WHAT MAKES LIFE BEAUTIFUL

Twenty – Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Am 6: 1a, 4 – 7 / Ps 146 / 1 Tm 6: 11 – 16 / Lk 16: 19 – 31

What makes your life beautiful? When can you say that you have lived a wonderful and beautiful life? For parents, to see their children grow and establish their own families make their lives beautiful. For lolos and lolas, taking good care of their apos make their lives beautiful. For the heartbroken, to be given another chance to love again makes life beautiful. How about you? What makes your life beautiful? When can you say that your life is wonderful and beautiful?

At the start of today’s Gospel, we meet a rich man whose life was beautiful because he “dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dines sumptuously each day.” Anyone of us can easily say that this rich man is living a beautiful life because he has much. However, towards the end of the Gospel, there was a turn of events. The beautiful life of the rich man ended in tragedy. He was suffered torment because of the flames while another man, Lazarus, was enjoying himself at the side of Abraham.

My dear friends, our Gospel today reminds us of an important truth in life. In order to make our lives truly beautiful, we must spend less for ourselves, and more for others. For our lives to be truly beautiful, instead of dressing up ourselves with purple garments and fine linens, we try to dress those undressed. I do not just mean to say those naked people walking on the streets. Rather, let us clothe those whose human dignity has been undressed because of greed and selfishness of others. Instead of dining sumptuously each day for our own fulfillment, let us also learn to dine with others. Dining with others do not only mean eating sumptuous food every day. Every time we eat, we always share stories only to those people who are close to us. We do not share table with our enemies. Thus, dining with others also means learning to open our lives to others.

The recently canonized St. Teresa of Calcutta once said, “a life not lived for others is not a life.” The American spiritual writer, Thomas Merton also said, “we do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”

My dear friends, our challenge today is to aim for a beautiful life by living our lives for others, by finding life’s meaning in other peoples’ lives. The prophet Amos in our First Reading reminds us that we must not be complacent with our lives. And St. Paul in our Second Reading gives us the means on how to live our lives for others by pursuing “righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.”

After spending some time in the Philippines, this retired teacher went to the United States for good. She decided to work there in the early 70’s. However, she opted to teach in a school that was not in the city center. And for more than 40 years, she taught little children who have difficulty in reading and comprehension. And so, this retired teacher shared with me a portion of her farewell speech during her retirement party. She said, “I am now happy with my life. I am happy not because I earned dollars for the past forty years. I am happy not because of my bank accounts. I am happy not because I was able to buy a good house for my family. I am happy because for the past forty years I have become part of the lives of the many children whom I have taught. “

“I am happy because I have become part of the lives of many.”

That school teacher, indeed, had a beautiful life. Lazarus, in the end of our Gospel, experienced a beautiful life. How about us? How about you? What makes your life beautiful? When can you say to yourself that you have lived a wonderful and beautiful life?

“A life not lived for others is not a life.” “We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”

Life is beautiful if it is spent with others friends or enemies alike. Amen.

CHOOSING GOD

Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Am 8: 4 – 7 / Ps 113 / 1 Tm 2: 1 – 8 / Lk 16: 1 – 13 or 16: 10 – 13

“Namamangka sa dalawang ilog (paddling the banca on two rivers).” A Tagalog idiomatic expression which means that a person has a divided heart. Here are some examples: a married man having relations with another woman; or an altar of the Santo Nino placed side by side with an image of a golden cat; or your friend backbiting you when you are not around. Simply said, the Tagalog saying means living a double standard lifestyle.

Our Gospel this Sunday explicitly rejects a double standard lifestyle. Jesus tells us, “no servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Even St. Paul in our second reading today tells us that there is only one God. “There is also one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all.”

And so, we ask ourselves, why only one? Isn’t it that the more, the merrier? Why not two? Why love one and hate the other? Let me answer our questions with the three F’s.

Loving God alone makes us focus our heads, hearts, and hands to God alone. When we love the Lord alone, then, we focus ourselves to things in our lives which can help us love the Lord more. We work only for things that can make us focus on our relationship with Him.

Loving God alone makes us faithful to our relationship with Him. When we look for other loves, then, our hearts become divided. When we entertain the other side of the fence, then, time will come when we fall out of love for God and become unfaithful to him. Hence, we must love God alone.

Loving God alone brings us to our finish line we call heaven. If here on earth, we only love God and our neighbors then surely we are brought to our finish line that is heaven. If students learn to love their studies, then, surely, they will reach their finish line which is graduation and ultimately the fulfillment of thier dreams. This is also true with us, children of God. If every day we practice loving and serving the Lord, then, surely, at the end of our lives, we are brought safe and sound to our finish line which we call heaven.

My dear friends, Jesus’ instruction of serving one master and loving God alone is not about selfishness. Rather, it is about preserving a relationship that has been wounded because of the presence of a third party – which is sin. Just as we set rules to preserve order and harmony in our human relationships, this is also the same context of our Gospel instruction today.

This is therefore our challenge that in this life, we choose God and him alone. By choosing him, then, we focus our lives to Him. By choosing him, then, we become faithful to our relationship with Him. By choosing him, we are led to our finish line, our home which we call heaven.

Our world today is like a marketplace. We have a lot of options and choices. However, in any marketplace, despite the abundance, customers only choose what is best for them. I hope and pray that in this worldly marketplace, we also choose what is best for us that is to love God and neighbor alone. By doing so, we focus and remain faithful to Him and for sure we will be led to heaven, our finish line.

LOSING AND FINDING

Twenty – Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ex 32: 7 – 11 / Ps 51 / 1 Tm 1: 12 – 17 / Lk 15: 1 – 32 or 1 – 10

Have you experienced losing something very important to you? I recall this incident with my father inside the retreat house during the Legion of Mary conference a few years ago. Early morning, he was calling home because he was looking for his sandals. Awakened by his angry voice, I helped him search for his sandals. It was nowhere to be found! After some time of deliberate search, we both sat down and surrendered. What did we discover? He was all the while wearing them.

The Gospel we read is just part of the long Chapter 15 of Luke. I forgo reading the second part of this Gospel which is about the parable of the prodigal Son. Let us just reserve our reflection on that beautiful parable during the season of Lent. In the first 10 verses of this Gospel, we see a divine action of God – he is a God who searches, who is willing to look for the lost in order to complete the whole. And this is beautifully portrayed in the story of the shepherd who looks for one lost sheep and the woman who searches for the one lost coin.

If we look into our salvation history, we realize that God has also been looking for us. In our first reading today, the Lord commanded Moses to go down from the mountain because the Israelites were already getting lost; they were now following the golden calf. In the Second Reading, St. Paul also admitted that he was once a persecutor and a blasphemer but God has mercifully treated him. At one point in his life God found him and appointed him to be His minister.

My dear friends, this Sunday, we are reminded of a God, a Father, who constantly searches for us through his Son. For sure, you will agree with me that both the shepherd and the woman in our Gospel today have to undergo a lot of sacrifices in their search for the lost sheep and coin respectively. You could just imagine the danger of the shepherd being attacked by wolves, or the woman meeting an accident while searching for the lost coin. This is also true with Jesus. Our Lord, while he was looking for us, has to carry the cross up to Calvary and die on the same cross that he carried. He sacrificed his very self so that the Father will find us worthy to be his sons and daughters.

The question therefore that lies before us now is: “Has God found us?? Or the better question would be, “Have we allowed ourselves to be found by God?”

My dear friends, this is our problem. We only allow ourselves to be found by God during Holy Week. But after that Holy Week, we continue to hide away from him and wallow ourselves into our favorite sins. We only allow ourselves to be found by God when something bad happens to us like a life threatening accident or a terminal illness. Otherwise, we continue to run away from him.

After our graduation from Theology studies, my classmate took a leave from his seminary formation. And so, he found himself working in a car dealing company. After some time, he was doing well and earning well with his job. In fact, he planned that on his birthday, this was three years ago, he would have already purchased his own car. A few weeks before his birthday, however, typhoon Yolanda came. And such event was a turning point in his life. Being a survivor himself, he realized that such super typhoon destroyed not only many lives but also his own dreams in life. He lost everything. Yet, God found him. He found God. Come November, he will be ordained a priest.

Now, let’s go back to our question, “Have you experienced losing something very important for you?” Have you experienced losing God in your life? Then, what did you do? Did you allow him to find you back?

My dear friends, today may I invite you to allow yourselves to be found by God because finding you means great rejoicing in heaven. And so today, sin no more and be seen by God. Amen.