05-26-2014, 01:45 PM
LOVE ENABLES US TO RECOGNIZE THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN HIS ABSENCE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 8:5-8, 14-17; 1PT 3:15-18; JN 14:15-21
http://www.universalis.com/20140525mass.htm
There is this story of an eccentric Jew who each day would climb to the lectern of the synagogue and shout with pride: “I have come to inform you, O Master of the Universe, that we are here.” Then one day, the Nazi onslaught reached his village. Many of his fellow Jews were either murdered or deported and the population was decimated. But after each onslaught, he would crawl out of his hiding, run to the synagogue and there cry out, “You see, Lord, we are still here!” At the end, he was the only living Jew left. Once more, in a sad whisper rather disheartened, he addressed his God: “You see? I am still here … But you … where are you?”
Yes, this same anguished whisper rises in millions of throats everyday. We live in a world haunted by the absence of God. The problems and sufferings of the world seem to confirm the skeptics’ proposition that God is dead. Disenchanted and disillusioned with life, many try turning to God as a last resort to their problems but sometimes God does not seem to be bothered to hear them either. It is not uncommon to hear people saying: Father, forgive me but I have lost my faith in God. I cannot believe He loves me as He does not seem to answer my prayers. Such words often make me feel helpless and pained because I know what it is to feel abandon by God. Where are you Lord? Is God dead? These are the universal cries of man. These are the cries of orphans! What answers can we give to them? Can we give our reasons for the Hope we have, as Peter tells us to? Can we reassure them that Jesus’ promise that “he will not leave us orphans” is true? Yes, how do we explain His absence, or rather, how can we see His presence in His absence?
Someone once said: We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, “Why did this happen to me?” unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way. How true! How can we feel God’s presence and love in our sufferings when we do not even see Him in our blessings? To recognize God in our bad times therefore presupposes that we must learn to see Him in our good times first. This was so with the Samaritans where Philip went to preach. Acts records their openness to the message “because they had heard of the miracles he worked or because they saw them for themselves.” And indeed, there was great rejoicing and many conversions took place.
The first question we need to ask ourselves therefore is, whether we praise and thank God and rejoice with Him for the blessings we receive. Because if we cannot even do that, how can we praise Him in our sufferings? Sad to say, many of us also tend to lose God’s presence when things are well with us. When we are successful and well, it is due to our hard to our hard work and effort, or just mere coincidence. But when things go wrong, God is to be blamed. He is responsible for our misfortunes. Yes, we adopt double standards towards God; when things are well with us, we give ourselves the credit but when things go wrong, God is to be blamed. Poor God, He is always the loser. It is not surprising therefore that those who forget to praise God in their good times will feel His absence more strongly in their bad times.
However, if we are not blind to His love in our good times, then such faith will enable us to trust Him even if His presence is not felt during our bad times. Our hope and confidence is founded on our past experience of His love. Our memory of what He has done for us will give us the strength to carry on. Even in daily life, our depth of confidence and trust in a person is based on our past experiences with that person. That was how Peter encouraged his fellow Christians who were under persecution. He reminded them of the love of Jesus and how He gave up His life for them so that they might follow Him in sufferings. Furthermore, Jesus did not suffer in vain but His death opens for us the way to God. Like Jesus, we may suffer for doing good but such sufferings only lead us to God. And just as God gives life to His Son by His death, our surrender to God in sufferings will also bring about a new kind of existence for us. Indeed, the truth in life is that there is no hopeless situation but only people who have grown hopeless about them.
Just consider the persecution of the early Christians in the first reading. From a purely human point of view, this state of affairs might have initiated the decline of Christianity. But in fact, the persecution had just the opposite effect because as Luke never tires of reminding us, the Church enjoyed the gift of the Spirit and such obstacles only served to advance the gospel. If not for the persecution against the Church in Jerusalem, the disciples would not have been scattered through the surrounding areas of Judaea and Samaria. The persecution proved to be a blessing in disguise.
Isn’t this true in our sufferings? Isn’t success born out of failures? Isn’t strength born out of weakness? Isn’t matured love born out of broken relationship? How many of us have become successful today because our encounters with failures only made us more determined to do well? And how many of us are much happier today because certain crises in our life have forced us to be more realistic about our work and our ambitions for wealth and status? And how many of us, because of our sickness, have become more realistic with life thus making us compassionate towards others? Such realization is an indication that the Spirit of Truth never leaves us and that God has never abandoned us. In fact, the ability even to endure and grow in our sufferings shows that God is all the while with us, helping us to carry our crosses cheerfully, meaningfully and joyfully like Jesus.
But we can see God’s presence and love in these entire apparently hopeless situations only if the Spirit of Truth lives in us. And the key to recognizing God’s presence in His absence is a question of our relationship with Him. This is what the gospel is telling us. Unless we love Jesus and allow Him to love us, our relationship with Him will not be strong enough to see us through when sufferings come our way. Jesus says in the gospel: “Anyone who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and show myself to him.” The promise of Jesus is that to those who love Him, He will show Himself to them.
This is only obvious because we reveal ourselves only to those we love and to those who love us. For it is not possible to reveal ourselves to those who do not love us, since they will be too prejudiced against us even to listen to us. But when we love Jesus, we will be able to perceive the Spirit of Jesus living in us and revealing to us about the truths of life.
For good reasons, therefore, Peter exhorts us: Reverence the Lord Jesus in your hearts. That is to say, recognize His presence in our hearts and in our daily lives. But most of all, recognize that He is Lord of our lives and of the whole world, that He is revealer of all truths. When we realize that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him, we will never feel insecure in our trials. Christian hope is basically centered on Christ. If our hope is based on Christ, then we will be able to handle our trials and sufferings positively and confidently, knowing that in every suffering, there is a reason, a meaning and a blessing.
Yes, happy is the man who is able to see and feel and see Jesus’ presence not just in good times but in bad times as well. To be able to do so is to sense the Spirit of Truth dwelling in us. This is our invitation today: to make Jesus’ presence felt at every moment in our lives. This calls for a strengthening of our relationship with Him, a relationship of mutual love.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 8:5-8, 14-17; 1PT 3:15-18; JN 14:15-21
http://www.universalis.com/20140525mass.htm
There is this story of an eccentric Jew who each day would climb to the lectern of the synagogue and shout with pride: “I have come to inform you, O Master of the Universe, that we are here.” Then one day, the Nazi onslaught reached his village. Many of his fellow Jews were either murdered or deported and the population was decimated. But after each onslaught, he would crawl out of his hiding, run to the synagogue and there cry out, “You see, Lord, we are still here!” At the end, he was the only living Jew left. Once more, in a sad whisper rather disheartened, he addressed his God: “You see? I am still here … But you … where are you?”
Yes, this same anguished whisper rises in millions of throats everyday. We live in a world haunted by the absence of God. The problems and sufferings of the world seem to confirm the skeptics’ proposition that God is dead. Disenchanted and disillusioned with life, many try turning to God as a last resort to their problems but sometimes God does not seem to be bothered to hear them either. It is not uncommon to hear people saying: Father, forgive me but I have lost my faith in God. I cannot believe He loves me as He does not seem to answer my prayers. Such words often make me feel helpless and pained because I know what it is to feel abandon by God. Where are you Lord? Is God dead? These are the universal cries of man. These are the cries of orphans! What answers can we give to them? Can we give our reasons for the Hope we have, as Peter tells us to? Can we reassure them that Jesus’ promise that “he will not leave us orphans” is true? Yes, how do we explain His absence, or rather, how can we see His presence in His absence?
Someone once said: We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, “Why did this happen to me?” unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way. How true! How can we feel God’s presence and love in our sufferings when we do not even see Him in our blessings? To recognize God in our bad times therefore presupposes that we must learn to see Him in our good times first. This was so with the Samaritans where Philip went to preach. Acts records their openness to the message “because they had heard of the miracles he worked or because they saw them for themselves.” And indeed, there was great rejoicing and many conversions took place.
The first question we need to ask ourselves therefore is, whether we praise and thank God and rejoice with Him for the blessings we receive. Because if we cannot even do that, how can we praise Him in our sufferings? Sad to say, many of us also tend to lose God’s presence when things are well with us. When we are successful and well, it is due to our hard to our hard work and effort, or just mere coincidence. But when things go wrong, God is to be blamed. He is responsible for our misfortunes. Yes, we adopt double standards towards God; when things are well with us, we give ourselves the credit but when things go wrong, God is to be blamed. Poor God, He is always the loser. It is not surprising therefore that those who forget to praise God in their good times will feel His absence more strongly in their bad times.
However, if we are not blind to His love in our good times, then such faith will enable us to trust Him even if His presence is not felt during our bad times. Our hope and confidence is founded on our past experience of His love. Our memory of what He has done for us will give us the strength to carry on. Even in daily life, our depth of confidence and trust in a person is based on our past experiences with that person. That was how Peter encouraged his fellow Christians who were under persecution. He reminded them of the love of Jesus and how He gave up His life for them so that they might follow Him in sufferings. Furthermore, Jesus did not suffer in vain but His death opens for us the way to God. Like Jesus, we may suffer for doing good but such sufferings only lead us to God. And just as God gives life to His Son by His death, our surrender to God in sufferings will also bring about a new kind of existence for us. Indeed, the truth in life is that there is no hopeless situation but only people who have grown hopeless about them.
Just consider the persecution of the early Christians in the first reading. From a purely human point of view, this state of affairs might have initiated the decline of Christianity. But in fact, the persecution had just the opposite effect because as Luke never tires of reminding us, the Church enjoyed the gift of the Spirit and such obstacles only served to advance the gospel. If not for the persecution against the Church in Jerusalem, the disciples would not have been scattered through the surrounding areas of Judaea and Samaria. The persecution proved to be a blessing in disguise.
Isn’t this true in our sufferings? Isn’t success born out of failures? Isn’t strength born out of weakness? Isn’t matured love born out of broken relationship? How many of us have become successful today because our encounters with failures only made us more determined to do well? And how many of us are much happier today because certain crises in our life have forced us to be more realistic about our work and our ambitions for wealth and status? And how many of us, because of our sickness, have become more realistic with life thus making us compassionate towards others? Such realization is an indication that the Spirit of Truth never leaves us and that God has never abandoned us. In fact, the ability even to endure and grow in our sufferings shows that God is all the while with us, helping us to carry our crosses cheerfully, meaningfully and joyfully like Jesus.
But we can see God’s presence and love in these entire apparently hopeless situations only if the Spirit of Truth lives in us. And the key to recognizing God’s presence in His absence is a question of our relationship with Him. This is what the gospel is telling us. Unless we love Jesus and allow Him to love us, our relationship with Him will not be strong enough to see us through when sufferings come our way. Jesus says in the gospel: “Anyone who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and show myself to him.” The promise of Jesus is that to those who love Him, He will show Himself to them.
This is only obvious because we reveal ourselves only to those we love and to those who love us. For it is not possible to reveal ourselves to those who do not love us, since they will be too prejudiced against us even to listen to us. But when we love Jesus, we will be able to perceive the Spirit of Jesus living in us and revealing to us about the truths of life.
For good reasons, therefore, Peter exhorts us: Reverence the Lord Jesus in your hearts. That is to say, recognize His presence in our hearts and in our daily lives. But most of all, recognize that He is Lord of our lives and of the whole world, that He is revealer of all truths. When we realize that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him, we will never feel insecure in our trials. Christian hope is basically centered on Christ. If our hope is based on Christ, then we will be able to handle our trials and sufferings positively and confidently, knowing that in every suffering, there is a reason, a meaning and a blessing.
Yes, happy is the man who is able to see and feel and see Jesus’ presence not just in good times but in bad times as well. To be able to do so is to sense the Spirit of Truth dwelling in us. This is our invitation today: to make Jesus’ presence felt at every moment in our lives. This calls for a strengthening of our relationship with Him, a relationship of mutual love.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh