13 MAY 2020 National Consecration to the IHM Rev. 12:1-6, John 19:25-30
Take a close look at the icon of Our Lady of Fatima. Look at her face; she is grieving. Today I wish to portray Mary as the image of the Church, the mother who grieves as she looks at her children, especially during this time of the pandemic crisis.
Pope Francis prefers to portray the Church as a joyful and prolific mother. Is the joyful mother typology of the Church the antithesis to the idea of the Church as a “Grieving Mother”? NO, not necessarily. Did not the Lord say in his Beatitudes, “Blessed are the sorrowful they shall be comforted.” How can we know sorrow if we have not known joy? How can we grieve if have not loved? You will not know what it means to lose what you did not have, in the first place.
I remember a mother who was grieving the fact that her son had lost his faith. Her son who loved his mother looked sincere to me when he gave in to his mother’s request that he allow himself to be guided by a priest. I happened to be the priest. I remember him saying to me bluntly, “Father, I’ve lost my faith already.” So I asked him: “What do you mean?” He said, “I’ve stopped going to Church since several years ago already. I hate to break my mother’s heart but I can’t seem to explain to her that I’ve say I’ve outgrown religion already. I’d rather just try to live a meaningful life, do what I believe I should do as a human being who’s trying to be good.”
Here’s what I said in reply, “Wait a minute, if you say you’ve lost your faith, you presuppose that you had it in the first place. Are you sure about that? Faith is not just about religious beliefs, you know.”
He reacted and said, “what is the difference? “ I said, “Well, Religion is probably something that was imposed on you, something you did not choose. And so now you choose to get out of it because you don’t find it meaningful anymore. That makes sense.” And what about faith? “Faith is something that cannot be imposed on anybody. It’s a choice. You can’t call it faith if you did not choose it freely.”
“Is it possible that this is precisely what you are looking for now? Could it be that you’re questioning your religion precisely because you’re beginning to discover your faith?” Our conversation ended with, “Can I have more chances to talk to you about it?” I said, sure.
I spoke to the mother afterwards. I told her her son wanted to have a follow up session with me. Then I explained to her I did not think her son had lost faith; I said he was in fact just beginning to discover it. And that it was enough to just let him go through his own process and accompany him, with a lot of respect, patience and love. I saw a hint of a smile replacing the grief that covered her face before that.
The Bible actually turns grieving into a positive experience. Remember St. Paul who tells the Thessalonians in 1 Thess 4:13 “not to grieve like the rest who have no hope?” The image of the Church as a grieving Mother must be seen in the light of Christian hope if it is to have any meaning at all.
Last week, when my brother Randy David thanked the family and friends who joined our Mass for the first anniversary of the passing of Karina, his wife, he quoted the thoughts of the Italian writer, Carlo Rovelli in his book entitled, THE ORDER OF TIME on the positive meaning of grieving. Rovelli said, “It isn’t absence that causes sorrow (or grieving). It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence, is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.”
My honest feeling is that what Mother Church truly grieves about in our day and age is when people cannot even grieve anymore; when people just don’t care. When they remain unaffected by the suffering f others. When the Papal Nuncio visited us in the Diocese of Kalookan, he retold us the story of our beloved patron saint, San Roque—who lived in the time when Europe was confronted by the plague, when whole cities would be wiped out by epidemics and diseases.At some point, he shifted to our own times and said, modern people are confronted by an even more serious kind of plague: the plague of indifference. When more people behave like the priest and the Levite characters in the well-known parable, when, in their life’s journey they encounter the wayside victim.
You would probably remember the time when I said, in the context of the extrajudicial killings that were happening almost every day in Metro Manila, “I sincerely believe this is what Mother Church is grieving about, with regard to her children. What I call the death of conscience, the prevalence of indifference. In the story of Cain and Abel, it is the Lord who grieves. And he is more deeply affected by Cain’s incapacity to grieve about the terrible thing he had done to his brother. He is grieved by Cain’s answer to his question, WHERE IS YOUR BROTHER? When Cain says, AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER? He was actually saying, WHAT DO I CARE?”
Jesus himself was grieved when he wept for Jerusalem, wishing that he could gather them as a hen would gather her chicks under her wings. Like the ancient prophets, he was grieved by the knowledge that they were heading for their own destruction and he could not prevent them. Why? Because they would not listen to their prophets, because they would rather listen to lies than the truth.
Indeed, It is indifference that kills our hope—the very incapacity itself to grieve. And so, back to the grieving mother image of the Church. In John 16:20-21, Jesus says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.”
The Church’s grief is that of a woman in labor, the birthing of the sons and daughters of God in the image of Christ. Not only does she grieve because of the pain of birth pangs. John tells us in Rev. 12 what makes her birthing even more terrifying: she is being pursued by a dragon that threatens to devour her child. Not only does she have to go through the pain of giving birth. She also has to deal with the pain of a miscarriage, or that of her child being snatched away by the beast.
Listen to how she is described by the writer: Revelation 12:1 “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” (Ang tanda ng corona.)
Take a look at our typical Marian iconography, how often Mary’s image is embellished with those details that actually describe the Church. And then the texts says, Revelation 12:2-7 “She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon… The dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth.”
It is in this context that a heavenly battle takes place.
Revelation 12:7 “Then war broke out in heaven; Michael* and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back…”
The Church does not give birth to sons and daughters only to allow them to be devoured by the evil one. And so she raises her children And makes them ready for a spiritual battle. Take note, the battle is a spiritual warfare. It is not a fight between good and bad people but between good and bad spirits. Wala namang masamang tao o masamang damo dito sa mundo. All of us are by nature good—we are all like good fields sown with both good seeds and weeds. (Mat 13:24ff.) The parable tells us the farmer would rather allow them both to grow together than pull out the weeds, so as not to harm the good seeds. He will allow them to fight it out and bear fruit despite the presence of the weeds. But he will make sure that at harvest time, he will separate the grains from the chaff by winnowing them.
And so we ask, why does the Church grieve like a mother? Because not all her children who are conceived are born. Some are spiritually miscarried, some are spiritually aborted. Or if we stick to the image of the grains, not all the seeds that fall on the ground grow and bear fruit. Some just decompose. Why? Because they are empty.
Life in this world is really a choice between two possibilities: meaningful or meaningless, with purpose or without purpose. Maybe that is why the final judgment is often portrayed in the Bible as a WINNOWING, the figurative act of separating the grain from the chaff. Iyung may laman sa bilao ang bagsak at iyung walang laman sa lupa matatapon para mabulok. Iyung may laman, pwedeng iluto at kainin, o pwede ring itanim para dumami.
I think this is what inspired Jesus to give the image of the FALL a positive meaning. John 12: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” It is no longer about sin. The grain of wheat must fall in order to germinate, grow, and bear fruit. That is, kung may laman. You cannot grow palay from ipa, from an empty shell.
If we just live a physical life, no doubt, we will just end up on the ground, since biodegradable din naman tayo. But ifwe live our physical life in a manner that is endowed with spirituality, if you live a bodily existence in a manner that is soulful, meaning—one that is made truly meaningful by love, care, compassion, grace, forgiveness, and sacrifice, there is truly hope for an afterlife. A soulful life does not end with death. It is not even afraid of death. Why? Because it has hope; it has something to look forward to.
The Church is indeed a grieving mother. She grieves because she loves. But she grieves with hope. Like Mary of our Pinoy Ritual of Salubong, she has her face covered by a black veil. But the veil of mourning is removed by the angel who facilitates her encounter with the Risen Lord. And so the angel sings,
“Queen of heaven rejoice, alleluia. For the Lords is risen as he said, aleluia. Pray for us to God, alleluia.”
