Peace! Kalilintad! Shalom!

Category: Fr. Jom Baring, CSsR

  • Break the Cycle of Invalidation

    Break the Cycle of Invalidation

    April 5, 2025 – Saturday Fourth Week of Lent

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040525.cfm)

    Have you ever experienced being “invalidated”? This may take in a form of invalidating or discrediting our feelings, thoughts or person. What commonly happens is the emotional invalidation. This happens when we deny, reject or dismiss an emotional expression or feelings of another. It is a way of telling the person that his/her emotions are not important or wrong at all. This may be intentionally or unintentionally because we are not aware of such invalidation of other people’s emotions.

    Some expressions would sound like these. “You better move on. I have a similar experience like yours and I have move on already.” – advising a friend who is experiencing a heartbreak.

    “Don’t be too anxious. Anyway, we are here for you.” – as if comforting a dear friend who have anxiety attack because of pressure at work/family.

    “Don’t get upset and stop overthinking. There are always failures in life.” – an advice to a friend to brush off one’s feeling over a failure.

    “You better not feel that way. It was not the intention of the person, anyway.” – giving comfort and advice to a friend who felt violated, hurt over an action of another person.

    We might believe that by invalidating the feelings of others or the person himself/herself is our way of giving them friend support, comfort and understanding. However, this is not the case. By invalidating the feelings of others whether of a special someone, a family member, a friend or anybody else is not respecting one’s feelings and person. By invalidating others, we tend to focus our gaze on ourselves making our hearts apathetic and filled with prejudice.

    This kind of experience also happened to Jesus. There were people who tried to invalidate and discredit the identity of Jesus not just the thoughts and feelings of Jesus. They questioned his origins, his family background and status.

    People began to make reasons in order not to invalidate and reject him. The officers of the Temple and Nicodemus, a Pharisee were one of the few who were inclined to listen more to Jesus, yet, they too were invalidated and discredited by the chief priests and Pharisees.

    Despite the many signs and wonders that Jesus did, those in power and position continue to invalidate Jesus. In John’s Gospel, those signs were miracles that pointed Jesus as the Christ. Yet, the more the people also created reasons to invalidate Jesus’ person. Instead of looking at Jesus to find the truth, “they all went home,” as the Gospel ended today.

    The people went home and settled with their own beliefs. Their hearts remained unwilling to give up their personal agenda and selfish desires. They were unwilling to allow God to be their God. They too are unwilling to allow Jesus to challenge them and to change them in the way God desires them to be. Thus, instead of going back to the Temple or to the synagogue to pray and dialogue with God, they did not.

    However, the Gospel invites us today to refocus our gaze on the officers of the Temple and with Nicodemus who allowed themselves to be encountered by Jesus. It is through them that we are being asked also today to see Jesus clearly, to recognize him better.

    As there were many signs before that pointed to Jesus, let us also be more aware of the many signs God has given us today. There are many, every day, perhaps we just lack that awareness and keenness to recognize those signs of wonders and everyday miracles that Jesus did for us.

    As we recognize Jesus’s presence better in our life, let that encounter with Jesus to make our hearts more discerning. In this way we can break the cycle of invalidating others. Hinaut pa.

  • RESPONDING TO REJECTION

    RESPONDING TO REJECTION

    April 4, 2025 – Friday Fourth Week of Lent

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040425.cfm)

    Rejection from people can be painful and even traumatic for us. Its emotional impact could trigger sadness, anger, hurts, low self-esteem and anxiety. This could also affect our relationships to the point that we might develop unhealthy ones. We could form trust issues and doubt our self-worth.

    This very kind of human experience was not far from what Jesus received from people around him. The Gospel tells us how Jesus was rejected by his own people. Jesus had to go to Jerusalem in secret in order to protect himself from those who were trying to kill him. What he received was a rejection with malice. Those who rejected him desired to cause harm to Jesus. 

    Yet, even though he knew that he was in danger if seen in public, Jesus still took the risk to be there among his people. Jesus took the risk to speak the truth and make the truth known to all even though it may cause him his life. Indeed, this is God’s way of making himself revealed to us.

    Jesus did not deter from rejection, but he responded with grace. Jesus responded not with hatred towards those who rejected him but with the truth. This tells us that Jesus knew his identity well. His identity was anchored in his intimacy and oneness with the Father in heaven.

    This rejection of the presence of Jesus was a reaction of some powerful figures at that time. They felt threatened to the way of life of Jesus and to the message that he preached and lived. This was how Jesus caused turmoil among the powerful leaders in that Jewish society. Jesus was unconventional who ate and drank with sinners, forgiven them and freed them. He healed the sick and touched the unclean. He preached about a loving and forgiving God the Father.

    And as Jesus gained popularity among the ordinary people, the leaders were threatened at his knowledge and wisdom. Jesus was not a well-known intellectual and did not come from a rich and powerful family. And they felt offended.

    Jesus himself and all that he did threatened the status quo of the powerful people who were contented with their comfort. These “Jews” who in the Gospel of John were referred as the powerful religious leaders of the Jewish society, preferred a strict and vengeful God. By this belief then they could advance their self-interest. They too can use their position to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.

    Thus, they were against Jesus because he was changing their ways. Their hearts were filled with bitterness, hate, anger and the desire to have more. These were the reasons why they could not accept Jesus or even recognize the presence of God in Jesus.  Their blindness and the hardness of their hearts made them incapable to understand the ways of God. Thus, they wanted to kill him, to silence Jesus.

    As we continue our journey in this season of Lent, may this Gospel reminds us of our tendency to reject others and to only believe our own ideas and perspectives. Let us also make the last week of lent as days of opportunities to humble ourselves. We are called to recognize areas of our lives where we have become complacent, too comfortable and arrogant so that our hearts may become more welcoming. Hinaut pa.

  • A Loving and Caring Parent

    A Loving and Caring Parent

    April 2, 2025 – Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040225.cfm)

    As human beings, each of us is biologically a by-product, born out of a male and female. Hence, we have a father and a mother. As we were born and grew up individually, we too have different experiences with our parents and with our fathers particularly. It is such a blessing of having a good, responsible and loving father.

    Yet, it cannot be argued that not all of us have experienced a very good father. Not all of us have a father who spends enough time to be with us and who supports us constantly as a child.

    Some of us, may even have painful memories particularly when we talk about our fathers. Others might have been abandoned by their fathers. This caused us so much pain. Others might have absentee fathers, always away because of work. This could create a deep longing of our father’s presence. Others might have a father who was abusive and irresponsible. This could give us deep and sometimes lasting emotional wounds.

    Those who have lost or not having their biological fathers around them were sometimes rescued by those who stood as their father. Indeed, in the absence of our fathers, there would be persons who have become our father from whom we still experience having one.

    Well, with our experiences with our own fathers, somehow would affect the way we relate with God whom we believe as a Father to us. Having a very good experience with our biological father, then, it might be easy for us to believe in a loving and merciful Father in heaven. Yet, if we have painful and traumatic experiences with our biological father, it can create doubts. We may hesitate to believe in God the Father who is loving and forgiving.

    Our readings today remind us of these experiences. They too also call us to recognize God’s true character as a parent to us.

    The Book of Isaiah tells us of a God so passionate to us. God is like a parent who brings comfort to us. God is there to flatten the mountains so that life won’t be too difficult for us. In fact, Isaiah uses the image of a mother who carries her baby in the womb. A mother is always connected with her baby. Nevertheless, a mother may forget her baby but God will never forget us. God remembers us because God always carries us.

    This confidence in a loving and passionate God is expressed in today’s Gospel. Jesus tells us about how he loves his Father so much. Jesus shows his affection to the Father who will never leave him alone. This expression of Jesus is an affirmation of that passion of God the Father to Jesus.

    This is where we find the invitation for us today. We might have painful experiences with our own fathers or mothers. Some of us may have similar experiences with those who became our guardians in the absence of our biological parents. However, the readings call us to be confident and assured in God as a loving and caring parent to us.

    Like Jesus, let us take confidence in God who is both a Loving and Caring Father and Mother to us. God assures us to be with us. God shall never leave us and will always be there for us. This is how God is so passionate to you and to me.

    When you become parents yourselves, let your parenting be an image of God’s unconditional love. If you stand as a foster parent to a child, make sure your parenting reflects divine love. Hinaut pa.

  • GOD WILL HEAL US

    GOD WILL HEAL US

    March 29, 2025 – Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032925.cfm)

    “Putting someone in a box” is an idiomatic expression in which we limit or categorize a person unfairly. We put a limit to a person’s character, qualities and whole being based on the label or role that we fix for them. This is a form of judging others that deprives them of hope, of healing.

    Indeed, we could become the righteous individuals who scrutinize people, searching for their faults. We could be that mean person whose main intention is to bring other people down by shaming and gossiping their weaknesses in order to hide our own sins. This happens among our families, circle of friends, in our workplaces or even in our organizations and communities.

    The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus addressed a parable “to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.”

    To become self-righteous and be convinced of it, blinds us. Thinking highly too much of ourselves prevents us from asking God to show his mercy upon us. Egoism believes that we do not need God’s mercy.

    In fact, when we become “the self-righteous person,” we begin to think of ourselves so highly that God is as if obliged to be good to us. Our heart is so perverted that we also begin to believe that God has to pay us for being good and righteous.

    Such was the case of the Pharisee in the parable. There was a reversal of relationship. God is as if the servant of this righteous person. Although he might be after of the rewards in his life for being righteous, yet, he was actually seeking to control God through his self-righteousness. Nevertheless, this attitude leads us to build an invisible wall that separates us from others.

    We might still have that idea of condemning our brothers and sisters who were considered terrible sinners. We too might have that attitude of separating those people whom we consider as unclean for fear of being contaminated and be associated with them.

    Yet, Jesus invites us today to rather look closely at ourselves and to examine better our intentions, thoughts and actions. This will lead us to that recognition of our failures and sins. This realization will hopefully make us to also join the tax collector in praying, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

    By recognizing and owning our brokenness and sins, then, we begin to take the steps to come closer to the Lord. Hosea expressed this today, “Come, let us return to the Lord, it is he who has rent, but the Lord will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds.”

    We remind ourselves that to both the righteous and the sinner, God does not condemn. The Lord desires our healing, reconciliation and fullness of life for all.

    This calls us to see more in the person of our brothers and sisters. We are challenged to stop our harsh judgments and condemnations. Stop our gossiping and image shaming that only destroy the image of our brother or sister.

    We are invited to be more understanding of those who failed but not in the sense of condoning such failures and sins. We are invited to be merciful rather than to be condemning. Hinaut pa.

  • IN GRATITUDE AND LOVE

    IN GRATITUDE AND LOVE

    March 28, 2025 – Friday of the Third Week of Lent

    Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032825.cfm)

    A scholar of the law asked Jesus, what was the greatest of all the commandments? Jesus responded with two that are inter-related. The first is, “to love God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” And second, “to love your neighbor as yourself.”

    Our Christian faith must be rooted in these two commandments. However, following these two greatest commandments we need the right attitude.

    The possible failure and difficulty for many of us in practicing our faith is when we limit faith within church laws. Limiting ourselves within the imposed laws or commandments brings us into a legalistic attitude. This attitude believes that Christianity is only about fulfilling laws. When we break a law or a rule, we feel guilty.

    This attitude is not what God wants for us. God does not want us to merely feel guilty of the wrong we did. To only feel guilty does not make move forward. It does not inspire growth and maturity in our heart and spirit. Rather, God wants us to feel sorry because our response to Him is lacking and ungrateful. This makes us understand of the gravity of our faults. This brings us towards reconciliation and conversion.

    Indeed, we may have laws but God wants us to look what is behind these many laws. This is what Jesus said to the teachers of the law. Jesus revealed to them the meaning behind those laws, and that was love – to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

    We are only able to respond to God with love when we ourselves are conscious of God’s love for us, of God’s goodness and generosity in us.

    The first reading from the Book of Hosea tells us how God shows mercy and compassion to the erring people. God promised, “I will heal their disloyalty and love them with all my heart.” God as if speaking in human language, shows faithfulness to us despite our unfaithfulness.

    This experience of forgiveness, mercy, love and faithfulness from God moves us now to respond to God, to respond in “gratitude and love.” This is the right attitude that we are called to develop.

    Jesus invites us today – that as we live our lives as Christians, our response to God should be out of “gratefulness and love” not out of fear or mere obligation. Thus, faith is beyond obligation, it is a human response of love to the God who first loved us, as the late Pope Benedict XVI reminded us.

    Our love for God will then be shown in our words as well as in our actions. We express our generosity to those who are in need because we are grateful to God who is generous to us. We show our concern and affection to our friends because God shows his love to us in many ways. We forgive those who have hurt us because God has forgiven us first. Hinaut pa.