Palm Sunday opens the Holy Week

ON Palm Sunday, we will be having a very long gospel reading that narrates the very passion and death of Christ, our Redeemer. (cfr. Mt 26,14-27-66) Our human reaction to this day may be different from what should be expected from us. 

 That’s understandable. But we should not miss the fact that with the Holy Week and the long readings and other extraordinary forms of penance and mortification asked of us these days, we are actually invited to enter into the very dynamic of the most sublime form of love that Christ is showing us through his passion, death and later his resurrection. 

 This is what we should bear in mind as strongly and as deeply as possible. That’s because what we are given during these days is the occasion to turn ourselves to be truly like Christ, which is what we are meant to be. 

 Christ is the very personification of love, the very essence of God that is also meant for us. Love, of course, is the sweetest and greatest thing we can ever have, but we can achieve that only in heaven. While here, that love, given our wounded condition, cannot be pursued and developed without the cross of Christ. 

 We just have to learn to reconcile ourselves with that truth of faith. Let’s not deceive ourselves by thinking that we can achieve love and everything that it brings—joy, peace, etc.—without going through the cross of Christ. 

 Christ himself said it very clearly. If we have to follow him, as we must, we should deny ourselves and carry the cross. That’s because we always have the strong, almost inherent tendency to think that our true joy is when we would just satisfy our natural needs as well as our infranatural, i.e., sinful, wants and desires. 

 We need to be liberated from such enslaving tendency of ours. And there’s no other way to do that than by following what Christ said, taught and showed us. Indeed, we have to learn to truly deny ourselves and carry the cross of Christ. 

 This definitely is a big challenge, a very tall order. We first of all have to overcome whatever doubts and disbelief we can have regarding this truth of faith. We need to truly enliven our faith. And then, we should start going through a training process and program so that we can turn into practice what our faith tells us. 

 In this regard, we can never overemphasize the need for us to have some effective plan of life that makes this truth of our faith as its directing and shaping principle. Everything else in our life should be animated by this principle—our personal and family life, our professional and social life, our business and politics, our sports and entertainment, our cultural pursuits, etc. 

 We need to help one another in this effort. We should try our best that we create a world culture that lives this kind of spirit and lifestyle, first by clarifying whatever misconceptions we can have with regard to this truth of our faith, and then by constantly fostering its practice. 

 Now, with the powerful technologies at hand, we should see to it that they are used primarily for this purpose. We can be sure that by using these technologies for this purpose, we would be truly using them properly, and avoid being deceived and misled by their many tempting conveniences and advantages they offer. 

 May everyone have a most meaningful Holy Week!

We are gods

THAT’S what Christ told those Jews who could not believe that he was the Son of God. “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy,” those Jews said. “You, a man, are making yourself God.” (Jn 10,33) 

 That’s when Christ told them directly, “Is it not written in your law: ‘I said you are gods?’ If he called them gods, to whom the word of God was spoken, and the scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world: Thou blasphemes, because I said, I am the Son of God?” (Jn 10,34-36) 

 Then Christ appealed to them so they can believe that he was the Son of God and that we are meant to be children of God, sharers of God’s life and nature, by saying that if they found what he told them difficult to believe, then to consider the works he was doing, for they showed he was doing the works of God, his Father. 

 It’s very understandable for these Jews to find it difficult to believe that Christ was the Son of God, and God himself. It took time for some of them to believe him to be so. Christ had to perform so many miracles and many wonderful signs as testified by John the Baptist before some of them could believe he was the Son of God. 

 Now, that we are also children of God or that we are gods ourselves since we share in the very life and nature of God, as Christ clarified, that indeed is more difficult to believe. Before this truth of faith, what we have to do is to humble ourselves to be able to accept such truth, so unworthy we may feel to be, and then start aligning our thoughts, and will and all other faculties we have to such truth. 

 We need to level up our understanding of who we really are. We are not just a creature ruled by the laws of nature—be it biology, chemistry, physics, etc. With our intelligence and will, we also are a spiritual and personal being, poised to enter into the supernatural level of God. 

 Our life and world are not just natural. The reality that governs us includes the supernatural. And we can actually live in it because as Christ has shown and shared it with us, we are given God’s grace, which is God’s way of sharing his supernatural life and nature with us. 

 That God has to become man and that a woman can become the mother of the Son of God and can be rightly called as the Mother of God, since the Son is the same God as the Father and the Holy Spirit—all these should lead us to conclude that we are meant to be children of God, sharers of the divine life and nature. 

 We obviously would feel unbelieving before such tremendous truth of our faith about ourselves, but that’s just how and who we really are. The only way to accept this truth of faith is when we are humble enough to accept this truth in faith. 

 This is indeed a big challenge, a very tall order. And so, we just have to work it out as early and as earnestly as possible. We have to make this truth about ourselves more known, understood and appreciated. Let’s turn it into our life itself—with God’s grace and our relentless effort!

Eternal life only with Christ

“AMEN, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (Jn 8,58) 

 Words of Christ that so confounded the Jews of that time that they started throwing stones at him. These are words Christ said to show that only with him can we have eternal life. Yes, we are meant for eternal life. 

 Christ himself also said: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (Jn 14,6) These words indeed require a lot of faith for them to be taken seriously and to be believed. We need to keep our focus on Christ whatever may be our condition, circumstance and situation in life. 

 But let’s remember that faith is freely given to us. God shares it with us abundantly, us who are his image and likeness, children of his, sharers of his divine life and nature. We should just accept that gift and make many acts of faith since the reality Christ is telling us is something spiritual and supernatural, something that simply goes beyond our natural capacity to understand. 

 Death therefore does not have the last word for us. As a Eucharistic Preface of the Mass for the Dead would put it, “Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended, and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.” 

 We always have to keep in mind that we are meant for eternal life. Our life here on earth is simply transitory. It is meant as a test for us to see if what God wants us to be, that is, to be his image and likeness, is also what we want ourselves to be. 

 That test will have an end, and that is our death. We should try our best to pass that test. And the secret is to stick to Christ always and as tightly as possible. He has given us his word and teaching, his example, the Church and his very own self in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. 

 Thus, he also said that whoever keeps his word will never see death. (cfr. Jn 8,51) He is referring here to the eternal death of being separated permanently from God. That’s when we fail in the test God has given us in this life. When we are with Christ, believing and living his word and will, our death would actually lead us to our eternal life with God. 

 St. Paul encapsulated this most wonderful truth of our faith when he said, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom 6,5) 

 No wonder then that Christ culminated his redemptive work with his passion and death on the cross. Only then would his own resurrection take place. Christ made this point clear when after being rightly identified by Peter as ‘the Christ of God,’ he proceeded to talk about his passion, death and resurrection. 

 “The Son of Man must suffer greatly,” he said, “and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” (Lk 9,22) 

 We have to deepen our belief that with Christ’s resurrection, sin and death have been definitively conquered, and a new life in God is given to us. We are now a new creation, with the power of Christ to conquer sin and death and everything else that stands in the way of our becoming true children of God.