Jun Mercado, OMI
Wednesday, April 20. 2011
I have been in turmoil questioning over and over again why the poor continue to suffer, not only of man-made disasters, but also natural ones. Why the poor are often the victims of endless calamities? In the Congo, Sudan, the Middle East, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Latin America and in Japan post earthquakes and tsunami. The list is endless and the anguish and the cry of the poor DO NOT reach God!
In a mysterious way, this season of Holy Week, we are invited to turn to the reality of the CROSS. Isn’t the message of Holy Week, that is, Jesus Crucified is a disclosure that God is NOT the all powerful one that we were taught from catechism to the liturgies that we celebrate the whole year round.
The God revealed to us on the cross is so weak, so helpless and so poor. Except for a few women and a disciple, he was all alone, abandoned and betrayed by his friends. Yes, this is the message of the cross. Our God is not only so poor and weak but also a suffering one and dying on the cross.
This is a shock! Indeed, a real scandal! How can we reconcile this radical message of the cross with the history of power, victory (often military ones) and wealth that have been the dominant traditions from the time that Emperor Constantine claimed that by the sign of the cross he killed his opponents at the Battle of Ponte Milvio?
Purveyors of power and wealth both in the sacred and the profane world have since engaged in a big cover up of the real meaning of the Crucified Lord. Tragically, they go to the extent of crafting new myths and symbol including regal titles, throne complete with Triple Crown, miters and scepter for the Lord who died on the cross.
Jesus, the Son of God, and died in the Cross, revolutionized our understanding of God and upset the religious and political institutions. The Crucified Lord yesterday, today and forever, continues to hound us even today. Our God is NOT the all-powerful one! Much less is He the all TRANSCENDENT One. Definitely, God - revealed by Jesus in the Cross is NOT a sort of a SUPERNATURAL DEITY!
The message of the Crucified Lord tells us a different story line that the world is used to hear. In the mouth of Caiphas, the High Priest, the world’s story line is ‘redemptive violence’, that is, to kill one man to save the nation. The story line of the Crucified Christ is a ‘redemptive suffering’, that is, to offer one’ s life, suffer and die that others may live.
The story line of the cross is a radically different life from what the world tells us. It invites all believers to live a life of simplicity and at the service of the poor and all who were on the fringes of society. These so called unclean, unwanted, unacceptable people, the pagans, the sinners, the prisoners, and the lepers are now the number one in the roll call of Jesus of Golgotha. These were the people through whom God chooses to reveal Himself.
The Jesus of Golgotha was branded as a troublemaker, a blasphemer, a scandal to all. He had the audacity and the RAGE to question the entire teaching of established religion about God, the Temple and the Law. It is a revelation that has rocked the world ever since. This has been the uncomfortable truth that the experts and religious leaders want to deny, cover up and reject.
Yet, to find the deepest experience of God, we have to retrieve the real meaning of the cross that is at the heart of the mission and the following of Jesus.
For centuries, pilgrims, knights and ‘seekers’ have all been looking for the so-called ‘Holy Grail’. I never understood the real meaning of the ‘Holy Grail’ until I was confronted by the cruel killings of OMI Martyrs - Bishop Ben de Jesus in front of the Jolo Cathedral in 1997; Fr. Benjamin Inocencio at the back of the Cathedral in the year 2000; and Fr. Reynaldo Jesus Roda in his mission station in Tabawan, Tawi Tawi in 2008. Then I begin to surmise… Is not the cross the real ‘Holy Grail’ of human and divine encounter?
The martyrs like them give a name to the crucified peoples. Here we speak of the deaths of millions of people, especially of children, in what used to be called Third World countries, in the form of poverty, illnesses, exclusion, wars, massacres, particularly those of children, who are in no way to blame. What is happening is undeniable, but society and government do not even give these victims a name, let alone grant any sort of dignity to these deaths.
My uncle Johnny Mercado quoted in his latest Inquirer Column the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel who was able to capture this ‘absence of God’ in his book “Night.” At Auschwitz, 14-year-old Wiesel and other Holocaust prisoners watched the Gestapo execute a child.
“‘Where is God?’ someone behind me asked,” Wiesel recalls. And I heard a voice within me, answer: “Here He is, hanging on this gallow.”
Though the cross remains the most powerful expression of the Christian story line. The story ends not on Good Friday! We do know that on the third day, God raises him up. And this Jesus whom they crucified is now RISEN from the dead and has become the LIGHT of the world. By his resurrection, he has conquered death and has restored the fullness of life. EASTER proclaims that ‘Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, all the time belongs to him and all the ages, to him the glory and power through every age forever. Amen.’
In a mysterious way, this season of Holy Week, we are invited to turn to the reality of the CROSS. Isn’t the message of Holy Week, that is, Jesus Crucified is a disclosure that God is NOT the all powerful one that we were taught from catechism to the liturgies that we celebrate the whole year round.
The God revealed to us on the cross is so weak, so helpless and so poor. Except for a few women and a disciple, he was all alone, abandoned and betrayed by his friends. Yes, this is the message of the cross. Our God is not only so poor and weak but also a suffering one and dying on the cross.
This is a shock! Indeed, a real scandal! How can we reconcile this radical message of the cross with the history of power, victory (often military ones) and wealth that have been the dominant traditions from the time that Emperor Constantine claimed that by the sign of the cross he killed his opponents at the Battle of Ponte Milvio?
Purveyors of power and wealth both in the sacred and the profane world have since engaged in a big cover up of the real meaning of the Crucified Lord. Tragically, they go to the extent of crafting new myths and symbol including regal titles, throne complete with Triple Crown, miters and scepter for the Lord who died on the cross.
Jesus, the Son of God, and died in the Cross, revolutionized our understanding of God and upset the religious and political institutions. The Crucified Lord yesterday, today and forever, continues to hound us even today. Our God is NOT the all-powerful one! Much less is He the all TRANSCENDENT One. Definitely, God - revealed by Jesus in the Cross is NOT a sort of a SUPERNATURAL DEITY!
The message of the Crucified Lord tells us a different story line that the world is used to hear. In the mouth of Caiphas, the High Priest, the world’s story line is ‘redemptive violence’, that is, to kill one man to save the nation. The story line of the Crucified Christ is a ‘redemptive suffering’, that is, to offer one’ s life, suffer and die that others may live.
The story line of the cross is a radically different life from what the world tells us. It invites all believers to live a life of simplicity and at the service of the poor and all who were on the fringes of society. These so called unclean, unwanted, unacceptable people, the pagans, the sinners, the prisoners, and the lepers are now the number one in the roll call of Jesus of Golgotha. These were the people through whom God chooses to reveal Himself.
The Jesus of Golgotha was branded as a troublemaker, a blasphemer, a scandal to all. He had the audacity and the RAGE to question the entire teaching of established religion about God, the Temple and the Law. It is a revelation that has rocked the world ever since. This has been the uncomfortable truth that the experts and religious leaders want to deny, cover up and reject.
Yet, to find the deepest experience of God, we have to retrieve the real meaning of the cross that is at the heart of the mission and the following of Jesus.
For centuries, pilgrims, knights and ‘seekers’ have all been looking for the so-called ‘Holy Grail’. I never understood the real meaning of the ‘Holy Grail’ until I was confronted by the cruel killings of OMI Martyrs - Bishop Ben de Jesus in front of the Jolo Cathedral in 1997; Fr. Benjamin Inocencio at the back of the Cathedral in the year 2000; and Fr. Reynaldo Jesus Roda in his mission station in Tabawan, Tawi Tawi in 2008. Then I begin to surmise… Is not the cross the real ‘Holy Grail’ of human and divine encounter?
The martyrs like them give a name to the crucified peoples. Here we speak of the deaths of millions of people, especially of children, in what used to be called Third World countries, in the form of poverty, illnesses, exclusion, wars, massacres, particularly those of children, who are in no way to blame. What is happening is undeniable, but society and government do not even give these victims a name, let alone grant any sort of dignity to these deaths.
My uncle Johnny Mercado quoted in his latest Inquirer Column the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel who was able to capture this ‘absence of God’ in his book “Night.” At Auschwitz, 14-year-old Wiesel and other Holocaust prisoners watched the Gestapo execute a child.
“‘Where is God?’ someone behind me asked,” Wiesel recalls. And I heard a voice within me, answer: “Here He is, hanging on this gallow.”
Though the cross remains the most powerful expression of the Christian story line. The story ends not on Good Friday! We do know that on the third day, God raises him up. And this Jesus whom they crucified is now RISEN from the dead and has become the LIGHT of the world. By his resurrection, he has conquered death and has restored the fullness of life. EASTER proclaims that ‘Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, all the time belongs to him and all the ages, to him the glory and power through every age forever. Amen.’
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