Saturday, September 24, 2016 25th Week in
Ordinary Time First
Reading: Eccl 11: 9 – 12: 8Gospel: Lk 9:43-45.
And all were astonished by the majesty of God. While they were all amazed at his every deed, he said to his disciples, “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men”. But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
A friend of mine became a victim of a dubious marketing strategy at a Mall in Cebu. An agent told her that she was an instant winner in a raffle draw by random counting of passersby. To claim her prize, however, she had to enter the store to register. She went in smiling but came out grumbling because she was asked to buy an expensive item from the store to validate her win. She felt deceived.
Reflecting on her story I turned to the experience of the apostles. Did they feel deceived when they were told of the need to suffer persecutions to win eternal life? The disciples may have felt deceived too because they were expecting an easy political liberation. They weren’t ready for a Messiah who would merely teach them to look at the oppressive status quo from another perspective in order to derive spiritual merits. If it is true that Judas Iscariot was a member of the “Sicarii”, a cadre of assassins among Jewish rebels determined to drive the Romans out of Judea, Judas must have been the face of that segment of the citizenry putting so much hope in Jesus as a political liberator.
But if they felt swindled, they couldn’t put any blame on Jesus since he laid down his cards from the beginning. “If you want to follow me”, he told them, “you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow in my footsteps” (Matt. 16:24). In hinting at his Passion and Death he showed that he was not except from the requirement of self-oblation. But something prevented the disciples from understanding this. They were also afraid to ask for clarification. Either they were afraid that further clarifications would drag them into the ordeal, or they were afraid that Jesus’ clarification would twist their paradigms into abandoning their expectation of a political messiah.
We too cannot accuse God of deception. In no clearer terms Jesus said: “The Son of Man will be delivered into human hands” (Luke 9:44). If he the leader underwent suffering by necessity, can we, his followers, expect any better path than the difficult path he traversed? –(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM, MMExM, MAPM, REB. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com.
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