Keeping hope alive

For this year's World Youth Day, Pope Francis gave the theme "Young man, I say to you, arise". In his message, Pope Francis launches an appeal to young people to have the ability to see pain and death - to look at pain and death in the eye. We live in a society where the reality of death, pain, suffering, poverty is camouflaged in different ways because we want to give an idea, or at least an image, of a perfect life. We are often afraid to express our weaknesses and failures because society gives us a subliminal message that there is no room for weaklings in the world. But the covid-19 situation has brought us face-to-face with the reality of sickness, death, poverty, misery, incompetence, injustice, desperation, and insecurity. We see images every day and there is a danger of getting used to them. So Pope Francis asks us: "All around us, but at times also within us, we can see realities of death: physical, spiritual, emotional, social. Do we really notice them, or simply let them happen to us? Is there anything we can do in order to restore life?
Our Christian faith is founded on Christ's resurrection. This is what inspires us to act proactively, to give our own concrete contributions, no matter how small they may be. We believe that we are part of and are weaving history. We learn from those who have gone ahead of us and we hope that with our good choices we leave a better world for future generations. Our Christian faith is personal, but it is not individualistic. It acknowledges that we are part of history. It acknowledges that we are part of a community.

From Palm to Passion to Pasch

I attended a Palm Sunday Mass at a small parish. At the homily the priest talked about the Holy Week as a celebration from Palm to Passion to Pasch. It was Jesus' journey. It is our journey as well.
The journey doesn't happen once in a lifetime. It is a process that is repeating until we are moulded into the creation that God originally created us to be: His image and likeness.
It is very normal as we go through life, we would want to be recognized, to be acclaimed, to shine, even for a brief moment. That is our Palm Sunday.
But then, since restlessness is something that is inherent in our creaturehood, this shining moment loses its fascination and leaves us to craving for something more. When something we thought would make us feel fulfilled fails to do so, we become disillusioned. It makes us question a lot, from the most trivial to the most profound. In a sense, this is our Passion because those that have given security to our life suddenly come falling apart. It is those moments in life when, like Jesus on the cross, we shout out "Father, why have you forsaken me?".
But as in Jesus' life, we know that it doesn't end in death and defeat. The seeming defeat is the necessary way to the resurrection, to gaining a deeper understanding of life.
There are no shortcuts to life. We must go through the palm to the passion to rise again.

We will rise

The year 2011 has been a year of many blessings. Sometimes I think that God was trying to make up for all the tears I've shed.
The greatest blessing for me is the grace of insight. I have discovered that I am a strong person. I have always thought that I couldn't handle big difficulties. It is perhaps because of this that I have tried so hard to avoid conflict and precarious situations. But something happened for which I was unprepared. It was like being pushed into a wall with no way out. I have spent a long period of time groping in the dark, just living one day at a time, without any ambitious thought of miraculously emerging from the pit. All throughout this time I prayed that I wouldn't let anybody suffer because of what I was undergoing.
Then one day I just woke up with a very secure feeling that everything is going to be well. This feeling didn't change my situation, but it changed me. I know that I have paid due respect to my experience, that I have let it touch me to the depths.
The miracle was, it didn't engulf me into darkness. Instead, it made me discover that bereft of everything I still had the gift of life, and with this life comes the gift of a God who is with me, the Emmanuel.
So as I say goodbye to 2011, I thank God for making me rise again.

It is the heart that sees

The Gospel according to Matthew talks of the women who went to the tomb in the dead of the night. It was as if, for them, the death of Jesus did not cut the ties that bound them to Him. For indeed, what is the sense of going to the tomb? They certainly had very exhausting days and the most logical thing to do was to have some rest. But can anybody who has lost a significant part of oneself rest? You may reason out with your mind, but the heart says otherwise, and it is always the heart that wins. Probably this is the reason why we need to mourn, to give time for the heart to say farewell, to let the heart take its own time to say goodbye.
To say farewell to someone who has been an important part of one's life is one of the most difficult things to do because the love in your heart is still present but the object of that love is no more, at least physically. To mourn takes time because it follows no program. It has no timetable.
I admire those women-followers of Jesus who did not choose to take a short cut, but who, instead, faced their pain. It takes a lot of courage and honesty. And they were rewarded. They managed to see the life that was bursting forth.
Why is it that in other parts of the Gospels, the apostles and the disciples saw Jesus but they did not recognize Him; instead, these women, when they suddenly met Jesus, "came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him." They recognized Him.
Indeed, it is true, "only the heart sees what is essential that is invisible to the eye."
And so I respect the time that my heart needs to mourn, but I will not forget that it is not sorrow nor death that has the last word.
This is the message of Easter. Sorrow is a necessary part of life; but it is love that has the last word.
I will remember Blessed Teresa of Cacutta's words:
Remember that the passion of Christ ends always in the joy of the Resurrection.
So when you feel in your own heart the suffering of Christ,
remember the resurrection has to come, the joy of Easter has to dawn.
Never let anything so fill you with sorrow
as to make you forget the joy of the Risen Christ!

We are the reason

May these Holy days lead us to a deeper experience of the breadth, length, height and depth of God's love.
Why did Jesus not go down from the cross, despite the fact that He could have done so?
Because He knows that so many of us cannot go down from our crosses. So He stayed there, to be with us and to show us that He knows our sufferings, our weaknesses, our failures.
But it didn't end with the cross. He will rise again. And so shall we, too, if we carry our cross with Him.