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THE WORD

Dn 3,25.34-43/Mt 18, 21-35

Peter [approached Jesus and] asked him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting , a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt.

At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, "Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.' Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When the servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, 'Pay back what you owe.' Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until paid back in debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair.

His master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?' Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.

 

IN OTHER WORDS

The custom of the world is to return good for good, but the custom of the child of God is to return good for evil" (Vima Dasan, S.J.). Sadly, one could add that it is all too common to return even evil for good. The debtor in our parable received goodness and mercy beyond measure but he still went out and inflicted evil on his fellow servant. As a result, the mercy shown to him lost all its effect and he had to pay the price.

Mercy received and mercy given are strongly connected. We cannot really have one without the other, like love of God and love of neighbor. It also brings to mind the picture of the Last Judgement: "As often as you neglected to do it to one of these least ones, you neglected to do it to me" (Mt 25:45). An early Church writer puts it another way: "He who wants to be heard when he petitions should hear another who petitions him. ... If he hopes for mercy, he should show mercy himself" (St. Peter Chrysologus).

Like Peter, we may want to put a limit on forgiveness. For him, seven times is very generous. But if we are to imitate the Master, it must be "seventy seven times," i.e. without limit. We will often feel that this is just too much. Justice and accountability are important and God does not ignore them. But still the necessity of forgiveness remains, otherwise we are in danger of descending to the level of the aggressor and remaining under his/her power. When to forgive is really too hard for us, let us admit it, implore God's grace, and not justify our refusal to forgive. Bringing the difficulty to God rather than to the social media is already the start of the forgiving process. No matter how long it takes to complete the process, God patiently and lovingly accompanies us. We can never hope to equal the mercy of God but, in his compassion, he accepts the efforts we make.

  • Fr. John O’Mahony, SVD | DWST Tagaytay City

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.

 

THE WORD

2 Kgs 5,1-15 / Lk 4,24-30

And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”

When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

 

IN OTHER WORDS

In Luke 4:24, Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.” Jesus uttered these words in response to the people’s reaction to his authoritative way of reading a part of the book of the prophet Isaiah which says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce the year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God, to comfort all who mourn….” (Is 61:1-2, Lk 4:18-19). At the beginning, the people were amazed and they admired him for his eloquence but they started to question his authority when they realized that he was just Jesus, the Son of Mary and Joseph. As the Gospel according to Luke said, “All who were present spoke favorably of him; they marveled at the appealing discourse which came from his lips. They also ask, is not this Joseph’s son?” (Lk 4:22). It was at this point that Jesus sensed that they were questioning his authority because of his humble beginning. And he said “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place”.

If one applies for a job, one is required to submit his/her resumé, curriculum vitae and undergo a series of interviews to find out whether one is qualified for the job. And often times one has to give three persons as character references, which sometimes are more important than the curriculum vitae. As some people would say “whom you know is better than what you know”. It is here where Jesus fell short which caused his rejection by his own town mates. He was rejected because he was nobody in the society. The peoples’ appreciation of his wisdom and power was waylaid by their prejudice about him whose father was Joseph a carpenter and who did not have political, social and religious influence. Jesus’ pedigree was just too lowly for the people to accept him and listen to his teachings. Another thing which caused his town mates to reject him was envy. In the account of St Mark, the people asked, “Where did he get all these? What kind of wisdom is He endowed with?

How is it that the miraculous deeds are accomplished by his hands? Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary. . . . ?” (Mk 6:2-3). According to the standard of his town mates, Jesus, being a lowly member of the society is not supposed to possess such authority and power. But as they themselves had seen and heard, He just had such power which they themselves, who belong to the higher social strata than Jesus, did not have. They must have asked, “Why he, not me?” For them if there is anybody who should have been endowed with such power it should be them and not Jesus. Prejudice and envy, two of several hindrances that prevent us from accepting Jesus and making him rule in our lives.

  • Fr. Jimmy Sales, SVD | USC, Cebu City

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.

 

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.

 

THE WORD

Mic 7,14-15.18-20 / Lk 15,1-3.11-32

(The parable of the Prodigal Son) ...“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”

 

IN OTHER WORDS

One morning while I was making up my bed, I heard some of our lady-helpers passionately exchanging thoughts on an Aglipay Christian who attended in the previous Sunday’s Eucharistic celebrations.

What caught my attention were their arguments on whether the Aglipayan Christian should be welcomed or not in the Eucharistic celebration.

One of them kept on repeating with affection how the Aglipayan was so hurt when she heard a comment from the congregation saying, “may naligaw na kambing ngayon” (literally, a goat lost

his/her way and found him/herself here). For this, according to her, the Aglipayan decided to stop coming to the Catholic Church. She was wounded and ashamed.

In our gospel today, the scribes and Pharisees were complaining against Jesus because He welcomed sinners and ate with them. This was followed by the “Parable of the Lost Son” as if to remind us that the Father is so happy when a sinner comes back to Him.

If we apply this to the Aglipayan Christian, she is not even a sinner compared to the “tax collectors and sinners” in the gospel. She just wanted to attend the Eucharistic celebration with the intention of returning back to the Catholic fold.

Sometimes, we are also guilty of the same harsh judgment. Maybe not the same as the one who commented against this Aglipayan Christian but in some other ways, we judge other people and exclude them in our concept of “church” simply because we think they are not worthy to be in the fold of Christ because of their status and disposition in life.

But Jesus, in the parable, is reminding us how precious to God when a sinner returns to Him. For this, we are strongly invited by our gospel to be instruments for the facilitation of a sinner’s restoration to the fold and not a hindrance, lest we become scribes and Pharisees!

  • Fr. Ross Heruela, SVD | DWIMS, Tagaytay City

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.

 

More Articles ...

  1. February 26, 2016 Friday
  2. February 25, 2016 Thursday
  3. February 24, 2016 Wednesday
  4. February 23, 2016 Tuesday
  5. February 22, 2016 Monday
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