Peace! Kalilintad! Shalom!

Category: Homilies

  • When Love liberates and empowers us

    When Love liberates and empowers us

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    May 14, 2020 – Feast of St. Matthias, Apostle 

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051420.cfm)

    A friend of mine once shared to me why she became confused and distressed. She was restless and depressed because of a deep-seated emptiness within her. She felt unloved, rejected and worthless. Her parents separated when she was young, her father was so strict that she could not even express what she needed, her siblings treated her as if she’s not existing, at school she was bullied. She’s aware that she has a house to live, but she has no home where she feels being loved, supported and affirmed. This emptiness in her heart haunted her when she’s asleep even when she’s awake. Her life became so dry and meaningless. She does not know where to go.

    To feel being loved and affirmed is everyone’s need. Love gives brightness and meaning to our life even in the midst of suffering and much difficulty. That is why, when love seems absent, life becomes a horror. 

    This reality reveals the imperfection of our human relationships. Though our relationships are the source of our fulfillment and joy, yet, it is through our human relationships also that we find the deepest pain and frustrations because of rejection and at times betrayal. But, that is not the end of everything because even out of a messy relationship, something can grow.

    This is where we can find the presence of God. As God joined us in flesh in our history, God also dwells in our human relationships. Jesus was born into a family and gathered people and made them his friends. Within this context, Jesus experienced rejection as well as betrayal from people closest to him. Yet, despite this painful experiences, we also find redemption, we find forgiveness and find life.

    TODAY ON THIS FEAST OF ST. MATTHIAS, AN APOSTLE, OUR READINGS GIVE US THE COMFORT THAT WE ALL NEED WHEN ALL OUR HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS FAIL. WITH IT, WE RECOGNIZE THE NEED FOR REDEMPTION AND FORGIVENESS.

    In the Gospel, Jesus says to you and to me, “I love you!” John, who is believed to be the author of this Gospel and traditionally, as the beloved disciple,  truly felt the weight of this love. It was because of this love that made him to stand strong even in the midst of confusion at the arrest of Jesus. He followed Jesus on his way to be crucified. John was also present at the foot of the cross of Jesus with Mary and witnessed the death of his Lord. John was also the first to believe in Jesus’ resurrection upon seeing the empty tomb despite his confusion and fears. 

    However, aside from him, the rest of the disciples of Jesus were nowhere to be found. Judas betrayed his Lord and Master and killed himself. Peter denied Jesus three times. And the rest? They all fled and him themselves because of fear. However, the Lord never abandoned them. The Lord never gave up on them. The Lord will never give up on us.

    This is how we find the Gospel truly life-giving. Jesus says, “There is no greater love than this, to give one’s life for one’s friends; and you are my friends.” Jesus calls us his friends and nobody can take that away from Jesus. Hence, even with rejection, denial and betrayal, these will not make Jesus to withdraw from us. “You are my friends,” says the Lord.

    This is the same love shown by Jesus in the most concrete way, that the disciples were converted. They began to see their imperfection that though they were all unworthy, but Jesus remained faithful till the end. This is the love that made the disciples to become confident and daring. The love that they truly believed is life in itself for them. Thus, as a community, we believed that God first loved us and because God is faithful, God will always love us even if everyone and everything goes wrong.

    This love then, empowers the disciples. This is how we find the story of Matthias being chosen to be part of the 12 Apostles who were sent to continue what Jesus has started. Matthias became part of this apostolic ministry that proclaims the life of Jesus and the power of his resurrection.

    It is the same love that God tells us today. When rejections, betrayals and fears haunt us, when our relationships fail, and begin to feel unloved, then, Jesus tells each of us, “I LOVE YOU AND YOU ARE MY FRIEND.” God is totally in love with you and with me. Be assured and be confident in that love because His love is constant and faithful.

    It should be this same love that would hopefully lead us to see the light and joy even in the midst of suffering and pain in life, even in the midst of rejection and betrayal of people who are close to us, and even in the midst of worries and anxieties in times of pandemic. 

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    This love should also inspire us to respond in love, to express our love to God, to ourselves, and to others even to those who have hurt us and people we do not like. This is the commandment of Jesus, “love one another as I have loved you.” St. Matthias is a witness to this. This is the reason that he also committed himself to Christ that he may be able to give life to the Church even in the midst of persecution.

    Indeed, God’s love is liberating and empowering. This is how Easter becomes glorious because God’s love empowers and liberates. As we are being loved, we are also moved to love. 

    Loving and being loved certainly make our life worth living. Love gives us purpose and meaning in life and this becomes concrete as we continually reach out to others to express our love and show our kindness. Thus, hopefully, we may not become reasons for others in making their lives miserable and horrible because of our indifferent, childish and selfish desires and intentions.

    May I invite you then today, show your kindness to people around you in the most concrete way. Make that person feel being loved as God lets you feel being loved today. Hinaut pa.

    Jom Baring, CSsR

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  • Listen. Live.

    Listen. Live.

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    May 13, 2020 – Memorial of Our Lady of Fatima

    Click here for the readings (http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings/0513-memorial-our-lady-fatima.cfm)

    Did Jesus just downplay the role of his Mother, Mary by saying, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it?”

    On this memorial day of Our Lady of Fatima, the Lord has actually reminded us how Mary, his mother, is indeed blessed. Mary is blessed among women not just because she carried Jesus and nursed him. Before Mary conceived Jesus, Mary listened to God. Mary welcomed the word of God proclaimed to her. By listening to the word of God, Mary observed it. Mary lived the word of God. 

    This is how Mary silently lived her life within the life of Jesus. And living in that life, Mary became life-giving for she is at the very source of life and of love.

    Hence, the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary was made possible through her generous participation in the Divine Plan of God. Mary indeed opened her heart and welcomed God’s word. This action of Mary made God’s plan to be fulfilled in our history, through a human participation.

    As a consequence to that, Mary conceived Jesus in her womb. Mary became pregnant with God and brought the Immanuel in our midst.

    Today’s memorial of the first appearance of Mary in Fatima, Portugal in 1917 to the three children, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta reminds us also of the blessing that we have received from God. Mary’s appearance would tell us of God’s presence in our midst. It is a reminder that God has not forgotten us. God is with us.

    Thus, the call to pray the Holy Rosary daily is a call to constantly listen to God. The Holy Rosary is not a mere memorized prayer that must be done dutifully. Rather, it must be done “prayerfully.” Doing the Rosary “out of duty” is not what Mary wanted because with that attitude, it will only make us tired and disappointed once we have not done it. The invitation is that the Holy Rosary becomes a channel for us to converse with God – in listening to God and listening to ourselves.

    During this month of May, children are being taught to pray particularly the Holy Rosary. Yet, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this annual religious gathering is also suspended. (Photo from Brgy Nabitasan, Iloilo City 2018)

    The repeated prayers in the Rosary and the mysteries attached to each decade are invitations to dwell deeper in the life of Jesus. In every decade, it is an invitation to see our life, and the life of our brothers and sisters within the life of Jesus recalled in every mystery in the Holy Rosary.

    The Holy Rosary then, is a form of making ourselves more aware of God’s presence and more attuned to God’s word, to God’s many invitations for us. 

    This is where we realize how “blessed” we are, because God speaks to us. We are invited to listen to Him and to live by the word of God as Mary, our Mother, did it.

    May Mary, the Lady of Fatima, teach us how to listen prayerfully and lovingly to God’s words revealed in the Holy Bible, in our Sacraments, in our relationships and in our daily affairs with the world. By living God’s words, we may find life then, and become life-giving to every person whose life we are able to touch today. Hinaut pa.

    Jom Baring, CSsR

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  • Have you been circumcised? I mean, your “heart”

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    May 13, 2020 – Wednesday – 5th week of Easter

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051320.cfm

    During this month of May, our Parish would always have the annual “Operation Tuli” to be sponsored by the Devotees of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. This plan has already been discussed as early as November last year in order to have an organized operation. With this, it reminds me of my growing up years in elementary school.

    During summer time like this, there would always be an “operation tuli” everywhere. Tuli or circumcision of the male genitalia has become a Filipino tradition and culture, an initiation process among young boys.

    As I underwent the same process, I was filled with fear of the pain that I would experience. Thus, when my mother brought me to a doctor’s clinic, I was trembling but managed to get out and hid myself. Well, for a week, I was able to avoid that. But because of the tremendous pressure from my playmates and classmates especially with those who were already circumcised, I was somehow forced by them to go through the same process of “initiation.” With tuli, then, as we have believed will turn me into a man. Tuli has become an initiation process from being a small weakling boy to a “gwapo-looking” young teen and from being a boy to a young man. But I wondered, was it really necessary for a man to be a man?

    This question I have brought me to the problem of the first reading. The Acts of the Apostles expresses a conflict of the early church. The Jews, especially the Pharisees who became believers of Christ insisted that pagans or non-Jewish Christians should be circumcised like them. Somehow, the Jews discriminated the pagans by thinking that pagans were unclean. For them to be cleaned they too must go through the same process of circumcision. The Jews thought that by becoming first a Jew through circumcision then one becomes a Christian.

    Now, Paul was against it though he himself was a Pharisee. For him, to be converted into Christ is beyond what is physical. The Jews at that time were looking in a very legalistic point of view. Paul wanted them to realize that a person who has been captured by Christ does not need any “tuli” anymore. 

    What is needed is the circumcision of the heart! What does it mean? It means that one should give up or stop old habits and attitudes that keep one away from God. These include the insecurity and indifference of the Jewish Christians at that time.

    For us today, what should be cut-off from us also are those thoughts, beliefs, actions and attitudes that continually keeping us away from the Lord, making us unresponsive to the invitations of the Lord, and that make us uncaring and unmoved of the difficulties and struggles of others. In other words, cut-off those that keep us indifferent to what is happening around us.

    This is the invitation of the Gospel. We, who are believers in the resurrection of Jesus, must be constantly pruned just like any plant so that we will bear good fruits or flowers. What is not helpful, dangerous and oppressive must be stopped because that will only lead us into our own misery.

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    Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that the key to become a good Christian is “to remain in him.” To remain in Jesus means to be always aware of his presence in our life. To remain in him too is to recognize his face in all of God’s creation especially among the criminals and sinners, the young and the old, the sick and the underprivileged, the poor and the abandoned.

    I would like to ask you now as we continue to deepen our faith.

    What are the thoughts, actions and attitudes that keep me away from God’s presence? Or those that make me indifferent and uncaring to the needs of others?

    May our Mother of Perpetual Help who is an example to all of us, inspire and teach us how to remain and recognize the Lord always. Through her help, we may be able to circumcise our hearts. Hinaut pa.

    Jom Baring, CSsR

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  • How often do you worry?

    How often do you worry?

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    May 12, 2020 – Tuesday 5th Week of Easter

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051220.cfm)

    How often do you worry?

    I am sure that we would find ourselves worrying about many things in life, almost everyday. You worry about your husband or your wife, or your growing children and the failing health of your parents. Or we worry about the demands of our job or the difficulties in our business, or about your new relationships, and newfound friends. We might also find ourselves worrying about our tomorrow, of what is to come the next day because of the uncertainties brought by the pandemic. Or worrying also about our unfulfilled dreams and unsatisfied desires.

    Our worries and anxieties may prevent us from seeing things as they are because our minds and hearts are already troubled. When worries and anxieties overwhelm us too, we might not be able to respond properly and responsibly because we are internally disturbed. 

    Indeed, excessive worrying may lead us to high anxiety, which may cause us physical and mental illness. When this comes, our decision making process is also affected and our relationships with others and even with God will suffer.

    That is why; it is very important that we remain calm and at peace with ourselves and with what surrounds us. It is in this way that we will be able to move forward with our life and will be able to respond generously to what God calls us to be.

    Today, the Risen Jesus invites us to be confident with the gift that his resurrection brings to us. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you but not as the world gives, do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”

    It would be good for us to see and understand what Jesus was saying about the peace that he gives and the peace that the world gives.

    Let us see first to what Jesus said about the peace that the world gives. We may understand that what the world tells us about peace is the normalcy of life or ‘business-as-usual.’ This means that we go and proceed to what we usually do in life by doing what we want and by satisfying our needs and desires. But is it really peace at all?

    The peace that the world gives is shallow and remains self-centered. This peace focuses on our ego. But then, when the ego is not satisfied then the promised peace is lost because worries and anxieties will overwhelm us again.

    However, the peace Jesus gives is something different. This peace is growing in confidence with God, with my brothers and sisters no matter who they are. Thus, this peace allows us to see and recognize our brothers and sisters. This peace breaks any form of division, discrimination and indifference.

    This goes beyond to what is physical but into our hearts, in believing and becoming confident that God is with us and that God never abandons us. This peace sips through our troubled life, even into our stressful work or ministry, and into our un-reconciled relationships, into our danger-filled surrounding brought by covid-19, into the many displacements and halting of our so-called normal life before the Covid-19,  and into our anxieties of what is to come tomorrow.

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    Jesus gives us His Peace! This is Jesus’ gift to us. Are we ready to accept it? Are we willing to embrace it? Or do we prefer to just do our normal and usual things in life? To continue making ourselves submerged in worries and anxieties of life?

    Jesus wants us to be free from the troubles of worries and anxieties, to be free from fears and hesitations. This is the reason why the Lord gives Himself to us so that we will have him and enjoy his peace.

    Be confident that the Lord is with us; the Holy Spirit is among us and within us. By becoming confident in Jesus, we may also recognize the peace that others may bring into our lives. Hence, be welcoming also of the peace that our brothers and sisters may bring into our life.

    Peace be with you always. Hinaut pa. 

    Jom Baring, CSsR

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  • Time-check. When are we in life Now?

    Time-check. When are we in life Now?

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    May 10, 2020 – Fifth Sunday of Easter

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051020.cfm)

    Not only we are already almost half way through the month but also already half way through the year. And we are yet far from what we have initially planned early for this year 2020. Our global reality of viral pandemic has rendered our initial plans and programs for this year on-hold, hanging and at the verge of scrapping down the drain. Worse, nowadays ours is confusing and ground-shaking times since we find our “life-givens” – our basic presumptions and systems now unreliable (if not crashed).

    Moreover we find ourselves in a situation where and when “no possible way to know what is going to happen tomorrow, we never know”. During these trying times in our lives, as we struggle daily with the “What’s now? What’s next” of our limited, constricted, and uncertain reality, we grapple also for the “Why? How come? What for?”, that could somehow provide us some sense, meaning, and direction to our lives today.

    Corrie ten Boom once said in her book, The Hiding Place: “Every experience God gives us, every person He puts into our lives is the perfect preparation for the future only He can see.” Somehow these words of wisdom could provide us a perspective as to how we can view what we are going through and happening to us these days.

    These words are based on Corrie’s experience of being a Dutch Christian survivor of the horrors of Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. In her experience of the worse of human disaster and cruelty as well as the best of Christian faith, Corrie came to realize and believe that as Christian believers, our LIFE now is and can be  God’s preparation of us for the New Life He promised us. Understanding then our present Now as God’s preparation may provide us a much-wider perspective, allow us to go beyond and find meaning to what is happening and we are going through now.  

    Based  on her experiences of the challenges of living life in faith, here she is counselling us now that whatever happens and is happening to us, what we have gone and going through (however it may be) are just but mere  God’s PREPARATIONS for His promise of our much better tomorrow than what we envision to be. In other words, there is more to life than just what we have Now, for Now is just but a preparation for God’s promise of more abundant and better life ahead and anew for us. And we are now just being prepared by God, and God is preparing us for something greater than these things we have now.

    Somehow Jesus has the same message for us in our gospel today. In admitting that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, Jesus is preparing us His disciples for the coming life ahead. Jesus said: “I am going now to prepare a place for you”. He is preparing us and we are being prepared by Him. And this is not just about the place prepared for us out “there and after”, but all about ourselves, (you and I, here & now) being prepared for a role, task and mission – a responsibility in God’s plan of more abundant life for all.

    In Jesus, God thus is  preparing us according to His plans and purpose for us. In Jesus, God is calling, forming, training, retooling, and redesigning us now to be suited for the promise of our new life with Him.  

    Jesus as our “Way, Truth and Life” is God’s signs, guidelines, and means of preparing us. The witness of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection with us prepared and still preparing us for the promise of eternal life. And as we, believers of Jesus and our Father are being prepared, the challenges of living life in faith we Christians are going through now may be lived, not as it is, but as a preparation to a witness of better future for the world now and beyond.

    In other words, our experience of Christian life now is and should be lived same way as in holding pre-departure areas in airports and terminal or bus stops’ waiting sheds  in preparation for a journey to a better future destination God is offering us anew, along with the conviction that God and Jesus is not finish with us yet. The journey is not yet over. There is more yet to come for us with God.

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    So for now, take heed Jesus’ advice: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God and in Me also”, since we are being PREPARED for something anew. BRACE ourselves  therefore, for we are part of the preparation in God’s grand plan of things in life.

    May we have the patience and faith to endure and persevere more with what we are going through Now, so that we may be worthy and  better prepared for our responsibility to a much better world ahead, God offering us now. Amen. 

    (By: Fr. Aphelie Mario Masangcay CSsR, a Filipino Redemptorist  Missionary stationed in Gwangju South Korea, though now still stranded in Cebu until further notice for available flights.)