From the housetops

Monday,
September 23, 2019
25th Week in
Ordinary Time
First Reading: Ezra 1: 1-6
Gospel Reading:
Lk 8:16-18
Jesus said to his disciples, “No one, after lighting a lamp covers it with a bowl or puts it under the bed; rather he puts it on a lampstand so that people coming in may see the light. In the same way, there is nothing hidden that shall not be uncovered; nothing kept secret that shall not be known clearly.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
I had a dream. I was driving to the Northern part of Cebu and was somewhere in a very secluded area when a big truck drove past me with a speed faster than the wave of its Doppler sound. It was a tanker hauling for a purified water company. It was running so fast in order to gain momentum for an uphill climb. But when it reached the crest its momentum sent it flying like a motorcycle driving swiftly through a ramp. It fell down the ravine.
I called up a local newspaper. A photographer who picked up my call was in a hurry to leave yet polite enough to explain that someone had already aler-ted him about the accident. He was in fact on his way to the accident scene. After I hanged up the phone, I heard a dirge – a medley of lines from “Ave Maria” and “The Prayer” – coming from a big military truck that almost occupied both lanes of the highway. On board were uniformed members of the military sent to nurse the wounded and to collect dead bodies. The truck stopped at the gate of the Archbishop’s Residence compound. A simple prayer service was initiated by Msgr. Joseph Tan who sprinkled Holy Water on the dead and invited me to do the same. Other priests joined us
If that dream does not carry any special dispatch for me, it sure has a special message in relation to the Gospel reading today. How fast the news could reach that local newspaper when I was supposed to be the only witness to the accident. This goes with today’s Gospel message: there is nothing hidden that shall not be uncovered.
By nature secrets are whispered everywhere, which is why William Congreve in his ‘Love for love’ exclaimed, “I know that’s a secret, for it is whispered e-verywhere.”  The hugeness of the truck that fell down the ravine and the enormity of the military truck that responded to the accident highlight the impossibility of hiding secrets for good. Hypocrites have reasons to worry because pretense cannot sanitize their image forever. For, “there is nothing hidden that shall not be uncovered; nothing kept secret that shall not be known clearly.”
In submission to this Gospel message I publish this dream at the risk of revealing anything hidden in my subconscious. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.