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Category: Season of Lent

  • If and when the well runs dry, dig deeper

    If and when the well runs dry, dig deeper

    March 15, 2020 – Third Sunday of Lent

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031520.cfm)

    Homily

    Common rural village people teach us simple words of wisdom: “If and when the well runs dry, dig deeper. (Kon ang atabay mahubsan, palawoman: Pag ang balon natuyo, hukaying malalim.) If we reflect on it deeper, these practical words tell us more about waters or wells but also offers meaning and wisdom about life, relationships, and even faith in God. 

    We do know how important water is in our life. Water is our basic human need and our life-giving source itself. Our physical body as well as our world is mostly composed of water. Life without water is no life at all. Because of our need for water, wells and springs are also important in life as sources of life-giving water.  Unlike now in urban cities where it is enjoyed conveniently at home, usually in rural villages, people go and gather together in wells and spring to get and have water. In and through wells and springs, we get access to natural water that offers life not only to individuals but to community, as well. Water in the wells and springs brings us together before God’s life-giving water and with one another. 

    I find villages’ wells and spring as the best place to meet people in the village. Whenever I am on mission in rural areas, I usually go to the wells or springs in the village for meeting and integrating with people. Not only there where I could clean myself and drink water – satisfy my need, there I could also come to experience and know the people’s lives and faith more.  Simply put, water wells and springs bring about meeting, encounter, well-being, relationship, community, and communion. For us then, to have an access to and get in touch into God’s life-giving water, we must go and gather together before God’s wells and springs. 

    In life we also do experience dryness. Like wellsprings atabay, there are moments in our lives that we feel dry, thirsty in life and in our relationships with God, others and even oneself. There are periods in our life that like the Israelites, we grumble before the Lord about our life-miseries, challenges and problems, doubting “Is the really Lord with us or not?”  

    However, experiences of dryness in life and in our relationships could be an invitation and opportunity to go to and be connected with God himself, the source of life. As we experiences of life’s dryness and thirst, As the saying goes “If the well runs dry, dig deeper” “Kon ang atabay mahubsan, palawoman. Pag ang balon natuyo, hukaying malalim.  Thirst for God’s love and/or Dryness in our life and relationships could also be the opportunity to dig deeper, i.e. the right time and place to examine our life and relationship, be in touch with our realities and ideals, at the same time deepen our relationships and commitments. In other words, dryness in life are moments of encounters or meeting points where we can experience for ourselves our relationship and commitment with others and with God. 

    The gospel we have just heard is an account of Jesus’ meeting of Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. This is one of the most touching encounters in the gospels which pictures God’s love and human conversion – a story of God reaching out to us and us reaching back to God through the person of Jesus. At Jacob’s well, Jesus expressed God’s thirst for our faith and love for Him as well as offered us God’s life-giving or love-giving life.

    At Jacob’s well, the Samaritan woman became in touch with her own dryness and thirst, her need for God’s eternal life at the same time quenched her thirst in her encounter with Jesus. As she met Jesus at Jacob’s well, the Samaritan woman began to know and accept herself deeply (from being a Samaritan, descendant of Jacob, a divorcee to a believer) as well as she began to know and accept Jesus deeply (from a Jew, Sir, Prophet, Christ). At the Jacob’s well, Jesus recognized and satisfied the woman’s need for God’s love, and the woman recognized and fulfilled Jesus’ need for our faith in Him.  

    In dryness and abundance of water, there are a lot of positive things happens at wellsprings of life. Usually at the wellsprings of our life we experience, renew and deepen our life-commitments and relationships with one another and our faith in God through Jesus.  The season of Lent is also the wellsprings of our Christian life. It is the appropriate place and time to once again in encounter and experience God’s life-giving saving act through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. 

    So again, If and when the well runs dry, don’t look and dig for another hole. Just dig your hole deeper and be in touch and be quench once again with your first life-giving water. 

    Amidst today’s challenges of Corona Virus pandemic, Lord, grant us the grace to know you deeply, love you more dearly and follow you closely during this Lenten Season. Hinaut pa unta. Siya Nawa. Amen.

    Shared by Fr. Mar Masangcay, CSsR

  • Going deeper to dialogue with Jesus

    Going deeper to dialogue with Jesus

    March 15, 2020 – 3rd Sunday of Lent 

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031520.cfm)

    Homily

    In the Book of Exodus, the people became thirsty while they were in the desert. They became desperate. They began to complain and become bitter of their situation. They also began to blame Moses and God for bringing them out of Egypt. Moses had become desperate too and afraid of what the people might do to him. Moses pleaded with God.

    However, despite the ingratitude of the people to God for saving them from slavery in Egypt, the Lord responded generously to them. Striking the rock implied trust in God. The rock is hard and empty of water but out of that emptiness, God brings forth abundance, life and assurance of God’s love. There was flowing water.

    In the Gospel, the Samaritan Woman, who experienced deep thirst in her soul, had a dialogue with Jesus. This was something that was forbidden at that time. But then, this was the initiative of Jesus to meet the woman “where she was at that moment.” This tells us that God meets us where we are too.

    She had been with different men, and with this, people around her must had been condemning and judging her.

    “Give me a drink,” was an invitation of Jesus to allow him to dialogue with her and to know her deepest longing in her heart. Jesus wanted her to allow God to feel her thirst for love and acceptance. The woman was indeed thirsty for such love and acceptance.

    This encounter with Jesus allowed her to look deeper into her life, into her many experiences of thirst for love, for acceptance, for true friendship, for true and lasting intimacy with people whom she loved and loved her.

    Her dialogue with Jesus turned her bitterness, desperation and sadness into hope and joy. At the end, the words of Jesus, “Give me a drink,” have become her words too, she said, “Give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty again or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

    Such statement is very deep. This does not only mean to water itself, but to the deepest thirst and longing of the woman. What she was asking was freedom from her sadness, desperation, and bitterness from those negative/traumatic experiences in her life that have made her to constantly seek from what was only temporary.

    Hence, she realized and found that “Living Water” in Jesus, in a person, in God who showed true compassion to her, lasting friendship with her and acceptance of her painful and sinful life.

    This is the invitation for us also on this 3rd Sunday of Lent. Jesus invites us to dialogue with him, because it is in dialoguing with God, is expressing our heart to God and listening to God’s that we begin to dig deeper into our own well, to recognize the dryness and thirst that we experience in life. However, this will also allow us to discover the abundance of God’s love and forgiveness for us. 

    When we begin to recognize and own fears and failures, sinfulness and weaknesses that we also ask God to fill us, to love us, to forgive us and to give us life. 

    We are not called to bury ourselves in fear and anxiety when difficulties come in our life, or to turn towards bitterness and complaints when our struggles become confusing and overwhelming. Like Moses and the Samaritan Woman, let us turn towards God who shall direct US to that Living Water, to life itself, to our life’s contentment and joy with God.

    As an exercise for this week, I invite you to find time at least 10 to 15 minutes every day, spend those moments in silence. You do not have to say your memorized prayers, but just stay in silence and be comfortable with that. Allow yourself to confront yourself and to dialogue, in expressing to God what is in your heart and in listening to what God would like to tell you. Ok lang? Sana all.

    Jom Baring, CSsR

  • Loving beyond the minimum

    Loving beyond the minimum

    March 7, 2020 – Saturday 1st Week of Lent

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030720.cfm)

    Homily

    “If you love those who love you, what is special about that? And if you are friendly only to your friends, what is so exceptional about that?”

    These questions are not from me, but from Jesus for all of us.

    Loving those who love us or being friendly with those who are only our friends means that we are only doing what is minimum and easy which requires less effort from us. 

    Have you met persons who live their life to what is only minimum?

    There are people who tend to work to what is only expected from them. They won’t be late yet they will never come early. They will be the first person to “time out” and the first person out of the door. They won’t dare going an extra mile yet, we cannot accuse them of not doing their job. 

    There are also some of us who fulfill their Sunday obligation or other religious obligations and stop there. Yet, they would also stop from extending themselves to do some volunteer works or from joining solidarity causes of the Church.

    There might be some of us also who would tend to relate with others in a casual and in a minimum encounter with others. This minimum encounter does not require us of building deeper relationship but only superficial. It does not require more energy and effort of extending oneself for the other. It only stays to what is safe, not risky and self-beneficial.

    Hence, doing what is only minimum can become an attitude of complacency and would developed into indifference. This is what Jesus was criticizing about. And this is also the very attitude that Jesus wants us to get out and to go beyond. When we become complacent, we become stagnant and won’t grow. When we become indifferent, we become detached and isolate ourselves from God and from others.

    Remember, when we truly love somebody, this love does not do the minimum, but always the maximum. And surely, to many of us, this kind of loving beyond the minimum is being experienced at home where parents sacrifice or go an extra mile to provide better opportunities for their children. This is also experienced among couples who take the risk of loving each other despite their differences. This is also showed by people who work tirelessly to serve others such as teachers, nurses, doctors, etc. 

    What Jesus is calling us now is that in our relationships too and in the expression of our faith, go beyond what is minimum. And this is done by loving our enemies and by making them our friends, at least in our own perspective. Not just to settle down to what is only beneficial for us but to extend ourselves to others by becoming more generous of ourselves and presence to those who need company, friendship and assurance of love and affection. 

    Though there is beauty in minimalism and goodness in it but not in loving. Do not be a minimalist in loving because it won’t be love anymore. Love as much as we can as God has done it for us. Express such love in concrete ways and let your relationships be founded on it, your profession and work be its inspiration, and our faith be its power. Hinuat pa.

    Jom Baring, CSsR

  • stoop down low enough… to listen to Him

    stoop down low enough… to listen to Him

    March 8, 2020 – Second Sunday of Lent

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030820.cfm)

    Homily

    Once a man approached a priest and asked, “Father, how come God seems so absent and silent? Why do we not feel and hear him anymore listening to us as He used to be? Why does God no longer speak to us His people?” The priest sadly replied, “It is not that God no longer speaks to His people. But rather, nowadays no one can stoop down low enough to listen to Him. No one… can stoop down low enough… to listen to Him.”

    Once in a while (if not most often) we experience the absence and silence of God in our lives. Though we trust and believe that God is with us since the Lord is with us, we live through moments in life where God and Jesus seems distant and silent. But is God really no longer listening and talking to us? Has he really abandoned us? Or is it we become too noisy, self-preoccupied, or high and far enough to listen to Him? 

    During this Lenten Season, if you happen to have some time, consider to watch the movie: “Silence” – a movie about Jesuits missionaries during the time of Japanese persecution of Christians. The movie is surely not a silent movie, but full of messages to hear and listen. Though it is called “Silence”, rest assured you will hear a lot from it and perhaps in many ways be moved and disturbed by it. 

    Because among its many messages, the movie is really an invitation for us Christians, those who follow and believe in Jesus Christ to listen to Jesus in silence. A call for us Christian to Listen to Jesus in Silence. A call to Silence for us in order to hear and listen intently God’s will for us in life. Only in silence, only in experiencing God’s seeming silence and absence, and not in the noise of our hearts and others that we can discern and recognize God’s will for us through Christ. Only in God’s Silence that we can experience God’s glory and our salvation. 

    In our gospel today, we hear that the apostles heard God saying to them: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” Their experience of the Lord’s transfiguration has the same very simple message: Jesus is His beloved Son – God’s gift and message to us, so we must acknowledge and listen to Him intently. And we can only do this – acknowledge and listen to Jesus – like the apostle, not in noise, pre-occupation, and ambitions of our hearts, but in the shadow of God’s silence and absence. Only then by experiencing God’s silence that we recognize God’s glory in Lord’s transfiguration, transformation in our lives and hear intently God’s will for us now. In other words, “Be Quiet (Don’t be noisy) for the Lord is with us and He has something to say for us. Huwag kang maingay, Narito sya at may sasabihin sa atin. Ayaw’g saba. Ania siya ug naay isulti nato. Di pag-gahud, Ari siya. May inug-hambal sa aton. 

    Pope Francis once said: “People listen to radio, to TV and to gossips throughout the day, but do we take a bit a time each day to listen to Jesus?” True indeed, we spend a lot of time listening to and knowing about others. We also may spend some time listening to and knowing about ourselves. But do we spend some time to listen to and know Jesus? Listening to Jesus entails praying low enough in and with God’s silence. Only in silent prayer, we can recognize Him and listen to Him.  

    So next time you find yourself restless and sleepless at night, stop counting sheep. Talk to the shepherd. Pray then silently and listen to Him for the Lord has something to say and then you will hear what He got to say to you and for you.

    As you hear it, So may it be. Sya nawa. Hinaut pa unta. Kabay pa. Amen.

    Shared by Fr. Mar Masangcay, CSsR – a Filipino Redemptorist Missionary based in South Korea

  • To be righteous beyond what is minimal

    To be righteous beyond what is minimal

    March 6, 2020 – Friday of the First Week of Lent

    Click here for the readings (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030620.cfm)

    Homily

    There was a wealthy man who told a young priest that he was not so religious, in the sense that he would not go to Church. However, as a form of religious piety that he could do, since he was rich, he would only donate big amount of money to several parish churches in the city.

    The wealthy man proudly enumerated how he helped through his charity to finish the construction of a particular church, helped another church to build its own adoration chapel and assisted another church for its air-conditioning and so on. The man was indeed wealthy, yet, as the wealthy man enumerated his charitable acts, there was no mention if he ever gave just compensation to his many workers and laborers, if he ever been a good and faithful husband and father, or an honest and just businessman. 

    The young priest did not judge the wealthy man for this but this gave the priest questions in his heart. The young priest asked himself,

    “Is it enough to only do what is comfortable for me? Is it enough to show to others that I am charitable and to be proud of my good works? Is it enough for God that I will just do some good works but remain indifferent with others?”

    With this, this reminds me of today’s challenge of Jesus in the Gospel. The Lord calls his disciples and also all of us today, “unless you surpass the righteousness of the Lawyers and the Pharisees, then, you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

    Without condemning these people, who were the Jewish Lawyers and Pharisees, Jesus wants us to realize something beyond the usual actions of these people and to become righteous beyond what is minimal. 

    Indeed, they were more inclined in focusing on the letters of the law, meaning, these people were more concerned of following trivial things in the Jewish Law. However, this kind of attitude prevented them to be compassionate to others and more expressive of mercy to the sinners, the sick and the poor.

    Thus, Jesus gave a very practical challenge to his disciples, an action that expresses mercy and compassion. Jesus calls for “Reconciliation” and “Reparation” of the damage we have caused to others. To be reconciled with the person whom we have hurt and those who have hurt us expresses the essence of this Season of Lent.

    Hence, Lent invites us to look closely at our failures and sins and to recognize them. Yet, we do not stop at the recognition of sin but we step forward by making peace, by reconciling ourselves with others, by doing the right thing and doing what God desires us to do.

    This tells us that God also challenges us to go beyond from what is only easy and comfortable for us. It is a big temptation to settle to what is only minimal and become complacent and indifferent towards others. And true enough, it is very easy  for us to continue what we are doing like going to mass, praying our rosary and novena, and going to confession regularly, but then, remaining unmoved by the many social issues that surround us, or remaining indifferent to the needs of people around or in doing the same sins over and over again.

    Today, Jesus invites us to be more expressive of our devotion to him by being honest and true in our words and actions and by seeking reconciliation and peace with our brothers and sisters. In these ways, then, we make a room for Jesus to renew our heart and to experience God’s mercy. Hinaut pa.

    Jom Baring, CSsR