Many times because of our Father wounds we resist any of the times God reaches out to love us. We can’t accept his love because we wrongly believe that we are not worthy. We are so conscious of our sinfulness that we have a hard time to be open to the loving mercy and forgiveness of the Father. The father of the prodigal son rushed to embrace and kiss his son when he returns home, but the son initially resists the father’s embrace and love since the son knows what he has done and thus is not deserving of such lavish affection. But the father is persistent for he sees his son, not the run away; he is more happy that the son has chosen to return and is not interested in the sordid details during his alienation from the father. The son seeks only to be a hired hand, but the father refuses anything less than full sonship.

So when God seeks to break thru the resisting walls of our darkened tomb, instead of initially welcoming his embracing arms, we try to push him away; we try to run, we try to deny or question why and how God could or would enter into my self imposed darkness with his dazzling light. But in spite of our efforts of resistance, God persists in love to speak words of love and life and freedom and newness and wholeness.

We fight, we struggle but God will not withdraw. It is almost like we know if we resist long enough God will give up and prove that what we fear was real. He does not love us no matter what he says to the contrary.
Some of us prefer to settle for a hug rather than an embrace. A hug is one-sided. And embrace is received and mutually and freely responded to. A hug says, something from the one hugging but is not received fully by the one hugged, who is also making a statement. But an embrace is welcomed, received, responded to and a gift of love is exchanged. In an embrace you are included and enclosed in the arms of the other and the other in your arms.

Yes, we are spiritual sons and daughters of God by grace and a son or daughter of our human father by nature. Our relationship with the natural father is learned and experienced through the tangible and tactical as well as verbal and nonverbal statements and actions of our human father. Unfortunately but true, everyone of us has father wounds no matter what degree of love and affection we received from the human father.  For the human father had his own wounds coming from the imperfection of our human nature which has been further damaged by original and personal sin.

If we, as adopted sons and daughters of God the Father, do know how to receive the love of the Father–the kiss of the Father–then we will find it hard to fully and properly parent our children in accord with the pattern of the heavenly Father.

These father wounds in us hold us back from receiving this outpouring gift of love and mercy. It is fear, guilt, unworthiness, shame, sin, past failures, things done to us, feelings we don’t understand, anger, resentment, failed relationships, unanswered needs, you name it. Yes, name it but don’t own it any longer!

All these create a wall isolating and insulating us from the Father, even though we cry for all the Father wants to give us. Though our heart wants it, our self-understanding, our scars, our hurt memories prevent us from experiencing it. Until we let go the junk within us, we can’t know the fullness of the Father’s love and mercy. He wants to embrace us with his love. He wants to heal us and restore us to our full inheritance as sons and daughters. (To be continued)

Every day God says to us: “You are my son (daughter).” God the Father wants to embrace each of us each day with the same abandoned love, unconditional love, unmerited love.

Each of us needs to know that we are loved for who we are and not some other motive, in spite of our shortcomings and failures. When Michelangelo saw the flawed block of marble, he saw the statue of the shepherd boy David within. Everyone saw the external flawed object, the artist saw the interior treasure within. That is how God sees us as Father.

The Father believes in the prodigal son when the son doesn’t believe in himself.  Even when he purifies us and strips us, God has the vision of himself in us and seeks for our sake to bring it about, not for his sake.

The Father doesn’t possess his son but frees him to respond or not. There is always the question: why are you doing what you are doing” The Father says simply because I love you whether you accept and respond or reject and refuse. The role of the Father is love.

We can’t equate or duplicate God’s love for us, but we can imitate his love, be a reflection of his love to others.(To be continued)

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Gospel B

After this, Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee (of Tiberias). A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover was near. 
· It was significant for John to recall that it was near the Feast of the Passover that the multiplication of the loaves and fish took place. Feeding the crowd in this manner reminded the people how God provided a meal for them at Passover and fed them in the desert with Manna. This miracle also anticipated the Last Supper transformation of bread and wine into his Body and Blood.

When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, "Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?" He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do.
· How did he know this in his humanity? Is it the presence of the Spirit?
o Last Sunday we heard that Jesus had compassion on the people for they were like sheep without a Shepherd. He will express his compassion in this miracle.

Philip answered him, "Two hundred days' wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little (bit)." One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?" 
· That they were barley loaves indicated they were the food of the poor. This may also be an allusion to the miracle that Elisha did in the OT.

Jesus said, "Have the people recline." Now there was a great deal of grass in that place.
· Since it is near the Feast of Passover it is springtime.

So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. 
· Indicating the number underlies the magnanimity of the miracle.

Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, "Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted." So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat. When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, "This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world." 
· The OT had spoken of one who would come who would be like Moses.
o In the OT the prophets spoke of the abundant banquet in the new Messianic kingdom.
· This was the fourth sign Jesus performed according to John; the first was the changing of water into wine at Cana.

Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone. 
· This event is told in each of the four Gospels, indicating its significance to the early Church.
· What does this passage say to you? Where has God shown his abundant love to you?
· Knowing what the people wanted to do, what is your response to God’s love in your life?

The father of the prodigal loves his son; he never stopped loving him. He longs for the day he will see his son again. He looks for him daily. His prayers go out to him. “Son, return home. I love you.”  God waits for us with a greater longing and passionate love. He sends his grace upon us to draw us home. But he waits for us to choose to come home and to be reunited with him in a father-son, father-daughter relationship of love.  When he sees his son at a distance, the foolish father runs to him, praising God, crying, waving his hands. He embraces him tenderly in his arms and kisses him profusely on his cheeks and  head. Jesus is saying that his Father reacts the same way when one of us returns to him after we ran away because of sin.

But something is wrong with this picture. The Father is so joyful and the son is cold and unresponsive to the Father. He can’t even look at the father eye to eye. He can’t embrace the father and kiss him on the cheeks. He is almost lifeless in the father’s embrace. There is something he is holding on to, something that prevents him from experiencing the healing love and freeing mercy, the unconditional acceptance of the father. He feels so full of self-condemning guilt and shame; he feels  so totally unworthy. “Don’t father. I don’t deserve this. I have sinned against God and you. I am a loser. You don’t know what I have done and how low I have fallen; you don’t know how abused I have been by others who used me for their pleasure as I used them. I have lost my right to being your son. May I be a hired hand who at least can get something to eat and a place to sleep?”

The father won’t hear any of this non-sense. “I don’t care what others think or do. You are my son. You were dead but now you live. You were lost but now you are found. Let’s celebrate and rejoice. Here are the symbols of your sonship: the robes, the ring, the shoes, the status of son.

The most beautiful depiction of the Father’s love and mercy, compassion and true desire for us is that told to us in the Parable of the Father and his two sons. I call it the Parable of the Foolish Father. The younger one runs away physically from home, symbolizing his total alienation from the father and the elder stays home, symbolizing obligation but not commitment to the father. The father loves both of them and ministers to each where and as they are.

The younger son couldn’t wait for the father to die. There is no indication that the father had done anything against the son. It was what the father had that motivated the son.  He was a man of means. Once he died, his two sons would share the inheritance.  The older would get two-thirds and the younger one-third.  The younger son couldn’t wait for this. “Old man, as far as I am concerned, you are dead and I want nothing more to do with you. I want my future inheritance now.” The father loved the son and gave him what was not his yet, but what belongs to the father. The father frees him to wish him dead and to be alienated from the father.  He loves him so much he frees him to make his choice even at the expense of the father. This is what God does for us. He gives us the freedom of will to choose to love him in relationship or to reject him through sin.

In time, having seen the result of his decision, now destitute, the younger son lost more than his material inheritance. He lost his self-identity, his self-worth, his self-acceptance. He was a nobody, not even good enough to eat the slop of the pigs. His return to the father’s house was out of hunger and self-preservation.  “I don’t deserve to be your son. Let me be at least a hired hand, a slave.” His shame and guilt remained within him, even though he said: “I have sinned against God and you.” He called him “father” not as a son but as a possible “servant”. (To be continued)

God the Father loves his Son. The Son receives the love in thanksgiving. In receiving the Father’s love thus the Son acknowledges the Father’s love and validates it. Knowing that the Son receives his love is sufficient for the Father who delights in loving his Son. The Father doesn’t look for love in return. However, the Son loves the Father and therefore responds to the Father in love.

In turn, Jesus fathered the apostles through love. His love was manifested in acceptance of the each, in directing each  to reach his  full potential, in forgiveness and healing, in challenging each, in providing the best for each, in laying down his life for each..

It is in the context of that love each finds self understanding and self worth. This self worth is a gift that does not come from the outside but is already a given within them. But that self-worth can only be discovered and acknowledged in the context of love and acceptance.

Jesus reveals and the Spirit confirms a Father who cares for us.  Jesus does this in his teachings and his actions: the image of the Good Shepherd who goes after the lost sheep and when he finds it he rejoices; the parable of the lost coin and the rejoicing upon finding it.  Jesus reveals the Father who is merciful and forgiving.  As Jesus reached out to the sinners and outcasts, he was saying “I am doing my Father’s will, who sends me to show his mercy and love, forgiveness and reconciliation.” When he healed the sick, cast out the demons, raised the dead to life, he was showing the mercy, compassion and love of the Father. (To be continued)

Our image of God as Father and our image of ourselves as beloved sons and daughters may not reflect the reality of God and the reality of our true identity.

Our image of God as Father is sometimes colored, determined and blurred by our image of our earthly father. If our human father was kind, loving, encouraging, caring, patient but firm, outreaching, personal, intimate, correcting but accepting, then we see God the Father similarly. If our human father was distant, uncaring, disapproving, unemotional, never hugged us or said verbally nor physically that he loved us, too busy for us, never close, hard to talk to, made us fearful of him, punished us unreasonably, then we will see the Heavenly Father with the same understanding.

There was a point that Jesus in his humanity became and was so in love with God the Father that he desired to do only his will. As he came to realize the Father’s love and the Father’s call to him to be the anointed, prophesied Messiah, he desired to publicly commit his whole being and life to the Father he loved passionately. So he went to the Jordan to publicly acknowledge his yes to the Father’s call, to plunge himself totally in doing the will of the Father. Being immersed in the Jordan was his yes to the Father.

At this moment and in this event, Jesus was sustained by one single experience in his life. After his baptism in the Jordan, while in prayer, he experienced a theophany: The Father with great joy said: “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” And the Spirit filled Jesus in his humanity with a fresh outpouring of anointing and power. The Fathers of the Church, along with St. John Paul II, said that this was the kiss of the Father that sustained Jesus throughout his life even on the cross. (To be continued)

Sixteenth Sunday Ordinary Time: Gospel B

The apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught. 
· He had sent them on mission two by two to prepare for and to share in his ministry. Do you see the importance of sharing with others what God has done through you.

He said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while." People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat.
· Jesus wanted to teach the disciples that they must have a balanced life: ministry (action) and prayer (contemplation).
· How much time do we take in our daily, weekly life for quality prayer time? We can’t always do it with a lot of people around.

So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place. 
· Do you have that “deserted place” in your life?

People saw them leaving and many came to know about it. They hastened there on foot from all the towns and arrived at the place before them. 
· Sometimes people may not always understand our need for aloneness with God. How do we deal with that?

When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. 
· Do we sometimes become angry with people who seem to need so much of our time? Reflect of Jesus’ attitude.
· Notice Jesus ministered to the crowd while allowing the disciples their space to recoup. What does that say to you?
· What does this passage say to you? What resolution will you make and hopefully follow up on?

Embraced by the Father. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.“ (Eph 1:3-6)

It is God’s plan and will that we are to be his adopted sons. But because of original sin, we don’t come into life as adopted sons of the Father, only as creatures. Only through Jesus, Our Lord and Savior is this relationship restored by virtue of his obedience to the Father even to the death on the cross.

From all eternity the Father chose his own divine Son by nature–The Word–to become man and to demonstrate how in his own humanity man could be the son of the Father. The Son of God became man to reconcile us back to God, to heal the Father wound caused by sin, to restore us to our graced inheritance as adopted sons of the Father.  (To be continued)

When God gives himself to us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, he expects that our response to him would be a desire and a decision to live in union with him more and more and to turn away from the life of sin more and more.  How does that transformation take place?  Romans 12:2: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

When we begin to seek the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect, we will begin to see our life being transformed. Or as Paul says in 2 Corinthians: “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, (will be) transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (3:18).

Like the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, we need to listen to the word of God and share in the Eucharistic sacrifice and banquet.  Then like them our hearts will burn within us as we recognize the Lord in the breaking of the bread and receive him as the Bread of Life.

If I truly reflect on what happens at the time I receive the Body and Blood of Jesus and afterwards, I may recognize a dysfunction.  My eyes gaze on Jesus sacramentally present and later my eyes are allowed to gaze on creatures in a lustful way. My mouth receives the Lord of Lord and my mouth is used to curse, to gossip, to lie, to put down another. My hand acted as a throne for the King of Kings and later these same hands are used in sinful ways. My heart says I love you Lord at the time of Communion and the same heart turns away from the Lord later.

What did Jesus say about the vine and the branches? I am the vine, you are the branches. The branch can’t receive its life from the vine if it becomes decayed and rotten, if it is broken or cut off. And yet, isn’t that what we do when we receive the Body and Blood of the Lord and so easily and so soon  forget, allowing sin to be part of our lives? (To be continued)

Our third response to the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is transformation. If we really understood what has happened, we should not be the same after the reception of Communion as before. A miracle has taken place before our very eyes–bread and wine transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus–and a miracle has taken place within our own bodies–in the indwelling Eucharistic presence of God himself. Though the accidents of bread and wine still remain, there has been a transformation, a transubstantiation.  Though we remain externally and physically the same in receiving Eucharist, internally and spiritually we are being transformed by the power and presence of God.

In the first case, the transformation from bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus does not depend on us but on the word of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. But in the latter, the intention of Jesus in the gift of his Body and Blood to us is that we enter into a deeper relationship with him. But whether this takes place or not depends on our intention and surrender to the Lord. The grace enabling transformation is given by God; putting on the mind of Christ comes from my decisions. (To be continued)

Our second response to the Lord's presence is reverential awe and worship before the Eucharistic presence of Jesus, after receiving him in Communion and later during Eucharistic Exposition.  What an awesome privilege it is for a struggling sinner, which each of us is, to have intimate union with Jesus.  In the words we say before Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.” Why? Because God, who is bigger than anything I could imagine chooses to humble himself and share himself with me, who is nothing in comparison.  All I can do is adore the living God.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses adoration this way. “To adore God is to acknowledge, in respect and absolute submission, the ‘nothingness of the creature’ who would not exist but for God. To adore God is to praise and exalt him and to humble oneself, as Mary did in the Magnificat, confessing with gratitude that he has done great things and holy is his name. The worship of the one God sets man free from turning in on himself, from the slavery of sin and  the idolatry of the world.” (#2097) (To be continued)