Category: Misa de Gallo

December 23, 2019 – Monday of the 4th Week of Advent

Click here for the readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/122319.cfm

Homily

The Lord promised to send a Messiah who will come to us in order to save us. But before the Messiah will come, a person shall be sent first to serve as a herald who will prepare God’s people for the coming of the Messiah. This herald will not only announce the coming of the Messiah but he too will lead the people to recognize who the Messiah is.

In the prophecy from the Book of Malachi, this person shall lead and gather the people to see God. He will be like a refiner’s fire who will teach and correct the wrong of the people. In this way, this person will lead the people to repentance to fully welcome the Lord. The birth of this person is not by accident but planned well by God.

We have heard in the first reading how Malachi described God sending the messenger who is also the message himself of God. This means that the life of this person is the message of God to make the people prepare themselves for God’s coming. This is God’s promise that is  to be first fulfilled through the participation of humanity, through us.

The Gospel reveals further to us how God planned everything so that we will be able to recognize Him. The birth of John was announced to an old couple, to Zachariah and Elizabeth. For the Jews, if a couple has no child, it means that they are not favored by God and worst they too believed that the couple are cursed. 

However, to the surprise of this old couple an angel announced that they will have a son.  Elizabeth welcomed the message from God, but her husband, because it was too much to believe could not accept God’s gift. That is why, Zechariah was silenced by God. He only recovered his voice when his son was born. It was when he gave the name John to his son that the Lord opened his mouth again because the Lord is gracious. Yes, the name John or Johannes means the Lord is gracious. Zechariah realized that his son is God’s message to him.

The birth of John is a divine manifestation that God is indeed gracious and faithful despite our unbelief and doubts. God continues to reveal himself to us even though we refuse to believe.

This was the role of John and that was to bring people again to believe that God has never abandoned us. God remembers and He is here with us. This made John a great and important prophet because he reminded the people about God, made people recognize God and brought them close to God. He was indeed a refiner’s fire because he challenged the people’s way of life and called them to get out from their comfort zones of power, influence, abuse, sin and corruption.  Yet, because of this role of John, it caused John’s life. He was martyred, beheaded actually, because of this cause to make people recognize that God is gracious

For all of us, we may ask ourselves, “What is God’s plan for me now? What does God want me to be now? Is there also a divine purpose of my life?” 

We are called today to be the modern John the Baptist of God. Yes, you and me who have been baptized in the name of God have been called to proclaim God’s graciousness. We are called to lead people back to God and to discover a life filled with peace and love with God and with each other.

How do we do it then?

You as parents, you are in the best position to lead your children to God. You are there to prepare the way of the Lord in the hearts of your children. Teachers, educators and persons who are in authority, you too are in the position to influence your students, mentees and subjects to discover God in your authority. As friends, co-workers, and classmates we too are in the position to let those people around us to realize that God is in us. Through us, people around us may discover and be led closer to God.

Let us include in our prayers today to make John alive in each of us. It also means that we make ever present God’s graciousness in us because we will become a witness to God’s grace. Hopefully, through this vocation of bringing people close to God, we as a community, will also journey closer to God as we struggle to recognize God daily in our life despite our unbelief and refusal to believe in God’s graciousness to us. Hinaut pa.

Jom Baring, CSsR

December 19, 2019 – Thursday of the 3rd Week of Advent

Click here for the readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/121919.cfm

Homily

Do you like surprises? Or do you like to be surprised?

When I was very young I really liked to be surprised because as a child, a surprise is a stimulus that creates excitement and happiness. Yet, as I was growing up I also gradually realized that I did not want any surprise anymore. I began to become calculating in what I say and in what I do. This has become the way I was brought up at home and at school. But more than this, I also grew up in an environment where a particular mistake or failure has a particular punishment.

As a child, a punishment whether verbal or physical can be painful and shameful. Because of such experiences, I learned many lessons not to commit the same mistakes over and over again. As a result, I became very careful in what I say and with the things that I do. In fact, this helped me to become an organized person. Because of this too, I have become an obedient boy. I carefully followed orders as well as rules and regulations at school. Nevertheless, I became indignant to something that may come as a surprise or spontaneous. Thus, I refused to be surprised because I feel insecure and not prepared. I settled to what was only familiar to me, to what was routine and mechanical . Yet, I also tend to be complacent and rejecting to what was spontaneous and surprising.

However, the readings that we have today shed light to my own experience and rather called me to what God desires for me and for all of us. So, let us go through once again the scriptures and discover how God is surprising us today.

The Book of Judges tells us the story of the birth of Samson. Manoah and his wife, who was not named, were surprised by God. His wife was barren, therefore, she cannot conceived a child. However, in a surprising way, God blessed her with the visit of an angel. That angel announced to her the good news from the Lord. Being intuitive and receptive to God’s presence, she welcomed this surprise despite the physical limitations she had of being barren. 

This tells us that there is something really good with the mother of Samson. Despite the pain of being shamed by people around her, just being barren, she never lost the attitude of being receptive and welcoming to God’s presence. She might have prayed a lot before this but for many years, her prayers remained unanswered. Heavens seemed to be too far from her and God’s ears seemed to be unavailable. Yet, she has never lost hope and thus, never lost her heart that longed for God’s surprise.

However, in the announcement of the Birth of John to Zechariah, we have heard a different attitude from him. With the news proclaimed by Angel Gabriel, God’s surprise was just so damn good… that Zechariah couldn’t believe that in his old age with his old wife Elizabeth, they would be having a son. It was just so damn good that he refused to believe the great news from God.

But we may wonder, how could Zechariah a priest of God become so numb and disbelieving of God’s surprise for him? 

In the Biblical tradition, the revelation of God to Zechariah was the first since the last revelation in the Old Testament that ended in the Book of Malachi.  There was about 400 years of silence from heaven. There were no prophets and no revelations from Yahweh.

From this, we could just presume that Zechariah had also become too apathetic to anything new and any surprise from God. He was just so used to his routine and to the many days that had become too ordinary for him. Yet, he had become indifferent to God’s surprise because his prayers to have a child seemed not been heard. 

We too are not far from Zechariah. We might be tempted also to settle for what is routine, mechanical and ordinary because our prayers remained unanswered and our dreams remained unfulfilled. We might become lifeless in our prayers and relationship with one another because everything seemed to be just so ordinary. This may lead us to relate with God and with others in a lazy, complacent, automatic and uninterested way. 

These attitudes, therefore, will prevent us from being more sensitive to God’s way of surprising us. Thus, in today’s Gospel, we are invited to encounter the Lord with an attitude of sensitivity and receptivity.

God calls us to be sensitive to his surprises, which also means to be more aware of His presence in our life and in the life of others even in the midst of the ordinary, of the routine and of the usual. God comes to surprise us out of the blue because he loves to surprise us.

God calls us also to be open and welcoming of His presence and of his surprise. God’s surprise will be worthless if we are not open to Him and refuse to be surprised by Him. An attitude that is receptive of God, makes us become childlike where in, we free ourselves from fear and anxieties, including judgments and biases. Thus, allow God to surprise us because, certainly, he has a surprise for each of us.

Indeed, may God surprise us all the more in this joyful season that like that woman, the mother of Samson and Zechariah too, we shall praise the Lord with our lips and hearts because God is good and faithful to us. Hinaut pa.

Jom Baring, CSsR

December 18, 2019 – Wednesday 3rd Week of Advent

Click here for the readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/121819.cfm

Homily

Have you ever experienced being betrayed? Betrayed by someone you love or someone who is so dear to you? 

 I am sure that many of us here would really be upset. Personally, I would feel angry and perhaps hate the person for betraying me. Betrayal or unfaithfulness is scandalous and disgraceful by the fact that it causes so much pain to the person being betrayed. This would happen within our relationships, within our families, relatives, friends, workmates. And because unfaithfulness causes us so much pain, it breaks our heart. Unfaithfulness destroys trust and confidence in a relationship.

For us, our common attitude to painful experiences such us the unfaithfulness of a friend, or a partner or a relative is sometimes “hostile” either towards the person who betrayed us or towards ourselves. When we are hurt, we either inflict pain to others to take our own revenge or inflict pain on ourselves by lingering to depression, guilt, and self-pity.

However, today’s Gospel presents to us a different attitude in a scenario that is intrigued with a scandalous betrayal and unfaithfulness.  Yes, the story that we have heard in the Gospel was scandalous. Mary and Joseph were already engaged but within that period of engagement Mary got pregnant. The people in their village knew that Joseph was not the father. Joseph himself was confident that Mary’s child in her womb was not his. Joseph knew that the Jewish law would find Mary guilty of adultery.  This is an act punishable by shame and death. Their law mandated Joseph to divorce her.

In a small village like Nazareth, gossip seemed to be faster than lightning. Every person in their village knew that Mary was pregnant. Yes, Mary was judged by the people to be unfaithful to Joseph. And if we would imagine Joseph, surely, he too was hurt. He might have felt being betrayed. As a man, Joseph would have already imagined Mary as his wife. As a family, Joseph might have possibly dreamed of a simple and happy family. Unfortunately, these aspirations of Joseph seemed to be in darkness at that moment.

But then, there was something in Joseph that particularly pleased God. Joseph was a good man. He was righteous and thoughtful. We expect Joseph to have been really hurt by this scandal yet what Joseph showed towards Mary was mercy rather than revenge, and love rather than hate in the midst of his anger, disappointment, confusion and fear. And so, Joseph considered to divorce Mary in secret and not to expose her for a public trial and public execution by stoning her to death. Joseph thought to protect Mary from further bullying and disgrace.

 Indeed, Joseph struggled with this decision. This crisis could have been the darkest in his life. But then, the story has not yet ended. This dark and difficult moment of Joseph became the way for God to reveal His plan. That is why, God revealed to Joseph in the night of dreaming and pondering. Through that revelation, Joseph’s view of Mary and her pregnancy and even of himself became larger and brighter. Joseph began to see the scandalous situation of Mary’s pregnancy through the eyes of faith rather than his fear and disappointment, through God’s love rather than his anger and hate.

And from then on, Joseph saw and felt that what has been revealed to him was truly scandalous because God revealed Himself to him, because God has become man there in the womb of Mary just to be with us. It was scandalous because we thought that God is up there or out there in the heavens only, a place that no person can reach. But then Mary got pregnant. This is what blows our mind now, because through that unexpected pregnancy, God is telling us the He is intimately present with us. God is telling us that humanity can become pregnant with God.

Mary’s faithfulness to Joseph was also questioned. She was accused of betrayal and infidelity. But after the revelation to Joseph, he understood that Mary’s pregnancy is a statement of God’s faithfulness and commitment to us. God commits himself to be our God. He commits himself to choose us as His people. This is God’s assurance to us now that he is present and he lives in the midst of our lives, in the midst of our pain, of our failures, of our disappointments, hurts and fears in order to bring to us His mercy, love and friendship.

What God is telling us this Christmas is this – that He chooses life and not death because he chooses to be born like us. God is telling us that he never gives up on us because His name is Jesus – the God who saves us. God is telling us that we are not alone in our difficulties because He is Emmanuel, the God who is with us who gives joy and hope.

As we are coming closer to celebrate the Lord’s birthday, I would like to invite you to look at the face of the person in front and behind you. Please look at her/him and generously give a warm smile and a simple “hi and hello.” Remember this, Jesus is born, human like us – as Christians we may always defend, protect, nurture and love every human life. Hinaut pa.

Jom Baring, CSsR