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Homily

General, Homilies, Soul Food

Pentecost Sunday

Homily on The Feast of Pentecost by Fr Arnel Aquino, SJ Cenacle Retreat House | 4 June 2022 I had a tooth extracted two days ago. I know. Sad. In the past, dentists were bunot-happy, remember? Konteng sakit, bunot. Konteng bulok, bunot. These days, extraction is the last resort of good dentists. They try to save a toot as much as they, even if it’s dead. They root canal it, fill it, cap it, anything to keep it just where it is. But alas, my dentist saw a fracture on my tooth, top to bottom. When a tooth fissures top to bottom, it cannot be saved. It has to come off. It’s hopeless. It’s irredeemable. Buti na lang, hindi bunot-happy ang Diyos natin, ‘no? Imagine if he were? When we’ve become such a pain to others, when we start infecting them, corrupting them, a bunot-happy God would extract us from the face of the earth. People are better off without us being such a burden. The space we leave behind? God could always fill that up with much better people, people who are more faithful, to him, kinder to others, steadfast in their love & service. But you & I, we’re often unfaithful, unkind, unloving, & uncharitable. So, thank God, he’s not bunot-happy. Kahit gaano tayo kasama, sa kaila-ilaliman ng ating pagktao, gusto pa rin nating mabuhay, lalo na para sa mga mahal natin sa buhay. And you know, God honors that. For good or for ill, he honors that. Secondly, such good news that no matter how fractured we are—top to bottom, sideways, inside out—to God, we’re still savable. To be fair, not all our cracks are our fault, no. The sins of family, community, the world have split & torn us apart. Nonetheless, we fissure also because of our own immoral, self-serving, & self-aggrandizing choices, both as individuals & as a community, as a country, even. Alam na alam na natin kung ano, sino, at saan anag makakasama sa atin, sige pa rin tayo nang sige. D’un pa rin tungo natin. Ang tigas ng ulo natin. ‘Di tayo matuto-tuto. But even then, we never forfeit our redeemability. Not to God, anyway. Sometimes, to be franck with you, I wish God didn’t give bad people such long lives, especially bad politicians. Sometimes, I wonder why politicians who are obviously bulok are still around & thriving. But just as divine benevolence is a mystery, human redeemability is also a mystery only God understands. If there’s one thing God is “incapable” of doing, maybe it’s to restrain himself from saving us. Kung sa bagay, ‘yun naman ang pangalan niya dito sa lupa, ‘di ba? Jesus. Yeshua. God saves. Many, many Catholics believe that when Jesus ascended to the Father, he has since been saving us by remote control…from heaven. The remot control is the Holy Spirit. I often ask the graduating class in LST: “What does the Holy Spirit look like? What does he do? How does he behave?” They stare at me like a I have three heads! But there’d always be one brave soul who’d answer: “Father, dove? Father, the Spirit hovers over us, enlightens us & empowers us?” So, the Holy Spirit is some bird-like avatar of God & has only two missions: light & power. Meralco? First of all, the Holy Spirit has a face, a human face. And this is the face of Jesus. The Holy Spirit in fact isJesus; not bird, not just “light” or “wind” or “energy.” Secondly, Holy Spirit does more than light & power. If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Father & Son, then, the Holy Spirit also saves! Whatever Jesus did in his earthly life over 2000 years ago, he still does today as the Holy Spirit. The Spirit heals our illness, fills our hunger, consoles our grief, reconciles us, unites our family & community—the very same way Jesus did back in his day. When Jesus “sends” us the Spirit, it is Jesus’ very Self who comes down to us, to be with us, yes, but also to dwell within us—regardless of our biyak, bitak, putok, baho, tigas ng ulo, katangahan, kasakiman. The Holy Spirit has a name after all. His name is Jesus. Yeshua. God saves. Hindi pa po tapos ang Diyos sa atin, sisters & brothers. We should never despair & think that we’re irredeemable, both as individuals & as a country. In God’s eyes, the world always needs saving because we always need saving, & very often from ourselves. Kung dumating man ang panahon when we finally make the right choices, whether in moral acts, correct behavior, or during elections—our right choices do not end the Spirit’s redemptive mission. We know ourselves only too well. Despite making right choices, we will eventually hurt each other. We will become cynical. We will resort to unkind behavior. And yes, we will try to extract people we reckon are irredeemable. So, all the more reason we need a constant Pentecost—a yearly Pentecost, a monthly Pentecost, a daily Pentecost: that divine outpouring of God’s very self on all of us, in spite of ourselves. And so, we prayer: Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful & kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit & we shall be created. And you shall renew the face of the earth.” Amen.

General, Homilies, Soul Food

The Upper Room

Homily on The Feast of Our Lady of the Cenacle | 4 June 2022 by Fr Oliver Dy, SJ In Jerusalem of the time of Jesus, it was typical for the house owners in the city to own a second floor or an upper room to be rented out to pilgrims. It is in such a room that the Last Supper was held and many other occasions, the disciples celebrated in the Upper Room for the feasts in Jerusalem, thus, also the name Cenacle or dining room. It’s in this Upper Room that the election to replace Judas, the betrayer, was held. And it was also in such a room where “All these [the apostles] were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” The Upper Room. I would like to share my thoughts related to this Upper Room which for me symbolizes and mirrors the heart of Mary, Mary of the Cenacle. That there is a certain congruence of meaning of the Upper Room and the heart of Mary related to the three gifts of the Cenacle – Apostolic Service, Prayer and Community Life. First of all, the Upper Room is a holy space between heaven and earth. It is grounded on the earth and yet also elevated above it to indicate a sense of perspective and spiritual transcendence. The Upper Room is grounded on the cry of the people who cry and with the groan of creation, so the vibrations of the earth, as it were, is felt in this Upper Room, and yet this Upper Room is also the meeting place between heaven and earth or rather the meeting place or the point of transition between the old heaven and old earth and a new heaven and a new earth. The Upper Room’s sense of apostolic service is that place where the old is transformed into the new. The Upper Room symbolizes the hill country of Judea where Mary visited Elizabeth in the sense that it is elevated and here, Mary’s Magnificat was heard for the first time, the revolution of the heart and the reversal of order in the world. And this perspective and this vision of Mary continues here in the upper room in a new way, in the apostolic service. There’s both a typical distance from the earth and yet also a certain typical intimacy. One should not succumb to the subtle temptations of the world but to live amidst them with a sense of perspective of Mary. And so, it is in the sense of spiritual deviation with the world that we can transform into a new heaven and a new earth just like Mary did in her time. The second one is the Upper Room is the place of prayer. As it is located in this in-between space, the heaven and earth, it is the place of radical openness related to the virtue of hope and the act of waiting. The radical openness to God’s possibilities. Not so much to give in to the earthly projects in the act of presumptiveness or over-planning like the apostles did or thought when Jesus ascended, “Would He restore the kingdom of Israel?” It’s not that, rather, the radical openness to something totally new , totally unheard of. An openness by that which came forth from the heart of Mary from the womb, that Incarnate God himself, something unthought of before. This radical openness demands that we detach ourselves from our earthly project and have that clear space for prayer. The German word for this is “abgeschiedenheit” or “detachment” in English. The word is “gelassenheit” or “letting things be”. Not to give in, on the other hand, to utility and despair but to allow our pondering in prayer, the gradual pondering while waiting to allow the plan of God to unfold in His due time. So, we must maintain that radical openness in prayer like Mary in the Upper Room. Finally, Mary and Community life. In the year 2018, Pope Francis also declared Monday after Pentecost as the Feast of Mary as Mother of the Church, and it is also related to the Feast of the Cenacle in this Upper Room where Mary became part of the emergent Church and in fact, became also a witness to the maturation of the disciples, the apostles in the Spirit. They were with one accord, a single heart. And this means spiritual conversation and fruits of prayer. I can imagine Mary sharing the stories about her Son to encourage the apostoltes. I can hear Mary entering into dialogue with the apostles in the spirit of the Lord’s absence. I can see Mary co-discerning in their fellow pilgrims here on earth. Mary was at the side of the apostles. She was with the apostles. She was companion to the apostles. She was telling the apostles, “You are not alone, I am here, your mother.” She died with the apostles and lived with the apostles at their side. The word Paraclete incidentally is someone called to one’s side. I can imagine the Paraclete as somebody beside us. Somebody who strengthens us when we need strength. Someone who speaks for us like a lawyer. Paraclete symbolizes God by our side. In the same way, Mary in community life is a woman, a person by the side, beside the apostles, being with, being together with the apostles in the place of prayer, in the place of emerging apostolic service. In this Mass today, let us pray for the spiritual blessings related to this Upper Room, that symbolizes and reflects the very heart of Mary, Mary in the Cenacle, apostolic service, in prayer and community life.

General, Homilies, Soul Food

The Voice of Love

(Homily given by Fr. Arnel Aquino SJ on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, at the Cenacle Retreat House.) When I was in high school, I was sort of forced into playing marriage counselor to mom & dad. Kuya had gone to Manila for college. Jonathan was still in grade school. So, whenever mom & dad quarreled, priest wannabe took it upon himself to patch them up. I always felt anxious whenever I was around mom & dad. I could smell the sl whiff if something was wrong. So, I stayed in my room most of the time because ignorance was bliss. Whenever they came home, though, I became super sensitive to the sounds they’d make downstairs. Many times, I’d suddenly sit up because I thought I heard yelling again. But then, the next day, they were fine. I only thought I heard they yelled. But it must’ve been just a dog that barked, a chair that screeched against the floor, or a car that roared past the house. Until I left home for college, I continued hearing what I thought was yelling. Unfortunately, 2 out of 5 times, it was! People with schizophrenia have it much harder. They hear voices physically, like you hear my voice now. And the voices are unmistakable from a dog, chair, or car. The voices are often male, repetitive, commanding, & nasty. “You, fat slob; you’re ugly; you’re garbage; useless. Everyone’s talking about you; they don’t want you here; they hate you; they’re planning to get rid of you.” That’s why many schizophrenics also develop paranoia. “Just end it all; go jump off a ledge. Pop all your pills in one go.” That’s why schizophrenia can also drive a person to suicide. But what I think is most chilling is when the voice says: “I’ll always be here; you can never run away from me; you can try but I’ll always come after you.” That’s why schizophrenic patients are trained to say, “No. No. Don’t.” I figured, though, things that voices tell the schizophrenic, you & I also hear them once in a while in some measure, don’t you think? “You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re a failure. They’re talking about you behind your back. They don’t like you. They want you out. You’re a bad person.” Thankfully, we know they’re merely negative thoughts, voiced in our own voice. We shake them off & not act on them. Problem is, sometimes, we only think we don’t act on our negative inner voices. When, in fact, we do. We make patol the voices (as the Assumptionista would say! Joke.) When we’re unaware that the voices are already taking charge, we transfigure into what’s called a reactive personality. Matalim na tayo magsalita, first response natin suspecha, reklamo, pintas. Madalas na tayong defensive, thinking that anyone who differs with us is out to prove us wrong. When we feel strongly against something or someone, kahit hindi fact-checked, we believe we’re absolutely right. (Kaya reactive personalities ang mga Marites!) In general, reactive people are difficult to live & work with because, well, they become the negative voice for people around them. See, that’s just the tragedy. Our negative voices say, “You’re not lovable. You’re no good.” Then, we’re roped in & prove them wrong. Then, we become reactive. Vicious cycle. That’s why we all desperately need a download. We need to download Jesus’ voice into this gadget, our heads. And update it. Constantly. One way we can do this by going back to the Gospels, reading them prayerfully & contemplatively, imagining ourselves as part of the story, observing Jesus, what he says, how he says them, & why. The Lord’s voice there is unmistakable. In fact, Jesus assumes not just any voice, but a very particular voice: the voice of a shepherd, a good shepherd who loves what he does & whom he’s doing it for. What a good shepherd says is completely opposite to what our negative voices would have us believe. Unlike a drill sergeant who rips into us to “make us stronger,” our shepherd strengthens us by pulling us together & giving us courage. Unlike a school marm who belts us so we learn our lesson, our shepherd teaches us the lesson we need to learn while he heals our pain; shearing us, not skinning us alive. Unlike a tiger parent who invalidates us to raise our esteem over the others, our shepherd prizes us by surrounding us with friends who love us. Finally, the shepherd doesn’t bark lofty standards of holiness for us to jump at to reach. Rather, he says, “Come, come, sheep. Let’s go to a better place. You & your friends. Come with me!” “I’ll always be here,” the shepherd’s voice says. “You can never run away from me. You can try. But I will always come after you.” To him we can say, “Yes. Yes. Do.”   image from kidshelpline.com.au

General, Homilies, Soul Food

Good Friday Homily | 15 April 2022

In the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius proposes that we “ask for grief with Christ in grief, anguish with Christ in anguish, tears and interior pain…” During today’s contemplation on Christ’s Passion and Death, we perhaps face no great difficulty, as we have no shortage of pain and suffering brought by Covid-19, natural calamities and conflict. With Jesus shedding tears at the death of his friend Lazarus, we have lost to illness and infirmity many of our dearly beloved, some of who have passed on with only the company of PPE-covered medical professionals. With Jesus worried for the hungry crowds following him, we feel the pangs of need of those who have lost life and livelihood because of the pandemic, the Taal eruption and the litany of typhoons, Odette and Agaton being the latest. With Jesus welcoming and embracing the little ones, we are even pained by the wide-eyed incomprehension of faraway Ukrainian children and young girls, cramped into trains, sometimes with no family, relying on the mercy of strangers. Like Jesus carrying his Cross, we all carry the heavy burden of these overwhelming and different faces of pain, suffering and anguish that seem to be the many-headed beast of ancient stories. It does not leave us unscathed, and we have felt how it eats us up inside. I have seen marriages break up, the young pushed to self-harm, and many suffering from anxiety and depression. Thus we have become more attentive to what is clinically called “mental health.” Social psychologists describe how this pandemic of interior suffering isolates us more than the strictest lockdown, and how we find ourselves languishing, as in a prison cell without walls. Thus we understand why the Evangelist Matthew would not hesitate to put the Psalmist’s cry on the very lips of Jesus, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” But being with Jesus carrying his cross is not enough, as Jesus reminds the women of Jerusalem, “Weep not for me.” There is more to being one with Jesus in grief, anguish and pain. In his Passion and Death, Jesus is no mere victim of power-hungry Jewish elders in collusion with Roman colonizers. Much less is he the warrior-king out to win victory for his own glory. Jesus suffers on account of and for others. As we profess at every Sunday Eucharist, “for us and for our salvation, Jesus came down from heaven.” Ignatius’ contemplation even makes it so personal: “Jesus suffered for me.” I wonder how deeply we feel this. All this invites each of us to examine our own suffering. Is my suffering brought about by external circumstances, created by outside forces, catching me in the wrong place at an inopportune time? Aminin na nating minsa’y katangahan o, para hindi masakit, naivete? Is my pained resignation to extra judicial killings, creeping authoritarianism and the trampling of truth the disguised surrender to apathy and convenience? Is my suffering self-inflicted, caused by willful selfishness and intensified by self-pity? Are my broken relationships the bitter fruit of anger, envy and jealousy? All these forms of self-violence are nothing more than the absurd struggle of Sisyphus up the mountain or, worse, a mad dog running after its tail. But with Jesus in his Passover from suffering to new life, we break out of our prison when our own suffering is also on account of and for others. Like Jesus, an OFW mother sacrifices her isolation and safety in war-threatened places for her family and children. Like Jesus, countless volunteers spend themselves, time and resources, to safeguard the integrity of elections and to hold those in office accountable. Like Jesus, life-partners learn to live with their shadows and to forgive each other. Like Jesus, an urban poor family shares their ayuda with a neighbor in greater need. My dear friends in Christ, it is no coincidence that the Filipino word for moving on, for continuing is “magpatuloy.” This can only suggest that for us to move from suffering to new life, we must allow others to enter into our home. by Fr. Jose Mario C. Francisco, SJ Cenacle Retreat House | 15 April 2022

General, Homilies, Soul Food

THE BANALITY OF EVIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARINESS OF LOVE

Fr Paolo Consonni, MCCJ After more than a month into the war in Ukraine, we have already gotten used to images of houses destroyed, long lines of refugees, columns of smoke after bombardments, burned-out tanks and, sadly, hundreds of wounded people and dead bodies. We are so overexposed to this kind of news that we risk becoming immune to horror. For young people it is even worse – war is a virtual reality that can be treated like a videogame. The banality of evil causes us to become inured to it. Famous author Hannah Arendt, in a controversial book about the motivations of prominent Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, responsible for the killing of millions of Jews during the Second World War, used the term “the banality of evil”. She realized that many of those who committed those crimes were neither perverted nor sadistic monsters, but “terrifyingly normal” people, acting out of a sense of duty, to advance their career, make money or even simply to blindly carry out orders as diligent bureaucrats. History shows that an accumulation of small choices made for banal motivations, without thoroughly thinking of their consequences, can provoke tragedies of unimaginable proportions. This Sunday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week, we will listen once again to the narration of the Lord’s Passion (Lk 22:14—23:56). Will we pay attention, or we will hear it as the same sad story of violence and death, similar to many others in the news? Will we view the evil in the events leading to Jesus’ death dispassionately because of their banality? There is nothing demonstrably alarming about Jesus’ Passion. It is a story of jealousy, greed, fear of someone upsetting the status quo, powerful people getting rid of a troublemaker through a corrupted justice system, zealous people trying to defend the purity of their traditions… we see these things happening every day all over the world. Besides, the narration of the Passion in each of the four Gospels is very sober. While Jesus’ sufferings are well described, there is no emphasis on the tortures, blood and all the gore that makes a horror movie or a videogame morbidly exciting. The point of the description of the Passion in the Gospels is not to make the death of Jesus, the Son of God, appear more painful than others (pain cannot be compared!), but to show its significance as the conclusion of Jesus’ extraordinary life. The life of Jesus was one of total self-giving, a gift given to the world by the Father who sent Him. A life in which He “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). A life in which He carried upon His body all the darkness and tragedy of human experience, especially the ones coming from evil and death, only to return compassion, mercy and forgiveness. A life of unconditional love. We might become indifferent toward evil owing to its banality, but our hearts long to find something, or better still, someone, to save us from the cynical routine in which our lives become stuck. Something – or someone – that can embrace our struggles, our failures and our limitations. Something or someone to whom we can entrust our last breath, saying: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” In other words, we long for the unconditional love Jesus’ revealed throughout His whole life and death. The early Christians understood that the narration of Christ’s Passion and death was important not only because it was expiation for our sins, but also because they understood that it was worth living and dying like Him. They also realized that only by inserting their own lives and deaths into His life and death, their existence might also become meaningful, worth living, worth the pain. Christ’s death saves us not only from the eschatological Hell, but also from a hellish, dull existence and relational life. Jesus’ disciples of every time and place, no matter whether married or not, all the young people who left everything to follow in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola or Mother Teresa of Calcutta (among many), all made this choice in their ordinary lives with an extraordinary sense of gratitude for having found what matched their hearts’ desire to live a meaningful life. They answered the unconditional love they received from Christ with the gift of their lives. Only this love can overcome the inexorable passing of time, the cruelty of the world, the banality of evil, the weariness caused by sickness and the inevitability of the tomb. Jesus’ Passion and Death is not simply another story of pain and death. It is the only one which can bring light and meaning to all the others, including yours. Listen to it, once again, like the first Christians did, with an overwhelmed and grateful heart. (Original article appeared on https://www.oclarim.com.mo/en/2022/04/08/the-banality-of-evil-and-the-extraordinariness-of-love/)

Homilies, Soul Food

Third Sunday of Lent: “The God of Extravagant Tenderness”

Fr Greg Boyle, an American Jesuit, is the founding director of Homeboy Industries in LA, the world’s largest gang-intervention and rehab center for inmates and gangsters.  He started working with them in the mid-1980s.  His latest book titled, “The Whole Language: the Power of Extravagant Tenderness” has an insightful reflection about who God is.  Greg writes:  A homie says to me: “I see now that I never made it easy for my parents to love me, and yet, they never stopped loving me.”  The God who never stops.  So, God, in this same way, has a limited vocabulary.  God never knows what we’re talking about when we judge our own worthiness or let ourselves get fixated on God’s ‘deep disappointment.’  Often when we think God is silent, this Tender One is just nearly speechless. God is monosyllabic. Love. I’m afraid that’s it.  Never stopping.  Many a time in our lives we are so focused on what appears to be God’s “deep disappointment,” disappointment perhaps of a failed marriage, an unsuccessful career, a dysfunctional family.  Disappointment in bad decisions we made, stupidities we did, lack of compassion, failures, fears, inadequacies, unworthiness, sinfulness, name it.  One priest told me that he could never forgive himself for what he did in the past – again an indication of our perception that God is so deeply disappointed with us. Our readings today turn this “deep disappointment” narrative upside down.  The call of Moses is a great revelation of who God is, one who rescues God’s suffering people.  In the burning bush, God says “I am who am.”  This does not have a philosophical or existential meaning.  It means: “I am actively involved.  I am acting. I am liberating my people.”  Even if God’s people would turn away from him, worship other gods; yes, even they are so stubborn and sinful, God’s fidelity is constant, never quick to give up.  This is very different from the prevailing idea of God as somebody who rewards the good and punishes the evil. We hear a similar tone in the Gospel. The suffering of the Galileans was not because they were more sinful than others, nor was the death of 18 people when the tower at Siloam fell on them an indication that they were more guilty than others in Jerusalem. Rather we see an image of God who gives us time to yield and produce a good fruit.  Jesus is like the gardener in the parable, always ready to push the boundaries of possibilities rather than making judgements or assessing our worthiness.  Our God does not get tired of expanding his patience threshold: “Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future.”  God does not easily give up on us!  We may easily give up on ourselves, but this is not our God.  The subtitle of Fr Greg Boyle’s book says it all: God has “the power of extravagant tenderness.”   In his TED talk in 2017, Pope Francis called for a “revolution of tenderness” amid so much violence and intolerance we find in our world. He says: “Tenderness is not weakness; it is fortitude.  It is the path of solidarity, the path of humility.  Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly.  If you don’t your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.”  In this season of Lent, we can never go wrong if we stay and relish in God’s extravagant tenderness, if we simply allow God to be God who is all-loving, never judgmental, never impatient with us.  If we can’t change our lives, however much we try and try, let us turn to the God of mercy and allow the Lord’s power of tenderness to take possession of our lives. Tony Moreno SJ 19 March 2022

Homilies

Fourth Sunday of Lent: “The Elder Son”

Whenever we hear this parable of the prodigal son, we would often think about the sinful behavior of the younger son and how he had to go through an experience of degradation before he realized that his proper place was to be at his father’s home. We are often moved by the touching encounter between the father and the younger son, where the sinful son receives the unconditional love and mercy of his father. It seemed like a story with a happy ending. But it is not the end of the story. In fact the real focus of the story is the elder son. We must remember that Jesus was telling this story to the scribes and Pharisees who are self-righteous and lacked compassion for sinners. Jesus wanted the scribes and Pharisees to see themselves as the elder son, and Jesus wanted to touch their hearts and make them realize that they are being called to forgive those who have committed great sins. The whole story is not really about asking forgiveness but it is a story that challenges us to forgive like the Father. It is easier to imagine ourselves to be like the younger son. We all had our experiences of sinfulness and the need to repent before the Lord. But we know that the Father will forgive us because we believe in his love for us. It is harder to place ourselves in the place of the elder son. It is so hard to forgive others who have sinned especially if we have tried very hard to be good. Like the Pharisees, we sometimes think that we have to earn the love of God and so we believe that if you work hard at being good God will love you more. If you are careless with your life, then you should receive less love and maybe even be punished. Shouldn’t the younger son repay the property that he had wasted? What guarantee do we have that the younger son will not sin again? Isn’t this they way we sometimes judge others? Isn’t this the way we often withhold our forgiveness from those who are sinful in our eyes. Like the elder son, we sometimes we think it is unfair for the Father to give the same love to a good person and a bad person. The parable does not tell us what the elder son did after his father asked him to accept his younger brother. Did the elder son join the family to welcome his brother? Did he stay with his anger and cut himself off from both his brother and his father? The ending is ours to make. Jesus did not put an easy ending to the parable because trying to forgive is not easy. It is something we ask the Lord to help us with. Just as Jesus appealed to the Pharisees and scribes to put away their self-righteousness, we are also being asked by the Lord, especially during this Lenten season, to allow compassion and reconciliation overcome any anger or judgment of others. Whenever we find ourselves in the place of the elder son, and are called to forgive a frequent or serious sinner, let us not forget that we too were treated with mercy and compassion by God. Just as God has loved us not according to what we deserve but according to what we need, let us also love others not according to what their sins deserve but according to what their souls need. (Homily of Fr. Ritchie Genilo, SJ on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, 27 March 2022)

Features, General, Homilies, Soul Food

Transforming Gentleness: the Grace of St. Thérèse Couderc

Homily of Fr. Daniel Patrick Huang, SJ on 26 September 2020, Feast of St. Thérèse Couderc in Rome. I hope you don’t mind, but this afternoon, I would like to reflect a little on your Mother, St. Thérèse Couderc, as a water purifier or filter. I realize that it’s not a very dignified or poetic image, but I hope that it helps explain what has struck me most these days about St. Thérèse: what I would call her transforming gentleness or her fruitful non-violence. A water purifier. This is not an original image, but one I learned from the spiritual writer Ron Rolheiser when he describes how the suffering of Jesus on the cross takes away the sins of the world. How does Jesus, the grain of wheat who dies, bring forth new life? Rolheiser suggests he does what a water purifier or a water filter does. “It takes in the water that contains impurities, dirt, toxins and occasional poisons.” The filter “does not simply let the water flow through it.” It “holds the dirt and toxins inside of itself and gives back only the pure water.” (1) This is what Jesus does on the cross: he holds in himself, bears in himself, the hatred, envy, anger, and violence of humanity, and instead of simply passing it on, somehow purifies all this in his own person, so that what flows out of him instead is love, graciousness, blessing, forgiveness, peace. Doesn’t this describe too what Thérèse Couderc lived in her sufferings? Reading various accounts of her life, I couldn’t help but be struck by the suffering and humiliation she went through, at the hands of a Jesuit Provincial and her own sisters. Looking back, one can see that Fr. Renault’s decision to replace Thérèse as superior general and foundress with a rich widow who had barely begun novitiate was not only ill advised but actually idiotic! What was he thinking? Till today, the writers I consulted struggle to explain Mother Charlotte Contenet’s inexplicable animosity towards Thérèse. I found myself asking: Why didn’t Thérèse fight back? She certainly would have had reason and justice on her side. Or why didn’t she just leave? Why didn’t she just start again, with a group of more congenial companions? Earlier accounts of Thérèse explain her response as humility: Thérèse as “une grande humble.” This seems to have been what was emphasized in her canonization process 50 years ago. But, as some of your sisters have pointed out (2), these accounts tend to speak of the humility of Thérèse in terms of uncomplaining submission, self-abasement, blind obedience to ecclesiastical authority, usually male. Although there is no doubt that Thérèse was deeply humble, this version of humility sounds suspiciously ideological. The more I reflected, the more I realized that Thérèse’s silent suffering was, in fact, less self-abasement, and more like the Gospel beatitude of meekness, what I have called transforming gentleness or fruitful nonviolence. Like her Lord, her dying was akin to the work of the water purifier. Instead of responding to stupidity, prejudice, pettiness, injustice in an aggressive, violent way, which would have continued the cycle of violence, Thérèse takes in all this and holds it in herself, and through the workings of grace in her deepest person, gives back instead kindness, reconciliation, peace, new life. By somehow absorbing in her person all this negativity, at great personal cost to herself, she kept the fragile congregation she so loved alive and united, for the sake of the work she so believed in, the revolutionary, till-that-time-unheard-of work of women religious giving the Spiritual Exercises. Even towards the end of her life, when she went through her “dark night” and could be seen weeping while she prayed for hours in the chapel in Lyons, she brought into her person all the pain and suffering of the Church, her beloved France, humanity estranged from its Creator. Somehow, mysteriously, like a water filter, what emerged from her was light and peace. There is that lovely story of the troubled novice who saw Thérèse in the novitiate in Versailles in 1880, not knowing who the elderly religious was, only seeing somehow light emanating from her, and feeling a deep sense of peace when that older sister looked into her eyes. (3) That this process involved crucifying pain for Thérèse seems clear. How did she do it? Where did she get the inner strength to respond with transforming gentleness to what would have provoked many of us to retaliation or escape? One of the favorite words of our former Superior General, Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, was the word depth, depth in the midst of a world of distraction and superficiality. I believe too that depth is the only word to describe Thérèse Couderc. Although her vision of goodness and her Se Livrer came decades later, those two documents capture the depth of her vision and her love throughout her life. Unlike many of us who can only see the surface of things and events, Thérèse was blessed with a vision that pierced beneath the surface to perceive the infinite goodness of God, like “letters of gold,” (4) gleaming and beautiful, present and active in the depths of all reality. And unlike those of us whose attention and desire are distracted and captured by so many lesser things, Thérèse was a profoundly centered woman, whose loving act of total surrender meant being so spiritually free that she held nothing back from God and lived completely from and for God. Because of the depth of her vision and the depth of her love, Thérèse was able to respond with depth to the events, even the most painful and difficult, of her life. Perhaps that is the reason why she so valued the ministry of the Exercises that her sisters were engaged in. It is precisely a ministry of depth that invites people to delve deeply into themselves to see the good God at work in their lives and in their world, and to respond with loving surrender to this

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Your Light Must Shine

Today we have a beautiful set of readings beginning from the Book of Kings, describing how the brook near where Elijah was hiding ran dry, and how he was instructed by God to move to a certain place where a widow will provide for him. Listen to the dialogue of the widow and Elijah; read between the lines: “Please bring me a cup of water” Elijah asked. That was easy to do and doable, so the widow went. Then Elijah asked for more “please bring me some bread”.  From this untimely request, what can we sense within the heart of the widow?  Stay with her in her suffering and struggle as she contemplated her plight, as when she had to explain that “when we (she and son) have eaten, we shall die” – this meal was to be their last: she was hanging on to her last thread of hope, awaiting and even preparing for the full blow of the crisis ahead. “Do not be afraid” says Elijah,  giving us a clue to what was going on inside of her at this time. Then, “Go…” Contemplating this widow’s situation, are we reminded of times when we, too, were hanging on to our last thread of hope and life? Literally it could be food that would be our last meal; or maybe an overseas student’s allowance running out; or a struggle with a relationship, a coping with sickness, or hurting from a broken heart or a failed endeavour; or being reminded of a disappointing past, etc.  Contemplating the widow’s plight, we see how she struggles now to share her last meal with a stranger. Observe how she does what Elijah proposed; spend some time with her in the kitchen: what was happening in her heart? Did she really believe in this stranger? Would you? You might wish to have a conversation with her. In this story, let us once again hear the affirming words of God through this text “Do not be afraid”.  Like the widow in whose heart the presence of a stranger ignited trust, can we trust that the unexpected can bring hope and life?  And because she trusted, she gave generously, and her generosity saved them all! Relating this to the call of the Gospel today: “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father,” consider what risks you struggle with, as you respond to these reflection questions:  What is your greatest fear these days? How have you responded to stranger(s) visiting you? What miracles have you seen so far? Trust, which allows us to respond to the call to be light that shines, is always rooted in a lived experience. It comes from having a storehouse of memories where this trust is learned.  #goodness #gratitude #miracles #share

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