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“They brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.” The Jews didn’t see those two as separate, you know. If you were ill at that time, disabled, or behaviorally aberrant, a demon was possessing you & God was punishing you at the same time, pure & simple. The more serious your affliction, the graver your sin. It’s absurd, even funny, to assume that these days. Imagine, kung trinangkaso ka, o sinisikmura, o inatake sa puso, ay, dinedemonyo ka kasi may kasalanan kang ginawa. But in Israel, people took that for granted.             Must’ve been a sight to behold, sisters & brothers: the whole town gathered at the door, the Gospel says, at evening after sunset; Jesus laying hands upon head after head; Jesus whispering into ear after ear, “Come out of this man, this poor child, this mother;” muted gasps of surprise & joy, watered by tears.             Sisters & brothers, did Jesus himself believe that illness & disability were sin & demon-driven? Well, since he was a very devout Jew, he must’ve. At the back of his head, he must’ve seen the afflicted as sinners, sure. But that was why he knew that people came for healing because they wanted to be forgiven. And Jesus honored that. There was no illness so severe Jesus couldn’t heal it. Therefore, there was no sin so grave, he refused to forgive it. How could he refuse? If the blind weren’t led in or the paralyzed carried over, they limped, hobbled, or crawled to him, after dark! They were desperate for God’s forgiveness. Well, it was cooler at night, for sure. But I bet, the darkness was also a friendly shroud from public attention & shame. May sakit ka na nga, kahihiyan ka pa sa lipunan. Sa imagination ko tuloy, parang naging confessional box ‘yung bahay kung saan naro’n si Hesus. People came in the dark to expose their demons to the Light…of the World, & exposing them, to be rid of them. Even if only to Jesus & to their fellow sinners in what was to be the last darkest night of their lives because tomorrow would be a brand new day.             Speaking of exposing demons, a little challenge I often face as a confessor is when some penitents end up exposing not their own “demons,” but their demon of a mother-in-law, their demon of a neighbor, ang demonyong ex-husband, etc. I’m sure they’re not initially aware of it. The sacrament of reconciliation, after all, should be safe space for unburdening. But I’d had to verrrry gently remind them, that since this was their confession (I mean, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,”) it’s our demons we want exposed & dealt with. And it’s very funny because after saying that, & asking, “So, what sins do we wish to confess today po?” Some end up saying, “Umm, wala naman ako masyadong kasalanan, Father!”             Speaking of not exposing their own demons, the 5 CEO’s of social media were grilled by the US Senate 3 days ago. Did you see some clips? They were made to answer for online negligence that bled into runaway sextortion, drug dealing, sexual predation, peddling of unrealistic beauty standards which triggered depression, eating disorders, & most tragically, suicide…of youth. Perfect examples of illness & disabilities caused by sin, if I may say so. Despite their own employees sounding alarms, the CEOs put them on mute. Zuckerberg, for one, refused recommendations to hire more employees who could code stricter guardrails & algorithms for young users. And when a senator asked him, “Have you compensated any of the victims? Don’t you think they deserve compensation for what your platform has done? Are you willing to set up a fund from your own money, you’re a billionaire, to compensate these people?” Zuckerberg? Silence…that screamed no. His apology a few moments later was too little, too late, & limp. Another senator asked the CEOs one by one if they would support the Earn It Act which incriminates tech companies complicit in child sex abuse & exploitation. It was unbelievable. They all answered with a spin. ‘Yun bang sagot-pulitiko. Smooth-spoken, silver-tongued, sounding like a yes. But it was really, “No.” The image in my head was a stone wall painted with a delightful nature scene.             The platforms that enlighten our minds, through the gadgets that light up our faces—they also traffic darkness. We, grown-ups, have often fallen for the dark that dresses up as light. Can you imagine the youth, how much more readily, more gladly they can be deceived? Incidentally, how long does it take our kids to look away from their gadgets when we want their attention? If they don’t, do we insist that they do? Or do we just say, “Oh, I’ll leave them alone. At least they’re not noisy, making a mess, strangling each other, so I can work in peace & quiet”? In the peace & quiet of our homes where we & our kids no longer talk much, whom are we listening to? Who’s got our full & unflinching attention? See, sisters & brothers, whether in Senate halls, billionaire’s suites, or just our humble homes, it’s really true: evil’s enduring modus operandi is deception. That’s what makes us sin in ways that make us sick. But when darkness falls, we already know where to go. We already know whom to seek. Doesn’t matter if we limp over, hobble, or crawl. We just go. For there is no illness he cannot heal, no emptiness he cannot nourish, no sin he will not forgive. We just have to look away from our gadgets & go.   Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cenacle Retreat House

“God created human beings to praise, reverence and serve God and by doing this, to save their souls.” Anyone who has made the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius will recognize that right away as the preliminary prayer of the Saint or what he calls the first principle and foundation. I have to admit though that when I first encountered that, I was taken aback and misunderstood it. I reacted negatively. I thought, this God of Ignatius was so needful of attention. He created human beings just so they can praise, worship and serve him like slaves. Isn’t he being too narcissistic, too egoistic and too self-referential. Of course, now I know better. As they say, I am older and wiser. I remember all this, my initial incursions into the spiritual exercises, because of the Gospel we’ve read today. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything we’ve got. And the second one is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Like many, I have had no problem with the second one. As a social activist in my youth, I have always advocated for love of neighbor in terms of social justice, basic services for the poor, human rights, etc. And as for the first one, the greatest commandment, I have always seen it from the viewpoint of the second one. You love God whom you do not see in your neighbor whom you see. But a Jesuit early on corrected me. No. You have to take on God separately. Yes, you find him in his creatures but he is more than your neighbor and creation. You seek him out in prayer, in silence, in the Bible, in the sacraments, in his daily engagements with you. And so, as Jesus tells us today, you have to love God, as he is, for who he is, in himself. That is settled. God is an entity unto himself, and must be reckoned with, as it were, in his own terms. But still I struggle with the order of priority. Why is loving him the greatest of all commandments. In other words, why should he go first? Why should we love him first? I have a friend. He got married to a beautiful and loving wife and they had three children. I had never seen him so happy, so contented with his life. And he would say that literally. He had a perfect wife, a perfect life. Admittedly though, God was not part of that life, except for the routinary Sunday mass. He was never spiritual or religious, but he was nonetheless a very kind and generous person. But one day, his wife got terribly sick, and in just a few months, passed away. My friend understandably went through depression; but when I spoke with him after some time, he said, only when his wife had passed away that he discovered God, that life was this enormous mystery bigger than himself, his wife, his family, and at the center of all of that is God. He thought life ended when he lost his wife; but it continued, life, love continued. Because God remains, he said. What my friend discovered or realized is what philosophers have been telling us about God. God is the very ground of everything. He is being itself, life itself, beauty itself, love itself. And creatures like us only participate in God’s very life. And so to understand ourselves, our world, we must deal with him, with mystery. And that is the reason why he comes first. When Jesus tells us to love God first, it sounds a command, an order, a summons. In fact, as many of us know as we get older, he is merely sharing with us the deep truth about our lives. We love God first, because he is at the center, the core of our very lives, our very selves, our very existence. He is alpha and omega. He is not one other being competing for our love, but Being itself, life itself, love itself.   Homily delivered by Fr. Emmanuel “Nono” Alfonso, SJ 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time 29 October 2023 Cenacle Retreat House

You know how difficult it is to enter Ateneo, right? It’s legendary now. These past months, there’s been regular turnover of new guards at the gates. So, all faces are unfamiliar to them including ours, campus residents. So, whether we’re in a car or on foot, we also get stopped & scrutinized, understandably. It’s their job. They’re just doing what they’re ordered to do. But it can get exasperating, esp. when you’re in a rush. So, I confess, dear sisters & brothers, if with embarrassment, that when I was stopped at the gate a third time, I came this close to blurting out, “Alam mo hijo, hindi ka pa pinapanganak, dito na ako nakatira,” out of sheer exasperation. Or is it…out of entitlement? I think it’s fair to say that most of us are host to this lurking germ in our egos: the sense of entitlement. I’ve seen entitlement not just among the rich, by the way, but also among the poor; not just in bosses & administrators, but also down rank & file & union members; not just in lay communities, but also in religious congregations. It comes in differing degrees. There’s entitlement that’s fleeting & harmless. But there’s one that’s enduring, scheming, & nasty—a lifestyle. In first century Israel, there was no such thing as a “Jewish landowner” because Caesar owned Israel & all its lands. “Landowners” were really Caesar’s cronies. They had to pay tribute to Caesar. So, they leased the lands to tenants & charged rent. To be chosen as a tenant was a huge blessing esp. at a time when Jews languished in poverty. A tenant earned not just a salary, but also a share in the harvest. For a master to leave his property to tenants was an act of enormous trust & empowerment. Pero ‘yun nga ang problema natin ‘di ba? With great power comes not just responsibility, but also entitlement. So, the tenants in today’s parable go from grateful to greedy, from blessed to malevolent to murderous, from untitled to entitled. Among many causes of entitlement today, the three most common I’ve seen are: (a) “This place & the people here owe me for bringing us all to where we are now;” (b) “I’m a survivor of humble & persecuted beginnings; I owe my success only to myself & to people loyal to me;” & (c) “I will never be bullied or poor or ugly again.” As a result, the entitled believe they’re exempt from rules, from correction, from vows. They regard higher authority as also beholden to them. They groom yes-men to perpetuate their power. And worst of all, as they ingratiate themselves with patrons & benefactors, they scheme to silence their critics & quash perceived competitors. I guess, underneath the sense of entitlement lies the sense of ungratefulness. Kapag mapagpasalamat tayo, nakakaala tayo kung saan tayo galing noong tayo’y nabiyayaan. When we’re ungrateful, we forget. We forget what we basically & still share w/ everybody else: creaturehood, na tayong lahat nilalang ng Diyos, pero hindi tayo Diyos. Na lahat ng kabutihan, kayamanan, at kapangyarihang ikinagagalak natin at ipinagdiriwang natin ngayon, ang Diyos ang nagmamay-ari at nagkaloob, hindi tayo. Tayo’y pinahiraman lamang. Nangungupahan lamang, tenants. All power & position, plus the prestige, praises, & possessions along with them, may expiration date lahat ‘yan. Eventually, we’re x-ed: ex-president, ex-vice-president, ex-consultor, ex-fundraiser. How much people miss having us around, or how relieved they are that we’re finished & gone from their lives—that might be a good gauge of where we fall on the entitlement seismograph. Sisters & brothers, a cornerstone is a fascinating piece of architecture. For centuries, it was the first stone set in position before any construction of a temple, palace, or cathedral went underway. The cornerstone was once a huge, unshapely, quarried boulder. Then, it was carefully measured & painstakingly carved until a magnificently beautiful block emerged. The size & shape of the cornerstone determined the size & shape of the rest of the stones for building. The cornerstone was placed with deliberate precision because it defined the orientation of the whole building. Artisans set cornerstones according to the advice of astrologers. They believed heavenly bodies regulated human life, fortune, & success; as well as failure, misfortune, & death. So, not only was the cornerstone structural & architectonic, it was mystical & prophetic. When the temple, palace, or cathedral is up & running, we don’t really pay much attention to the cornerstone anymore, do we? Oh, we marvel at memorial stone at the doorway, all shiny, ceremonial, & screaming, “me, me, me.” But the cornerstone? It sits in a corner outside, as it quietly carries all the weight, the orientation, the direction, & the history of everything that presses & bears upon it. How do we guard & restrain ourselves from being a self-absorbed, gaudy, entitled, imeldific memorial stone? Maybe we can beg our Father to always remind us of our Cornerstone. For upon his shoulders, he carries all our weight. From where he stands, sets our orientation. From where he walks, charts our course. From his rejection by the builders, his suffering & death, he retells our histories & heals them. So, if we really think about it, we actually don’t need much entitlement… any more than we’ve already been richly, constantly, lovingly blessed. And we already have a title. Mga anak ng Diyos; children of God.   Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ on the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time 8 October 2023 Cenacle Retreat House

In graduate studies, we were a big community of 8 houses. One day, a Mexican Jesuit ran back to our house & said, “The American scholastics are going from house to house, removing non-metal vessels from the chapels.” We were an international community. From their native cultures, Jesuits brought back chalices, ciboria, patens made of ceramic, clay, stone, wood, all exquisitely crafted & sublimely designed. For some strange reason, the American scholastics went on this zealous purge of non-metal vessels one fine day, leaving only the usual silver & gold. The Roman Missal instructions do say that metal vessels are preferred. But they allow vessels of other materials, so long as they don’t easily corrupt. Either the zealous scholastics read past the rules they didn’t like, or, they didn’t do their homework. I had asked myself, if Jesus were physically there that day, how would he have countenanced this purge & his person & message & ministry? The recent proposal to forbid you, mass goers, from doing the orans (praying) posture in the Ama Namin bewildered me. Biblically & theologically, the Our Father is a prayer of petition from start to finish. In its entirety, it expresses our desperate dependence on God for everything. I love that we Filipinos physicalize this dependence, if only w/ our hands, & if only in one part of the mass. After all, nothing in Scripture, Tradition, & Magisterium forbids us from assuming such harmless, sinless, yet sincere, & very human posture…of begging. So, I had asked myself, if Jesus were physically there that day, how relevant was this proposal to his person & message & ministry? In the Transfiguration, God showed in no uncertain terms that his Son was the fulfillment of the Law & the Prophets represented by Moses & Elijah. See, sisters & brothers, the phrase “the Law & the Prophets,” that was the catch-all term for Israel’s entire religious tradition based on hundreds of rules pursuant to the 10 Commandments. These rules governed a Jew right from when one got up at sunrise to one’s last wakeful moment after sunset: what to pray, how to wash, whom to avoid, what to not touch, what sacrifices to burn, how often to show up at synagogue, etc., etc. But in the Transfiguration, God showed that the Law & the Prophets were not just rules inked on sacred parchment. The Law & the Prophets was a Person, w/ a beating heart, w/ hands that touched, held, & healed, w/ breath that gave life, w/ a body that blended in esp. with the poor. So, from here forward, whatever law you obeyed, whatever prophecy you were told, all of it must mirror how God’s beloved Son obeyed them. Contrary to popular thinking, Jesus did not violate an iota of the Law & the Prophets. He fulfilled them the way God meant them fulfilled. How? With utmost care, attention, & priority to the human persons & their desperate need for a better life & their longing for God No wonder God promptly said, “This is my beloved son. Listen to him.” Meaning: “My son shows you how I want the Law & the Prophets obeyed.” Listen to him daw, sisters & brothers; to his Son. Alam na alam kasi ng Diyos that when we make ourselves the norm of the law, we tend to listen only to ourselves. The next thing we know—we’ve become harsh on others, & yet, lenient on ourselves. We impose the letter of the law on others, & yet, we invoke the spirit of the law as an alibi when we violate it. Worst, when we presume to be the norm of God’s law, we become quite exclusivistic, bigoted, holier-than-thou, & dismissive of the poor, na para bang sinosolo natin ang Diyos. Exactly what became of the Pharisees & the Sadducees. What did they do? They set themselves as the norm for how people must obey the Law. You could almost hear them say, “Become like us! Transfigure yourselves!” To Jesus’ eyes, though, they really disfigured the image of God into a ritualistic, legalistic, formalistic, moralistic deity. Ever the karpintero, Jesus went about fixing what the hierarchs disfigured. So, he told eye-opening parables about God. He extended God’s touch in all his healings. He connected people to God & with each other by teaching them to call God, “Father.” He forgave sins. So, in a miracle filled with light, God showed Peter, James, & John his face…in the face of his Son. “This is my beloved Son who pleases me. Listen to him. For he is the norm, the image & likeness of how I want you to understand, to interpret, & to operationalize…ME.” Sisters & brothers, never mind non-metal chalices, or whether the lay should or shouldn’t assume the orans along w/ the priest during Ama Namin, or whether we should receive communion w/ our hands or w/ our mouths. Our Church has more compelling issues that need our study, our discernment, our decision-making, & our constant praying. Artificial Intelligence, gender diversity, Evangelical & Pentecostal church expansion, Mother Earth’s moan & groan…these & so much more…they demand new eyes & ears, new hearts & mindsets from us Catholics. For us to see Jesus’ countenance & hear Jesus’ voice through all of these bewildering realities, we must be Transfigured, anew, afresh, & unafraid.   Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cenacle Retreat House