People were arguing to discredit the identity of Jesus. Jesus showed them signs that he indeed was sent by the Father. He is the Christ!
However, people began to make reasons in order not to believe in him. The officers of the Temple and Nicodemus, a Pharisee were one of the few who seemingly were inclined to listen more to Jesus, yet, they too were discredited.
As there were many signs that pointed Jesus as the Christ, the more the people also created reasons not to believe. Instead of looking at Jesus to find the truth, “they all went home,” as the Gospel ended today.
These people went home, not because of the “community quarantine.” They went home and settled with their own beliefs, unwilling to give up their personal agenda, unwilling to allow God to be their God, unwilling to allow Jesus to challenge them and to transform them in the way God desires them to be.
Thus, instead of going 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.
Thus, as we are being asked to stay at home these days, may we never fail to recognize those signs and wonders that God made for us and so to be encountered by God through them. Hinaut pa.
The Gospel tells us how Jesus was rejected by his own people. Jesus has to go to Jerusalem in secret in order to protect himself from those who were trying to kill him. 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.
The identity of Jesus of being a Galilean, was not really the issue. It was more than that. Jesus caused turmoil among the powerful leaders in the 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 because Jesus was not a well-known intellectual and did not come from a rich and powerful family.
Jesus himself and all that he did threatened the status quo of the powerful people who were contented with their comfort, with the power and influence that they were enjoying. 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 because it was on that belief that 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; in other words, they were filled of themselves, worshipping their very selves. This is idolatry!
These were the reasons why they could not accept Jesus or even recognize the presence of God in Jesus. Because of their blindness and the hardness of their hearts, they did not 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 remind us of our tendency to worship ourselves and our own ideas and beliefs. Let us also make our “home quarantine” days as opportunities to humble ourselves in recognizing areas of our lives where we have become complacent, too comfortable and arrogant. And so in this kind of attitude, we may also come to understand the ways of Jesus and recognize him who is within us and among us. Hinaut pa.
The Hebrew people were looking for a “god” to worship, to lean on from their desperation. They were in the desert for many years since their liberation from the Egyptians. They felt hopeless and directionless.
When Moses was nowhere to be found, they made themselves the “golden calf” and worship it instead of the TRUE GOD who brought them out of Egypt. The people had very short memory. That in times of great difficulty, they turned to a false god believing to find security in it. Indeed, the people forgot God’s promise to them and God’s faithfulness in them.
We are not also far from these people in the bible. We might have our own false gods too that offer false hopes. We may ask, who and what is our golden calf that we worship? Is it to our addiction and loneliness? Is it to ourselves or some others other than the Lord God? When we become desperate our minds and hearts may become crowded that we tend not to recognize the Lord who is at work in us.
Thus, in times of difficulties in life we may develop some forms of attachments to compensate and appease our anxieties and the emptiness that feel from within. And so, a person who felt unloved by a mother may seek affection to many women. Or a woman who is rejected by a loved one, may retreat to loneliness and depression. A child who lacks the security of love and affection at home from the parents may succumbed to drugs or alcohol addiction. A child who has been deprived of material things in the past may become a hoarder of things or worst a thief.
These are forms of unhealthy attachments that only bring us to greater and deeper despair and misery. Consequently, there is a need for us to reconnect ourselves to God who gives us true hope and freedom.
Thus, like the Hebrew people, we may doubt God’s action and intervention and reject God in the long run. This is what happened also with the Jewish leaders who continually rejected Jesus.
They have doubted the person of Jesus even though there had been many signs that he performed as invitations for them to believe. The presence of the Father at work in Jesus was already the moment of recognizing Jesus. Yet, these people were full of themselves that their eyes and ears and hearts had become closed and rigid.
They chose to be disconnected with God because they did not want God’s way and direction of life. Jesus showed to them the many discomforts and risks that they have to undergo once they accept Jesus. What they wanted was that God will act according to what they desire, to what they think and to what they only believed. They were more after of their comfort and privileges that they will enjoy as leaders. Thus, what they worship was not God but their comfort, their influence, their privileges, their very selves.
However, despite this kind of attitude God would always have a reason not to give up on us. Like what Moses did who intercede to God to forgive the people, Jesus also did that to us on the cross. Jesus wants us to recognize him because in him we find our true hope.
As we continue our Lenten journey in the midst of corona virus, let us once more claim Jesus, to accept sincerely God in our hearts that we may find our true hope. Reconnect each day with Jesus as we all face our individual burdens and problems, concerns and difficulties and the crisis that our community is facing today. Hinaut pa.
The reading from the Book of Ezekiel tells us about the flowing water from which life, abundance and healing spring forth. It says,
Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh. Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow; their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail. Every month they shall bear fresh fruit, for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary. Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
It clearly states that God created the world and everything in it and God has found them very good, as the Book of Genesis reminds us. However, in the face of the great crisis that we have now with the pandemic corona virus, it seemed that nature has turned against us. What have we done?
This calls us as individuals and as a human community to look deeper at our own lifestyle and on how such lifestyle endangers nature. This calls us to recognize our sins committed against the earth from which the poorest of the poor in our communities suffer the most.
Pope Francis has reminded that each of us is called to pro-actively protect the whole creation, our environment, and not to cause harm to the earth for the sake of the next generations after us.
This event in our history is surely a wakeup call that there is a need for conversion of both personal and social, individual and community conversion. Indeed, healing can only be possible when we begin to open ourselves for others and for God. Opening ourselves also means recognizing our sickness, our sins, of what is wrong with us
With our limited movement today because of the Community Quarantine, we have become like that sick man in the Gospel of John waiting to be healed. As of the moment, we could not yet reach the pool of the healing and cleansing water. We are lame and cannot move. Like that man who had been ill for 38 years, we too are desperate to find cure, to find healing and fullness of life.
However, the Gospel also reminds us that God is not blind and indifferent to our desperation and need for healing. Jesus sees us as he saw the man lying flat because of his illness. In the same way, Jesus asks us, “Do you want to be healed?”
Yes, we want to healed. For us to be healed, there is also a need that we take responsibility for ourselves rather than blaming others because of our condition. This was what happened to the sick man, his response to Jesus was giving reasons of why he remained sick because no one could put him into the pool.
In the same way, in whatever sickness we have at this moment, Jesus calls us for a personal commitment, that we respond actively to his invitation of healing. This is the reason why Jesus asked the sick man to stand up, to take his mat and walk.
Do you want to be healed? Yes, and as we seek healing for ourselves, for our relationships, for others and for the world that is sickened with the deadly virus ,then, we need to stand up, meaning, to take courage, to have faith and to trust Jesus. We need to take our mat too, to roll up and to let go those things, attitudes, lifestyle, and even beliefs that only prevent us from walking. Just like that healed man, the mat the he had become so comfortable with has to be left behind. He had to let that go for him to walk and embrace God’s healing.
In this way, then, hopefully, we shall all experience that flowing water that gives life, abundance and healing and to experience that from the very source himself, who is Jesus, the source from which the healed man was able to experience. Hinaut pa.
In our desperation and great difficulties, to whom and to where do we go?
Others because of confusion for what happened in their life would go to depression or to self-pity, or guilt. This sometimes would develop into unhealthy coping mechanisms that later on would progress into habit and forms of addiction. For instance, a drinking habit or alcoholism could have started through a painful or difficult memory in the past, a death of loved one or a financial crisis. Online game addiction or too much time spent on social media could have started through boredom at home and disconnection from intimate family relationship. A gambling or drug addiction could also have been caused by a traumatic experience or broken relationships.
Yet, there are also those who in their desperation and great need went to ask help from other people whom they believed could help them.
The very Gospel story that we have today conveys to us this kind of encounter. A non-believer who was royal official went to see Jesus. He was desperate and indeed was in great difficulty because of his dying son. As an official, somebody who had power over others, he must have already sought the best doctor he could find at that time, yet, there was no remedy. His son was not healed but dying.
As a father, this Royal Official, showed to Jesus how he loved so much his son. His son must have been everything to him and this was the very reason why he sought to see Jesus and begged him to come with him in order to heal his son.
For him, as a Royal Official, asking a Jesus to heal his son, was a humbling experience. In his desperation to seek healing for his son, he did not give up. He was hoping for a miracle even when his son was already at the point of death.
This tells us now to hope and not to give up. The encounter of this official with Jesus would tell us what kind of God we have. Through the humility of this man, Jesus saw and felt the desperation of this man. Jesus felt the love of this father to his dying son.
Jesus witnessed the life of prayer and the faith of this man despite being a non-believer himself. The official had that confidence to trust in Jesus’ words that his son will surely recover. “Go, your son lives!” – We were told in the Gospel that this man had faith in the word Jesus spoke to him.
But let us also remember, there is so much risk in believing. The royal official went home and risking everything by trusting the words of Jesus. However, it was also in that attitude that Jesus showed how his presence and words could bring healing and change life. True enough, the son was healed and the official became a believer of Jesus and all his family.
This is what is wonderful and powerful here. This is also the message for us today, for each of us who are in desperation and in great difficulty in whatever aspect that may be in our life. This is also the message for us as a community today, facing this global crisis caused by the pandemic corona virus that brought chills of fear and anxiety in us.
Thus, there are two aspects that we are particularly called for today.
First, we are called to pray and to humbly beg for God’s mercy. Our prayer just like the official, is not just of ourselves, for our own salvation, but also for others. Yes, we are called to pray for those who are infected by the virus, for those who have died and their families, and also for the doctors, nurses and other medical staff that are ministering the sick. We also pray for the medical experts tasked to create a vaccine that through them God’s healing will be revealed. We pray for them out of our true concern and love. Certainly, Jesus shall also feel that in us.
Second, we are called to believe. Like that official and father who believed in the presence and words of Jesus, we are also called to put our confidence completely in the Lord, meaning, to have faith in Jesus, in his presence among us and his words so that God’s wonder and healing power will also be unfolded in us.
May I invite you then now that we all stay in silence for few moments, to pray and to beg the Lord’s mercy and to believe that God will bring us healing. Let us all bow our heads and pray in silence (as you read this, please observe a 2-minute silent prayer).
Brothers and sisters, God shall protect and heal us and in faith, we will all pass this through. Hinaut pa.
A DOSE OF GOD TODAY 