Aug 20., 2013   /   Homilies, Soul Food

Rite Of Passage

This homily was given by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ, on 17 August, 2013, the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, at the Cenacle Retreat House.

        The other night, I was talking to a brother Jesuit.  His 78-year-old mom is becoming more and more ill.  So he’s been grabbing every opportunity to fly to Bicol to be with her. It’s the time of his life when the headship of the family has fallen on him. His dad’s been dead many years, his siblings all married with kids. Over coffee the other night, he said, “Eto na, Chip, dumadaan na tayo sa bahaging ito ng buhay natin. Baliktad na the children take care of the parents.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”  There was no question about his willingness to care for his mom. But from how he sounded, willingness is one thing, the tremendous difficulty is quite another.

        I have another friend, a very nice fellow, finally coming to terms with his sexual orientation. He’s having a tough time, though.  I could imagine, he’s turning fifty soon, and nearly half his life, he’s been the prominent leader of his community. My friend is quite traditional in his theology and moral stance, sometimes; he’s even preachy about… until a few coffees ago, when he told me, “I’ve now come to that crunch when I know I can be truer to my God by being true to myself.  Yet I am racked with fear over losing so much in the process.”  He is terrified – and his terror often shows by way of anger.  He’s afraid of losing everything he’s invested in, especially his image as a very masculine elder of his community.

         I’m sure you’ve also gone through comparable rites of passage, if you’re not actually going through one right now.  We know friends who’ve also gone through it: someone is diagnosed with cancer, a wife decides to call it quits in a marriage, a son starts therapy for an addiction.  In the first reading, Jeremiah is sentenced to death.  In the second reading, Paul prays for endurance in running the race.  All of us know how it is and many times, we’ve prayed what appears on today’s psalm: Lord, come to my aid!

        Well, today’s gospel suggests that even the Lord had to go through a difficult rite of passage.  But he called it by an interesting name: baptism.  “There is a baptism with which I must be baptized and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished.”  He could really taste it, it had begun to happen, but it was yet to be fully engaged in and embraced, especially as it came to a head.  We know now that this “baptism” was his passion and death.  How great his anguish was, he said, till it happened.  I guess, the Lord thought the same way about his difficult passage as we do ours: the sooner the worst happens, the sooner it will be over.

         I do continue to wonder, however: why call it baptism?  Baptisms are happy occasions everywhere.  Admittedly, the theology behind the sacrament is pretty dark, namely: original sin and death.  But the occasions of baptism as a sacrament, not that’s quite the opposite: it’s bright, it’s celebratory, it brings people together. So it is interesting that the difficult and cheerless rites of passage, we often call baptism… of fire, don’t we?  Whereas the happy occasion in Church we call baptism… of water, don’t we?  There’s hardly an audible resonance between the two baptisms.

        Or is there?  There is actually a nexus between the two baptisms, between the gauntlet and the sacrament, the rite of passage and the rite of life, one of fire and the other of water.  For haven’t we gotten scorched or even burned by the fire of anger, of being put upon, or being judged despite our best efforts in our cheerless run of the gauntlet – and by people we love?  Yet, at the same time, doesn’t that fire also purify us, steel our determination, and even leave us glowing?  And have we not drowned in exhaustion, in the flood of crazy emotions, and even crazy people, including those we love?  Yet, at the same time, don’t the very same waters wash off our own neediness and self-seeking, and refresh our outlook, and slake some thirst, some dogged desire for triumph?  And like the Lord said, “a household of five will be divided, father against son, mother against daughter.” Haven’t we felt that that father and that son, or that mother and that daughter were all within the one body, the one person that we are?  So as we run through the rite of passage, we’ve felt very self-divided, desperately torn apart – like my two friends, like Jeremiah, like Paul.  Yet at the same time, did we not discover that we could be many things to many people because of all this.  Even when our passage has left us needful of a more wholeness, still we became reconcilers of others, of family and friends and of selves?  So you see, the Lord used the word “baptism” with utmost aptness.

        The best thing I love, considering all of this, is the word we use for baptism – a word I actually prefer: christening.  To christen is to make like Christ, to imbue with the presence of Christ’s Spirit, and therefore to transform what is apparently unlike Christ into something Christ-like.  Because our Lord himself had to endure the most difficult rites of passage, then what we have to endure because of love is naturally christened.  In a strange and mysterious way, therefore, our suffering because of love, sanctifies, because it glows and flows and burns and springs with the strengthening fire and refreshing water that is Christ.

 Ad Majorem Dei gloriam!

(Image from the internet.)