Pins of Light:Scattered hints to provoke thought and talk about God...
This bible blog was launched for Advent 2007, and began as a daily reflection on scriptural readings until Easter of 2008. Since every reflection posed a question to God, this initial portion of Pins of Light is called Questions for God.
From March 2008 to December 2009, Pins of Light has featured a weekly reflection on the Sunday readings.
Since 2008, Advent and Lenten recollections have also been conducted on line.
In September 2010, this web site with its new look launches as the Sunday bible blogs resume. I hope you enjoy reading them and stumble into some hints about God's whereabouts.
I've been thinking about Cristy these days. I don't think I will ever forget what I saw when I visited her the other day in the hospital. I've been warned about her, but I was shocked anyway. She wasn't at all the Cristy I knew. Her cancer had ravaged her body: All skin and bones, she stared at me with one eye, the other forced shut by the growing tumor in her brain.
When I reached for her hand, she clutched mine with what remaining strength she had, and because she could no longer speak, she could only plead with her eyes and her groans. It was the saddest, most painful sound.
I didn't know what to say. How do you offer consolation to someone who is experiencing a suffering you don't understand? Words failed me. The only thing I could do was assure her of my prayers. But as I did this, I also heard another voice inside asking: "Why, Lord? Why have our prayers gone unanswered?" That morning I left Cristy's hospital room helpless and heartbroken.
Forgive me, Lord, but since then I've been thinking: I think I understand why your critics sometimes complain that you're deaf and mute. Times like this, you don't seem to hear our prayers. And the times we most need to hear you speak are the times you seem to fall most silent. I don't know why you do it. It's easy to explain this away if it's treated as a theological subject, but when one sees pain up close...
And of course, just to complicate my life, as you sometimes do, today's Gospel story has to be about the healing of a deaf and mute--just when I've been wondering about the very same things about you!
The strange part is, you don't do a quick cure here as you usually do in other healing stories. You know that you could have simply said, "Your sins are forgiven"--which, much to the chagrin of your heresy-obsessed enemies, is your usual formula when you heal paralytics and the like. Not this time though. You take the man away from the crowd and then heal him in a most human way: by touching him--his ears and tongue.
While all this goes on, I can't help but wonder: Are you trying to tell me something? Are you trying to open my ears as well? Who's being deaf and mute here? I couldn't hear you as I stood before Cristy, and I certainly felt like I had a speech impediment.
There's a term in psychology for all this: Projection. "Projection" refers to the unconscious act of denying something about ourselves by ascribing it to something or someone else. Maybe I've been projecting all along. Maybe I've been turning the table on you. As it turns out, now I suspect that I'm the one who can't hear you, and I'm the one with the speech impediment.
Lord, what you do with the man in the story is instructive. You take him away from the noise of the crowd. And there alone with him, you insert your fingers into his ears and command them to open up. No wonder I have been unable to hear you, much less offer any word of consolation to Cristy. I haven't allowed you to take me away with you, far from the madness of my world.
Let me steal away with you, Lord. Let me hear you--not the easy platitudes that explain your mysteries away, but the sometimes painful and bewildering truths that deepen your mysteries. Touch my tongue, and take away my every speech impediment--whatever keeps me from true prayer, from opening my heart to you, and giving voice to its innermost hopes and dreams, deepest fears and anxieties, so that I may bring your consolation to those who most need it. Amen.
Today's Gospel story reminds me of what happened to me last May, when I was in Rome for a meeting. Thanks to a Filipino Jesuit friend, Fr. Joe Quilongquilong, I got to join the Scavi Tour, touted as one of the hottest tickets in Rome.
"It's extraordinary," promised Father Joe, who, having lived in Rome for years, has become our resident expert in Church history there.
At the time I had no idea what the Scavi Tour was, but soon enough I learned that "scavi" meant "excavations," and that the tour, with only 120 visitors allowed per day, would take me to the necropolis (or "city of the dead") beneath the St. Peter's Basilica and eventually to the tomb of St. Peter--a graffiti wall with the Greek inscription "Peter is here" and a small hole with two boxes containing human bones believed to belong to St. Peter.
I still don't understand exactly what I experienced at the end of the tour as I prayed before St. Peter's sepulchral chamber at the basilica crypt. It was some kind of unexpected religious experience, when I felt mysteriously connected to St. Peter. There, on my knees, I was suddenly overwhelmed with memories of St. Peter's words. Wave after wave, they rushed to me--those unforgettable lines that have been attributed to him in the gospels:
When you saw your other followers leave and you asked them if they too would leave you behind, Peter gave voice to every disciple's deepest desires: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Only you have the words of eternal life."
When the miraculous catch made him feel he might have too much in his hands, he fell on his knees and told you: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man."
When he thoughtlessly jumped overboard to try to walk on the water towards you and began to sink, he cried out: "Save me, Lord!"
When you scolded him for refusing to let you wash his feet, he changed his mind: "Lord, wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head!"
When you kept asking him whether or not he loved you, his pained response was: "Lord, you know that I love you!"
And of course, when you asked your disciples who people said you were, his famous confession today was: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!"
It was as if St. Peter himself was speaking to me. Each line I remembered I resonated with; each word I heard I recognized as also my own. The circumstances in his life in which those words had been spoken made me realize what I had always felt: Simon Peter is my brother.
Always the first to speak among the disciples, always the quickest to rush in--sometimes without adequate thought, he found himself often having too much in his hands or simply out of his depths. Among your disciples, St. Peter was always first to recognize you, but was also the one who denied you at the time you most needed him. Lord, you know I am the same. How often I've rushed in only to find that I have too much in my hands. How often I've jumped into a situation only to find myself out of my depths. Like Peter, I love you passionately and recognize you immediately, but I've also often forgotten you, denied you, and turned away!
Lately, I've been feeling that I'm out of my depths and out of sorts. Perhaps like Peter, I have rushed in too soon again. Maybe I've ended up with too much in my hands again. And maybe I've dived in too deep again. Save me, Lord! Save me from every sinking feeling! I should learn from St. Peter, my brother, who, unlike Judas, was saved only because he kept his eyes fixed on you.
Lord, I think there's a little bit of Peter in each of us. The question really is: "Which Peter?" The Peter who is first to recognize you--as he does in the gospel story today, or the Peter who denies you? Grant us the grace to be the Peter who sees you first even if the best he can do in following you is to fumble after you.
In the more secular world of the Internet, everyone seems to be talking about what happened at last Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards.
Country singer Taylor Swift had just won Best Female Video, and the nineteen-year old singer was really overjoyed because it was her first time to win the award. In the middle of her speech, hip hop singer, Kanye West, stormed the stage, grabbed her mike, interrupting her speech, and announced something like: "I'm happy for you, Taylor, but I think Beyonce's video is the best!" Kanye was booed and got off the stage, while poor Taylor, unable to complete her speech, was led away, still looking stunned.
Your disciples arguing about who among them is the greatest reminds me of this competitive world we live in and our obsession with being the best. Kanye West is but an extreme example. I'm not sure if it's something about our society today, or maybe something more fundamental--like being human and needing approval, if not, admiration--life sometimes lapses into a race for bragging rights. It's a phenomenon evident in different areas of our lives--certainly in our work, but also in our social lives!
But as the Gospel story shows today, we're not exempt from it in our spiritual lives either.It seems that even those committed to following you can end up in the same trap. Even in the realm of discipleship, we at times want to outdo one another and be considered the "greatest." Some of us try our best at distinguishing ourselves in our devotions; others work hard at outshining others in terms of service. These are all good in themselves, but once we grow more concerned with ourselves and how we fare, that's the moment we lose sight of you. Today you remind us that if we want to be first, we have to be last.
Cute. But what does it mean exactly?
Reading the question in your disciple's mind, you called for a child and wrapped your arms around it, then you tell your disciples: “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me."
For us to understand what you mean, I think we can go back to the VMAs. Late that evening, many awards later, Beyonce was called on stage to receive the final and most coveted award, Video of the Year, for her "Single Ladies." But instead of keeping that moment all to herself and hugging the limelight, she called Taylor Swift back on stage to allow the younger singer to finish her interrupted acceptance speech. It was one helluva classy act. By graciously stepping out of the limelight in order to share it with another, she showed who the real winner was that night.
Lord, help us to un-condition ourselves from our obsession with honor and approval. Amen.
