Soul Food

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!