5TH GOSPEL

Do you know that there is a commandment before the Decalogue or 10 commandments of God? Yes there is and it is called Pre-Sinai. It is noteworthy that today's 1st reading points to the reason behind this. I learned this from a Lenten Retreat. When the people of Israel complained to God, He sent them quail and manna as their food in the desert. Every morning they gathered food from the ground and whenever they get more than they could eat for a day they discovered the following morning that the excess got spoiled or rotten. The moral lesson of this commandment is social justice. We should remove greed in our midst and learn to care for others. We should also live within our means and not desire something that is beyond our reach. The Israelites were so discontented despite of the presence of manna in their midst. They did not appreciate and were not grateful that God has provided them food. They sinned against the Lord and directly rejected God's grace. Thus placing themselves outside the protection of God and being predisposed to danger and calamity which was exactly what happened to them when bitten by serpents in the desert. In their journey to the Promised land, Canaan, the 5th gospel which is now known as Palestine, the Israelites strayed away from God's path and went their own way. We should learn the lesson of their story and choose to always stay within the protective grace of God so as to attain the 5th gospel and Promised Land of God in our own lives. Amen. Hallelujah!

Numbers 21:4-9
...with their patience worn out by the journey, 5 the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!”... ...Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, 8 and the LORD said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover.” 9 Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.


PRAYER is the litmus test or yardstick of our faith. Our souls have holes that need to be filled or plugged and it is in prayer that we don't end up placing the wrong plugs that fit our souls. We develop a discerning power through prayer. The way of prayer is not a feeling but a decision. Prayer could very well be patterned after the seasons of the church. There's a part of our life when we need to die, suffer and rise and so are prayers should always be full of faith, hope and love. It prepares us to live a life of relationship. At the end of the day it's all about relationship. We might not be fully aware of this but we engage in relationships every single day of our life and they all contribute to this life of mystery we have. We just have to be careful by checking first with whom we are building a relationship with. We've got to make sure that we are progressing towards the fullness of our relationship with God. We need to remove the restrictions that we place on prayer. Though, we need to test if it's really God's Spirit. We need to keep in mind that we are in a journey to God and we are obliged to study and learn all there is to know because wrong spirit could be in the form of ignorance. I just found out that the word anti means in lieu. Satan is so envious of Jesus he wants to be Jesus and every time we do not decide for Jesus in our actions then we choose the act in lieu of Jesus and in effect become an anti-Christ. We need to be aware that whenever we are about to pray, go to church and do something good, Satan would do everything in his power to distract us. We need to cultivate our soul in order to grow. Anything that improves our relationship with God is prayer. In fact, the mere act of suddenly remembering to give a loved one a call is already a form of prayer. The way we relate to our loved ones, family, friends, relatives and the people around us could already be a form of prayer. When we are in the middle of a breath taking scenery in nature and become full of joy and awe brought about by it, it's almost like a prayer of appreciation for God's wonderful work and creation. The language of intelligence relies on rational thinking while the language of the soul appreciates beauty and makes use of images. In order to understand this more deeply we have to look at the Parable of the Seed and the Sower. This parable contains a lot of imagery to convey its message. Although the parable is about the seed and the sower, the soil is of utmost concern in this story. You know why? We are the soil. It is our soul and spirituality. In fact the name of Adam, the first man created by God was derived from the Hebrew word Adama, which means soil. We need to cultivate the soil, Prayer is the fuel that cultivates our soil. Prayer is God's gift. God's perfect love reaches out to us when we sin or commit mistakes. Remember when Adam & Eve fell into sin, God immediately searched for them, in Gen. 3:9, "Where are you?" Prayer is an act of raising one's mind to God. We need humility for it to be perfect. Humility comes from the word humus which means dirt. If only Adam & Eve were humble enough to admit their wrongdoings instead of point fingers at each other as in Genesis 3:11-13 ...You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!" The man replied, "The woman whom you put here with me--she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it." The LORD God then asked the woman, "Why did you do such a thing?" The woman answered, "The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it." Who knows we could have had a different story and could still be in paradise if they had instead admitted, asked for forgiveness and prayed in a posture of humility. We have a universal call to prayer thus our yearning for God. Man is naturally in search of God. It is God who called and thirsted for us first. Prayer is a response to man's thirst for the thirst of God. It is a response of faith to a God who is reaching out to us. God gives us the Living Water that will not make us thirst anymore. Amen. Hallelujah!

Psalm 102:2-3, 16-18, 19-21
R: O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.
...Hide not your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me; in the day when I call, answer me speedily. (R) 15 [16] The nations shall revere your name, O LORD, and all the kings of the earth your glory, 16 [17] when the LORD has rebuilt Zion and appeared in his glory; 17 [18] when he has regarded the prayer of the destitute, and not despised their prayer. (R) 18 [19] Let this be written for the generation to come, and let his future creatures praise the LORD: 19 [20] “The LORD looked down from his holy height, from heaven he beheld the earth, 20 [21] To hear the groaning of the prisoners, to release those doomed to die.”

In today's gospel it is written that many came to believe in Jesus. "Are we not among them? Those who come to believe and embrace Him especially as we come near the final part of this Lenten journey. All who have been baptized should live this faith. Jesus described in the gospel that He is going away. It is a prediction of His passion, death and resurrection. Jesus is lifted up in the crucifixion and resurrection and these are the events that lead to eternal life. He said to the Pharisees, "Where I am going you cannot come" and also said,"...the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” It is not passed on like whispering a secret but the Christian truth is proclaimed from the roof tops. Jesus had spoken in the temple area and also in the church being proclaimed daily to the world. God wants all people to be saved but we have to believe. We need to come to the core of the revelation. What is Jesus saying? Going back to Moses when he asked what he's going to tell the people, God said, "I AM" Jesus too, said "I AM." He is claiming to be Divine and He is God. They refuse to accept. Those who do not believe that He is God only tell that He is just, upright and righteous. We have to realize that an upright and devout man does not claim to be God, it's either he is really God or a lunatic. The title "I AM" is always taken from the context of God saving his people from distress, captivity and slavery. God has heard His people cry, wanted to set them free and claim their promised land. We can also see from Isaiah 45, God raised up King Cyrus to set the people free, and several times mentioned God referred to as "I Am" This is to emphasize that God wants to rescue His people and save them. Jesus said again, "I AM" talking in the context of freedom from sin. He said, For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” He sets us free from this dominion of sin but we fail to trust Him. Just as we see in today's 1st reading in Numbers "...But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses." We, too are guilty of the same attitude at times. It would be nice if at once we received Jesus then we will be ushered into the perfect freedom, inability to sin anymore and the resurrection from death. Nevertheless, we still have this journey to make, have to battle, and even fight when they came to the promised land. We're all in a journey. Looking back at those people in Deuteronomy 1 we read that it took them 40 yrs to travel in the desert when all it takes is just 2 weeks. They wandered because of their lack of trust. They initially went to scout the land and came back with a report. The majority said that they can't do it because there are giants in the promised land and would just be like grasshoppers. They're stupid and forgot one basic fact, God is giving them the land. They forgot who was talking to them. When we believe "I AM", the great exile should come to mind, when they were freed from Egypt and should speak confidence. In our present time we should believe that we can overcome social injustice, sin and the culture of death. We have to believe in that because it is Almighty God telling them to come. We don't charge them for being at fault for seeing those realities, the giants and scary things in the promised land but we can charge them to be at fault for not trusting. When they complained against God, it is an insult to God for 2 reasons, first they forgot that God provides and He did provide the manna all the time and also of water from the rock through His power. In fact in 1 Cor. St Paul speaks of this water from the rock that followed them as they journeyed and the rock was Christ, "I AM" Jesus was with them in the desert. He is the same God as yesterday. We must trust God at all times. Those people in the desert however, lost their patience, was worn out and complained. Let us examine ourselves and see if we grumble like this? Sometimes we doubt if Jesus is really with us in this life journey. When we are trying to live the faith, whenever we are fasting and resisting temptation and we are being ridiculed and made fun of we also may come to a point when like these people would rather go back to Egypt and slavery. When we embark the journey of the Christian faith and indeed try to live up to all the teachings of the church, time will come when it is easier to say “Let's go back to our own Egypt.” But Jesus said, my yoke is easy and burden light. Let us not be fooled for the sins are the heavier burden. We have to embrace Jesus, the one who comes to save and have more confidence than ever in “I AM” that sets me free and truly believe we have eternal life. Amen. Hallelujah!

John 8:21-30
...I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. 29 The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.”...The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” 30 Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.