THE WORD
FIRST READING: Ex 3,1-8.13-15
Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock beyond the wilderness, he came to the mountain of God, Horeb. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him as fire flaming out of a bush. When he looked, although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed. So Moses decided, “I must turn aside to look at this remarkable sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to look, God called out to him from the bush: Moses! Moses! He answered, “Here I am.” God said: Do not come near! Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father, he continued, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
But the LORD said: I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry
against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them up from that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Hivites and the Jebusites....
SECOND READING: 1 Cor 10,1-6.10-12
GOSPEL: Lk 13,1-9
At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!
“Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
And he told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fi g tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fi g tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’ He said to him in reply, ‘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. If not, you can cut it down.’”
IN OTHER WORDS
During the Pope’s visit to the Philippines, he celebrated mass for the youth in the University of Santo Tomas, a Catholic university in the Philippines run by the Dominicans. One of the highlights of the mass was that several representatives from the different sectors of the youth were given the opportunity to approach the Pope to say something and to off er a token of appreciation to the Pope for his visit. One of the children chosen was a 12 year old girl, Glyzelle Palomar, a victim of the super typhoon Haiyan in 2013, and she asked the Pope why innocent children suffer and why people do not help them. The Pope, as reported, remained silent and could not give any answer or explanation. Cardinal Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila, accordingly, asked the Pope if he had something to say to the girl. As a response to the Cardinal, the Pope asked the Cardinal in return, what was there to say.
The silence of the Pope speaks for all of us when we are faced with the mystery of suffering. There is really nothing we can say and there is really nothing we should say. We say this because words are not the proper responses to suffering. Human words can comfort us, but they will not be enough. Words can ease the pain but they will not remove the pain. Words can inspire but they will never bring back what was lost, and the situation will never be the same again.
What then is the human response or reaction to pain and suffering?
Although silence is not the answer, silence helps us find the proper clue to how to deal and face suffering. Secondly, silence also helps us find the strength we need to keep ourselves a oat in the sea of pain.
First of all silence as a response to suffering gives us the opportunity to step back and consider our finitude.
Although it is a fact that all of creation is not yet finished, most often, we assume that it is already completed and nothing more is to come. We behave and react as if what we have and see NOW is almost everything. We become so focused only on what is at hand. No wonder we mirror the saying, “What you see is what you get.” It is as if NOW is the only moment. Though it is not obvious, and we do not easily notice, creation is an ongoing process. As another adage goes, “…life is a series of beginnings, not endings, much like the fact that graduations are not terminations but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process…”
God is not done yet with His work. St. Paul echoes this thought much earlier when he says, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;” (Rom 8:22) as if straining to reach its perfection or completion.
Although we do not belittle the experience of pain and suffering, we neither surrender the conviction that there is a much bigger picture than what we see and experience at the moment.
What we see and experience at the moment is part of our being alive. Job’s lamentations are no different from ours.
But he did not give up. In fact he survived all his losses and was happy in the end. “To live is to suffer,” says Friedrich Nietzsche, and “to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
But how much or to what extent can we bear and endure pain and suffering? How much suffering can we take?
This leads us to the second point – that as we take in suffering (or when suffering actually sucks us into its vortex), in our solitary moment, we will fid our way out by simply facing it. As the saying goes, “we take the bull (in this case, suffering) by its horns”. Whether we resist, fight, surrender, or accept suffering, these are all ways and means of facing suffering. When we face suffering with dignity and courage we have won already half of the battle. In her autobiography, The Doctor Will Not See You Now, the blind physician Dr.
Jane Poulson, who died of complications from her diabetes and blindness wrote, “I hate having diabetes and being blind. I rail against my body, which is constantly failing me and severely limiting my activities…My covenant (with God at the time of my birth) has required that I repeatedly let go of my images and desires, and that I acknowledge that they are not realities in my current journey. In letting go I have learned about the richness of being alive.”
As regards letting go, the same thought is expressed in Carly Simon’s 1974 hit “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain”. It sounds so similar to the thought of focusing not on ourselves. We actually find the sense of selfworth by not looking at ourselves. The second stanza of the song goes: “You showed me how, how to leave myself behind/ How to turn down the noise in my mind/ Now I haven’t got time for the pain/ I haven’t got room for the pain/ I haven’t the need for the pain/ Not since I’ve known you.”
There is also another axiom that goes “scarred people are beautiful people.” This particular truism is put into different words by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss- American psychiatrist and pioneer in near death studies and well known for her book on Death and Dying. She says that “the most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and found their way out of those depths.”
Most often our silence leads us to look beside us, or around us, and even beyond us. Though self-absorption is the rule, when in pain, the outward gaze allows us to discover a diff erent view. Nelson Mandela once said that “human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.” In prayer, let us hope that the seed scattered on the ground grows and produces fruit. May the earth do God’s work while we sleep. (Mk 4:26-28)
- Fr. Joey Miras, SVD | Toronto, Canada
The Word in other words 2016
An annual project of Logos Publications, The WORD in Other Words Bible Diary contains daily scripture readings and reflections written by priest, brothers, and sisters of the three congregations founded by St. Arnold Janssen (the SVD, SSpS, and SSpSAP). It hopes to serve as a daily companion to readers who continually seek the correlation of the Word of God and human experience.
