June 30, 2017 Friday
12th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading:
Gen 17:1. 9-10
Gospel: Mt 8:1–4
When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him.
Then a leper came forward. He knelt before him and said, “Sir, if you want to, you can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I want to, be clean again.” At that very moment the man was cleansed from his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you do not tell anyone, but go to the priest, have yourself declared clean, and offer the gift that Moses ordered as proof of it.”
DAIGITAL EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
More painful to bear in the time of Jesus than the leprosy eating the body part by part was the rejection by even family members. When the leper came forward and asked for healing, we understand he did so with the desperation of a traveler wanting to get into the last bus.
Today’s Gospel takes us to the heart of the June 22, 2008 sinking of the Princess of the Stars on Philippine seas. We will never know how much prayers were uttered by the 862 passengers on board that ill-fated vessel! Twenty-three-year-old Jose-Mari Garbo survived by jumping to the water when the ship got closer to the sea. He narrated how he had called on all the saints and even his dead grandparents for help.
Did the missing passengers pray any lesser? They were probably praying even harder. Would that it were as easy for them to obtain divine help as the leper of today’s Gospel reading.
Where was God when the fourth ill-fated vessel of Sulpicio Lines Inc. was tossed by the ruthless winds, battered by angry waves and swallowed by the hungry sea? Was leprosy easier to attend to than the fate of 862 passengers calling on God’s name in different dialects, from different religions but with equal fervor? If Jesus was sleeping as he did in the boat of the disciples battered by the winds in the Sea of Galilee, were the cries of the passengers of the Princess of the Stars not loud enough to wake him up so he could rebuke the winds and the waves?
The relatives of the missing passengers are probably asking more disturbing questions. God’s ways are so foreign to our ways. As human error committed by whoever was responsible for the sailing of the ship despite the visit of typhoon Frank makes this mystery more disturbing. We grope in the dark for answers. This is the moment that our faith should shine like the star. The darker the night, the brighter the star should be. The leper’s night was just as dark. But because his faith shone like a star, he found his way to God. The Princess of the Stars had long sunk, would you allow the star of your faith to fall with it? – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM
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