Easter Season proclaims: “The Lord has risen. Let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia”. But how do we recognize the risen Lord in our life now?
In a class inside the seminary, their professor asked the seminarians to discuss how do people recognize the presence of our risen Lord. One of them complained, “Yes, we believe Jesus has risen, but it is not easy to recognize Him in our midst. It is like finding a needle inside a haystack.” The professor continued: “Well, let us start with that. How can we find a piece of needle inside a haystack?” A seminarian answered: “We sort through each straw until we find the needle.” “The scientific approach”, the professor said. “People have done it but it is a futile and time-consuming exercise to examine each element of our lives until we recognize His presence”. “How about if we burn the hay so that we can find the needle?” suggested by one. “The practical approach. You may have found the needle but you lost the hay. You may recognize the Lord but destroyed lives in the process,” commented by the professor. He then continued, “The best way thus to find a needle within haystack is to use magnets. Use magnets to attract the needle from the haystack. Eventually, the magnet will recognize the needle and separate it from the haystack. Via magnets, you will find and recognize the needle, and still have the haystack. This is also how people recognize the risen Lord. The Lord uses magnets for us to sense and recognize His presence in our midst without destroying ourselves.”
Brothers and sisters, surely, we have heard of our gospel before and are familiar with such one of the great resurrection-story ever told. After the Risen Lord has revealed Himself to women & his disciples, here two disciples have encountered Him in person on the road to Emmaus. With Jesus on the road, they eventually recognize Him through various signs, attractions, and magnets.
Yes, our gospel today suggests us various signs that would point us to recognize or various magnets to attract us to the presence of the Risen Lord in our midst.
First, we may recognize the Risen Lord through our ordinary normal lives. He appears on their way back home with their life-griefs, struggles & defeats. In the same way, the Lord accompanies us in our day-to-day lives – especially whenever we invite Him to be with & be part of our ordinary lives in faith. We may also recognize the Risen Lord in our midst through the Holy Scripture.
Just like when he opened their minds to understand the Scripture concerning Himself, we can recognize the risen Lord whenever we read, reflect, and pray with the Scripture, as we understand the relevance of Jesus’ story in our own lives. We can recognize him further by welcoming a Stranger into our lives. Jesus sometimes crosses our path in a form of a stranger, especially those who are in need, asking us: “Have you anything to eat?” By reaching out and befriending with a stranger who sit with you in the tricycle or you meet along the way – especially the poor, we could have a glimpse of His presence.
We also recognize His presence in the Holy Eucharist. Whenever we attend mass, and whenever we eat with one another and with the Lord, we witness people gathered in faith to remember and celebrate the Last Supper of the Lord, his offering of sacrifice. Like the disciple, we recognize the Risen Lord through the breaking of the bread – the Holy Eucharist. Our gospel suggests also that we can recognize the Lord in and through the community of faith. The Risen Lord made himself known not only to them, but also within their community. We can recognize the Lord not in isolation or distancing but whenever we join and be involve in our faith-communities, whenever we participate in the activities of our parish or BECs.
And finally, the presence of the risen Lord can be recognized through the preaching and witness of His follower. Same way as the two disciples shared their faith-experience with others, whenever we proclaim and preach our faith, we his faithful become the representative of Jesus to other, that through our words and actions, people recognize the Risen Lord in our midst.
We may then, recognize the Risen Lord through our ordinary lives, through the Scripture, through our act of charity in welcoming a Stranger, through Eucharist, through Christian community and through our faith witnessing.
Let us rejoice & be glad then for the Lord has indeed risen. And gracefully, He has provided us enough means & magnets to recognize Him in our midst – accompanying us in our journey of life in faith.
May we continue to encounter & recognize Him in our Emmaus – our road to life & faith with Him who loves & saves us now & always.
Have you ever paused at some moment and hear the lamentations of Mother Earth? The sad whisper of the wind as it loses its coolness with the sweltering heat here in the tropics especially during summer?
And the parched earth crying out for rain that sadly seem to abandon the usual seasons when the heaven’s tears are badly needed to make the rice grow. And yet when winds and rains reach howling proportions owing to what has happened to the earth’s climate, Mother Earth’s children can just vanish from the face of the earth?
All of creation today join in this tragic chorus lamenting the utter destruction of their habitat, from the polar bears in the North Pole who have lost their icebergs to the Philippine eagle who have lost their forests. Can you still hear birds twittering in the trees of our backyard or have they all gone to the moon? And are those trees able to offer the much needed canopy under which the children can still play outdoors?
Or have you been so busy eking out a livelihood, pleasing your boss, taking care of your family members, dealing with the repercussions of the runaway inflation or dealing with mental or physical health issues, that you consider it a luxury to deal with environmental issues? Or you would rather the United Nations, the governments, the oil and mining companies and the big institutions worry and do something about this gargantuan challenge of dealing with climate change?
I have bad news for you dear reader if you would rather bury your head in the sand and refuse to get engaged in environmental advocacy, no matter if you consider what you can do as just a drop in the bucket! For as everyone knows now, Mother Earth’s health condition has so deteriorated that if we – all of us whether we hold a miniscule or huge amount of resources – do not act to halt the downward spiral of the earth’s destruction, we are bound to face a dystopian future where life on this planet will become intolerable!
Lucky for us human beings that way back in January 1969, an environmental activist named Denis Hayes and Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin teamed up to shake people’s indifference to what was happening to Mother Earth. Each in his own way listened to Mother Earth’s lamentations – especially in the wake of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara – and instead of ignoring what they saw was a worsening problem, they acted and the rest is history.
They knew that what was needed was to widen the public sphere that would deal with ecology and establish a civil society that would bring more awareness to the environmental issues. They began organizing teach-ins in colleges across the US and soon enough more young people go to know more about the impact of pollution on air, water and the rest of the environment. In just a short period of time, they had reached millions and inspired them to be engaged in ecological advocacy through an office that had close to a hundred staff members.
This then encouraged Senator Nelson to propose an Earth Day and the first took place on April 22, 1970. More than fifty years later, Earth Day every year has mobilized the support of political parties, civil society organizations, academic institutions, media and people of every age, race, gender demographic and educational status. The movement spread globally, and by 1990, more than 200M people in 141 countries were highlighting environmental issues worldwide on Earth Day. EarthDay.org states what this day is all about: “Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national and local policy changes.”
Unfortunately, in a country like ours, our efforts at advancing the ecological movement have not been sustained in a manner that it creates the needed impact. Even as every year we face the consequences of climate change with our typhoons and floods, droughts and landslides, our walk has oftentimes failed to live up to our talk. From the national environmental agencies to the local government units, policies have been crafted, laws have been passed, government bureaucrats have attended environmental conferences like the COP (the one recently in Egypt) and loans have been secured for studies on how to flood control measures can be put in place.
But if our efforts are to be weighed, quoting the bible we end up with this saying: “Tinimbang ka, nguni’t kulang!” Yes, we can say the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak! Take Davao City as a good example of how the City Hall is responding to the urgent ecological issues. Owing to the strong lobbying of civil society organizations like IDIS, there have been ordinances passed to protect the watershed, to limit the cutting of the remaining trees, to curb the use of plastics and to look into the problem of garbage.
This is the case where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. On one hand, the City Hall passes these ordinances but then the citizens wake up one day and a contrary project has been approved. There are a few good examples: to deal with the problem of garbage, City Hall applies for billions of pesos to build an incinerator which is actually a pollutant and will impact the health of the communities surrounding the site of this project, to ease the traffic between the mainland and Samal Island a bridge is to be constructed and to hell with what happens to the pristine coral reefs which is the best reason to promote tourism to the island, there is a watershed code but they cannot stop the continuing logging in these areas.
People, wake up. Mother Earth’s destruction is sooner than you think. Listen to the voices of scientists who have gotten tired warning the whole of humanity to get our act together! Is anyone listening apart from the ecological activists whose numbers don’t seem to increase exponentially? The challenge for us today is to embrace the opportunity to encourage a sustainable future.
Do something today and gather your family members, friends, co-workers and others that you can mobilize to do something today. Do not let this Earth Day pass as if you don’t care where our planet is moving towards. Listen to Mother Earth’s lamentations and do something – no matter how modest its results will be – to alleviate our mother’s suffering.
You can take this challenge into your hands and do any of the following:
– Update yourself on the impact of the continuing use of fossil fuels and read more about the consequences of a worsening climate change. There are tons of documents out there for you to goggle in the computer, and films and videos to watch in Netflix and other live-streaming platforms.
– If there is a mobilization in front of City Hall, join and carry a placard.
– Continue advocating for the non-usage of an incinerator, a change in the design of the Samal bridge to protect the coral reefs, monitor what’s happening to the watersheds of the city and lobby City Hall to implement watershed ordinances.
– Find a nearby mini-forest and walk down the canopy of the trees and experience what it is to commune with nature. Join a group who ask for volunteers to grow more trees in the watershed areas.
– Refrain from using plastic of any kind when shopping, when buying products and when packing food.
– If you are a teacher, get the students to talk about Earth Day and before they go home, ask them to show their concern through making art or reminding their parents to stop smoking and to not buy junk!
– Clean up your surroundings and make sure not to burn the garbage but recycle them. If there are neighbourhood or purok clean-ups, join.
– When you sing a lullaby to get your child to sleep, sing Asin’s Kapaligiran song.
And make a resolution that on Earth Day 2024, you will do much more than what you are going to do today. And in-between Earth Day 2023 and 2024 – every day if it is possible – to commit yourself to comfort Mother Earth by simple acts to alleviate her lamentations!
An Elegy to a Brother who didn’t get a chance to say Goodbye
A dark cloud passes overhead as I write this elegy. In the past month, Cebu City has been enveloped in sweltering heat and at high noon, one runs the risk of being melted under the heat of the sun if one goes outside in the cement streets. But as the clouds hide the sun since early this morning, the city is cooler.
One hopes the April showers will come sometime today as the parched earth is desperately hoping for some rains to fall. But even as the promise of rain brings a temporary relief, the day – with the dark clouds above – is gloomy.
We wake up to the news that an esteemed and highly cherished confrere-brother – Fr. Alfonso “Fons” Suico, Jr. – left our ranks at 5:38 this morning. Last Monday, April 10 the Holy Redeemer Provincial Center community members went on a post-Easter picnic at a beach outside the city. (I am a member of this community but as I had dialysis sessions during the day, I didn’t join). An accident took place as he and a few others rode a banana boat.
He fell off the banana boat and nearly drowned at past 2 pm. It took a while before he got rescued and brought to a nearby hospital. By 9 PM, he was transferred to Chung Hua Hospital which had better facilities and was confined at the Coronary Care Unit. The doctors for a week tried to desperately keep him alive, despite the serious damage in his brain. He was on incubator and provided all the medical assistance, even as he stayed in coma and remained unconscious.
A decision has to be made whether or not to prolong the medical interventions as he – like most of us in the congregation – had signed a document stating his wish that when there is no hope for survival, all medical interventions should cease. Eventually our superiors and the doctors left the decision to his surviving sister, Sharmaine.
Arriving from the US past midnight of April 17, she rushed to meet Fr. Fons at the hospital and they were able to spend time together in silence. The caregivers still managed to give him a bath at past 4 AM; an hour later, he passed away. He was 47, having celebrated his last birthday with us in the community only last March 23. His family are from Mandaue, Cebu City, although most of his family members migrated to the US.
I vividly recall that day when he celebrated his birthday for the last time. There were wonderful flowers – big pink carnations, red roses, lilies and baby breath in a beautiful bouquet placed on the table. There was a big feast to which everyone – confreres, staff, gardeners and carpenters – were all invited to partake in this banquet. The food was sumptuous with pancit, lechon, fried chicken, ice cream and a carrot cake! Fr. Fons was effusive during that meal time and we certainly enjoyed the birthday celebration! Who knew then that less than a month after, Fr. Fons will later partake of the feast in heaven!
This was how the official news – that followed shortly – characterized Fr. Fons: “Fr. Fons was a brilliant and compassionate missionary, medical doctor and professor in moral theology who has touched and transformed the lives of many.” Professed as a Redemptorist on March 22, 2003, he was ordained a priest on March 25, 2008. Before joining the Redemptorist, he had finished his medical studies and immediately passed the Board examinations.
He held two doctorates, as a medical doctor and later secured his PhD in Moral Theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. He had been teaching Moral Theology subjects at the St. Alphonsus Theological and Mission Institute in Davao City for the past decade. He has mentored many SATMI students for their synthesis papers and dissertations. He has also been giving talks at various fora and conferences.
But for us Redemptorists, he was a well-loved confrere-brother. Much younger that those of us who are years older than him, he followed-up our health bulletins to make sure we did our regular medical check-up and followed doctors’ orders for medication. As we shared the same kidney problems – and years after I began my dialysis in 2016 he also began to undergo the hemodialysis procedure – we constantly were in touch with the progress of our medication.
When I had my life-threatening health issue last November, he was first to make sure I had the needed medical intervention. Up until I was released from the hospital – after a gruelling three-week stay in two hospitals – he made sure I had the best medical treatment. At the infirmary of the HRPC, he did his best to monitor the caregivers so that they offered the best help to those of us who have been sick.
One can get used to the easy and secured manner that he looked after all of us that we can now ask the question: what happens now that he is gone? His death comes at a not so opportune time, given the changes of our assignments starting on May 1. In the list of assignments issued by our superiors after Palm Sunday, his name appeared as the next Rector of HRPC. Those of us who were going to stay here at the HRPC were all delighted with this news and we looked forward to being with him as our Rector.
When death claims a loved one, the heart constricts and one is at a loss of words. This is especially so if death – like a thief in the night – comes so unexpectedly! The benefit of a long illness is that we are prepared for the eventually if the loved one finally takes a step towards eternity. There is grief but a sudden death is something else; it pierces the heart as heavier emotions flood our thoughts and feelings.
No matter if words of comfort are immediately relayed by friends and – even as confreres tighten their ranks for mutual support in this time of bereavement – the pain is deep and might linger on for a while. One can seek solace in tears and prayers and the thought that – with God’s mercy – Fr. Fons is now in a much more peaceful, happier and painless space reserved for those whose life was lived fully!
Parting – Shakespeare once wrote – is such sweet sorrow! But it takes on an added shade of sadness if the loved one does not get a chance to say goodbye. Lucky are we if there are premonitions of Death arriving at our doorstep; but oftentimes, our intuitions do not work. Even if we are staying in the same monastery and our rooms are just a few meters away, I have taken it for granted that I will bump into him every day.
The last two weeks are a blur of shallow memories. On Holy Tuesday, we had taken the car, together with two ICM nuns to go to San Carlos Major Seminary for a forum on Synodality. He had arranged the sandwiches we were to share at the forum. On Holy Thursday, he joined the community for our penitential rite. On Good Friday – after I and two companions went on a visita iglesia, I met him at the corridor when we came home and casually told him our visita iglesia was most interesting.
He had reminded me that after the Holy Saturday Easter vigil we were going to have a Gaudeamus, but the following morning as I greeted him Happy Easter I told him I couldn’t join the Gaudeamus because of my dialysis schedule. During our Easter celebration evening of Easter Sunday, he had taken full responsibility preparing the sumptuous meal and even hiding Easter eggs and chocolate for us to find in different parts of the common room. One could tell he was delighted that we all enjoyed the search for the eggs and chocolates!
I didn’t get to thank him for the lavish meal as I needed to leave the celebration earlier due to my dialysis session. The following morning he had gone early for his dialysis procedure so I didn’t get to meet him and since I didn’t join the picnic, I was not there when the accident took place. Last time I met him was at the Coronary Care Unit of Chung Hua Hospital last Thursday, April 13, after my own medical check-up. He was unconscious and I couldn’t stay too long in the room as I was very much affected by how he looked.
We stormed the heavens for God’s mercy so Fr. Fons could be healed. And when the doctors gave their diagnosis of the extent of the brain damage we prayed for a miracle to Our Mother of Perpetual Help! Each day since Monday, we had waited in bated breath for the next medical report on how he was surviving. Until finally, the sad news came at dawn today. It seems as if Fr. Fons was just waiting for his sister Sharmaine to arrive from the US so they could still have a few hours together before his departure.
When I met Sharmaine hours later at breakfast, I embraced her so that I could condole her. But I couldn’t control my tears so she instead was the one who comforted me. His remains will be cremated tonight and will be brought to their home in Mandaue where the will hold the wake from April 17 to 19. After that his remains will be transferred to the Redemptorist church where the wake is scheduled on April 19 to 22, after which it will be interred at our parcel of land at the Caretas Cemetery.
At this juncture, part of what we – the ones left behind – grapple with is to find meaning in the occurrence of an unexpected death. For some time now, I have thought that there comes a time in our lives when we become much more conscious that we are on borrowed time; that we have entered a pre-departure area and we can only be at peace if we realize that each day is a gift and needs to be lived to the full! There much be deep meanings why we are gifted with life even as this can just snap out any second. But perhaps the meaning is as simple as what Franz Kafka had written: “The meaning of life is that it stops!”
We are still in the Easter Week and we believers are supposedly reminded that our life is like a seed; it is sown at one moment, and if lived well could produce so much fruit but only to fade away in some future time. However, as we are promised by no less than the Redeemer who offered his life so we may have life everlasting, we have no reason to fear death. And every step leading us to eternity should be taken with a deep confidence that the end of the journey is the home that we are all destined to reach when time is up!
And in that place out there beyond the skies which Fr. Fons right now has claimed as his own, a grand welcome awaits him and us who will follow in the fullness of time. And one is consoled at the thought that this is a truly delightful place with flowers and food, laughter and good cheer, with music and dance – all the good things that one associates with the plentiful blessings!
And Kahlil Gibran gives us this assurance: “For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”
I remember when we first experienced “LOCKDOWN” here in the City in 2020 due to the spread of Covid-19, the first Sunday was so depressing. I walked around the empty Church ground and looked at an empty Church. I was very sad and afraid of what will happen in the coming days when lockdown was imposed. Since, then, as the virus made more infections, we experienced the same face of lockdowns, with its different names, from GCQ, to MGCQ, ECQ to MECQ. Our movement was limited and the more it brought anxiety to many.
Those lockdowns were imposed as a defensive mechanism that the government believed and medical experts developed to minimize the infections. We followed and believed that those lockdowns were necessary to protect, save and even give life. Yet, I pray that we will never go back to that experience again.
Remembering those lockdowns, it evoked to me now a different kind of lockdown. This is the self-imposed lockdown that can be life-threatening and life-depressing.
This is similar to the situation of the disciples, who embraced a self-imposed lockdown as told by the Gospel on this Second Sunday of Easter. The disciples gathered in one place and locked themselves in because of fear. They were afraid that what happened to Jesus, may also happen to them. Certainly, this was a defensive mechanism of a heart that was hurt and bruised. It is a form of withdrawal from others and from God because of “fear.”
In a way, experiencing pain in our relationships also makes us more defensive the next time we relate with others. We become defensive and even withdrawn with others because we fear of being hurt again, of being rejected again, of being bullied again. And so, we develop a defense mechanism to the point of making ourselves isolated from others. Thus, we “lockdown” ourselves from any possible pain or hurt, because we are afraid of what others can do to us. We will tend not to invest emotionally in a relationship, or refusing to give oneself for others, becoming mediocre and complacent and to just stay at the comfort zone but remaining fearful.
However, fear makes our heart unbelieving. This happened to the disciples who refused to believe what Mary Magdalene proclaimed to them, that Jesus has been raised from the dead. They couldn’t believe her because they were too afraid.
Yet, what was more interesting in the Gospel was on how Jesus appeared in their midst even though they made sure that the doors were locked. Jesus appeared to them and brought peace to the hearts of these fearful disciples.
We also find Thomas who was not there at that time of Jesus’ appearance, still holding on to his fears and doubts. Although all the other disciples have testified that they have seen the Lord, Thomas couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t believe, and because of that, his heart was more locked than the door and the walls of his heart have thickened to the point that he did not want any more to listen to what others were saying. Thomas personally lockdown his heart.
That is why, Thomas, set a condition before he would believe that Jesus is alive. He said, “unless I will see and touch him, I will not believe.” Because of so much fear and doubts, Thomas insisted that condition in order to protect himself.
Just as Jesus met the other disciples in their own hiding place and so he did it also to Thomas. Jesus appeared once again and asked Thomas to touch his wounds so that he may believe. Jesus submitted to the condition of Thomas.
This is what the Gospel is telling us today – the Lord meets us wherever we are and he takes us seriously in all our fears, anxieties and doubts. When God meets us in our own hiding places and closed doors, He brings us peace to our troubled hearts. This is an assurance that in God’s presence we find peace and without Him we will always be disturbed and insecure.
This is the mystery of the Divine Mercy which we celebrate on this Second Sunday of Easter, the God of Mercy who brings peace into our troubled and fearful hearts, and who pierces through our lockdown-and-walled-hearts.
In God’s Mercy, Jesus indeed meets us where we are at the moment especially when we decide to retreat to self-centeredness, to our old bad habits and addictions, to our unhealthy defensive mechanisms and self-imposed lockdowns of mediocrity and indifference towards other people, and into our angry and irritable response to people around us. God meets us there and he wants us to know that He is with us and He brings us peace.
It is when we recognize God in those moments that Jesus invites us to touch his wounds just like Thomas. Being aware of the wounds and touching the wounds of Jesus means that Jesus feels our own pain and suffering, our fears and anxieties, questions and doubts. Hopefully, that experience will lead us to proclaim like Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” This is again an assurance to us that our God is alive and at work in our lives.
I would like to invite you now to be aware and to recognize those attitudes, cultures, beliefs and experiences that continue to lock us away from others and from God. Be aware of those that are holding us back from fully relating to others and from freely expressing goodness, and those that make us withdrawn and indifferent to people around us.
May our encounter with the risen Christ, the image of the Divine Mercy make our locked and defensive hearts to open up as He brings us peace and sends us to others. This may move us to go out to touch the lives of others. Hinaut pa.
Happy Easter to all. Last Sunday we celebrated Easter Sunday. We celebrated and proclaimed our Christian faith that our Lord Jesus Christ has indeed risen into our lives. Today we are now on the 2nd Sunday of continuing celebration of Easter season. So, how is life after Easter Sunday?
After the preparations of Lent and the celebrations of Holy Week – after Easter Sunday surely, we are back to our normal ways – back to our usual routine, schedules, activities, programs, tasks, and responsibilities. But as we go along our normal ways and live our usual lives, we also wonder how is the message of resurrection of the risen Lord make sense and become more real now in our day to day living.
Yes, we believe that the Lord has risen. But how and in what ways the risen Lord has resurrected and can be resurrected into our ordinary lives today? Paano Siya naging at maging Buhay’ng-Muli sa Buhay ko at natin ngayon? This is the very challenge of Easter to us Christians during this Easter season.
While reflecting on the revival of Lazarus from the dead, Pope Francis once in his homily said that each one of us has a small tomb inside our hearts – that somehow somewhere in our lives, though still alive and breathing, is dying and dead inside. Yes, somehow, we are still & get used with isolations in our small caves, even after pandemic lockdowns & quarantine. Our small tombs are usually our dark secret holes and shadowy caves where we usually hide and bury our anger, hurts, pains, sufferings, failures, frustrations, anxiety, fears and addictions from ourselves and others.
And inside our small tomb, we do have the choice whether to be alone on our own, miserably struggling and grieving with the “why’s of life”… OR to invite the risen Lord to be part of our search for answers and sense for all these happenings in our lives. For Pope Francis, we need to recognize our dying and dead self-inside, and invite the risen Lord to be our Guest inside our small tombs and allow Him to be part of our death and dying within, and be resurrected into our New Life with Him.
Brothers and sisters, the empty tomb of Easter reveals to us that the risen Lord is not in his tomb, but out here and there revealing himself into our ordinary normal lives and offering us life and life eternal. The same way as He appeared before His disciples, the risen Lord is showing & will appear Himself to us in our ordinary lives anew with a promise of not only new normal but more so, of life eternal.
The mistake of Thomas in our gospel today is not so much for doubting the Lord’s resurrection but more so for being absent – he was not there when the Lord appeared the first time. Thomas at first did not recognize his own small tombs and invite the risen Lord to be part of his ordinary life. Only when he was with the other’s disciples in locked door room – present in their own tombs and allow the Lord to be part of His life that Thomas came to recognize and believe in the risen Lord.
Meaning, the risen Lord only wishes to be invited and partake into our own isolation inside our small tombs and in our ordinary lives so that He can share to us New Life with Him. No more being alone – on your own in your own tombs. Thus, no more hiding, navel-gazing, just looking into oneself – licking wounds, brooding, and sinking in anguish.
For the Easter message of Lord’s resurrection to be more real and meaningful now in our lives then, we must invite the Lord into our small tombs and allow His to be part of our usual day to day struggle with life. The Lord is risen and has indeed resurrected again and anew in our lives now – if and when we invite Him to be part of our small tombs and our ordinary lives. He also can only resurrect and bring our death and dying back to life anew if only and whenever we invite and allow the Lord to be part and be with our normal life’s-struggles and triumphs.
To have a more real and meaningful celebration of Easter Season then, Let the risen Lord in and allow Him to be our Guest – to be there and be part of our small tombs and our ordinary lives these days. And perhaps ask ourselves once again: What is the risen Lord offering me now here inside my tomb, inside my isolation? What is it in to me and what’s in for me? What are benefits and the purpose of letting Him be part of my life now: Healing, Peace, Mercy, Forgiveness, Hope, Mercy, Love, Release, Liberation, New Life, Holy Spirit…..?
Although we are back to our usual normal lives after Easter Sunday, we also know and believe that with the risen Lord in our lives now, life will never be the same again and as usual, but ours would now be a new normal life and better than before, IF and Whenever we invite and allow our risen Lord to be part of our small tombs and our daily ordinary lives. Siya Nawa. Hinaut pa unta. Kabay pa. Amen.
A DOSE OF GOD TODAY 