“Let there be light.” This was the first command of God in order to bring light to earth covered with darkness. Even until now, there are also dark spots in our life that need to be lightened. We experience pain of loss and rejection, of sickness and fear, of injustice and oppression. These areas are what we seek to be illuminated. This is the reason why we do things to overcome the pain of loss and rejection. We seek the comfort of friends when we are afraid. We seek the expertise of doctors to bring us into health. We fight and confront the unjust and oppressive to bring justice and compassion.
These desires to be in the light, to be illumined and to experience that grace of God, are being portrayed to us also in the Gospel of Mark. People followed Jesus wherever he went because they have recognized him to be that person who can bring light into the darkness they experienced in life.
That desire gave them the hope that there was something better for them that God offers to them. People wanted to touch Jesus, then, even just the tassel of his cloak. They believed that even in that small way, God shall bring them the hope they have been waiting for. True, indeed, all those who were sick who touched it were healed. At last, the darkness in their heart and soul disappeared because of God’s creative work in the world.
In the same way, Jesus invites us today to also have that desire in our heart, that we may always recognize his presence and seek to touch God. Jesus as well calls us today to become his tassels in our homes and communities where those who are in need shall also experience light and healing through our kindness and generosity, through our words that bring consolation and encouragement, through our presence that gives assurance and confidence. Hinaut pa.
The Holy Mass today on this Feast of the Presentation of Lord is popularly known as “Candlemas.” We have the blessing and procession of candles. The candle today is so significant in today’s celebration because of what it signifies. The light in our candle leads us to the “light that revealed salvation to the Gentiles.”
This light was encountered by two significant personalities in today’s Gospel, Simeon and Anna. The two had been waiting for the Lord’s revelation and his arrival. It was not just the fulfillment of their personal desire but also the fulfillment of God’s promise in the Old Testament.
This has been fulfilled as it was witnessed by the two in their encounter with the Holy Family that also completely transformed their lives and drew ever more their hearts towards the Lord.
There are two invitations for us that we discover in the encounter of Simeon and Anna with Jesus in the temple.
First, like Simeon who was able to hold the young Jesus in his arms, let us allow God to encounter us that we may be able to hold him in our arms. Holding God in our arms is more than feeling his presence but being convinced of his presence in our life. To hold God in our arms also means to be in touched with God, with ourselves and with what surrounds us that include our brothers and sisters and the rest of God’s creation. To hold God is to be welcoming to all.
Second, like Anna who desired and longed to meet the Lord, let us also have that desire in our heart to meet God whenever and wherever we are at this very moment. Let us remember, if we desire to encounter God, God desires it all the more to encounter us. And may our encounter with Jesus cast out our anxiety, boredom and doubts for his presence brings us joy, freshness and life.
Like them, we may become convinced in what we believe by translating our faith not just into words but also into concrete actions of love and kindness. Hinaut pa.
To show to others what we have in us is not entirely an expression of “showing off” or arrogance. To show off oneself comes from an attitude that only seek attention and affirmation from others. Showing arrogance does not necessarily also show to others the quality of what we have in us. Thus, “to show to others what we have” is a call to be generous towards others. This does not seek affirmation or attention or recognition or even seeking to be above others because of what we have.
Such attitude is something that the Gospel today is calling us to develop. Jesus said to his disciples “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand?” Jesus challenged the disciples to learn from him and that is to be generous enough to share what they’ve got. The lamp that carries the light is the gift that we have in us. We are the lamp and Jesus is the light.
This generous attitude of oneself is the very way of life that Jesus showed to us and revealed in our Scriptures. Jesus showed the light of God to the people. That light in Jesus made people to recognise God and brought them towards healing, freedom and life. Despite the resistance of the arrogant and the self-righteous as well as of those who were powerful, Jesus did not hide himself but continued to show the light to the people. His life, indeed, is meant to be shared even in death.
This was what Jesus was calling his disciples to do. Many will try to put off the light. The disciples may experience fear and will try to hide the light. However, the light shall never be put off for it will continue to shine in the darkness.
The great St. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican philosopher and theologian is another example of an person who had been so generous in terms of sharing his wisdom and knowledge to the Church. His scholarly works in philosophy and theology had become foundations in scholarship that helped the Church deepen her knowledge of the faith.
For us today who have heard these words from Jesus through our Scriptures, we too are called to share generously the gifts that we have in us. As Christians, we have Jesus in us, thus, share the Lord generously to our brothers and sisters through our charity and availability of our presence. Our gifts and talents, resources and capacities are also called to be shared generously because they can also serve as light for those who need our help and assistance.
By showing what we’ve got, we may add more light into our community darkened by indifference, by loneliness and by death. Hinaut pa.
Our traumatic experiences, unexpected and painful events that have happened in our life could be our heavy reasons to retreat into sadness and desperation. Sometimes, we could not help it because what has occurred to us was just too much to bear, and too overwhelming. Such experience can be likened to darkness where every gleam of the light of joy and comfort was deprived from us.
However, there are many of us also who despite those painful, traumatic and heartbreaking experiences in their life, they persisted to hope again and too see something beyond the darkness that had befallen into their life.
For us to have a better understanding on this and a better realization on the wonder of seeing beyond darkness and hoping beyond pain and sadness, let us rediscover God’s invitation for us today and see how the three gifts of presence, of light and of life were slowly being unboxed in today’s readings.
In the Second Book of Samuel, the prophet proclaimed the gift of presence to be given to David. David who thought that he should build a house for God, was promised by the Lord to be given a house that will last forever. This is the covenant so dear to the people because God will be a father.
Besides, the Psalm also expressed a similar hope. Because of the suffering endured by the people of this time, they longed to that promise of God who shall show an everlasting kindness. What kept them hopeful was their confidence in God’s faithfulness because God is our Father. This confidence in God as Father, is the gift of the presence of God being unboxed slowly throughout the history of Israel.
In the Gospel of Luke, what has been proclaimed to us today is the Song of Zechariah. Remember, before he was able to sing this, Zechariah was muted by God. Because of his unbelief to God’s gift to him, Zechariah was silenced. He did not listen and believe in God’s revelation.
Remember again, Zechariah’s unbelieving response was a bitter reaction to God. Zechariah must have believed that God had forgotten him and abandoned him. The shame that he endured for being childless for many years must have brought him to hopelessness. He forgot that God was faithful. Yet, despite this reaction of Zechariah towards the gift of God, John was given to him and to his wife. The birth of John, was a gift of light. The dark shame and guilt of Zechariah was removed because of this gift of light. John was a light to him and to people who came to be baptized by John. John also led people to see the true light. John as the prophet of the Most High, himself unboxed the gift of light for people to see and be illuminated. He unboxed that gift through his preaching of the coming of the Messiah, the Lamb of God who was in their midst.
This is how Zechariah recalled the covenant of God and the fulfillment of the promise of a mighty Savior. In his song, he also recounted how his eyes have seen clearly that promise being unfolded through the birth of his son. John will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of sins. The song of Zechariah itself is the unboxing of the gift of life.
The Song of Zechariah proclaims to us the abundance of life coming into us now and that we too, each of us, is unboxing this gift of life.
With all of these, how do we unbox the gifts given to us by the Lord?
We unbox the gift of presence of God by becoming confident in God’s presence. Both the Second Book of Samuel and the Psalm tell us that God is our Father. Take confidence in this. It is because that God is a Father to us, God will always be for us. We may have not so nice experiences with our earthly fathers, but God as our Father, will never hurt and will never leave us.
We unbox the gift of light when we also accept and confront our own blindness and our own darkness. Like Zechariah, he was confronted by the Angel of his unbelief. Let us also confront ourselves and challenge ourselves not to succumb to what is dark and to what is evil. Only then, also that we will be able to confront the darkness and the evil around us when we are confident that we have unboxed the gift of light, who is Jesus.
We also unbox the gift of life when we learn to embrace the beauty and the wonder of every form of life. God is about to be born like us, and God chooses to be born because God is life and God is for life. When we learn to show respect to all life, cherish all life and protect all life, then we unbox this gift and be gifted with eternal life.
The gifts of presence, of light and life is Jesus himself. Remember that. Hinaut pa.
One day, a boy opened their fridge and got two cupcakes and two small bottles of orange juice. When his mother saw this, she asked him, “Are you going out to play?” The boy replied, “I am going out, Mom, to find God.” “Well, good luck son. Tell me, then, when you find Him,” said the mother.
So, the boy set on his journey to find God. He was walking and walking. He saw trees and birds and flowers everywhere. He reached the tall buildings in their city, saw the busy traffic and the crowd of people crossing the street. Yet, not a single person noticed him.
It was about snack time that he went to a park and found a bench where a homeless woman sat. The woman looked very sad, looking aimlessly. And since the boy was quite tired, he decided to sit and have his snacks. Sitting on that bench, he opened his bag and got his two cupcakes and two small bottles of orange juice.
The boy, then, shared his cupcakes and orange juice to the homeless woman. The woman accepted his offer gladly, and looked at the boy with a big smile on her face. The boy, then, looked into the eyes of the woman and saw happiness in her.
The homeless woman, grateful to this boy, found tremendous generosity from him. While enjoying their snacks the two shared stories and laughed together.
After the snacks, the boy said his goodbye to the homeless woman and went home. When the boy arrived home carrying a smile on his face, was greeted by his mother. She said, “How was your day, son? Have you met Him (God)?”
The boy answered joyfully, “God is a woman, mom, and she has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen.”
Meanwhile, the homeless woman wearing a smile that she couldn’t hide decided to take her walk. Along the way she met an old homeless man. The old man was intrigued as the woman could not hide her joy reflected on her face. So, he asked, “What’s with your smile? You seemed to be filled with joy today.” The woman replied with cheerfulness, “Oh, I just met God today. He was a boy, much younger than I expected.”
This story shows us an encounter with God, in finding and meeting God in our human and ordinary experiences. This story may bring us into that experience of surprise from God because God reveals his presence in ways we do not expect.
Our readings today, both in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Gospel of John tell us of this story of the revelation of God in unexpected yet ordinary ways. Consequently, because of such simplicity, people found it difficult to recognize God. Moreover, many refused to recognize God’s presence because of its apparently unadorned and simple God’s self-revelation.
Let us look at the Gospel of John, Philip, who had been with Jesus for long, impatiently asked the Lord, “Lord, show us the Father, and that it enough.” As if Jesus was not really enough. With this, Jesus had to be honest to Philip, “You still do not know me, Philip, though I have been with you,” Jesus said.
In a way, we are told that even a close a disciple of Jesus found it difficult to recognize and to be convinced that the Father is in Jesus, and that they are one. Philip must have been expecting a magical revelation or any spectacular manifestation of God’s presence. However, God’s self-revelation was manifested through the person of Jesus, the Word-made-flesh.
In the same way, the Jewish people found it ridiculous as the Apostles preached to them the person of Jesus, as God-made-flesh. Jesus was too ordinary, too simple to be believed as God. Yet, they still found his death and resurrection as offensive or a stumbling block. This was how the people showed insults to Paul.
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This happens to us when our hearts also grow tired and weary. When we are overwhelmed with our anxieties and worries of the situation around us. Then, we might be looking for some spectacular thing to happen and for a magic to appear. But then, we might also lose the opportunity of recognizing God, of the revelation of God’s presence in the most ordinary way.
This is the call from the story of the boy looking for God. He found God not in a magical way but through a homeless woman who showed the most beautiful smile he has ever seen. Moreover, the woman also met God in a surprising way, in the person of a boy who showed tremendous generosity to her by sharing his snacks and presence with her on that bench.
Thus, what we are invited today is to see Jesus clearly, to recognize God who is very much involved in our daily life. To see Jesus clearly is to know God dearly. This will help us then, to follow Jesus closely. This is what has been proclaimed to us in the Acts of the Apostles commanded by Jesus, “I have set you as a light, so that you may bring my salvation.”
We are invited to see Jesus in every person no matter how ordinary they may look like, or how familiar or strange they may be to us. It is in this way that we too shall be able to bring light to them. Again, as it was in the story, the boy experienced the light through the person and the smile of the woman. The woman too, experienced the light trough the presence and the generosity showed by the boy to her.
Today, as we continue to live and find our way in this age of the pandemic, this may become an opportunity for us also to see Jesus clearly in the person of our brothers and sisters. May we truly become the light that shines in the darkness through our generosity and kindness to those in need, through our sincere and honest words to people around us, and through the gift of our presence to those who need comfort and a friend. Hinaut pa.
A DOSE OF GOD TODAY 