THE CHOICE TO LOVE

6th Sunday of Easter
Jn 15:9-17

Many are looking for jobs nowadays. Screenings for different forms employment are left and right. Before an applicant shows up for his job interview, he diligently prepares himself. Aside from practicing his answers beforehand, he never forgets to ask some heavenly aid.

The applicant willingly submits himself to many tests in the hope that he would be chosen for the job. The possibility of failure and rejection is very real, but the tough hope that he might be chosen gives him the courage to endure all the tension that goes with job hunting. To be chosen means to be picked out, to be favored, to be selected as the best among the rest. This is the reason why despite the difficulty, the risk is worth taking.

When the applicant passes the exams and the interviews, tables change. Whereas before the company had the choice, now he has the choice to accept or reject the company’s offer. The choice suddenly belongs to the applicant. And true choice presupposes the freedom and power to commit one’s self.

When St. John speaks about the love of God in the second reading and the gospel today, he clarifies what he means – “This is love: not that we love God but that God has loved us first.” The gospel stresses the same message: “You did not choose Me. I chose you.” We do not need to fall in line and submit an application cum resume for God to choose us. He already made the eternal decision: He loved us. He made His choice: He chose us.

“As the Father has loved Me, so I love you,” Jesus said. Clearly, the measure of Jesus’ love for us is the measure of the Father’s love for Him. Jesus loves us so much because the Father not only loves Him so much but also because the Father has loved Him first.

The love of God comes first. And precisely because God loves us that we have the power and freedom to also choose God. He has already made known His choice of us: “You did not choose Me. I chose you.” Having said this, Jesus admonishes us: “Remain in My love.” This expresses the hope that we would value God’s choice of us. Can we remain in the love that chooses us?

The love of God comes first. He already loves us that is why He can command us to love. Pope Benedict XVI said, “Love can be commanded because it has first been given.” To love our fellow human being as God loves us is imitating Jesus who loves us as the Father loves Him.

The love of God is based on a choice: He loves because He chooses to love. Love is a decision. And this decision is a choice that remains even unto death. Indeed, is there a love greater than laying down one’s life for one’s friends? None. And Jesus Himself is the supreme example of this love: His love brought Him to the cross and the love of the Father raised Him from the dead. Jesus spent Himself, gave Himself until He had nothing more to give. He emptied Himself.

To love is to choose. In everything He did, Jesus always chose to love. His choice was not a once-and-for-all event; He chose to love at all times. This choice drained Him, squeezed out all the life in Him, killed Him.

The true measure of love is love without measure.

THAT HAND, THAT ABUNDANT FRUIT

5th Sunday of Easter
Jn 15:1-8

Do you remember when Jesus approached a fig tree, searching for its fruits, but found none? Mk 11:12-14 tells us that, disappointed, Jesus cursed the tree and it withered.

In Lk 13:6-9, Jesus narrated the story of a landowner who, also in search for a fruit from one of his trees, found none. The landowner then ordered his servant to cut the tree, but the servant pleaded with him to give the tree one more year to bear fruit and if still it produces none, then it may be cut off already.

Very clearly, Jesus expects His disciples to bear fruit. He wants His disciples to be “mabunga” (fruitful) not “mabongga” (showy). But more than on a disciple that bears fruit, Jesus delights on a very fruitful disciple. In the gospel today, He says that we glorify the Father in our bearing much fruit. Moreover, Jesus tells us that the Father prunes the branch that bears fruit so that it may become even more fruitful. And the person who lives in Him and He in that person, indeed, bears fruit abundantly.

What does it mean to bear fruit abundantly? To bear fruit abundantly means to produce good works for the kingdom of God. God is not contented with occasional good works. He wants us to be perfect as He is perfect. He wants us to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and to love our neighbor not only as we love our selves but even as He loves us. He expects us to use our gifts to the fullest always. When I was still in college, the Jesuit priests at the Ateneo would always admonish us: “Always strive for the magis!” For it was St. Ignatius of Loyola, their founder, who adopted the motto: “Ad majorem Dei gloriam!” (“For the greater glory of God”).

Relying on our own strength alone, we are bound to fail. Thus, Jesus reminds us: “Remain in Me.” Separated from Jesus, we can do nothing. We cannot even start desiring to do good deeds if we are apart from Jesus and if we do not have His grace. But, united to Christ, we cannot only bear fruit; rather, we bear can fruit abundantly.

The light bulb will not light unless it is connected to electricity or to a battery. The bulb may be beautiful and its light is really bright, but what use does it have if it is not connected to electricity or to a battery? We are like light bulbs and Jesus is the electricity or the battery. But even more beautiful because Jesus never goes brown-out neither does He go low batt.

But you and I do go busted. We breakdown. We go out-of-order. As the Father prunes us, in the hope that we may bear fruit abundantly, we hurt, we falter, we quit, we sulk, and we even get angry at God sometimes. Yet, we know that indeed the lush and fruitful tree is the tree that is pruned.

The German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said, “The hand of God is at times the hand of grace and at other times the hand of suffering, but it is always the hand of love.” He said it right, did he not? The hand of God moves two-way. The hand of God presses on what it touches with opposite weights. But its constant goal is love.

God prunes and cleans the branch that bears fruit so that it may bear fruit even more abundantly. God’s ways can be very painful, can they not be? But His ways always ends for our benefit, do they not? That is how the hand of God moves in our life: gentle but also tough; like a calm breeze but also like a raging storm. Sometimes His hand caresses us but sometimes it strikes us down. It cannot always be happy because sadness is also real. There is comfort because there is suffering. One cannot exist without the other, as we can recognize light because we know darkness, we can say when it is daytime because we have been through the night, we can judge what is beautiful because we understand what ugliness is all about. If one is gone, both go.

In all these opposite realities, however, the love of God persists. Our opposite experiences in the way the hand of God moves in our life are all expressions of God’s love for us. Does a father discipline his child simply because he has nothing good to do with his begotten? Does a lover hurt simply to make the beloved feel bad? Do we get angry simply because we want attention? No. The father disciplines, the lover hurt, and we do get angry still because of love. If love is not the reason for the discipline, for the hurt, for the anger, then perhaps we are not real parents, we are not really loving, and we are animals – not real human beings. It is also true that if we are not disciplined, perhaps we are not a true child; if our lover never hurts, maybe we are not truly loved; if we are not reprimanded, possibly we are not being cared for at all.

Suffering has a beautiful message. If it is the way the hand of God moves, we should be grateful because we it means that we are not far from God, for His hand still reaches us. His Eminence Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales, in his homily of Maundy Thursday’s Chrism Mass last year, said, “The person who lives in luxury and pleasure is pathetic – he or she is the person whom God has truly abandoned. God no longer pays attention to him or her. God has already abandoned him or her to luxury and pleasure.” And if it God does not pay attention to us anymore and abandons us to the luxuries and pleasures of life, we end up nowhere else but to the danger that befalls those from whom the hand of God departs.

“The hand of God is at times the hand of grace and at other times the hand of suffering, but it is always the hand of love.” And that hand alone can surely make us bear abundant fruit. We pray that our hands may be like that hand, too.

NOT ABOUT PALM BRANCHES BUT ABOUT DISCIPLESHIP

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
Mk 14: 1-15:47

We gather to remember the passion of the Lord Jesus, praying that by remembering we enter into its very mystery. We gather to express our deepest appreciation for the love that opposed violence, the love that endured violence. We gather to give thanks for that love and to show our solidarity with people who are victims of violence because of their heroic love.

The cross of Jesus has not yet been dismantled; the passion He endured is far from over. In the midst of life, the cross stands not as a mere ritual decoration but as a reminder of the cost the world demands from those who oppose its ways through the values of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Could Jesus have avoided the cross? Could He have taken a detour instead of heading straight to Calvary? Could He have saved Himself from the violence He suffered and instead lived a quiet life in Galilee? Did His merciful love really need the cross?

Jesus did not look for the cross; the world looked at the cross instead as its way of eliminating Jesus. The cross is not the Father’s idea; the cross, rather, is the final solution that the enemies of Jesus thought about. God is not a bloodthirsty monster who desired the death of His beloved Son. But when He gave us His only begotten Son, the Father gave up His Son not only to become human but also to live a truly human life. And what is human life?

True, human life is full of many wonderful things, but it is also true that human life is marked by uncertainties and arbitrariness. Uncertainties and arbitrariness – these are two of our sad experiences in life. We are never certain of many things, including the number of our days and even how our days will end. We may plan but our plan cannot have the finality of certitude until it actually happens. The arbitrariness of life makes the uncertainty of life even worse. Not all things in life are governed by logical expectations: in this life, good people do not necessarily prosper while the wicked are not always punished. In sharing our humanity, Jesus likewise and truly shared in the uncertainties and arbitrariness of our earthly life. In fact, the greater proof of Jesus’ humanity is His sharing in our experience of life’s uncertainties and arbitrariness. Uncertainties and arbitrariness – such is our cross; it is also Jesus’.

On the first Palm Sunday, the people shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Acclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ, they waved palm branches and spread their cloaks for Jesus to walk on. But five days later, we hear them chanting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” That – that is what we call uncertainty. And come to think of it, was life fair with Jesus? He surely was an unwilling victim of life’s arbitrariness: He healed many yet many hit Him real hard; He helped many but many jeered at Him; He showed mercy to many yet many showed Him no mercy at all; He raised people to life but people raised Him on a cross. Having done not even a single wrong, Jesus suffered and was killed nonetheless. Such is the arbitrariness of life.

Amazing love! It chose to die than not love at all. Jesus could have taken a detour and not entered into Jerusalem as His disciples advised Him. But instead, we see Him entering Jerusalem with pomp and cheering in fulfillment of the prophecy regarding the much-awaited Messiah. He did not disguise Himself and quietly slipped through the backdoor. He even led a parade through Jerusalem!

Jesus decided to face the power that opposed Him. And when He did so, He showed suffering to the forefront. If He were to avoid suffering, He must avoid facing the authorities. To do so, He had to turn a blind eye to the sufferings of people and conspire with the violence of oppressive silence. But precisely because that was not His choice, His love in itself became the victim of suffering. He could have kept Himself away from suffering by being insensitive to the sufferings of others, by clinging to His divinity, by refusing to have anything to do with us, by sharing in the likeness of our nature but not in the uncertainties and arbitrariness of our life. Yet, again, that was not His choice, and that is precisely the reason why we gather today.

We gather today to remember. We are a people of remembrance. This is the command we received from Jesus Himself: “Do this in memory of Me.” This means that when we gather to “Break Bread”, we must remember Jesus, and faith tells us that Jesus becomes present again in our midst. But this command to remember is not exclusively about the Eucharistic meal. It also means that when we remember suffering, for example, our memory becomes a protest. Remembering suffering today urges a tomorrow that is not a mere repetition of the past. That is why the memory of suffering is dangerous: in the very act of remembering the suffering of the victim is the protest that this should not happen again. No one deserves death.

The memory of the passion of Jesus teaches us to pay attention to the sufferings, not only of Jesus, but also of others. Of course, we cannot eradicate suffering entirely, much more by ourselves alone, but what do with the pain of those, at least, within our reach? Do we make it own just as Jesus made ours His? Are we another Jesus to them?

Waving palm branches today is not only a symbol of welcoming Jesus. It is, rather, a very deep token of our discipleship. Jesus was already welcomed two thousand years ago; let us now follow Him unto Calvary. Let us be like Him. Let us die and rise to life with Him. Palm Sunday is not a day of dramatizing our welcoming of Jesus, but a day of reaffirming our following of Him. This day is not about palm branches as it is about Christian discipleship. The holy palm branches we wave today will wither in just a matter of days, but may we, in our resolve to follow Jesus, to strive to become more and more like Jesus, and to love like Jesus, in the face of life’s uncertainties and arbitrariness, never waiver.

OBRA MAESTRA

4th Sunday of Lent
Eph 2:4-10/Jn 3:14-21

The scene we have in the gospel today is rather rare. Quite often, when Jesus and the Pharisees meet, they clash. But today, Jesus and a Pharisee are calmly engaged in a theological exchange. Like a real disciple, the Pharisee listens intently to Jesus and asks Him sincere questions. The Pharisee’s name is Nicodemus, indeed a disciple of Jesus. He is one of the secret disciples of Jesus among the Pharisees.

It is evening as the two converse with each other. In the middle of the dark, Nicodemus searches and struggles to understand the Light of the world, Jesus Himself. To him Jesus tells the summary of the Good News: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” As exegetes claim, even if all the pages of the Bible were burnt, we still have the entire gospel in this sixteenth verse of John chapter thirteen.

God loves us not because of the cross. Rather, God loves us so much that is why there is the cross. Thus, the cross is not the cause, but the effect of God’s prodigal love for us. With or without the cross, God loves us. The cross is never a hindrance for God to love us, even if He who dies on the cross is His only begotten Son. Indeed, as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, “On the cross we see the mad love of God.” Truly, God loves us more than we know.
Today’s gospel carries a message of intense hope: hope that if we truly believe that God loves us so much, we would certainly strive to rise from the darkness we are in. As Jesus explains to Nicodemus the darkness that engulfs them, light explodes from the truth of God’s love that is being offered from the cross – even from the cross – to each of us through His Son, Jesus Christ. Whatever happens, we will never embrace the dark; the Light embraces us from the cross.

When the Light of the world was born, all darkness was vanquished. The truth about all things has been revealed. Under true light, there is no denying, no hiding, no pretending; everything is cystral clear: white is white, black is black, red is red, green is always green. Such is the nature of light: it reveals the truth.

But the ugly loves the dark. For when the ugly goes unto the light, its ugliness is seen by all. The ugly tends to hide and to be ashamed. That is why, unpleasant traits are painstakingly being hidden and unpleasant behavior is always a cause for shame.

But you and I are not ugly. God creates only beauty. And we are the crowning glory of God’s creation. We are beautiful, and we do not fit in the dark. We fit in the light for we are God’s obra maestra. This is what St. Paul the Apostle says in the second reading today: “We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning He had meant us to live it.”

Easier said than done. Sweet to hear but hard to believe in. There are many who find it difficult to think that indeed they are God’s obra maestra, thinking that they are blunders and failures in God’s otherwise grand creation. Perhaps, we ourselves are tempted to think that way, too. We know our selves. We know our ugliness. And truly, our mistakes, weaknesses, and sins can overwhelm us sometimes. But this is the truth: We do not know our selves the way God knows us; and while we are disturbed by our ugliness, God focuses on our real beauty instead. For Him, we are simply priceless.

But, in life, many people keep on running away, fleeing, and hiding, afraid of their own shadow, only to realize at some point that the antidote to their fear is within their power: To conquer one’s shadow, one simply has to face the light. Face the light and see the beauty within. Face THE Light – Jesus the Christ – and see your real beauty. In Him who, crucified on the cross, has no beauty in Him, we are enlightened about how beautiful and priceless we are for God. Face the Light and shed the same Light upon those who see nothing in themselves but ugliness and filth.

The darkness engulfing us may conceal our real beauty, but the Light who came into the world reveals the truth about our selves: We are God’s work of art!

SEEING ANGELS IN THE MIDST OF WILD BEASTS

1st Sunday of Lent
Mk 1:12-15

We hear, see, and feel that indeed we are in the midst of a real global economic recession. Sometimes, when faced with the threat of popular upheaval due to national financial crisis, some politicians resort to tactics that aim to divert the people’s attention from the real issue. Such is an old ploy.

In the year 64 A.D., Rome was on the verge of economic turmoil. The emperor that time was Nero. To divert the people’s attention from the real issue, Nero burnt the city. The fire lasted for a week while Nero, from the terrace of his imperial palace, watched Rome burn as he fiddled his violin. When the fire was put out, half of the city was already reduced to ashes.

To cover up what he did, Nero created a fact-finding commission composed of his cronies. The commission was tasked to find who the arsonists were. But the result of the findings was already decided upon even before the commissioners began the investigation. They agreed on an easy scapegoat: the arsonists were the Christians.

Nero experienced no difficulty at all in winning the sympathy of pagan Romans against the Christian minority. Even prior to the catastrophic fire in the imperial city, the pagan majority was already suspicious of Christian population that was regarded that time as a merely small but steadily growing sect. Moreover, the pagans were already blaming the Christians for the misfortunes that struck the city even before it went up in smoke, for Christians refused to worship the gods and goddesses of the Romans. What made the situation even worse for Christians was their strong denial of the divinity of the Roman emperor. For Christians, there was only one God and Jesus was His only begotten Son, not the emperor. Rumors also circulated saying Christians would secretly gather to eat flesh and drink blood. They called it “Breaking of Bread”, we understand it today as the “Eucharist”, but for the first century pagan Romans it was sheer cannibalism.

Countless Christians were arrested, deprived of their rights, humiliated in public, tortured, and killed. Because those who reported Christians to authorities were even rewarded handsomely, betrayal knew neither blood nor friendship. Many of those who were arrested were fed to wild beasts. Some were burnt at stake. Others were either beheaded or crucified. And still countless others were stoned to death, roasted like a lechon (roasted pig), skinned alive, or simply pierced through the heart. Not only the numbers of those who were killed, but also the invention of new instruments for execution was truly horrifying. While many apostasized, still more remained strong in their resolve to die rather than deny the Christian Faith. Indeed, Nero was able to divert the people’s attention from the threat of a collapsing economy, but innocent Christians paid the costly price for such a diversion that later became a much-welcomed national pastime for pagan Rome. This was the beginning of the long history of widespread persecution of Christians. Starting with Emperor Nero in 64 A.D., it stopped only with Emperor Constantine in the fourth century when Christianity, ironically, became the religion of the empire.

But the fourth century was too far from the year 64 A.D., besides no one knew how long it would last after it started, and the fear of horrible death was real then as it is today, thus Mark wrote his gospel to encourage and strengthen his persecuted Christian brethren in Rome. It is therefore not at all surprising that Mark opens his story of Jesus in the desert.

As it is now so was it before, the desert was home to wild beasts. Remember that another word for desert is “wilderness”. It was like the Roman arena or coliseum where Christians were thrown to salivating beasts. But as Mark begins his gospel, we do not see the early Christians in the wilderness but Christ Himself. Jesus is in the desert, fasting, tempted by Satan, and surrounded by wild beasts even as angels minister to Him. And like the persecuted Christians, Jesus is innocent of any crime, including sin.

Indeed innocence is not always a protection against sufferings and temptations, against injustice, and even against death. Instead, experience teaches us that sometimes it is the righteous who suffer even as the wicked prosper.

Before the widespread persecution of Christians, Jesus was the first to have been persecuted. Before His faithful disciples were thrown and fed to the wild beasts, Jesus was already with the beasts in the wilderness. Before the innocent was killed by the guilty, the guilty already slaughtered the Innocent One: Jesus the Christ. Did Jesus not say (Cf. Jn 15:18 and 20), “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me first. If they persecute Me, they will persecute you too. No servant is greater than his master?”

We begin Lent in the wilderness. The wild beasts that surround us in the desert heighten our sense of vulnerability. The Apostle Peter warns us in his first epistle: “Be alert, be on watch, for your enemy, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Pt 5:8). Fear, indeed, is a factor. But more so is Jesus Christ. He is with us in the wilderness.

While we do need to go through our own wilderness every now and then, we do not need to go through it alone. We may be unwillingly thrown into the wilderness of life or unwittingly lost our way and just find our selves there. But, certainly, no one prohibits us from going through our wilderness without Christ Jesus. He was there first. He was already there even before we arrived.

For our Lenten observance, our parish takes the theme Kuwaresma 2009…Salamin ng Buhay Ko (“Lent 2009…Mirror of My Life”). Through the forty days of Lent, let us take a look at the mirror of our life every now and then. Let us look at it more intently. And let the light that helps us see our reflection on the mirror be the light of Christ only. Let the light be Christ Himself, for He alone makes us see angels even in the midst of wild beasts.

HE CONTINUES TAUNTING JESUS

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 1:40-45

A leper approached Jesus and said, “If You want to, You can cure me.” What exactly did the leper mean? Depending on the tone of his voice, there are, at least, four possible meanings of what the leper said to Jesus.

First, the leper was expressing faith in the healing power of Jesus. He wanted Jesus to know that he believes in Him. This is the safest interpretation.

Second, the leper was encouraging Jesus to use His healing power. “If You want to, You can cure me” was another way of saying “Go ahead, Jesus, You can do it. You can cure me. Cure me!” This kind of interpretation may sound rather unlikely, but, just the same, it is among the possibilities.

Third, the leper was allowing Jesus to heal him. He was welcoming Jesus into the privacy of his leper’s “world”, a “world” where no one wants to enter as either a dweller or a guest. He was granting Jesus the privilege to touch him in his vulnerability. This interpretation gives importance to the role that the leper played in his healing. After all, healing happens only when the sick allows the healer to heal him.

Fourth, the leper was taunting Jesus. This is the most disturbing possible interpretation. Listening more keenly to how, and not only to what, the leper told Jesus, one cannot miss even at least a slight tone of sarcasm in the leper’s voice. Notice that the “if” was placed before the “want”: If You want…. While the leper believed in the healing power, the leper seemed to be doubting the goodness of the Healer Himself. The leper’s statement sounds like a question rather than a declaration: “If You want to, You can cure me. But do You want to?” It gives the impression that the leper was not sure if Jesus really wanted to heal him at all. The painful years of being a religious and social outcast taught the leper the lesson that no one would ever bother about him, that no one would ever care enough about him, that no one would ever give a damn helping him and alleviating him from his misery: Was Jesus a different guy after all? Would He give a damn about me and my misery? Would He break the Law that prohibits any good from touching the leprous? Would He do it just to free one poor soul like me? Truly, cynicism can be a disease more difficult to heal than leprosy.

We do not doubt the healing power of Jesus. And, more than His power, we never doubt His compassionate love for all, most especially, the least, the last, and the lost. We believe that Jesus can. We are certain that Jesus cares. But the leprous man in the gospel today seems to be not so sure about Jesus – if not about what He can, perhaps, what He cares about. And Jesus was not happy about that. The gospel says that when the leprous man told Jesus, “If You want to, You can cure me”, Jesus felt sorry for him. But the original text, which is written in Greek, says that Jesus became fuming mad. And stretching out His hand, touching the leper, He said, “Of course, I want to. Be cured!” Thereupon, the leprosy left the man immediately.

Jesus did not only feel sorry for the leper; the original text says that He became indignant. Indignant – quite a strong word, expressing a strong emotion. However, the original text is quite unclear as to whom Jesus got angry with. Was He fuming mad at the leper himself or was He indignant with what has become of the leper – cynical about the goodness of his fellow human being? And what made the leper a cynic soul? The inhumanity of man to his fellowman. Worse, such inhumanity was sanctified by a religion that considered the leprous practically dead even while still living. Worst, the same religion judged as unclean not only the lepers themselves but also anyone who touched them. Thus, Jesus had every reason to fume in righteous anger.

The leper in the gospel today was cured. But the cynicism that many have learned from the way they have been treated by their fellow human being has yet to be healed. Until such healing happens, a leper continues taunting Jesus.

THE JOB OF SUFFERING

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Job 7:1-4.8-7/Mk 1:29-39

The question of suffering is as old as humanity. It remains unanswered. After two millennia, life has already taught us that the answer to the question of suffering is not only illusive; it does not exist at all.

Human suffering is a mystery, not a problem. That is why human suffering cannot be solved. Yes, it can be relieved. But solved? No.

A problem can be solved. That is precisely why a problem is a problem: it has a solution. It may take a long while and require a difficult struggle, but solved, a problem can always be. Take for example, in a mathematical equation 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 1 is a problem and 2 is its solution. You may have countless mathematical problems of great proportions, but whatever those problems may be, they always have a corresponding solution.

A mystery is never a problem. It does not have any solution. What we have grown accustomed to calling as “mysteries” in print media, motion pictures, radio broadcasting, and alike are, strictly speaking, not mysteries but problems because, more often than not, they communicate stories that carry some sort of resolutions at the end. A mystery cannot be solved. It remains a mystery forever. We know something about a mystery but we do not know and cannot know everything about it. One classic example of this is the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity: the very mystery of God who is one and indivisible and yet three in person. Human suffering is another good example.
Human suffering is a mystery. And while the suffering of anyone in general is already very difficult to accept and understand, the suffering of a good person is more than twice the pain. Why do good people suffer?

We have in the first reading today one good man who did not deserve the suffering he went through. His name was Job. And because, indeed, money is not the root of all evil, but the love of it instead, Job was one example of a man who was very wealthy but upright and blameless too. He and his wife had seven sons and three daughters, the largest estate in the kingdom, the biggest number of cattle, and the pinkest – so to speak – of health. So wealthy were they that his sons and daughters could party every single night, and every single morning Job would rise early to offer a holocaust sacrifice on behalf of his children who, he thought, might have committed any sin while partying. Moreover, with all his blessings in life, Job never abused his power and privilege nor exploited anyone. On the contrary, he used his riches and influence in helping the needy. But Job’s fidelity to God was put to the test by a series of calamities that took away from him his children, his friends, and his wealth. With tattered clothes and shaven head, Job fell to the ground and said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

As if his anguish was not enough, boils suddenly appeared on Job’s body, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Now, even his wife advised him to curse God and just die, but Job did not. Not that He took all these sufferings with a loud laugh. Rather while he endured all the pain – physical and emotional – he struggled with one agonizing question: What did he do to deserve such a dreadful fate. And of the many friends he used to have when life was still sunny for him, only three remained when the sky darkened. Unfortunately, those three proved to be no consolation at all for Job: they kept nagging him with their suspicion that Job must have done something truly evil to suffer so greatly and so Job must confess his guilt before God. Job, however, protested: he was innocent of any sin, for he was always faithful to God and charitable to his neighbor.

So, why did Job suffer? I know not. Neither Job knew. But in the midst of his undeserved misery, Job did not lose his faith in God. However, even as he tenaciously held on to his faith in God, he ran out of reasons to hope that his life will change for the better. Falling into despair, Job sighed from the very deepest recesses of his heart. That sigh is our first reading today.

In the parable of his life, Job’s fortune did change for the better, but he did not receive the answer to his question regarding his unmerited suffering. This good man, Job, who suffered a series of tragedies he did not deserve, stands for the many innocents in real life who wonder at their pain. Even until today, Job personifies the eternal question of the suffering: “Why me?” You and I are familiar with Job because if few of us share his innocence, all of us share his hurt and agony and confusion. His question is our question and his despair can be our despair. And we still ask, “Why am I suffering? Why me?” or, worse, “Why do the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper?”

Jesus, too, had no ready-made answer to every affliction brought to Him during His earthly life. He also had His own share of human sufferings. This does not mean that He was powerless to crush any pain, to soothe any ache, and to make whole again whatever is broken. This only shows that, indeed, human suffering is a mystery that can only be relieved but never solved with a final blow.

While problems search for solutions, mysteries beg for enlightenment. And this is precisely what Jesus brought with Him each time He came face-to-face with a suffering soul: enlightenment. After all, Jesus Himself is the Light of the world. As He did during His public ministry, so does Jesus continue doing today: the healing He brings to every human suffering may at times be physical and literal but most of the time spiritual. As He Himself is the Light, so is He Himself the Healing. He enlightens us in our sufferings not by taking away our sufferings from us, but by sharing in them. As the Apostle Peter said in his first epistle, by His wounds we have been healed (1 Pt 2:24). Because Jesus shares in our afflictions, the suffering of a righteous man becomes meritorious not only for him but even for the whole world. The innocent suffers in union with Christ. Because Jesus identifies Himself with all who are in pain, we meet Jesus in one another’s suffering and we are graced with the privilege of attending to Jesus’ need in the person of one another.

There is simply too much suffering in the world. But with what Jesus did to human suffering, we can say that where there is righteous suffering there is abundant grace. Everybody suffers, and the words of the apostles in the gospel today are not only for Jesus but for you and me too: “Everybody is looking for you.”