People who are severely ill, those who are haunted by their traumatic experiences, and those who suffer chronic depression would mostly agonize the feeling of being alone and lonely. At the height of this pandemic, when infections were so high, the pandemic left many individuals to that feeling of being alone. The isolations and lockdowns, no movements and Enhanced Community Quarantines increased the anxiety and fear to many of us.
To feel alone, indeed, is a terrible feeling. It makes a day no matter how bright it would be, to be so dark. Even though many people will surround us physically, this feeling detaches us from their presence. This explains how a person who is alone and lonely would compensate that feeling by having many distractions as a way of coping and entertaining oneself.
Yet, this causes people to be so sad and depressed. How much more if physically people will leave us alone? If someone we love and so dear to you would just go away and leave us? Then, this would be a horrible feeling.
People who work away from their family would also feel being alone. They cannot help it but work from a far to give more opportunities for their family and for the children especially. Yet, as a consequence, they have to endure such loneliness for their sake in the case of migrant workers.
In the Gospel today, Jesus reminded us of his conviction of the presence of his Father. Jesus knew that his disciples would abandon him when he will undergo his passion. The disciples will retreat and hide because of fear even though that would mean that Jesus will be left alone to suffer and die.
However, Jesus was filled with confidence that his Father will never abandon him. Hence, the Father was there with Jesus even at the cross where Jesus felt being abandoned.
Today, Jesus wants us to have the same conviction and confidence. Indeed, we are never alone. The Lord is with us, always with us. This is the promise of Jesus to us today.
Thus, when we feel alone, let it be known that we are never alone. When a terrible sickness hits us, when a traumatic experience haunts us, when depression bothers us, remember, God is with us.
Those of us who are away from home and away from our families, Jesus comforts us that he is always with us. Today, we can say, “I am not alone.” Kabay pa.
Have you ever had a religious experience? A religious experience is a deep and intimate encounter with God. This can be a realization how vulnerable and powerless, sinful and unworthy we are before God yet, we are being loved. Such experience brings transformation in the way we look at life and in the way we relate with others, from being closed-minded to being welcoming, from being hateful to being loving.
Thus, a tremendous joy is felt. It could be a moment of your prayer time where you have deeply felt God’s presence despite the many problems you have. It could be in an occasion where you have seen your family or friends being together and the happiness of being with them cannot be contained. This could be the moment your girlfriend said yes to you, the moment your boyfriend held your hands, or the very first time you have carried in your arms your baby.
This tremendous joy makes God’s presenceand love ever more present in us that we wanted to get hold, to just stay there, in those feelings of joy and peace.
Hence, allow me to bring you a bit deeper into the readings on this Solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus and see how God invites today.
The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles told us about this kind of religious experience. The apostles witnessed the ascension of Jesus into heaven. That was surely an event that captivated them so greatly because it was glorious. It was their religious experience where God made himself ever present in them as Jesus was lifted up. Because of that, the apostles kept looking at the sky. They wanted to behold that moment for a long time, not wanting to disappear from their sight and memory what have just happened.
However, two men appeared in their midst and told them, “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?” The apostles seemed to be stunned with what just happened. But, they were not to remain standing there and gazing at the sky. The apostles were told to come down and share what Jesus shared to them. They were to become his witnesses beginning from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, as the Gospel told us today.
Indeed, the apostles were witnesses of the many wonders the Father made and did through Jesus. As Jesus ascended back to his Father in heaven, Jesus gave an important role to those who believed in him. These believers were being sent and empowered by Jesus through his ascension to heaven.
Jesus’ ascension then does not mean that the disciples were being left alone or abandoned. His ascension means being more present to each of his friends wherever they would go. His ascension makes him a constant companion to all of them and to each of us now.
What does it mean to us? This feast reminds us that we, who believe in Jesus, are called to tell others about Jesus – that in our own way, each of us is sent to bring Jesus and to spread Jesus’ presence into the lives of others through our words and actions, through our very life.
Our very experience of God should move and motivate us to tell others of God’s mercy, goodness and generosity. Our experience of God is not meant for us alone but it has to be shared. Jesus is after all cannot be contained in us, because Jesus is spreadable!
We spread our God experience through our very life. We spread Jesus in the way we relate with others, in the way we treat people and all others around us. We spread the Lord in our homes, workplaces, communities and even in our virtual reality.
When we truly spread Jesus, this also means that we make a stand of being a witness of Jesus, of our Christian faith. Yet, it won’t be easy. It might be quite difficult because people will be against us. Why? Because, it is not easy to be honest, transparent and accountable when many are dishonest, cheating and corrupt. It is not easy to tell the truth when many are lying and convinced of the lies. It is not easy to be selfless when others are selfish. It is not easy to be faithful when others are unfaithful. It is not easy to be a counter-culture. Yet, this is what being a believer of Jesus means.
As we continue to deepen our faith and cherish our God experiences, God invites us today.
To Spread Jesus today! Share to someone, to your friends, family members or even to strangers your experience of God. For the young ones and to all of us who are in social media on a daily basis, explore the social media as a way of communicating and sharing the goodness of God, by not spreading lies and fake news but facts and truth.
It is just timely that on this Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, we are also celebrating World Communications Sunday. Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok and twitter are good media platforms to proclaim the goodness of God to others.
Again, spread Jesus today! Spread the Good News and not fake news; spread the good not the lies. Make viral God’s faithfulness and mercy upon us. Kabay pa.
Our gospel today proclaims that the disciple saw and believe,…. though they did not yet understand.
When was the last time you find yourself in this situation? Seeing & Believing, yet not Understanding. Though it happens to us occasionally & once in a while, we do have experienced situations in our lives that we find ourselves seeing & believing, though not yet understanding what is happening.
Come to think of it. Just for these past few recent years & months, we saw and still seeing a lot of challenging things happening in our lives. We are witnesses lately to life-threatening & life-changing experience of massive infections, sickness, & death caused by Covid pandemic that rendered our lives constricted with lockdowns, quarantine, protocols of social distancing, isolations & immunization. We see also the devastating effects of the natural disaster of typhoons, heavy rains, landslide, & flooding into our livelihood. We see also the influx as well as the lack of humanitarian & government response. We see also the threat of world war & the political turmoil in both local & global level. We have seen & still seeing the best & the worse of humanity & the world unfolding before us.
As we saw & still see a lot of things happening in our lives lately, we also yet to understand why all these things are happening to us. We still yet to understand the sense, meaning, or purpose of the life we had & having, are now being challenged & changed. We are yet to understand the ever-present losses, worries, anxieties & fears that we are going through a lot these days. We are yet to understanding why we idolize (make God of) others to somehow save us, while we also demonize (make devil of) others to blame of our present predicament.
As things happen & still happening, and we not yet understanding all these, be as it may, we cannot help but find ourselves believing not only on our own & other’s capacity to rise & respond to the occasion & be responsible for all these. Above all, we cannot help but find ourselves bowing & knelling down in humility before God, believing that He has better plans than what we had, in store for us in our life ahead.
Consider then that, in our gospel today, as they witnessed themselves the passion, death & burial of our Lord, the disciples had just lost hope & meaning of their very life – Jesus Christ. And worse, amidst their hopelessness & despair, what they saw then is an empty tomb. Jesus was not only gone, but worse His dead body is also gone missing. Their experience of empty tomb & missing body may have been devastating, non-sensical & incomprehensible to them. But they saw & believe, without even understanding yet. They see & believe. They have seen & will forever believing.
Same way as disciples of Jesus-then, this is also how we will now experience the Lord’s resurrection into our lives now & always – By Seeing & Believing in God’s Plans for us, though not understanding yet.
Easter, the Season of Our Lord’s Resurrection, challenges us then to See & Believe, even yet to understand the life we are going through at this moment now & will about to happen, for our God has a lot better life in store for us ahead. As we celebrate the Lord’s resurrection this year in our lives, we are invited to view the things that are happening to us now & about to happen ahead in the near future, in Faith in God & with Our Risen Lord Jesus Christ.
Be reminded then that Easter season is our yearly reminder of God’s everlasting love for us. God assures us that “I have love you with an everlasting love”. His love for us then is from eternity to eternity. He loves us long before & ever since from the beginning, until now & always be forever. And as Henri Nouwen would say: “Life is just a little opportunity for us during a few years to say, “I love you too, My God.” What we have and having now then is just our short chance in life to see & believe in His love & to love Him in return.
Though life nowadays may not be comprehensible, or no-sense at all, we do know deep inside & in faith that there are more better life yet to be seen & believed with Our God & our Risen Lord Jesus Christ.
So, Brace Ourselves. Abangan. For there are more yet to come & to happen, as the Lord has risen into our lives now & always.
God is for everyone. God does not belong to any particular race, culture or any group of people. Hence, no one can monopolize God. This also means that we cannot monopolize grace. And it is impossible to monopolize the gift of salvation because God’s nature is wider than what we can imagine or think of.
This is what Jesus wanted to realize for his townspeople. There in Nazareth, when he went home, Jesus tried to open the minds and hearts of his friends and neighbors to know God better. The people seemed to only understand that the Lord God only belongs to the Jewish people. This was such a narrow-minded belief about the Lord God.
Yet, this narrow-minded awareness of God led people to nurture hatred and violence against people whom they thought would not agree with them. This, basically, happened to Jesus. When Jesus began to teach them that God is for all, people began to turn sour. When Jesus made them aware of the story of a widow in Zarephath and Naaman, the Syrian, who despite being non-believers, were also favored by God’s grace, the people took offense.
Jesus told the people of what the Holy Scriptures revealed to them, yet, his own people were more unbelieving than the non-believers themselves. The people could not accept what Jesus taught them. They only wanted to believe what they liked to believe. This was the reason why they rejected Jesus teaching and Jesus himself as well. This was also the reason why they became furious when Jesus confronted them of their false belief and selective memory. Thus, the unbelieving and unwelcoming hearts of the people, indeed, turned them hateful and violent. They drove Jesus out of Nazareth and wanted to throw him down from the hill.
However, God remains for all. God’s grace, God’s call of conversion and God’s gift of salvation is offered for all as Psalm 130:7 says, “For the Lord is mercy, with him is plenteous redemption.”
Gospel verse for today
Today, Jesus is also challenging us and inviting us to confront our narrow-mindedness and selective memory of things. Jesus calls us to be welcoming and to always have a heart that desires to know God better. May we also grow to become a welcoming and a true believing community. Hinaut pa.
The first reading from the Book of Exodus tells us a wonderful story of the call of Moses. His call from God captures the invitation for each of us as we are now on the third Sunday of Lent. So, let us explore together our readings today and see how God invites and calls us.
The first reading is a story of conversion of Moses. We have heard that it began through the “burning bush” which led to the encounter of Moses with God. But what really happened there? Let us take it step by step.
When Moses noticed the flaming bush but was not consumed by fire, Moses became curious. His curiosity led him to come near to the burning bush. As he came near, it was at that moment too that Moses’ name was called. And when he responded, Moses was made aware of the holy presence of God as he was standing on a holy ground. Moses has to remove his sandals and to present himself in bare foot before God. When Moses did remove his sandals, it led him to a personal conversation with God because he became more grounded. By removing his sandals, Moses felt and became more connected with God. It was an intimacy shared by Moses and the Lord. Moreover, this encounter brought Moses to a mission. God sent Moses, and that is to bring the Lord to his fellow Israelites.
This encounter of Moses with God allowed Moses to know God and be more aware of God. God’s name is “I am who am” or basically means, “I am with you always, all the time.” This was how Moses realized that God is relational. This means that God does not remain remote or alien to human suffering. In fact, the Book of Exodus described God’s words in this way, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering.” This led Moses closer to God.
This is indeed a conversion story because from the kind of life that Moses was so comfortable with, God disturbed him. That disturbance was God’s way of calling Moses to go beyond from his comforts and even from his fear of being killed by the Egyptians. Remember, Moses fled Egypt because he killed an Egyptian soldier who had beaten a Hebrew slave. The burning bush then, became the opportunity for Moses to encounter and know God, and being called and challenged by God as well.
Moreover, the call of conversion is what St. Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Corinthians. The history of unfaithfulness, of the grave sin committed by the people in the past must be a learning experience. That cannot be forgotten. St. Paul calls us, definitely, not to grow complacent and to just be secured with what we have in this world. He even expressed this in these words, “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.”
The same call of conversion that would bring us closer to the Lord is what the parable in today’s Gospel revealed. In the parable of the fig tree, Jesus tells us that the Father is a God of many chances. God gives us many chances to change our ways and to come nearer to him so that we may find fullness of life. This is described to us as Jesus expressed in the parable how the owner visited the fig tree. Yet, in the person of the gardener, Jesus tells us that indeed, God gives us another chance when we fail and commit mistakes, when we grow complacent and refuse to be life-giving. The gardener expressed hope to the owner as he asked him to give the fig tree another year. The gardener promised to cultivate it so that it may bear fruit. The gardener saw hope for transformation and hope of being fruitful in that tree.
Indeed, God always sees hope in each of us too. This was how God saw hope in Moses who left Egypt to hide and to make him as God’s messenger. God also saw hope among his people who were made slaves in a foreign land to give them the fullness of life.
Out of these things, there are three invitations that I want you to remember on this Third Sunday of Lent.
First, to be more conscious of our own “burning bush.” This “burning bush” could be an experience were we also became curious about God but led us to a personal encounter with God.
Second, let us remove our sandals, as what Moses did, and to remove anything that is not helpful and toxic and those that prevents our growth. This means that we are challenged to remove and to let go those unnecessary things, attitudes, behaviors, opinions, beliefs and lifestyle that prevent us from becoming a life-giving person.
Third, to go beyond. This is where we find the message of hope and the call of conversion. We are not limited by our failures and mistakes in life, not even by our sickness, struggles and difficulties that we have at this moment. God sees hope in us and it is God’s desire that we are able to enjoy life and celebrate life in its fullness. Thus, go beyond from our protected shells of pretensions and complacency by allowing ourselves to grow in our relationships. And also, go beyond from our fears and sins by seeking peace and reconciliation, go beyond from our insecurities, anger, hatred, disappointment and trauma by making ourselves confident with God’s gift of healing and of his faithfulness to us. Hinaut pa.
A DOSE OF GOD TODAY 