Traces of God

These days at Mass, we are reading the book of Exodus. In it Moses is referred to as the person "who spoke to God face to face, as one man speaks to another", yet even Moses did not see God in all His glory because no man sees God and still lives.
But God told Moses, "When my glory passes I will set you in the hollow of the rock and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen."
Deep in each person's heart is the desire to know God. Maybe many of us do not know that it is God we are searching for as we search for joy, peace, life, serenity. Many times we do not realize that the unquenchable thirst, the angst that come to us once in a while, is the heart searching for God.
We cannot see God in His full glory, after all, we are limited creatures! But God shows Himself to us after He has passed us by.
We cannot see God face to face. We cannot fully comprehend Him. Otherwise, we would be God, too. But God is present in our every day life. And it is only on hindsight that we become aware of His presence, when we look back and review our experiences. We see that we are never alone. We see God's traces in our daily life.
So why continue to search for God? In reality, it is in our search for Him that we grow and we discover who we truly are.

Woman, why are you weeping?

I love Saint Mary Magdalene, and for many reasons. The first reason is, "she loved much".
The second reason is, she was totally true to herself that she was not afraid to show her weakness. When she saw the empty tomb, she started to cry, and it is in this state of weeping that Jesus encountered her.
For many people, crying, especially weeping, is a sign of weakness. How many people would want to be seen with their puffy eyes and red nose? I don't think we would find many. Each person wants to show to the world that he or she is strong. Nobody wants to be laughed at or pitied.
But in reality, how many of us can really say that everything is really okay. I mean, deep within our hearts, can we really say that nothing or no one really touches us to the point of crying?
When I reached forty, I have had a lot of exercise in crying. In fact, a friend called me a "cornball". My childhood friends and my classmates in high school and college would not believe this because they have always known me as the "jolly-bing". Anyway, nowadays I cry for a lot of reasons: when I have a headache or other physical pains, when I am tired, when I am touched by what I am reading or what I am watching, when I wax nostalgic, when I have a strong experience of any sort, when I realize the goodness of God expressed especially in small things, when I think about the transitoriness of life, etc., etc.
Actually crying does me a lot of good. I don't really cry in full view of others because I still haven't overcome human respect. But I do a lot of crying. It does me good because it makes me realize my boundaries, that at the end of the day, everything is on loan. Crying helps me to be in solidarity with the countless men and women who suffer for small or big reasons. It makes me remember that I need God, and that this God I believe in is a tender God who comforts those who mourn, who wipes away the tears...

Joseph's story is every person's story

These days we have been reading the story of Joseph and his brothers. This story has always fascinated me since I was a child. Joseph - the chosen one, the fair-skinned son of the beloved wife.
Joseph has certainly lived a charmed life as a boy, but everything ended in a flash. He certainly wasn't prepared for that fateful day when his life took an unexpected turn. Tired of being second best and of being lumped together in the generic term "Jacob's other sons", Joseph's brothers wanted to get rid of him. The first plan was to kill him, but one brother interceded "let's just sell him to the travelling merchants..."
Joseph pleaded, after all, these are his brothers. They have the same father, they ate at the same table. But the brothers' hearts have already been hardened. Envy and jealousy have a way of killing whatever spark of reason there is.
Then begins Joseph's many adventures...
From being sold as a slave, to being jailed, to being a high official in Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh himself.
It is a real dumpsters-to-throne story.
It takes only a few chapters of the book of Genesis to see how Joseph's life story had a happy ending.
In real life, it must not have been very easy for Joseph. Who knows how many nights he laid awake trembling with fear while he was with the caravan of the travelling merchants. What did he feel everytime he remembered his brothers' treachery and betrayal? How long did he struggle to accept that he was now alone in a hostile and foreign world, and that he would never see his beloved father again? Did he ever blame himself for what happened? Did revenge ever enter his mind? What about death, did he ever think of death as a sweet end to everything?
The Bible doesn't give answers to these questions, but given the number of years that it took before he ever saw his brothers again, I am sure that Joseph did not even imagine that his life would have not only a happy, but a glorious ending!
I guess Joseph's story is the story of every man and woman.
There are times in our life when we feel that there is no way out, that we have already exhausted all our options, that everything conspires to lead us to a downward spiral. There are many experiences that just don't make sense, no matter how much time and attention we give to dissecting them. There is just nothing in them for us except suffering.
But somehow, we survive, in different ways.
These experiences change us.
Probably for many of us, our stories will not have Joseph's perfect ending, that is, full closure, with people and events that have treated us badly, trampled our self-esteem and forced us to go on a very lonely journey.
For many of us, the happy ending will be something "quiet", like when we come to realize that, indeed, something good has happened out of the bad blows that life has dealt us with.
We do not know how long it will take before we arrive at this realization. That is why we need the presence of Someone who can be our deep center, Someone who will not give us the answers like a vendo machine, but Someone who will keep us company as we go through the journey's ups and downs, lights and shadows.
God will help us to read the beautiful stories that He writes with our life's crooked lines.