GOD IS CLOSE TO THE BROKENHEARTED

As individuals and as families, we have our ups and downs. We pass through various “seasons of our lives.” Some days can be sunny and bright; others may be dark and dreary. Whatever type of day comes our way, whatever reaction one might have to sun or shade, there is one thing we can be sure of. Life goes on. And the coming of a new day and whatever surprises it brings, is never dependent on our expectations and wishes, our inner disposition, and our worthiness or unworthiness.

Into everyone’s life, some rain has to – and does – fall! This seems to be what Job is acknowledging matter-of-factly. He compares himself to “a slave who longs for the shade, a hireling who waits for his wages” (Job 7:2). Never at a loss for words to describe his misery, Job more than aptly stands for a great many of us who may be undergoing their own share of “sweat and care and cumber; sorrows passing number.” Job tells a story that sounds all too familiar to many of us. They are stories that, as a priest, I have been privileged to listen to, and empathize with, over the many years I have been journeying with others in faith and life. The stories sound so alike and yet so different. They are so alike in the sense that all, bar none, are not immune to suffering and pain. They are so alike, too, in the sense that the pain each one feels is deeply personal and far-ranging in terms of consequences. They are so different in the sense that deep pain can be occasioned by a multiplicity of causes and surrounding circumstances, which are as many and as varied as there are people experiencing them.

There is something in the Liturgy of today for people deep in the throes of suffering. God does not take away the pain, it seems to me. God does not offer to make the pain go away. Not necessarily. But the readings tell us something for sure: God is close to the brokenhearted! God is on the side of those who suffer in any way. God offers a gentle reminder for those in pain: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds…the Lord sustains the lowly, the wicked he casts to the ground.” (Ps 147:3,6)

St. Paul stands for this God who is close to the suffering when he also alludes to himself as a slave, willing to go the extra mile and become like others are: “To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some” (1 Cor 9:22).

God is indeed close to the suffering. This, Jesus shows in concrete signs in today’s Gospel passage, alleviating the pain of those brought to him, including Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. God shows himself close to and on the side of those who suffer in any way.

But there is yet one thing we can safely deduce from today’s liturgy, which is no less true and no less important than the foregoing. This is the fact that there is something we who suffer can do despite the suffering and the pain: help others in their own pain, that is, become healers though wounded ourselves. This is what Paul did. “All this I do for the sake of the Gospel, so that I too may have a share in it” (1 Cor 9:23). For the sake of the Gospel, Paul became all things to all men, even to the point of calling himself a slave like Job did.

Jesus today even offers a heartwarming example of empathic and active concern for a particular family predicament. He healed Peter’s mother-in-law. In Jesus, God’s solicitude for the suffering took on concrete manifestation. In Paul, the same love for the suffering was shown in his willingness and readiness to walk in other people’s shoes, as it were. In Job, we see God’s long- suffering nature and patience. In him too we see a shining example of humble acceptance and resignation to whatever God allowed him to undergo. Job faced suffering without equal, with nary a passing thought to go against the God he believed in.

Among others, Filipinos still show a lot of this trait extolled by today’s readings. Filipinos are close to those who suffer, to the downtrodden, to those who are considered underdogs. How else explain the popularity of telenovelas, and the propensity of Filipinos to identify with those who suffer unjustly? How else explain the fact that for many families, the knowledge that another family is currently facing some difficult trial or at least needs help, would immediately send lola or nanay to that household to provide some help? In many cases, the person really does not need to do anything, nor give anything. In most cases, the poor who have nothing, are those who really help others just as materially needy as themselves. But they give what no money can really pay for: themselves. Their presence and obvious concern for the needy is more than money can buy. Pakikiramay is the untranslatable word for this Filipino trait that stands so close to the nature of God extolled in today’s liturgy: God is close to the brokenhearted. Wagas ang pakikiramay ng Diyos sa nagdurusa at nagdadalamhati! Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted!

FEARING NOT THE HEAT WHEN IT COMES

FEARING NOT THE HEAT WHEN IT COMES:
An Experience of God through Lectio Divina

Thus says the LORD: Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, But stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: It fears not the heat when it comes, its leaves stay green; In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.( Jeremiah 17:5-8)

Heart and Mind in Tandem

Lectio Divina suits my personality fine. I can bask under the warm glow of feelings for as long as I want. I can also bathe in the refreshing waters of novel insights born of a more mind-based reflection. There is abundance of the heart and free-flowing cooperation of the mind in this ancient process-prayer that puts the heart and mind in a dynamic mode of cooperation. As a basically heart person, trained, for the most part, to be a thinker, lectio divina is an experience that brings me more in touch with my strong feeling component.

A passage from Jeremiah quoted above, part of the responsory in the Office of Readings for one of the last weeks of ordinary time is what I base this reflection on.

Nature as Nurturing Mother

I love nature. I can spend hours gazing at a stream, and lolling on the grassy embankment. I am spiritually energized every time I go up mountains and trek by gorges and heights. In the countless foot journeys up mountains I have done in life, passing by refreshing rivers, gurgling and glinting under the sun, after a long, dry spell of seemingly endless, thirst-inducing trek, has always been a welcome treat. It has always led me to think about God as present in nature, a God who cares for weary trekkers like us, who could use a refreshing, reinvigorating time with mother nature.

Jeremiah’s image of a tree planted beside water is one that I found myself very much at home with, for actual and existential reasons.

Falling Leaves, Faltering Hopes

It is nearing autumn once again (even if I live in the torrid tropics!). Four years ago, when I was deep in further studies in Baltimore, Maryland, me and my siblings, along with a great many relatives and friends, buried an older sister, the second in our large family, taken away at a relatively young age at 56, by a cruel and unforgiving disease called cancer.

Not long after that, it was once more “autumn” in my life. Just when I thought we were just getting started on our downhill trek towards recovery, the shattering news came that another sister, younger this time, has a similar cancer … and then another, still more recently … third in a row!

To shift metaphors, I am once more on the uphill climb, up towards a barren, dry, and hot, lava-seared landscape that reminded me of a mountain I climbed 19 years ago. I am once more struggling and groveling up the lava waste of an experience that saps away hope, that dries up tender saplings of trust in God-nurturing-mother who seems to have walked out on us, on me, once again.

My sisters’ and the rest of my surviving siblings’ own “Goldengrove,” in allusion to Manley-Hopkins’ poignant poem addressed to the young Margaret, “grieving,” is now once more “unleaving.” The falling leaves speak not only of both actual and potential losses. They speak to me of unwanted endings. They remind me of “hope growing grey hairs,” of what the same Jesuit poet refers to as an experience in which “all I endeavor in disappointment end.”

What No Mind, Nor Thought Can Express

The prayer experience proved to be, as usual, an oasis for my thirsty soul. “As runs the thirsting deer to find where cooling waters flow, so rush the wishes of my heart to come before you Lord,” was a refrain of an old, old song back in seminary days that I kept on repeating. Jeremiah’s prophetic utterance could not have come at a better time. I dwelt on it. I mulled over it for a long while. I allowed images of me actually peering over the crater of a hot, smoking volcano (something I actually did in that climb 19 years ago), and then running down for dear life to the safety and refreshing coolness of regurgitating waters further down refreshing me. “What no mind, no, nor heart expressed, ghost guessed” … the possibility that I could actually be not that kind of tree Jeremiah may be speaking of.

Searing Pain, Healing Word

The rhythm of the prayer, with its four stages, that allowed me to rock back and forth lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio, brought up to me images of a nurturing mother lulling her child to safety and warmth. The pain I felt was real and deeply searing. But the prayer experience, based on the Word, came out as a healing experience. More than that, it offered me reassurance. And even more than that, it gave fresh insights. Hope falters when love’s conviction alters. When one is far from the life-giving waters; when one is not rightly planted near where grace flows, hope shrivels at the root.

Searching and Finding

I have always wondered at the internalized object I have been associating with God all this time. I have always wondered how best for me to think of God and how best to relate to this internalized object-image I learned from when I was a child. My search did not go in vain, at least as far as this prayer experience is concerned. The experience convinced me, more than ever, that my internalized object-image of God has always been that of a parent, a caring, nurturing mother, to be exact. Although thinking of God as father was not entirely distasteful to me, I realized I could “taste and see the goodness of God” more if I imagined Him as a provident parent. No wonder I always found it easier to commune with Him in and through nature. No wonder images of deer running to the water always strike me. No wonder, too, that Francis Thompson’s poems delight me, particularly his “God and the Child,” and “The Hound of Heaven.”

Fearing No the Heat When It Comes

I am afraid of the worst for my two other siblings just as I had been eight years ago. I am afraid of so many things, including what the future has in store for me and the rest of what used to be a big family. The realization that our genetic make-up is not that resilient to disease comes to me as one “long dry spell of searing heat,” placing me in a situation where I can “enjoy no change of season,” as Jeremiah wrote.

But it is precisely at times like these that prayer becomes more meaningful. It is only when one’s faith is sorely tested, when one’s love is forcibly “altered” by both pleasant and unpleasant circumstances, that one’s hope shines. Earth is, indeed, “crammed with heaven, and every bush is afire with God,” as Elizabeth Barrett-Browning so nicely puts it. But “only he who sees takes off his shoes and worships.” Only he who sees far beyond … Only he who sees can understand the meaning behind things and events, including a bush – nothing more and nothing else, but a manifestation of God.

I still do not understand the “heat” that has once too often come into my life. But prayer at least helps me to accept what is unfathomable and what is unacceptable. It, at least, helps me gain back precious perspective. Most importantly, it shows me who I basically am, someone who may need to draw closer to the stream, someone who may need to remain planted beside the waters, if I want to be, and remain a tree that “fears not when the heat comes, and whose leaves stay green.”