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.