Answering the President's Blasphemy

13^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

YEAR OF THE CLERGY AND CONSECRATED PEOPLE

JULY 1, 2018

Jesus, I trust in you!

The President blasphemed the Lord by calling God “stupid.” He gave this statement when he tried to show the “absurdity” of the biblical story of creation. According to him, God created a perfect world and placed Adam and Eve in it. Then, he sent a serpent to test Eve and therefore he destroyed the perfect creation that he made. This absurdity made him remark that the God we worship is stupid.

I think it is my obligation to preach about this in order to correct false notions that the president was trying to insinuate. First of all, God did not desire to destroy what he created. The Book of Wisdom today tells us: “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being, and the creatures of the world are WHOLESOME…God formed man to be imperishable, the image of his own nature he made him.” Death did not have a place in the original plan of God for creation. Man was meant to be imperishable.

If this were so, then why is there death? Did death come from God? Is it true that God desired to destroy what he created? The Book of Wisdom tells us that death did not come from God. Rather, “by the envy of the devil, death entered the world and they who belong to his company experience it.” God created all the angels but some of them chose to rebel against God. These fallen angels refused to serve God and therefore, they appointed themselves as enemies of God. Because man was made in the image of God, the devil envied him. The devil hated the fact that God created man in his image and likeness and therefore, he sought to destroy man by seducing him to sin. Contrary to the claim of the president, God did not send the serpent to destroy man. But rather, the devil took the form of a serpent and on his own accord, he went to Adam and Eve in order to tempt them. Temptation is a seduction to sin. By successfully seducing them to disobey God, the devil destroyed man by bringing death into the world. The author of sin is the devil. The same devil is the author of death.

In fact, sickness and death are all the effects of sin. Man, whom God intended to be imperishable, became vulnerable to sickness and death because he fell into the devil’s trap. “Death entered the world and they who belong to (the devil’s) company experience it. God did not bring sickness and death to man. It was the devil who authored these.

Look at the Gospel. Jairus went to the Lord to ask him to heal his daughter. The woman who was afflicted with hemorrhage for 12 years sought to touch the cloak of Jesus in order to be healed. Jesus raised up the dead daughter of Jairus. Before Jesus came, both Jairus’ daughter and woman were sick. The Lord did not bring them illness. People went to him to have themselves delivered from sickness and from death. God is not the destroyer but the healer. Death did not come from God. It came from the envy of the devil. God raises us from illness. He rescues us from death. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. He did this by dying on the Cross. Indeed, he defeated the devil in his own game. He defeated the devil in his own home court. Death was the devil’s domain. Jesus entered it to defeat the devil in his own domain.

And so, God is not stupid because he does not destroy what he created. Instead, he saves those who call on him. He rescues us from death that came from the envy of the devil. It is the devil who is stupid because he dares to challenge the One whom he cannot defeat. The devil fighting God is like a fool who rams his head against a concrete wall. The devil destroys himself by rejecting the God who gives life. Those who chose to belong to the devil’s company will also experience the devil’s self-destruction. The self-exclusion from the communion of the saints with God is what we call hell. Hell is the ultimate self-destruction.

This is why it is wiser to hold on to this God whom they consider stupid. The seeming foolishness of God is even greater than the wisdom of men. “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed… The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath.” (Psalm 2: 1-5) Have confidence: ‘Our Savior Jesus Christ destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel.” (2 Tim 1: 10)

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

The Assurance of our Future Resurrection

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

It was quite natural for the apostles to think that they were seeing a ghost when Jesus stood among them. It is because ghostly apparitions prove to us that the soul survives the body after death. This is why Jesus showed them his hands and feet and even challenged them to touch him in order to prove that he is not a ghost but it is truly him risen from the dead: “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and blood as you can see I have.” Here the disciples were confronted by an entirely new reality. Here they saw not just the soul which lives on beyond the death of the body. Rather, what they saw was the body of Jesus, who truly died, now risen and living because his soul was restored to it.

“By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with his disciples. He invites them in this way to recognize that he is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which he appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his passion. Yet, at the same time, this authentic real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ’s humanity can no longer be confined to earth, and belongs henceforth only to the Father’s divine realm.” (CCC, 645)

“Christ’s Resurrection is the principle and the source of our future resurrection.” (CCC, 655) Because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that even though we die, we will surely resurrect from the dead also. And at our own resurrection, our bodies will be like unto the risen body of Jesus. Yes, it will be the same body but this time, it will be incorruptible and immortal: “This corruptible (body) must put on incorruption; and this mortal (body) must put on immortality.” Our resurrected bodies will not be like the walking dead…lifeless, soulless, in the state of decay. Rather, our risen bodies will be like that unto Christ’s risen body: youthful, beautiful, and immortal. Our bodies will rise with all the soundness of body which is natural to man. Our bodies will no longer bear physical defects. They will be totally free from the defects of the present life. All will rise in the condition of perfect age, that is, of 33 years, which is the age of Jesus when he died and resurrected from the dead. Those who died before reaching the perfect age will be given what they lack. Those who died old, who lost the perfect age, will have restored to them what they once had. In other words, we will all rise in the eternal youthfulness of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, the resurrection of Jesus tempers our sorrow over the death of a beloved. Yes, we grieve over the death of a loved one but not to the extent of losing all hope. Knowing that death is but temporary, we look forward when we shall meet each other again when we rise from our own graves. The resurrection of Jesus also takes away our fear of death. Thus, martyrs and saints can readily give up their lives for Jesus because they know fully well that what they lost for him, they will receive from him again. The resurrection of Jesus gives us the incentive to live uprightly and to avoid evil. Our lives are not regulated by brief and determined time. Instead, our lives are regulated by eternity. We strive to live uprightly because we know that we shall receive eternal rewards for whatsoever we do here on earth. The resurrection of Jesus invites us to repent and to be converted for the sake of what lies ahead: “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love him.”

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

Not Just an Empty Tomb

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

AS THEY WERE coming down the mountain of the transfiguration, the disciples were charged by the Lord not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. “So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.” Early in that Easter morning, Peter and John (2 of those who saw the transfiguration) ran to the tomb of Jesus when they heard of the Lord’s missing body. Both of them entered the tomb and saw the shroud or burial cloths rolled up. At last they were confronted by the reality they were questioning. They came to stand face to face with the reality of the rising of Jesus from the dead. This is what rising from the dead meant.

St. John saw and believed. People may see the evidence of an empty tomb and see nothing in its emptiness. John saw the empty tomb and realized that its emptiness was itself the evidence of the resurrection. John saw with his own eyes how the Lord died on the Cross. He himself stood beneath the Cross. He saw blood and water flowing from the Lord’s wounded side. He himself brought Jesus’ lifeless body to the tomb. Now, the Lord is simply not there in the tomb because he has risen from the dead. He saw and believed.

St. Peter would later on see something from the empty tomb. Not only would he see it as simply an evidence of the resurrection. He would see the resurrection as the evidence of the fact that Jesus is “the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.” Having been the one who denied the Lord thrice, Peter himself experienced his sins being forgiven by the One who rose from the dead.  The Lord appeared to Simon. That is why Peter could testify “that God raised this man on the third day and granted that he be visible not to all the people but to us…who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

It was not just an empty tomb that they saw. They did not simply see the absence of a corpse. In that empty tomb, they saw life overcoming death. They saw mercy overcoming sin. The empty tomb was an invitation to believe in Jesus. It was an invitation to escape the condemnation that it ours on account of our sins. It was an invitation to receive forgiveness from him. It was an invitation to find in him eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him might not perish but might have everlasting life.”

The Lord Jesus once was slain for us but now, he lives forever. His love endures forever because he will never die again. His immortality makes him capable of loving us forever. “Life comes to us from being loved by him who is Life; it comes to us from living-with and loving-with him.” (Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil 2006.)

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

What death took away, the Lord returns

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

We are once again confronted by the harsh reality of death not only by the fact that November reminds us of our faithful departed but more so because of the super typhoon Yolanda which recently caused so much loss of life and property to so many Filipinos. The destruction of property can easily be confronted. What nature destroyed, we can easily rebuild. The resilience of the Filipino people, which is oftentimes compared to the bamboo tree, gives us enough hope to say that all is not lost. We will rise from where we have fallen. However, the loss of lives is another matter. We can rebuild that was destroyed but we cannot revive those who have died. This is simply beyond what human powers can do. It seems that all we can do is to bury our dead and move on in grief. Perhaps, we can always reproduce in order to replenish the numbers that we lost. But resurrecting the dead is simply beyond us.

He promised to resurrect...and so he did

It is in moments such as this that the Lord speaks a timely word to us: “Those who are deemed worthy…to the resurrection of the dead…can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” The Lord clearly speaks of the future resurrection of the dead. Our loss is not permanent but only temporary. Those who have been taken away from us by death will be brought back to us by the Lord on the day of the resurrection. God “is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive.”

It is the assurance of the resurrection that gave the martyrs the courage they needed to face death, even in its most tortuous forms. The courageous witness of the seven Maccabean brothers shows us that their tremendous courage in the face of death came from the certitude of the resurrection: “You are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again.” They were not even afraid to lose their limbs to torturers: “It was from Heaven that I received these. For the sake of his laws I disdain them. From him I hope to receive them again.”

Thus, in the face of the loss of lives, we are told by St. Paul: “You must not grieve as others who do not have hope.” [1 Th 4:13] The assurance of the resurrection makes a great difference in our lives. Pope emeritus Benedict wrote: “we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well.” [Spe Salvi, 2.] We know that we have a future. We know that our lives will not end in emptiness. Death does not have the final say for us. We know for sure that beyond death is the resurrection. This certitude of a positive future helps us live the present as well. Yes, we may have lost the ones we love but we shall have them back. The Lord will restore them to life. We know that He will do this because he is always faithful to his word. He has risen as he said. Therefore, we are so sure that he will raise back to life our mortal bodies to be like his own risen body. Indeed, God “has loved us and has given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace…” Let us live for God and courageously face death “with the hope of being raised up by him.” “God is not the God of the dead but of the living” we will always live in him.

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