Friday, September 26, 2014
25th Week
in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Eccl 3:1-11
Gospel: Luke 9:18-22
One day when Jesus was praying alone, not far from his disciples, he asked them, “What do people say about me?” And they answered, “Some say that you are John the Baptist; others say that you are Elijah, and still others that you are one of the former prophets risen from the dead.” Again Jesus asked them, “Who then do you say I am?” Peter answered, “The Messiah of God.”
Then Jesus spoke to them, giving them strict orders not to tell this to anyone.
And he added, “The Son of Man must suffer many things. He will be rejected by the elders and chief priests and teachers of the Law, and put to death. Then after three days he will be raised to life.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Joseph Luft and Harry Ingram invented the so-called Johari window theory, according to which self-knowledge falls into four quadrants, namely, the open, the blind, the hidden and the unknown quadrant. To the open quadrant belong personal information known to you and the public. Those known to the public alone belong to the second quadrant called the blind quadrant. The third quadrant contains those known only to you and not to the public. The fourth quadrant is called the unknown quadrant. It contains pieces of information that are neither known to you nor to the public.
The Johari window enriches our understanding of today’s Gospel reading. When Jesus asked feedback about himself from his disciples he was operating from the second quadrant. However, it was not for purposes of self-improvement; it was to provoke the disciples into deeper reflection of their knowledge of who he was.
The best feedback Jesus got came from Peter who said: “You are the Messiah of God.” It was not the perfect answer, though.
While it sounded politically correct, it did not capture the mission-vision of Jesus on earth, a mission-vision that ruled out the concept of earthly kingship. Peter’s answer only heightened the peoples’ thirst to hasten the formation of a revolutionary government that would crush the Roman invaders.
Who is Jesus to us? We may find this question irrelevant thinking we are religious enough to know Jesus so well. But the Johari window invites us to explore the other quadrants of self knowledge so that we may not stagnate. By humbly reflecting upon the blind and the unknown quadrants we see the possibility that we might not be as religious as we think after all. In seeking to know Jesus more we lessen our tendency towards hypocrisy and veer away from split-level Christianity.- Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website:www.frdan.org.
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