary workers and worked with his own hands to earn his bread. When he began to preach the Kingdom, crowds of the dispossessed followed him, illustrating his words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Lk 4:18). He assured those burdened by sorrow and crushed by poverty that God has a special place for them in his heart: “Blessed are you poor, yours is the kingdom of God” (Lk 6:20); he made himself one of them: “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat”, and he taught them that mercy towards all of these is the key to heaven (cf. Mt25:5ff.).” (Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 197.)

“God shows the poor “his first mercy”. This divine preference has consequences for the faith life of all Christians, since we are called to have “this mind… which was in Jesus Christ” (Phil 2:5). Inspired by this, the Church has made an option for the poor which is understood as a “special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness”. This option – as Benedict XVI has taught – “is implicit in our Christian faith in a God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty”. This is why I want a Church which is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the centre of the Church’s pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them.” (EG, 198.)

The Pope does not speak only of activities or programmes of promotion and assistance. Above these, he is speaking of loving attentiveness to the poor. “This loving attentiveness is the beginning of a true concern for their person which inspires me effectively to seek their good. This entails appreciating the poor in their goodness, in their experience of life, in their culture, and in their ways of living the faith. True love is always contemplative, and permits us to serve the other not out of necessity or vanity, but rather because he or she is beautiful above and beyond mere appearances: ‘The love by which we find the other pleasing leads us to offer him something freely’. The poor person, when loved, ‘is esteemed as of great value’, and this is what makes the authentic option for the poor differ from any other ideology, from any attempt to exploit the poor for one’s own personal or political interest. Only on the basis of this real and sincere closeness can we properly accompany the poor on their path of liberation. Only this will ensure that ‘in every Christian community the poor feel at home. Would not this approach be the greatest and most effective presentation of the good news of the kingdom?’ Without the preferential option for the poor, ‘the proclamation of the Gospel, which is itself the prime form of charity, risks being misunderstood or submerged by the ocean of words which daily engulfs us in today’s society of mass communications’. (EG 199)

The Lord Jesus said: I will be with you until the end of times. He also said: The poor you will always have with you. Both are connected: Jesus will always be with us…not just through his abiding presence in the Blessed Sacrament, but also in and through the poor. And so if we are attentive to the poor, we become attentive to Jesus. Let this be our gift to Jesus: a Christmas closer to his Christmas…a Christmas of essentials, a Christmas of sharing, a Christmas for the poor. May our parish be a place where the poor feel at home for it is only in being so that we can truly and effectively proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom.

Jesus, I trust in you. o Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

The Humility of Christ and the Cross (25th Sunday in Ordinary Time B)

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

Today, if it were not a Sunday, is the Feast of St. Padre Pio, a Franciscan friar who lived in our lifetime and who was known as the priest who bore the sacred wounds of our Lord in his own flesh for 50 years. There are many devotees to this saint today because they consider him as a great miracle worker. But very few realize that this man taught us to love the Cross of Christ and embrace it in our own bodies.

As in last Sunday’s gospel, the Lord teaches us, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and 3 days after his death, the Son of Man will rise.” At the very heart of the mystery of Christ is the mystery of the Cross. It is Christ who is the Just One referred to in the Book of Wisdom – the One whom the wicked find obnoxious because “he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for our transgressions, and challenges us with violations of our training.” Jesus is the Just One who is put to the test “with revilement and torture…so that we may have proof of his gentleness and patience.”  And indeed, he was put to test. On the Cross, in the face of much cruelty and revilement, the Lord was the perfection of gentleness and patience. He is truly the Wisdom from above, as the Apostle St. James said: “pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity.” On the Cross, Jesus truly manifested himself as the Son of God. His gentle compliance to the will of the Father was the fulfillment of the 1^st reading: “If the just One be the Son of God, God will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes.” On the Cross, Jesus truly became the last of all and the servant of all. He manifested this when on the night he was betrayed, he washed the feet of his disciples. He, who is the first born of all creation, lowered himself to wash his disciples’ feet.

It is the simplicity of the Son of God on the Cross that Padre Pio emulated. Even though he was famous on account of the stigmata on his body, Padre Pio continued to be a very simple man: “I am only a friar who wants to pray.” Padre Pio says: “Jesus likes to give Himself to simple souls; we must make an effort to acquire this beautiful virtue of simplicity and to hold it in great esteem. Jesus said: Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. But before He taught us this by His words he had already put it into practice. He became a child and gave us the example of that simplicity he was to teach us later also by his words. Let us empty our hearts and keep far from us all human prudence. We must try to keep our thoughts pure, our ideas upright and honest and our intentions holy." (From a letter to Padre Agostino from Pietrelcina, July 10, 1915. Diflumeri, Father Gerardo, ed. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Letters, Vol. 1, Correspondence with His Spiritual Directors (1910-1922). 2nd ed. Vol. 1. San Giovanni: Our Lady of Grace Capuchin Friary, 1984. 677-678.)

As on the Cross, Jesus lowered himself to become last of all, so should we go with him into the depth of his self-abasement. "In order to succeed in reaching our ultimate end we must follow the divine Head, who does not wish to lead the chosen soul on any way other than the one he followed; by that, I say, of abnegation and the Cross." (August 14, 1914, Epistolario II, p. 155.) 

Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

The Difference between the thoughts of God and the thoughts of men

Jesus, I trust in you!

St. Mark addressed his Gospel to the Christians who were being persecuted for their faith. Thus, the image of Jesus which he presents to them is that of the Suffering Servant of God, one who teaches that “the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise again after three days.” He rebukes Peter for resisting our Lord’s destiny as the Suffering Servant. He calls Peter “Satan” because he was “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

The Lord shows the difference of the thoughts of God from the thoughts of man. Man naturally thinks in terms of convenience, comfort, and ease. This is the reason why the RH bill is very attractive to many people. It promises couples of a life of ease and comfort because, admittedly, the less children they have, the less responsibilities they still need to fulfill. Less responsibility mean a lifestyle of comfort and ease. That is why, as I have said a few weeks ago, many people would rather listen to the human teachings that guarantee comfortable lives than the commandments of God that challenge us to transcend the narrow limitations of the human point of view.

But human beings do not think as God does. Men think in terms of convenience but God thinks in terms of righteousness and truth. Men think in terms of accumulation but God thinks in terms of self-emptying. Men think in terms of honors and applause but God thinks in terms of humiliations and self-denial. The ways of God, the way of suffering, self-denial, and daily cross, can only be explained by who God is: God is Love. Padre Pio used to say: “He who begins to love must be willing to suffer.” This willingness to suffer is due to the fact that love and sacrifice go together. Love and sacrifice is what the Cross is about.

We constantly search for what will make us happy. Wrongly do we think that happiness is brought by convenience and material satisfaction. True happiness is found in God. True happiness is found in heaven. And the only way to heaven is through the Cross. Christ entered his glory only through the Cross. “The foot of the Cross is the gateway to heaven.” “Life is a Calvary and we must climb it cheerfully…From Calvary, we go to Tabor.” The way of suffering is the way of glory. “Glory will be ours on the condition that we endure suffering.”

By the Cross, the Lord proved his love for us. By the Cross, let us prove our love for Him. “In suffering, we give to God something which we cannot do in paradise…The angels are jealous of us because they cannot suffer.” “Suffering is a sure sign that God loves us…Accepting sufferings will perfect us and sanctify us.” Let us deny ourselves, carry our Cross, and follow Jesus.

Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!