Homily

By Fr. Braulio Dahunan, SJ Is Jesus trying to attract or to discourage followers? In today’s Gospel, Jesus is so honest and upfront in bringing about the hardships and difficulties it will involve in following Him. He gives three scenarios to illustrate his point. The first scenario is about this person who feels so drawn to Jesus that before he’s even called, he takes the initiative himself. He resolutely says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus, however, wants to make him aware if he truly means what he is saying, and Jesus tells him, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man who has nowhere to lay his head.” Here Jesus is trying to show that to follow Him is to relinquish one’s security and well-being. To follow Jesus is a risky venture. He offers neither security nor well-being. To follow Jesus means not settling down in well-being and not seeking false securities. Following Jesus means entrusting one’s self to and trusting more in Jesus. The second scenario is on someone who is ready to follow him, but asks first to fulfill the sacred obligation of burying his father. But Jesus response to him is quite unsettling, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Jesus is trying to show that to follow Him means to make a firm decision. To open up paths to God’s Kingdom by working for that which is life-giving is always the most important task. Nothing must affect one’s decision. No one must hold him back or stop him. The third scenario is about this person who wants to say goodbye to his family before following him, Jesus says: “No one who puts hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Here Jesus makes clear that following Him means there is no looking back. To follow Him is to focus one’s attention on Him and His mission. It’s not possible to open up paths to God’s Kingdom being imprisoned in the past and being unable to look on what lies ahead. Are we attracted or discouraged to follow Jesus as he shows to us what it really means to follow Him? Following Jesus is not mainly based on attraction or discouragement, because if it is our only basis, then our following of Jesus will not be that meaningful and it will surely not endure to the very end. However, following Jesus must be based on how much we deeply love Him. Jesus’ words are not meant to just simply attract or discourage, it is truly meant to challenge us, His followers. Jesus’ challenge for all us is this—if we want to follow him we will have to love him even more than we love those for whom we would normally have the deepest natural affection. As God’s representative, as God’s Son, Jesus alone is to be loved in the way that God is to be loved, with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. Nothing less will do for God or for God’s Son. Jesus seems to be saying that if we want to be his disciples, we can’t be half-hearted about it. Our following of the Lord is not a casual affair; it needs to be carefully considered, just as someone who decides to build a tower or to go to war needs to think it through thoroughly beforehand. To follow Jesus means a complete dedication of self, an abandonment of all other attachments and involvements. Anyone who is willing to follow Christ must absolutely and completely entrust himself or herself to Him, let Him dictate what the proper attachments are, and let Him take care of his or her well-being. Becoming Christ’s disciple means to truly and sincerely commit to Him and His teaching. And so, we must establish our priorities and not to allow things to stand in the way of that which we consider important. Thus, Christianity is not only a Sunday morning religion. It is a hungering after Jesus to the point of death if need be. It shakes our foundations, topples our priorities, pits us against friend and family and makes us strangers in this world and people call us: “out of our minds!” Are we able to keep up with the challenge of being followers of Jesus? Honestly, we are not! We have not been following Jesus with all our hearts. We have not been fully responding to the demands of the Gospel. We have not been completely faithful to Christ. Rightly so, because no one in this world, with the exception of Mary, has ever been able to live that absolute dedication of self to Christ in the absolute manner that we hope to do. As we continue to desire to follow Christ, we have to humbly acknowledge that we are never right up with Christ, never in any way His equal. As we continue to keep up with the challenges of following Him, we do not have to worry about that, about perfection. We just have to strive our very best to love Him passionately and serve Him generously as we can every day. Following Jesus is not all about relinquishing or giving-up, but it is more on bequeathing or giving, which is solely motivated by our love for Jesus. Following Jesus is not only making a firm decision, but it is more on abiding on one’s decision because of love. Following Jesus is not just about not looking back, but it is more on treading forward with much devotion to Jesus and His mission. My dear friends, as we continue with our Eucharistic Celebration, let us humbly beg the Lord through the intercession of Mary, our Mother, to grant us the grace to live our Christian vocation with passionate love for Jesus and allow ourselves to be challenged by Jesus’ words and examples in the Gospel so that

This homily was given by Fr. Roger Champoux, SJ, during the Easter Vigil Mass at the Cenacle Retreat House last March 26, 2016. We have three main themes in the readings of this Easter Vigil: • We remember the distant past, the deliverance of Israel in the Exodus: “This is the night when you first saved our fathers”; • We remember our own deliverance through Baptism: “This is the night when Christians everywhere are restored to grace”; • We remember the resurrection of Christ: “This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and sin.” What a magnificent historical fresco this is: we are invited to open our ears and our eyes and our hearts to the whole of creation and history, from the very beginning, with the way we were wonderfully created in the image of a loving God, with this window in our minds that opens us to see fire and light in darkness and have a glimpse of the mind of God. That original goodness, “very good” indeed, is still with us today. God said it about us in the very beginning, and he says it again to us tonight: “You are very good, my beloved.” Then we were invited to remember Abraham, our Father in Faith because he put all his trust in God. As somebody puts it very well, trust is the jump we make when we cannot understand anymore. So often in our lives, we don’t under-stand what is happening in us and around us but we are invited to trust. And then, in His own way, God “sees,” God “pro-vides,” and the lamb that suddenly appears –in the bush, in our lives–is the sign of God’s fidelity, the assurance of His presence. The chosen people, however, (and this includes us) were not always faithful to their loving God and to his covenant, and ended up in exile, in slavery. But the name of our God is Compassion and Fidelity, and Moses was sent to lead them out of exile into the Promised Land (what St. John will call “eternal life”). We heard tonight of the Passage through the Red Sea: a powerful image of Jesus going through the waters of death and emerging triumphant, and pouring upon us, from his Open Heart, the waters of life that deliver us from all the forces of evil. God’s power in Moses opens the frightening seas into a passage to freedom, as happened to Jesus on the Cross, as happened also to us in Baptism. And we saw how their very evil turned against the Egyptian pursuers, as we can see today when evil begets evil and violence turns against the violent, when evil breeds chaos. It was not always a straight journey for God’s people (is it ever for us too?) and this is why we were invited to hear, this very night, how the Prophets, like Isaiah, Baruch, Ezekiel, kept the Word of God alive and continued to proclaim God’s promise of faithful love in spite of our infidelities: “If you are thirsty, come to the water,” like the Samaritan woman invited to drink from the “living water” offered by Jesus. We were admonished again and again: let go of your wicked ways, seek God since He can always be found, drink again from the fountain of wisdom, as we heard again the divine promise: “I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit within you,” a heart that seeks love and peace instead of revenge, a spirit that seeks light instead of darkness. “You shall be my people, my children, and I will always be with you.” All of this “history” is still true tonight: it came true in our Baptism, it remains true this very evening as we remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. The waters of the Red Sea killed evil and set the Israelites on their journey; the waters of evil and sin killed Jesus on the Cross but the waters of new and eternal life flowed from his loving heart; the waters of our baptism did not drown us, instead they filled us with God’s love and we became His children. Paul’s reading reminded us: “Our old sinful self was crucified with Jesus, we are no longer in slavery to sin, we live with him in newness of life.” But now, we have a little problem. We celebrate tonight the glorious victory of Jesus over death and sin. But the Gospel sounds so hesitant, so muted: the women are “terrified” and Peter is simply “amazed.” They don’t see him! This is strange, but it makes something very clear: except most probably for Mary, nobody, nobody, expected this to happen: Jesus was dead, really and totally dead, and they were filled with pain and sadness and despair. Later in the day, the two disciples of Emmaus will walk with Jesus without recognizing him, they will only recognize him when he is no longer with them! But tonight, for the women who are told “to remember” what he said and later, for the two disciples who are invited to re-visit the Word of God in the Old Testament, suddenly, the light shines in their hearts first, and then in their minds: The Living is not among the dead! Nobody can take away the life of the Living, neither sin nor death! According to Luke, all this “had to happen.” But why did it have to happen? What was, what IS Good Friday, God Friday? Luke refers to is as “the power or darkness.” Simply because the CROSS is part of human life. All life ends in death, and then in rebirth. Add to this the gift of freedom that goes astray and that often seeks evil over good. This is true in our lives, in the lives of all people, and our religion embraces the crosses that are so much part of our lives. So does Jesus: he embraces and

This homily was given by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ, on Palm Sunday, 20 March, 2016, at the Cenacle Retreat House. I’m one of 10 Jesuits assigned to San Jose Seminary. This is the time of the year when we evaluate applicants from all over the country. In every batch of young men we evaluate, at least three or four have fathers who are drug addicts. Now I’m used to hearing young people having jobless fathers, drunkards, violent fathers. But I still have to get used to fathers who are drug addicts. With neither shame nor pride, these sons openly admit that they’ve suffered incredible violence from their fathers. It’s really very sad. On the other hand, you’d marvel at how these men have turned out to be such cheerful prospects for the priesthood. In fact, we’ve accepted several such young men this year. Having a drug addict for a father is not an impediment to acceptance in a seminary. They have very clear motivations, they’re psychologically honest, they have a nourishing prayer life, and a good disciplinary record. But as soon as they step into San Jose, we put all seminarians through mandatory counseling. Many find it excruciating to go through counseling at the beginning. But as years wear on, all our seminarians eventually say the pain has been worth it. This reminds me of Fr. Richard Rohr, a modern Franciscan spiritual guru. In books and lectures, he repeats a line I will not forget for as long as I have my wits about me: “If we do not transform our pain, we will most certainly transmit it.” Many seminarians come wounded by family. So, we hope that putting them through counseling will transform their pain; not only so they don’t hurt anymore, but also so that they don’t transmit it anymore—like their fathers had transmitted it to them, and like their grandfathers passed it onto their fathers, and on and on, further back into the valley of darkness and tears. In my own life and that of my friends, I’ve seen three of many ways by which we’re able to transform our pain. Transform our pain into what? Into something more life-giving, something that neutralizes its poison, so that it stops with us. First, we begin to transform our pain with humility: accepting that we are wounded, that we need help. This demands an almost brutal psychological honesty, especially because our pain unearths ugly emotions and traumas we never had control over, and yet now that we’re older, we’ve visited them upon others in the process. Secondly, we transform our pain by sharing it. We talk about it with someone who can understand and assist us. I believe that our more serious pains in life are meant to be shared, especially with our closest friends. We were never meant by God to suffer alone. In fact, it’s usually the lone sufferers by choice who heal the slowest—and who tend to transmit their pain the most. Third and last for today, we transform our pain by offering it for others. When the great filmmaker Marilou-Diaz Abaya was in the last stages of her cancer, she listened to programs on Radio Veritas at which people called in their prayer requests. As she lay in bed, the good woman listed down on a notebook the callers’ names, people she didn’t know from Adam. Alongside their names, their prayer requests. Then, she prayed for them. But part of her prayer was offering her own condition on behalf of these strangers. Imagine that. I also have a friend who suffered from very deep sadness and meaninglessness. Other than her medications, what kept her from surrendering to the darkness was her conviction that God can use her pain, in some mysterious way, towards the healing of her troubled family. We don’t have the scientific, sociological, anthropological evidence backing up what we call “redemptive suffering”, or as I understand it, transforming our pain by offering it for others. I don’t think it’s payment to purchase pity from God, as though in a kind of fiscal exchange, God will grant us what our suffering can buy. No. To offer our pain and suffering for others is, first, a confession that despite everything, we have nevertheless been blest beyond imagination. It’s like offering our gifts at the altar—gifts we don’t mind parting with, however painful, because God has blest us with so much more besides. Secondly, offering our pain for others is our way of affirming that all of us are desperately and totally dependent on God. In fact, we’re able to withstand suffering only because God has never abandoned us….so that, thirdly, instead of falling into that sink-hole that leads to the darkness of self-prison, offering our suffering for others is our way of begging God to find some use, any use for our offering, to help ease the suffering of others—in some mysterious way. Because if we could offer prayers for others, then surely we could offer our suffering for them, too. Basta, bahala na ang Diyos kung papaano niya gagawin…basta magtitiwala tayo na maaari niya itong gawin. In a few days, we will commemorate the passion, death, and resurrection of a man who knows what it means to suffer the senseless, envy-driven, cruel, and painful death. But we know how he offered his body and blood to the Father who has since transformed that suffering to benefit us. Now, 3000 years later, we have a choice. We can see our pain either as something useless, dead-end, unfair, and self-defeating…or we can accept it, share it, and offer it for others by asking God to transform it—towards the healing of our loved ones, towards the forgiveness of our sins, and towards the lightening of the burden of those more sorrowful than we. So as we transform our pain and suffering with the help of the Lord, may we do all this in memory of him—especially as we welcome Holy Week.  

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.)

  This homily was given by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ, on the 5th Sunday   of Lent 2013, at the Cenacle Retreat House. Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126:1-6; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11  A very close cousin is a lawyer in a very prestigious firm. I received a text from him last month. He was desperate for prayers. He said in the text: “Please pray for me, Arnel. I’m being put under audit by my firm for what they discovered were inappropriate use of funds. I could lose my job. I’ve made serious mistakes, please pray for me.” My cousin is already a partner in that law firm, so he probably gets to share a bunch from the earnings. And the benefits! They travel abroad every year, for instance. They get cars and live well. But now, not only is his partnership on the line, or his job. He can very well be disbarred—and lose everything: his car, his house, his property. And along with that, his self-respect as a lawyer, pinaghirapan pa naman niya. At worst, he could despair and lose his dignity as a husband and as a father and implode out of self-hate. My cousin is still waiting for the conclusion of the audit. So for almost two months now, he’s been living under a swinging blade. He’s never seen so much uncertainty as he does now. It must feel terrible especially at night when he looks at his two children, fast asleep without a care in the world, and his wife, who’s helpless as he. Imagine the regret, the embarrassment, the self-directed anger. I wondered what else he was doing other than worry, or if he still had some morsel of hope on the smudged plate that his life had become. Then the other day, he emailed. He said: “Throughout all this time when my future in the firm was uncertain, all I could really do while my fate was being determined by management, was turn to God. It is amazing how God reaches out to us in the most unlikely times and places. When my wife and I were at mass the other day, it was when the congregation sang “Here I am, Lord” that I lost it, and I found myself weeping uncontrollably. Trying to regain my composure, I looked at my wife, and she, too, was in tears.  So we both cried together. The Mass, the homily, and the song hit me dead-on. Despite all my shameful and wicked ways, Arnel, God was there beckoning, telling me that I have worth to Him….God loves us not because we are good, but because he is good, and his love is unconditional.” My cousin gets to keep his job. But he will have to pay every single peso he misspent. But at least, he’s not being fired. In fact, he’s actually getting off with fewer lashes than he thought he’d actually get…than he thought he actually deserved. Oh, there’s no doubt in his mind that he deserves to be fired, disbarred, even sued. He knows that if he ever lost everything because of this, he’d only have himself to blame. But because of God’s goodness, a second chance! You know, my sisters and brothers, I look at my cousin’s experience, and I was thinking, maybe it’s just what he needed from God. I look at my own close calls as a Jesuit and I realize, too, that they’re just what I needed. Maybe we all need something like this to happen to us, at least once in our lives. I don’t know how to put this without sounding ridiculous, so I’ll just lay it on the line. Maybe we all need this experience of sinning greatly and terribly, and getting caught, and finally being placed under the mercy and full disposal of other people. And these “other people” we’re placed under the mercy of, they may be sinners like ourselves—but they have power over us, and for now, they happen to have the rules on their side. In other words, maybe we need something like this if this is about the only way God can impress upon us once again two very crucial lessons: one—that for every great sin, we pay a great price; and two, and much more importantly—that of all people, God himself will help us pay the price. For do we not realize that we never really get to serve the full sentence? For the sins we’ve committed, we deserve every bit of whip and thorn, every insult and embarrassment. But, look, we’re still here. We have our wits about us, our dignity. We’re fine. We’re always taken down from the cross, and placed back into God’s arms, not because we’re good—in fact, we’ve been bad. But because God is good. So I was thinking, unless we’ve sinned greatly and darkly, and gotten caught, and been forgiven, unless that, maybe we’ll instead turn out to be like the men in today’s gospel: murderously self-righteous. And you and I know what annoys the Lord more than anything else, right? Self-righteousness, and self-righteousness happens to sit cozily beside its first cousin: hypocrisy. Going back to the story of the woman caught in adultery, nothing in the gospel proves Jesus condoning the woman’s sin. She was caught in the act of adultery—although it does make you wonder where the guy was who was caught with her. But still, she was guilty as charged. Most likely, the religious authorities goaded the menfolk to bring the woman to Jesus, to have him adjudicate this delicious capital offense, to trap him. If Jesus said, “No, let her go,” he would be charged with blasphemy and be stoned along with the woman. If he said, “Yes, go ahead,” then he would be caught contradicting himself, and the woman’s blood would be on his hands. It was by far, one of the toughest riddles the Lord had had to crack in record time, with a human life on the line.

This homily was given by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ, on the 1st Sunday of Lent 2013, at the Cenacle Retreat House. Do you remember the movie, Devil’s Advocate? Keanu Reeves plays Kevin, a brilliant lawyer, but has difficulty making his way to the top. He knows his caliber, and he knows his place is the top, but it’s taking him too long. Al Pacino is Satan, disguised as a CEO of a prestigious law firm. He hires Kevin and he furnishes him with all that he needs to get to the top, including a very delicate case. If Kevin wins it, he’ll be on top. But it comes to a point where Kevin has to choose between winning the case…or giving it up to care for his fast-deteriorating pregnant wife, but not without making it sound saying, of course; he’s the devil, devils do that. Unfortunately, Keanu chooses the case over the wife. He promises his boss: “I’ll win this case, I promise, I know I can win it. And then I’ll devote myself fully to my wife.” So he wins it. And on the same day, his wife kills herself right before his very eyes. The final scene is a confrontation between him and Pacino who finally reveals himself as Satan. And Kevin screams at him, “What did you do to my wife?”  And at one point, Satan says: “I’m no puppeteer, Kevin, I don’t make things happen; doesn’t work like that. Free will…I only set stage. You pull your own strings.” I couldn’t agree more. Too easily often, we fault the devil for “possessing” us, making us do what we wouldn’t have freely done anyway. But if that’s the case, why is it that even if we know what ought to be done, and we have all the means to do it, we still freely decide to either postpone it, not do it at all? Does free will stop short of actually acting out evil, at which point the devil takes over? “I’m no puppeteer, Kevin. I don’t make things happen…I only set the stage.” Deeper still, we all have this need to be nourished. We live in plenty, yes. We’re surrounded by the blessings of things, opportunities, people. Yet we have this longing to be nourished still, because in this desert we’re in, we seem to have everything, yet we have nothing. We constantly seek that specific nourishment which we can’t readily educe from our life’s abundance. We have food, gadgets, books. We have loving people who surround us—family, beloved, friends—some of who love us more than we even love them! Still, we need to be particularly poured into with something that would somehow follow the contours of our emptiness. Because unless that, then we feel only half-filled. It’s not evil to try to seek nourishment for our existential hungers, our gaping yearnings. The problem is, as our deep hunger rises to the surface of our words, our actions, our behavior—as our deep yearning swims up to sea-level—sometimes it gets hijacked on its way up. So that by the time our hunger reaches our mouths, it’s blurted out as a hurting word. By the time our hunger reaches our eyes, it’s a glower. By the time it reaches our hands, it’s a fist or a pointed finger or a grab. By the time it reaches our feet, we stomp and walk out, and slam the door behind us. In other words, our innermost yearnings seek to be satisfied—as they should, as they should. But on their way up and out into the light of day, they’re often hijacked. It’s like pulling a full bucket of water from a very deep well. It’s such a long, arduous pull that halfway up, we feel impatient and aggravated. So what do we do? We hurry up and fidget and tug and grab at the rope. By the time the bucket’s out…much of the water has jumped back into the depths of the well. Our bucket is nearly as empty as it was when we threw it in. Desperation. That’s one hijacked of our deepest yearnings. We want to be fulfilled, we want to be nourished…but we want it now, and in this particular way, in this form, and from this person, and that person, and him and her. No, not tomorrow, now. For we have waited for far too patiently for too long. Desperation. It’s not an accident that at the heart of the word “desperate” is the word “despair”. “Despair” is from de, “the lack or absence of”, and spes, “hope”. We become desperate when our deep hunger turns into hopelessness and breaks through the surface as a hurting word, a glower, a fist, a pointed finger, a grab for control, a walk-out. Just when we thought we could still come up with a full bucket. We actually feel so much emptier than before. But see, we’re in very good company. The devil wouldn’t have badgered Jesus if he didn’t find anything he could work on. But he did, Because like us, Jesus must have nursed unfathomable yearnings deep in his tender heart, yearnings anticipating satisfaction, hungers seeking providence, loneliness awaiting embrace. And Satan wanted to hijack them all, to set the stage so that Jesus might grow weary of waiting and demand fulfillment now, no matter what the cost. But Jesus did not despair…well, not until he was almost lifeless, when he said, “Itay ko, itay ko, bakit n’yo po ako pinabayaan?” Yet, with one last ounce of strength, his final word was a commendation of his spirit. He tossed his bucket back into the depths of his Father’s loving yet inscrutable will. That’s why early on, the devil failed in his mission. Jesus wouldn’t despair. In spite of all his unfulfilled yearnings, he hoped a lot; he hoped too much. Someone who hopes in God too much is a hopeless case as far as the devil is concerned. Ad majorem + Dei gloriam!