Hearing the Voice of Jesus

Today’s gospel (Jn 10:27-30) is so short that I have to put it here in this space. 

Jesus said:
“My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”

Allow me to reflect on this theme: hearing the voice of Jesus. 

In our life we hear many voices; it is a marketplace of voices.  If you want to hear something, you should ask first: to whom or for what?  Usually the “to whom” follows the “for what.”  So if your concern is about legal matters, you go to a lawyer.  If it is about some illness or sickness, you go to a medical doctor.  If your illness is in the heart, you don’t have to consult an opthalmologist but a cardiologist.  If your concern is about buildings, you go to an engineer or an architect.  If it is about money, maybe you go to an accountant or to a banker or to an economist.  In a word, you go to an expert and hear from him/her.  But if your concern is about eternal life (and this should be the main concern of every human being), there is only one expert for you to go: Jesus Christ.

Remember one time when Jesus was talking about the Bread of life, some of his followers were confused.  It was for them difficult to understand and some were even offended (Jn 6:60-65).  With this, many of his disciples left him (Jn 6:66).  This prompted Jesus to ask the Twelve: ”Do you also want to go away?” (Jn 6:67).  Peter replied: “To whom shall we go?” (Jn 6:68a). 

To whom shall we go Lord, you have the words of eternal life; and it is you alone my Lord.  No one else.  The world around us with all its voices cannot give us eternal life.  And this makes the church significant.  The church established by Christ resides in the Catholic Church: ”And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).  And Jesus before going back to heaven assures us: “I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Mt. 28:20).

The Catholic Church is the voice of Christ on earth.  The Pope is his Vicar.  Hence it follows that the world should listen to the Church.  Of course, as the Church admits, she has no ”technical solutions” to the many problems of mankind.  The Church is not an expert in politics.  You don’t have to go to the Church when you need to know about economics.  She is not an expert in medicine or any other science.  But every politician, legislator, lawyer, economist, doctor, engineer or scientist should never dismiss the Church, for she is an “expert in humanity.”  Meaning, the church is an expert when it comes to what it means to be human.  Never forget that there can be no sound politics, economics, engineering, medicine, or science without first touching the question of what it means to be human.  That is why the Church, specifically the Catholic Church, is very important.  The world should come to listen to what she has to say.  Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate is telling something to the world.  Though it offers no technical solutions to our present economic, political, social, and ecological problems, it puts forward what is often neglected in many of our worldly discourses - the human person as the center of authentic development.  This is a wake up call to the world - we should listen to the Church or else we would be leading towards self-destruction.

We listen to the Church, for as I have said earlier, she is the voice of Jesus on earth.  And why do we have to listen to Jesus?  In today’s gospel, Jesus says: “I know them and they follow me.”  Jesus knows who we are and what we are.  Take note that at the end of the reading, he says: “The Father and I are one.”  The Father our creator and Jesus Christ our Lord are one.  Since Jesus is God and he created us then he knows who we are and what we are and where we are going to.  So if we don’t hear his voice, then we perish.  If the world dismisses the Catholic Church, then it leads towards self-destruction.  But if we listen to Church, to the voice of Jesus, then we will have eternal life and we will never perish.     

 

      

Peter’s Profession of Faith and the Transfiguration

The gospel reading every Second Sunday of Lent is on the Transfiguration of the Lord.  This gospel account appears in all three Synoptic Gospels; if we put Matthew, Mark and Luke side by side together, one can see their parallelisms.  In these three gospels, the Transfiguration is preceded by Peter’s profession of faith.  One can easily claim that the Transfiguration is a deepening of what took place during Peter’s confession.  In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI has an enlightening reflection on this.  He calls these two events (Peter’s Confession and the Transfiguration) as “Milestones on Jesus’ Way” (read pp. 287-318).  Our present consideration is therefore inspired by Benedict XVI’s reflections.Putting together Luke 9, Mark 9, and Matthew 16, we can see that what comes before the Transfiguration is Peter’s profession of faith.  On behalf of the disciples, Peter confesses that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.  This profession also appears in John: “We now believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:69).  After Peter’s profession, our Lord Jesus Christ has predicted his inevitable passion and death on the Cross.  With this Peter strongly protested saying: “God forbid it, Lord!  This shall never happen to you!” (Mt 16:22).  And so our Lord has to reproach him: “Get behind me, Satan!  You are thinking not as God does, but as people do” (Mk. 8:33).  Peter’s remark sounds very relevant to us even today.  As Benedict XVI puts it, “Yet we know that through all the centuries, right up to the present, Christians – while in possession of the right confession – need the Lord to teach every generation anew that his way is not the way of earthly power and glory, but the way of the Cross” (Jesus of Nazareth, p. 299).  “If you want to follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.  For whoever chooses to save his life will lose it, but the one who loses his life for my sake will find it.  What will one gain by winning the whole world if he destroys himself?  There is nothing you can give to recover you own self” (Mt. 16:24-26).Life is difficult, as Scott Peck puts it.  Life on earth is a vale of tears.  There is pain, sadness and there is no short cut to a happy life.  If you are a student, you have to work hard to attain you degree.  Cheating has no place for you.  If you are married, you have to stick to your commitment in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, in poorer and in richer.  We earn life the hard way.  As the trite goes, “No pain, no glory.”The way to Christ is the way of the Cross.  There is no other way to Glory but through the Cross.  Suffering then is essential.  But maybe like Peter we protest: “God forbids it!”  The world teaches us the other way: power and wealth and just pleasure.  In our school, we are often taught how to earn money, how to become rich and how to get ahead of anybody.  The world teaches us how to live an easy life.  The instant culture is an example.  We can no longer persevere in more arduous tasks.  That is why we hear these words coming from the clouds: “This is my Son, my Chosen one, listen to him” (Lk. 9:35).  We need to listen to Christ and learn from him that there is no other way but the Cross.  And this reality strikes at the heart of our existence.  We need to listen to Christ because the world around us is teaching us the other way.  The Cross is unacceptable, for we often say: God forbids it!  St. Paul has pointed out that the Cross of Christ is a “stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23).  But Christ and the Cross are inseparable.  The Cross is Christ’s exaltation; without it there can be no resurrection.  So to follow Christ is to carry our cross.  The world wants to dismiss this saying: “There is no God, enjoy life.”  Maybe one can enjoy life without God, without the cross but in the end it will be an empty life – one of darkness and despair.  A world without Christ and the Cross is a world that leads to self-destruction.Listen to Christ, for he alone brings life and hope.                 

The Sermon on the Mount Brings Hope

Why is a Christian happy? The answer is simple: he has God. The Sermon on the Mount in today’s gospel (Lk 6:17, 20-26) shows us how happy a Christian can become; for even in poverty or deprivation, in hunger, in pain, in tears, in life’s failures, in rejections, in persecutions, a Christian is still truly blessed. “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for a great reward is kept for you in heaven” (Lk 6: 23). It is always the beyond that keeps a Christian going, even in the most difficult circumstances. It is the hope that beyond the tears of this world there is heaven. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has branded Christianity as a religion of the weak, of the coward, and of the incompetent. It is for him a religion that rejoices over one’s failures and curses those who are strong, successful, and happy. He says, “What has been the greatest sin on earth so far? Surely the words of the man who said ‘Woe to those who laugh now’?” Nietzsche rejects Christ’s promise of the kingdom of heaven. For him what is real is only the kingdom of earth. He says in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go” (p. 13). If I point my finger at the moon, the wise man sees the moon while the fool man only sees my finger. Remember that in the book of Psalms it is written that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (14:1). Nietzsche once proclaims that “God is dead” (The Gay Science, p. 181). Pope Benedict XVI has these words for Nietzsche: “Jesus’ wide perspective is countered with a narrow this-woldliness - with the will to get the most out of the world and what life has to offer now, to seek heaven here, and to be uninhibited by any scruples while doing so” (Jesus of Nazareth, p. 97). In our present time, the spirit of Nietzsche continues to haunt religion. Today similar criticisms can be found. Secularism goes on attacking organized belief. Fr. John Flynn in a Zenit.org article entitled “Religion in the Cross Hairs: Secular World Attacks Organized Belief,” Nov. 26, 2006), mentions that the English singer Elton John accuses religion to have turned “people into ‘hateful lemmings’.” This comes from the claim that religion is hateful to “gay people.” The article also says that in the United States, Rosie O’Donnell considers Christianity to be similar to a “radical Islam.” And as quoted by Fr. Flynn, an Australian newspaper dated August 15 releases a survey declaring that atheism is strongly happening in most countries with “prosperous liberal democracies.” In Canada, Christopher Hitchens continues to declare his hatred against Christianity. For him, religion causes hatred to rise in the world. Accordingly, “anti-religious books” are too fashionable today. The following can be mentioned: God is Not Great by Hitchens, The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Christianity is not against life. On the contrary, the promise of heaven is the fulfillment of life. Fulfillment or satisfaction cannot come from the world. “Blessed are you who are poor; blessed are you who are hungry; blessed are you who weep now; blessed are you when people hate you, when they reject you and insult you and number you among criminals, because of the Son of Man, for with you is the kingdom of heaven. It is a future promise but at the same time an actual reality. Yes, I can agree with Nietzsche that Christians are weak. The poor, the hungry, those who are weeping, those who are persecuted for the sake of the gospel are weak. But they find strength in Christ. Let me put it this way: if you don’t believe in God, then suddenly all your earthly securities fail, where will you go? If a poor man believes in God, so even in his misery there is still joy for he is assured that everything is just temporary. If everything fails, there is still God.
How many today are living in misery? Walking around the streets of Manila, poverty abounds. The sad sight of homeless individuals meets our eyes. And I cannot imagine how many nameless faces are in pain this very moment, everywhere. And these seemingly unfortunate people can find hope only in God. And if there is no God, can there be any hope?

I want to share with you this third paragraph of Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter Spe Salvi:

“Yet at this point a question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is “redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the Letter to the Ephesians quoted above: the Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father’s right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter’s lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.”

The Sermon on the Mount brings hope; and if there is hope, there is life.

Not Signs But Living Witnesses

In one scene from the Gospel, the scribes and Pharisees are asking Jesus to work some signs.  That is why Jesus calls them evil and unfaithful.  They are eager for a sign but Jesus assures them that they will not be given any.  What sign do they need?  It is already Jesus standing before them.  The people of Nineveh were transformed because of Jonah.  The queen of the South came to Solomon just to listen to his wisdom.  And here Jesus is more than Jonah and Solomon (see Mt. 12:38-42).  What else do the scribes and Pharisees need?  Is Jesus not enough for them?  Why look for some signs other than Jesus Himself?

By the way, what do we mean by the word ’sign”?  A sign is something that points out to something else.  For example, smoke is a sign that there is fire.  Smoke points out to something else, that is, fire.  In the case of Jesus, why do the scribes and Pharisees ask for something else when it is already Jesus?  That is why they deserved to be called evil and unfaithful.

How about us?  Are we still looking for some signs for us to believe?  When the priest consecrates the ordinary bread and wine, they become the body and blood of Christ.  Christ is really present in the Eucharist.  The consecrated bread and wine are not signs of Christ.  They do not point to something else.  The bread and the wine is body and blood of Christ.  It is already Christ.  It is not pointing to him, like a sign pointing to something else.  It is Christ’s real presence.  So that everytime we receive communion, we receive Christ Himself, allowing Him to enter into our lives.  St. Paul is right when he says, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  What we receive is Christ and not something else. 

Receiving Christ means that he lives in us.  After the mass when we go out and go back to our ordinary lives, we bring Christ with us.  We become now, not as signs, but living witnesses of Christ.  Through our actions, we show Christ to others.  We bring love, compassion, forgiveness, peace and truth to a world that is often too lacking of them.  That others may believe in Him…