Galilee

"He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him." -- Matthew 28:10

Thanks to a friend's generosity, we were able to attend the Easter recollection given by Cardinal Tagle at the Araneta Coliseum last April 21. 

According to Tagle, going home to Galilee can mean three things:

1. Completion of abandonment
   When Jesus is being questioned by the authorities, and someone asks Simon Peter if he is a disciple, Peter denies it. One by one, the disciples abandon Jesus. And when utter defeat has apparently come with Jesus' death, where does one go? One goes home. And completes the abandonment.
   
2. A place to hide
   One goes home to Galilee... far away from Jerusalem where all the scandal and pain of the past few days have occurred... Jerusalem where the authorities are based, the ones who put to death the person one had believed in for the past three years. One goes home to Galilee to hide.
   
3. Old way of life
   One returns to Galilee, to the old way of life, because what else is there to do but try to move on?

Galilee can be an event, a person, a place. In my Galilees, one factor remains the same... Jesus is waiting for me.

1. I might be abandoning Christ when things have been going badly... when I have my little "tampo" and ask God where he is in my situation. But even when I abandon Christ, the Risen Lord is in that Galilee of abandonment waiting to meet me. For he cannot help but be faithful even when I am not.
   
2. I might be inhabiting a Galilee out of fear... Maybe I'm trapped by my fear of being disliked or not accepted and I lie or put on a mask and further strengthen my prison. Again, the Risen Lord can embrace me in my Galilee of fear and set me free.
   
3. How often have I gone back to my old sinful habits? Sometimes it seems to me like I can tape record my confession and play it back the next time I'm there... I struggle with the same things, in varying degrees, with varying success. But Jesus will be there in my Galilee of my old life to catch me even before I immerse myself there. Jesus offers me a fresh start.

The Risen Lord directs me to go to Galilee where he is waiting. I return to Galilee to accept failure. Jesus is there to say, "Don't lose hope, we can start again." Galilee is seemingly a place of failure but Jesus is there to open our eyes of faith and to bring new life.

But it does not end in the return to Galilee... the return to Galilee is preparation to be sent to many other places. The Risen Lord sends out witnesses to the ends of the earth to testify to the truth. However, the first qualification is knowing Christ. How can we share what we do not have? I can be sent only if I am a good friend of Jesus.

Overall, it was a beautiful recollection. 

Thank you, Cardinal Tagle for feeding God's sheep. 

Thank you, Lord, for the good shepherds you send to us. 

Ambrosial Revelation

As part of an English "summer camp," I asked my lone student to summarize articles selected by my theology professor (for a prior class he taught in another university). I would also summarize them to help my student see an alternative way of doing it. This is one of those article summaries...

 

Article Summary/ Reflection on Ian Knox, “Revelation” in Theology for Teachers (QC: Claretian Publications, 2003), pp. 63-75.

by Eline Santos

Revelation, in a word, is romance, i.e., divine romance because God, out of an unfathomable love for us, chooses to reveal his own self—though infinitely beyond human comprehension—so that we might love him back. Out of love, he created us for himself; and to love we are called, both as a verb and as a noun—mission and destination. 

      Inscrutable as he is to our limited senses, the infinite God takes the initiative to communicate with us in mediated ways we can understand: through our own experiences; the awe-inspiring beauty of creation; individual and collective history (scriptures); the prophets; the Church; and the ultimate, definitive revelation of God, Jesus Christ. These things are necessarily perceived with faith, for without this God-given virtue, there can only be blindness, hard-heartedness and unbelief. Active faith practiced in daily life goes hand in hand with receiving revelation.

        Revelation might come when one is lying on the beach and gazing at the stars in the night sky or watching a program on how the universe began, and then Psalm 19 comes to mind: “The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky proclaims its builder’s craft…” This could be just another anecdote in one’s personal faith journey, but it is nevertheless another step forward as one evolves from perhaps being a lukewarm, non-Church goer to becoming a devout defender of the faith.

       In some instances, the revelation experienced by a person can take on more influence and is recognized by the Church as “private revelation,” i.e., it could be helpful to the faithful to live more fully as a Christian at a certain point in time, or perhaps emphasizes a certain aspect of the deposit of faith, but does not add to the latter. The faithful are not obliged to believe this type of revelation.

       In contrast, out of all the communication God uses, the Bible is at the heart of revelation—the norm by which other revelation is measured. As St. Jerome puts it: “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” The study of scripture, guided by the Holy Spirit, is essential to understand and interpret revelation correctly. However, this study is not done in isolation; for us Catholics, it is done within community, where the living transmission of revelation is carried out by the successors of Christ’s apostles, embodied in the priesthood. Knox does not say it but no other revelation is clearer than the Eucharist, where Christ comes and gives himself to us as living, life-giving bread.         

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien