The Good Thief

             Three crosses, two thieves and three different expressions of suffering. Jesus wanted to be crucified surrounded by sinners, sharing his throne of glory with them. Many saints would have liked to have been there, to change places with one of them, with a holy envy. Three crosses; as Saint Augustine says, one gives salvation, the other receives it and the other despises it. Two thieves; we are represented by these two criminals, and we all deserved to be there. We should be there, but we are still running away from the cross. These two thieves represent two attitudes in front of the cross, two ways of life that can be summarised in every human being: for or against God, with Him or without Him. Three sufferings, one redemptive, another purifying, and the third useless. Which one is mine? Am I with Jesus, accompanying him in his redemption? Or maybe, I am the good thief, waiting for the end of my life to jump into paradise. I hope we are not the bad thief, wasting our lives in useless frustration.

            What did the good thief see to believe? It is a very good question, almost impossible to answer. The two thieves were crucified on both sides of Jesus, suffering the same penalty for their crimes. One, whom we call Gestas, was abusing Jesus, asking him, in frustration and pain, to save all of them at the same time, in a very selfish manner. Dimas, the one on his right, rebuked him, telling him that they were there for a just reason, to pay for their actions, a right punishment. But Jesus was innocent and he shouldn’t be there. And he made the best petition a man can make to God: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” We need to repeat these words over and over again, especially when we are suffering.

            There were other people at Calvary, and they witnessed the same thing, but only Dimas made this petition. Maybe because he looked at things from the cross, from a higher ground; or maybe because he was suffering the same fate as Jesus, wearing the same shoes. When we suffer we see things with different eyes. What he saw was a man dying in silence, not only accepting his cross, but coming out of himself to meet his suffering, welcoming the pain with open arms, with a reason for his torture, savoring every minute of it. But the Roman centurion also present, only believed after Jesus died, when he felt the earthquake and experienced the darkening of the sky.

            “Today you will be with me in paradise.” What did Dimas feel when he heard these words? “Today”, not tomorrow, but now, after few minutes of suffering, opening the door to a new beginning, with a meaning to your crucifixion, with a happy ending, like a successful operation healing your wounds. “With me”, you are coming with me; we are going together, crossing the threshold of this life to eternity hand in hand, lighting for you the way forward. “Into paradise”, the place you long for, what you have been created for, what your heart believes, with all the people you love.

            The good thief gives us plenty of hope. We can easily place ourselves in his shoes. We can turn our bad thief into a good one and at the same time steal heaven. But we don’t need to wait till our last moments. We can begin now to repeat his petition many times, from the cross of our suffering.

[email protected]

Eschatological discourse

           When we reach November, at the end of the liturgical year, we have these Gospels about the end of times, about the distant future. They are always a bit frightening and we don’t know what to do about them or how to react. We want to read them quickly, and pass soon into Advent, to be able to look forward to Christmas. Why does the Church wants us to look at these events, when we don’t know when they are going to happen, and most likely they won’t happen in our lifetime? They tell us about our future and teach us lessons for our own lives.

            It is very human the desire to know about the future, to plan things accordingly. We would like to have more control of our lives, to foresee situations and be prepared for them. But God tells us what we need to know at every given moment. Curiosity killed the cat. We are in God’s hands and he knows what’s going on. We need to leave things in his hands and let him be the boss. We are just little children.

            There are three future things which are foreshadowed in this Gospel: the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The first one happened in the year 70, when the Romans circled the holy city and destroyed the temple of Jerusalem, to quash a rebellion. The Jews never recovered. Now, all they have is the wailing wall, were they can pray for the future temple to be built. Once Jesus came, there was no need for God to dwell in a particular place. We shouldn’t worry too much about the destruction of material things, because everything will pass away, but we should worry about the destruction or corruption of our soul, the actual temple of the Holy Spirit.

            The end of the world is something that has been prophesied many times by many people, and so far all of them have been mistaken. We shouldn’t worry about that, or have the attitude of some of the early Christians who stopped working because they thought it was imminent. This reality brings to our consideration that whatever we do here has an end. Eventually everything will disappear. We all have a desire to leave behind things that will last for ever and this is impossible. The only things that last forever are in the other life, when a new heaven and a new earth will be renewed. This thought will help us to fix our eyes more in what is behind the veil between time and eternity.

            The second coming of Our Lord is less frightening. After all the signs and amazing events of the end of time, the appearance of Jesus among the clouds will be a happy ending of our universe, which began with the Big Bang when God created it. We will be happy to see Our Lord coming back to judge the living and the dead. This future event reminds us of our personal encounter with him at the end of our earthly existence. We need to get ready and the proof that we are not is that we are still here. We ask our Mother to be there when Our Lord comes to pick us up, as we pray every time we say the Hail Mary: pray for us now and at the hour of our death, amen.

[email protected]

Resurrection of the dead

             Today in the Gospel the Sadducees tried to have a go at Jesus with a silly argument,defending their denial of the resurrection, and thanks to them we have from him a good statement about the resurrection of the body. Jesus uses sometimes our pride and selfishness for our own good, to give us a lesson. Whether we like it or not, at the end of time we will be reunited to our bodies. It will be either a glorious body or a damned one. It is a reminder that our bodies are important. They make us who we are. They are not just a cage were our souls are imprisoned. They are created by God together with our soul and they are destined to be together for ever in the other life. This reality has three important consequences.

            Firstly, our bodies are good. Love your body, look after it, give thanks to God for the body he has given you. There is a vision which separates the body from the soul, a kind of dualism, with two extremes: one that says that our bodies are bad and what it is important is our spiritual side; another extreme says that I am only my body and I can do whatever I want with my body. What we do with our bodies affects our soul; we cannot isolate one from the other. If you take drugs you get addicted. If you cut off your leg you cannot walk properly anymore. If you have sex with many different people, your heart becomes divided. If you eat as much as you want, you become fat and sloppy. Our emotions, our feelings, our character, are related to our body. What affects our body, affects our soul. It is not easy to see it, because it is impossible to separate in this life our body from our soul. Only death can do it. We cannot point out where our soul is in our body, because it exists throughout our being.

            Secondly, our body has dignity. Saint Paul says that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We must treat our bodies with respect, honour it, celebrate it, bury it. During the funeral rites we sprinkle holy water and we incense the dead body. We place our ashes in a place of remembrance. We go there to pray for our loved ones. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Atheists throw the ashes into the sea, for the fish to eat them. For them everything is finished. For us it is a time of waiting. We venerate the relics of the saints. They remind us of their presence.

            Thirdly, we are our bodies. Without our bodies we are nobody. Our bodies make us who we are. We are male or female because of our bodies, not because of our minds. Our soul in a way has sex, it is either a soul of a male or of a female body. Our bodies give us our identity, our place in space, our relational dimension. We cannot get out of our bodies, we see things from within, we need to carry it with us all the time, like a turtle its shell.

            People deny these important and undeniable realities, manly to do whatever they want, to justify their own vices or passions. They have come out with the gender theory, which destroys our Christian anthropology. During the 20th century we had a struggle between common good and private property. Now it is between sex and gender. As Christopher West repeats all the time, talking about the Theology of the body from John Paul II: “You are irreplaceable, indispensable and unrepeatable; be what you are.”

[email protected]

All Saints

             Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.

            The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.

            What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.

            Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.

            We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of JesusChrist. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”

[email protected]

Zacchaeus

             There were three big obstacles that prevented Zacchaeus from seeing Jesus. They seemed insurmountable, but because he wanted with all his might to see Jesus, he overcame them all, one after the other. We all have some hurdles that make it difficult for us to discover God. And we need to jump over them one by one. Every man has a desire deep in his heart to see God, a hunger for the happiness that only an infinite being can fulfill. We are restless until we find our creator, and we wish to attain the end that we are being created for.

            Zacchaeus was so short he couldn’t see Jesus over the crowds around him. Short people normally have a strong will and they have to learn how to push hard, because they have to stand up for themselves; they have to fight to be able to jump and reach their desires. Our smallness is always in front of us. We cannot forget about it, even though we daydream or try to live in a virtual reality; sooner or later we have to come down to our true level and confront our nothingness. Our artificial life on the internet, cannot be our real life. Without God it is easy to have a low self esteem, hate ourselves, long for attention, and try to hide behind all sort of addictions, that only serve to dig our hole deeper and eventually destroy ourselves. We forget what theologians call the love of predilection: God loves us not because we are good, but we are good because he loves us. His love comes first, independently of how we behave or what we think or what we do. We are his creatures and he made us. And we Christians are also his children. Therefore we need to concentrate more on his love for us and not get bogged down if we find it difficult to see something good in ourselves.

            The crowd was big. Everybody wanted to see the famous prophet. And because they envied and hated Zacchaeus for his riches, they didn’t allow him to see Jesus on purpose. They could see him running along the line of people as Jesus was passing by, and they lifted up their bodies higher for him to see nothing. The biggest obstacle for Zacchaeus to see Jesus was his riches. They didn’t allow him to see Jesus. They were in the way. Once he concentrated in Jesus, he was saved. Our second biggest obstacle is in the world, the multitude of things, people and events that surround us. They can be in the way because we keep looking at them. We don’t see the wood for the trees. As Saint Thomas Aquinas puts it, wealth, honours, power or pleasure, we think they bring us happiness. And over and over again we are mistaken. The happiness of a human soul can only be in an infinite being.

            Lastly Zacchaeus had to overcome shame, human respect, peer pressure and a desire for prestige and fame. The last thing he had to do was to climb a tree in front of everybody. Even though he was dressed in expensive clothes, he disregarded what people thought of him and climbed like a monkey. This showed Jesus that he really wanted to see him. There is always a tree for us to climb and see Jesus. We need to find that tree and show Jesus that we are interested in him.

            Jesus told Zacchaeus to come down: I want to come to your house. He gave half of his property to the poor, making room for Jesus. He is telling us the same thing: come down from your addictions and let me enter into your life. There are a few things we need to give away.

[email protected]

Parable of the Pharisee and tax collector

            We normally see ourselves as the tax collector. We don’t think the example of the Pharisee is for us. And we are mistaken. We walk into a church with the attitude that it belongs to us. We place ourselves in front of the tabernacle with the right to be there. We talk to God listening to ourselves, reading a list of favours we have done to him, expecting him to acknowledge our achievements. We are arrogant and proud, and we fail to see ourselves as we are. We should rather see ourselves at the back of the church, with our eyes downcast and beating our breast with our fist, trying to bring sorrow out of a dry piece of flesh. This should be our attitude in front of God the Father Almighty.

            In our modern society we have taken God out of the picture, or, if we still believe in Him, we have brought Him down to our level. Through the pendulum law, we have gone from a God of fire and brimstone, to an old fluffy sweet man, with a white long beard and a face of a teddy bear. The balance is always difficult to achieve, and the pendulum keeps swinging. We can never imagine how God is.

            Today through this parable Jesus teaches us that prayer should flow from a humble heart. And he does it by opposing two figures very familiar to the Jews of his time. The goodie, the master of the law, the teacher of morals and obligations, and a baddie, a public sinner, who steals the money from normal people and gives it to the Roman oppressors. The righteous man and the thief are the best examples to be opposed to each other, and to bring the audience to a contrary reaction. Both go to the temple to pray, but only one is justified. We know who goes back pleased in God’s eyes.

            What Jesus wants us to do today is to look into our hearts, where nobody else can peek: into the depths of our intentions, our desires and our longings, to what really moves us and what we really worship. He is taking us on a wild journey; he wants us to accompany Him, to come down with us, to drag our feet through a rough surface, and to look at something we don’t normally want to look at: the depths of our soul. What is there? What sort of stuff do I keep inside? Can I make room for him? Today is a good day for a spring cleaning, for a garage sale, to allow Jesus to come in, leave the windows wide open, turn on all the lights and discover what’s inside.

            At the beginning of the Mass, during the penitential rite, we make an act of sorrow, like the tax collector, hitting our breast three times, trying to break it open, to see what’s inside, as Sain Augustine says, “to bring to light what is concealed in the breast, and by this act to cleanse your hidden sins.” Or as Saint Jerome declares, “We strike our breast because the breast is the seat of evil thoughts: we wish to dispel these thoughts, we wish to purify our hearts.” We should hear the sounds of our chest, resounding deep, striking hard without the fear of a broken rib. We need to break the bones of our chest, to let our heart be seen, like open heart surgery, for Jesus to come in, and fix our arteries; maybe to have few bypasses, or better yet, to have a heart transplant, like Saint Catherine of Siena, when Jesus gave her a new heart, his heart. 

[email protected]

Parable of the unjust judge

            Even though this parable focuses mainly on the reactions of the unjust judge, on his lack of fear of God and his indifference about justice, it should be better called the parable of the persevering widow, because she is the real protagonist, the one who wins at the end and is vindicated. She is our model in front of injustices and the indifference of human beings. She teaches us how to react when we find ourselves in hopeless situations or in great trouble: persevere in prayer.

            The first reading of the Mass talks about Moses watching Joshua fighting against Amalek. While his arms were outstretched, the Israelites were winning; when he grew tired and let his arms go down, they began to lose. What a responsibility for Moses! People’s lives were at stake. We too experience the same. When we stop praying, the devil has the upper hand; when we persevere in our prayer, the faith of the Church  strengthens. People’s souls are somehow connected to our prayer. This teaches us the lesson that we should always have our arms stretched out, in prayer, that we Christians are called to sustain the world with our spiritual life, that we cannot give up and lower our defences. We have the responsibility of supporting others with our struggle, with our sacrifices and with our personal witness.

            The Gospel says specifically that Jesus taught us this parable to teach us how to pray always and not to lose heart. How can we pray without ceasing, as Saint Paul recommends us? In principle it is not possible, because we are not angels. Saint Augustine says that prayer is an exercise of desire. We are created for God and we are restless until we find him. We all have in our hearts a desire for eternity, for the infinite, a longing for our Creator, even though many times we cannot articulate this pain. Prayer finds the embers of this feeling in our hearts and blows them to enkindle them, to eventually create a huge fire that burns the whole forest of our sins. Saint Augustine comments that desire is your prayer; and if your desire is without ceasing, your prayer will also be without ceasing.

            The Eastern tradition have the famous Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Through repetition and breathing, it can become a part of your life, without realising you are praying, like the beating of the heart. In the Western Church we have the Rosary, a prayer that can be said anywhere, anytime. Many saints give us an example of their immersion in God.

            Modern society tells us that it is possible to concentrate on one thing all the time: our mobile phones. They are always in our hands, beeping, receiving messages, taking photos, talking, checking, clicking. They want constant attention, like babies. Big companies design strategies to keep us hooked to the little screen, and try to sell us data for us to keep the gadget happy. We look for hot spots where we can rest and spend time with our handset. Can we do the same for God? Can we give Him more time, more attention? Prayer allows us to connect with God. It is free and we don’t need a fast expensive gadget. It is always on in our hearts. And it connects us with eternity, infinity and beyond.

[email protected]

Ten lepers

            You could say that leprosy was the worst sickness. They used to call lepers “living dead”. Your body died slowly, in front of you, in front of others. You were thrown out of society, you became a castaway; some of them literally were being sent to an island, like Molokai. You had to walk round sounding a bell like an animal, crying out: impure, stained. They were like zombies. It was considered a punishment from God; he had touched your flesh with his finger and the corruption from the grave was beginning to get you. In a way it was a graphic way to have your death in front of your eyes. We are one of those ten lepers. We don’t normally see it, but our soul stinks. We are missing some limbs and we cannot walk; we lost our fingers to be able to touch; our eyes are gone, and we cannot see. We are blind, deaf and paralysed to spiritual realities. We all need to realise that we need healing from God. The more we recognise our leprosy, our real illness, the more we will look for him. How can we be healed if we don’t acknowledge our sickness?

            A new leper joined the shameful community and told them about the miraculous prophet. They abandoned their caves and set out to look for him. Hopeless sick people are always hopeful of new treatments. It is possible to be cleansed of our leprosy and our flesh restored, like Naaman the Syrian, whose flesh became as tender as the skin of a little child. We normally don’t believe that we can be cured of our vices or addictions. And we give up. We stop looking for him.

            We don’t know how long these lepers looked for Jesus. We don’t know how long we too need to look for him. But if we don’t look for him, we won’t find him and we won’t be healed. If we look for him, eventually we will come across him, like the lepers did, because at the end he is the one looking for us.

            From a distance the ten lepers cried out: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! A good act of faith. He told them to present themselves to the priests, to certify their cure. He could have touched them but demanded from them a little faith. They were disappointed; they thought he was going to heal them there instantly, but they didn’t know what to do and went to see the priests without much conviction. Like us, many times we do things without knowing really what to do. Go to the priest! He is telling us the same: Go to confession! Have faith in me. I can cure you. Go! While they were on their way, they were cured. We don’t know if it was instantly or gradually. But I t must have been an amazing sight. Ten men dancing and embracing each other. The Samaritan told them they had to go back to thank Jesus. They said that Jesus told them to present themselves to the priests. They wanted to see their families as soon as possible. How quick we are to forget what God has done for us!

            Only one came back to give thanks. It was a Samaritan, an outcast. Jesus complained: Where are the nine? It is one of the big disappointments of our Lord. This question keeps sounding through the timeline of history. He keeps asking this question to us: Where are you? We can be the nine or the one. Let us not disappoint Jesus. He has healed us many times and we haven’t returned to give him thanks.

[email protected]

Increase our faith 

            Today we go to Jesus like the apostles and we ask him to increase our faith. Like them we have witnessed miracles, we have experienced things beyond our power, we have seen God’s grace, but we feel that our faith weak. We cannot do what Jesus is asking us to do, because Jesus normally asks for faith before he gives us a hand. After the transfiguration, coming down from the mountain, Jesus met the apostles trying to cast away a dumb spirit from a boy. They couldn’t because they didn’t have enough faith. His father came up to Jesus asking for help. Jesus told him that everything is possible for the one who believes. That man, sensing his lack of faith, realising that the cure of his son was dependent on him, gave us a great prayer: “I believe, but help my unbelief!”

            Four men brought their friend to Jesus to be healed. He was complaining all the way, telling them that it was a waste of time. He couldn’t do much because he was paralysed. His friends were very stubborn. When they arrived at the house, it was packed with people. They weren’t discouraged and they dug a hole in the roof of the house, against the will of the owner. They lowered him through the hole right in front of Jesus. The people inside could see four faces looking down through the hole in the roof. The Gospel says that Jesus seeing their faith, healed him.

            Jesus didn’t normally praise people. But he was impressed with the faith of the Roman Centurion, who trusted his word. His faith was shown when he told Jesus that just his word could heal his servant. We repeat his words during every Mass, just before Communion. We should say them with the conviction of the Centurion. Jesus commented: “I haven’t found this faith in Israel.” What would Jesus say about our faith? Would he praise us?

            Jesus put clay on a blind man’s eyes and asked him to wash them on the pool of Siloe. He could have touched his eyes and healed them, but he demanded faith from the man. The blind man could have asked Jesus if he could wash his eyes in a nearby fountain. But he walked with clay on his eyes and recovered his sight. The man with a withered hand had tried millions of times to move it but with no avail. When Jesus asked him to stretch it out, it was healed. He could have refused to move it another time, but his hand wouldn’t had been healed.

            What does Jesus need to do with us? What infirmity do we have that has to be cleaned? We can cry out like Bartimeus, the blind beggar at the side of the road of Jericho, from the top of his voice: Son of David, have pity of me! Or like the woman who suffered a flow of blood for twelve years and was healed when she touched the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. We have to do the same. We must go to the fountain of faith, to the springs of salvation, where the water gushes out pure and clear. We know where to find it, specially when Jesus comes to the altar after the consecration, and we only need to ask: increase our faith. There is plenty of it, and just a little bit, like a mustard seed, is enough for us. 

[email protected]

Parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus

            We are the both the men in the parable, whether we like or not, the rich man and the poor man Lazarus, with both their weakness and their strengths, with their aspirations and desires. Both lived parallel lives, clearly related to each other but completely opposite, in this life and the next in eternity, crossing each other at life’s intersections; the first will be last and the last will be first.

            The rich man has no name. Possessions don’t give you real identity, don’t tell you who you are, don’t give you roots or indicate where you come from. In front of God we are the same, things have no value, they have no meaning. We are born naked and we are going to return naked, with nothing to hang on to, only with what we have given away. It is not important what you have, or what you have achieved, but who you are or what you have become. Things don’t make you who you are, but what you make of them. In front of God we are little children, with just toys in our hands.

            We are the rich man. We live a life of our own, without realising that in front of us, there are so many people in need, both materially and spiritually. We normally have the door of our hearts closed. We live a life of  self centredness, self conscious, navel gazing. We fail to be aware of the poverty that surrounds us. Lazarus’s sores are licked by the dogs, without us hearing their barking. Jesus tries to turn us around, to turn us inside out, to be aware of all the poor Lazarus’s outside our door. Pope Francis says that Lazarus “represents the silent cry of the poor of all times.” They are constantly knocking on our lives. The Pope reminds us that “to ignore the poor is to scorn God.” We need to see Jesus in the needy, disadvantaged, marginalised, ostracised. In every homeless person we can find him, even though they are dirty, smelly, and ungrateful.

            Lazarus, on the other hand, has a name. Poverty is real and has real effects on people’s lives; you can identify it straight away. Some authors say that Lazarus was a real person in Jesus’ time, a well known poor man, perhaps sitting at the temple door, even helped sometimes by Jesus and his apostles. Judas would have given him some money reluctantly. We are also the poor Lazarus, at the side of the road of life, our sores in need of dressing, begging for God’s help. Lazarus precisely means God helps. Rich people don’t need God, they think they have everything figured out, only desiring more money. Rich countries abandon God, not feeling the need for God anymore. Cathedrals were built by the poor and the lame. Nowadays rich countries build structures for people, stadiums, arenas, courts for sports and games. God is absent from these buildings. When they are empty they have no soul.

            We have to make sure that in this life we are poor in spirit, in need of help, another Lazarus; then in the next life we are going to be spiritually rich, to share the life of the angels and saints. The austerity of this life is transformed into the abundance of God.

[email protected]