Today’s 1st reading speaks of God promising to Abraham that
he’ll be a father of multitude. For the Jews he is the physical father and has
an influence greater than anybody in the history of the world. For 75 years he
was a pagan and worshipped the god of Mesopotamia
and had not yet met God. When he met God he was transformed for all the nations
of the world. It is ironic for him to be called that name for he has no
children yet. His name was changed from Abram to Abraham and exactly what his
name means, father of all nations. Abraham was promised that his descendants
will be so great just like looking at the stars and not be able to count them.
When God gave this promise, he was 99 years old
and Sarah was 90. All he did was trust God. It’s not hard to believe in
a God who brought everything out of nothing. Are we going to trust or not? In
Gen 18, Abraham was visited by the Lord’s angels. He exercises hospitality to
them whereas Sarah laughed to herself when she heard that she’s going to bear a
child at her age. And the Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? God wants
us to trust Him. There are times in our lives when we doubt the promise of God.
Or worse, we sometimes laugh at the promises of God. We can be astonished and
say how marvelous it is but we shouldn’t laugh. God made this promise and He
will fulfill it. We can see that after God made a covenant with Abraham in Gen
15:12, As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep,
terrifying darkness enveloped him. This
is a foreshadowing of someone who fell into deep darkness in Good Friday. Abraham went into deep darkness as this deep
sleep descended to Jesus on Good Friday. A soldier pierced His side from which
flowed blood and water that fills the world, washes our sins and gives new life
thus in the dark sleep a new humanity was born. We, the people of Christ belong
to that humanity, a people of hope. There is no doubt that God is able to
fulfill His promise thus it is imperative that we keep our part of the
covenant, no matter how deep a darkness we may be going through. In doing so we
sometimes have to go through our own Good Fridays in order to yield to God's
will in our lives, be full of hope and thus become very blessed just like our
father Abraham. (Psalm 112:4, Light shines through the darkness for the
upright; gracious, compassionate, and righteous) Abraham is the 1st recipient of God's revelation
of Himself to mankind. He is considered as one of the Patriarchs to whom God
chose to establish his covenant. Salvation history tells us of God's faithful
love and continues to restore and bring back the broken relationship of God and
man. It was through Abraham's total surrender to God's will to offer his son
Isaac that he foreshadowed the sacrifice of Jesus as the Lamb of God. It is true that God
started to reveal Himself to us through Abraham and the ultimate revelation was
in Jesus His only begotten Son. The victimhood of Jesus to conquer evil not by
slaying evil but by allowing Himself to be killed is the height of God's love.
It should always be a treasure embedded in our hearts. The cross is not just a sacrifice but God's
expression of His desire for love, relationship and a covenant with His people.
There are many qualities of the covenant in order to better understand this
relationship with God it is indeed good to look into the Book of Hosea because
there are 3 qualities unique only to Hosea which I learned from our bible study
through the courtesy of Fr. Tony Astudillo. Hosea's style is a parable of
married love to describe Yahweh's relationship with His people. Hosea is a
proponent of Yahwism. It is a doctrine of repetitious reminder (pesher) to the
Jews that Yahweh has been the only savior of the chosen people in their
history. The formula of Yahwism:"I am Yahweh who brought you out of Egypt ."
This evolved into what is later called "Salvation Theology", the
covenant, which could be expressed as God after having created man and fallen
into sin asked, "What am I going to do with my creation? Hosea's prophecy was based on this. Yahwist
tradition is the source and the beginning and God continues to sustain and
nourish His people, the people of God who were set apart, chosen and
privileged. As in this bible saying, "Hear ye O Israel, I am your God and
there is no other God than Me." Hosea addresses the disorder in the kind
of worship being offered to God. They have forsaken Yahweh in both rituals and
moral life and did not follow what is expressed in the covenant, the decalogue
(10 commandments) and the following 3 qualities of a covenant:
1. Fidelity is best described as a covenanted union which is
best depicted in the image of marriage union: showing Yahweh and Israel as
husband and wife. (Hos. 1-3) In this regard, infidelity to the covenant is best
shown thru the images of sexual perversions and the breaking of the marriage
vows. (Hos 4:14)Like Hosea's love to his unfaithful wife, Yahweh's fidelity to
the union remains in spite of Israel 's
unfaithfulness. During that time there was presence of the worship to the pagan
god Baal which contaminated the worship of God's people to Yahweh. Baal was
believed by pagans as a god that gives fertility and fruitfulness. This contamination resulted to impure rites
of worshipping. Eventually the Jews no longer became a pure race and was even
evident in the presence of several other races, the Samaritan as one. But more than
the impurity of the race is the unfaithfulness manifested in the empty rituals
and sexual perversion shown in adulterous and unfaithful relationships.
2. Loving Compassion- "I desire loving compassion and
not sacrifice..."(Hos 6:6) Hesed is Hebrew for loving kindness. Hesed is
the center of this love. Hesed is not quid pro quo. It is true devotion (both
mind and heart) to the covenant partner. A sign of faithful love to His own
people. True covenant partner has pity (rhm) Rhm true meaning is lost in
English translation. Rhm is not just a sorrowful compassion but more of the
attitude a mother has to her child. Like rehem or womb. The covenant is
characteristic in all the prophets. In Isaiah it has mentioned, "Can a
mother forget her child and even if she forgets, God will never forget."
The cross before the time of Jesus used to stand for death. It is abhored and
detested by people. Fr. Tony before proceeding with his talk asked who would
like to become a victim and as expected nobody raised a hand. When God became
man, He embraced victimhood when he willingly died on the cross. During the
ancient times or even in the book of Revelation in the bible the dragon stands
for evil and is even symbolic of the serpent in Genesis. When Jesus came He did
not slay the dragon but instead allowed the dragon to slay Him by dying on the
cross which is rehem and Hesed. Of course Jesus rose from the dead with power
on the 3rd day. The Latin word
sacrificere means to make sacred or holy. It is God's business to make man holy
which is symbolized by the cross. Fr. Tony continued by saying that there are
actually 8 days of creation. The 7 days as recorded in the bible and each day
of our life as 8th day. God continues to create but with man as co-creator.
Since it was man who made the mess in creation by giving in to sin, each day is
an invitation to us to cooperate with God in making this world a better place.
3. Knowledge of God- the most important among 3 qualities.
Personal knowledge/relationship of God and His attributes. (Hos 5:4) There is
no true "Hesed" without knowledge which is wisdom or true
intelligence as not only the world sees and knows of but is interwoven with
life experiences. Knowledge here is more of deep spousal knowledge akin to
marital union of 2 individuals becoming one. True union of no secrets, shared
joy and sorrows as well as oneness of both bodies and souls. Love making (not
sex) is a good example of this. (Gen 2:24 "That is why a man leaves his
father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one
body.") Even Jesus in Mk 2:19-20 compared Himself to a bridegroom. In
Ephesians 5: 23-24 Jesus compares His eternal love for the Church as the love
of a husband for his wife. See also Lk 1:34 when Mary said,"I have no
knowledge of a man." and Jer.1:5 "...before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you." This knowledge is encompassing and strives to reach the
height and depth of God's unfathomable love.
Book of Genesis 17:1.9-10.15-22.
This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you
that you must keep: every male among you shall be circumcised.” God further
said to Abraham: “As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai; her name shall
be Sarah. I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. Him also will I
bless; he shall give rise to nations, and rulers of peoples shall issue from
him.” Abraham prostrated himself and laughed as he said to himself, "Can a
child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Or can Sarah give birth at
ninety?" Then Abraham said to God, "Let but Ishmael live on by your
favor!" God replied: "Nevertheless, your wife Sarah is to bear you a
son, and you shall call him Isaac. I will maintain my covenant with him as an
everlasting pact, to be his God and the God of his descendants after him...
One
of the purposes of marriage is for procreation. When we enter into it we should
be open to having children and the responsibilities that go with it. This is
the reason why when people petition for marriage annulment cases the tribunal
look for 3 things, 1. whether it’s defective consent there was defective
diriment impediment or a defective form. When you have a formal marriage
annulment case usually it’s a defective consent. In such case the direction of
the tribunal would like to know whether the spouse has an intention against
children. There are 4 goods of marriage and one of those goods is to have
children. The openness to children is one of the essential parts of marriage.
If a party chooses marriage and somehow chooses in some way to avoid having
children to frustrate the marital act to exclude children from inception
through to end then that’s an invalid marriage. It’s a great starting point for the tribunal
to investigate. This is a canonical opinion from a canon lawyer and to find out
whether the marriage is invalid or valid there is a need to petition a tribunal
where a person resides. It is a very challenging task and we need
to know how to really walk in God's ways in order to live a happy and favored
life. There is only one thing needed and that is to follow the ways of the
Lord. Whenever we come to a point in our lives when we encounter trials and
difficulties and standing up firm in our faith in God seems to be an
impossibility then all the more should we remain faithful and true to God. The
psalm reading tells us exactly why. This fear being spoken of in today's psalm
is the holy fear of the Lord and is different from other kinds of fear that we
know. It's more of the kind of fear that is coupled with respect and is the
beginning of wisdom as written in Proverbs 1:7. We have to be perfectly aware
of this and strive to maintain it within ourselves so as not to lose sight of
this aspect of God's Holiness. Over the years, the olive has been the symbol of
peace, wisdom, glory, fertility, power and pureness. The olive tree and olives
are mentioned over 30 times in the Bible, in both the New and Old Testaments.
It is one of the first plants mentioned in the Bible, and one of the most
significant. For example, it was an olive leaf that a dove brought back to Noah
to demonstrate that the flood was over. The Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem Greece
Psalms 128(127):1-2.3.4-5.
R: See how the Lord blesses those who fear him.
1 Blessed are you who fear the LORD, who walk in his ways! 2
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork; happy shall you be, and favored.
(R) 3 Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the recesses of your home;
your children like olive plants around your table...may you see the prosperity
of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
There is really no doubt to the power of God as shown in
today's gospel for all He had to do was to wish it. God wishes all of us to be
happy and we should no longer doubt God's great love for us as shown in His
fidelity, loving compassion and our response should be no other than to seek
and find it personally for ourselves without others forcing us to it to have
true knowledge of who our God really is. In a way mortal sin could also be
equated to leprosy although it does not rot the flesh as leprosy does but it
rots the soul. The faith of the leper in today's gospel is certainly
commendable and worthy of praise. He practiced and exercised his faith at all
cost. Just in case we don't know or forget, lepers during the time of Jesus are
considered outcasts and never allowed to be seen in public. He defied all
these, braved through it, stood forward and was rewarded. Amen. Hallelujah!
Matthew 8:1-4
1 When Jesus came down from the
mountain, great crowds followed him. 2 And then a leper approached, did him
homage, and said, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” 3 He stretched
out his hand, touched him, and said, “I will do it. Be made clean.” His leprosy
was cleansed immediately.
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