Monday, 29 May 2017
7th Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 19:1-8
Gospel: Jn 16:29-33
The disciples said to Jesus, “Now you are speaking plainly and not in veiled language! Now we see that you know all things, even before we question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God.”
Jesus answered them, “You say that you believe! The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. “I have told you all this, so that in me you may have peace. You will have trouble in the world; but, courage! I have overcome the world.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
A foreigner who confronts a waiter, “Why is your Peking duck so small?” Waiter replies, “It’s not even a duck, Sir, but an ordinary chicken”. “And you call it Peking duck?” the foreigner shouts. The waiter explains, “In Tagalog, Sir, fake duck is “Peking Duck”.
Language veils meaning. Some take advantage of this to cheat. Others use this to withhold full disclosure of meaning until the proper time for revelation arrives. Jesus had been talking in veiled language because people still needed more preparations to absorb the meaning of his message. In today’s Gospel reading people noticed that Jesus was no longer talking in veiled language. Jesus’ reply was in the context of sufferings. He was no longer talking in veiled language because they had grown in wisdom because of sufferings.
The altar of suffering is like a large whetstone against which we sharpen our minds to attain wisdom. As we rub ourselves against this rough slab of sufferings, we become sharp in deciphering hidden mysteries of life. In the scary trials I had gone though I came up with this conclusion: we can float in any ocean of suffering. Don’t we float more on impure waters? All of us, chubby or skinny, will have to struggle a little to float on pure water because our density is one (1) gram per cubic centimeter. Pure water has the same density. Salty water has more. The salt concentration in the Dead Sea fluctuates around 31.5%. Lie down on the Dead Sea and you can actually play dead while floating comfortably. We struggle to float on purer water but not on water with more “impurities”.
Panic makes us sink when technically we are supposed to float. To float, we simply have to breath slowly and take it easy. The same thing works with sufferings. Since Jesus had already conquered the world (verse 33), we have enough buoyant force to float over the sea of sufferings. Fear makes us sink. We just have to relax in faith and total surrender to God’s grace in order to float. —(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM
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