MENTORING

Homily for Friday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time, 5 June 2020, Mk 12:35-37

Our Gospel today ends with a parenthetical remark by the Gospel writer. He says, “Many people came to Jesus and listened to him gladly.” The New American Bible Revised Edition reads, “They listened to him with great delight.” Was it because he was a great entertainer? Was it because he was an expert in public speaking and he could hold the attention of his audience? You want to know the answer? Sorry for the Jesuit answer, it’s YES and NO.

YES, he seemed to be a really interesting speaker. But NO, I do not think it simply had to do with technique, or style or manner of delivery. There were many other reputable Rabbis during those times, such as the scribes who have been debating with Jesus in our Gospel readings for the past few days now, people who were very well versed with Scriptures. But St. Mark tells us in chapter 1, verse 2 (right at the opening of his Gospel) “The people were amazed at Jesus’ teaching, because he taught them as ONE WHO HAD AUTHORITY, NOT LIKE THE SCRIBES.”

I think it was because when he spoke, people heard God speaking to them. Jesus was not out to build a fan’s club around himself. In fact, sometimes some of his words were a bit offensive, or disturbing, or even thought to be scandalous. There were even times when some people walked out on him, like when he spoke about giving of his flesh as food, and his blood as drink. At some point, even those close to him were asking him to go easy on some of the things that he was saying because they didn’t find it palatable. And so, he told them frankly that they were free to go if they honestly felt that what he was saying was hard to swallow. But among them, we are told that Peter stood his ground and said, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. “ That was it. It was clear to Peter what drew him to Jesus from the start: Words that gave life, eternal life. God’s Word, God’s voice, which he could hear clearly through his words, through his person.

St. Paul is saying basically the same thing in our first reading today. He is talking to his young disciple, Timothy, who has not left him, since the day he first joined his missionary journey. You know, Paul wrote only three letters addressed to individual persons: one to Titus, one to Philemon, and two letters to Timothy. We have read today from the second letter to Timothy. I call it a letter from a mentor to his beloved student. You could feel in Paul’s words, how he, as a teacher, is taking his student seriously, because he had seen in him the making of a true apostle, a true alter ego of Jesus.

He says, “Continue with what you have learned and what has been entrusted to you… “ Then he explains to him that it is the Scriptures that have led him to his faith in Christ Jesus, because it contains inspired words, God’s Word, without which he is in no position at all “to teach, to refute errors, to correct, or to give formation in the Christian way of life.” I suspect that whenever Timothy listened to Paul explaining the Scriptures, he felt he was hearing it straight from Jesus Christ in Paul. Did not Paul once say, “It is not I but Christ who lives in me?”

What Paul is saying here confirms what St. Jerome once said, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” I realize this more and more, in my own ministry as an ordained minister of the Church. People think I have become an expert in preaching, as if it were a matter of honing an expertise, or a matter of drawing from a limitless stockpile of ideas, memorizing biblical passages.

Believe me, sometimes I feel, I have nothing to say. Sometimes, I preach and I feel that I have failed, that it was just me, that I had given in to the temptation of ego-tripping or entertaining, or ventilating my own personal opinion. When I find myself doing that, I feel a certain remorse. I find myself going back to prayer—the most important part of preparing a homily.

Standing here is not about telling you what I think or want to say. It is rather about giving a voice to God, letting Jesus Christ, the real presider in this Eucharist speak. And so, at each time I am tasked to preach, I remind myself that my name is AMBO, which, in the English vocabulary refers to the stand on which the Word of God is proclaimed. I tell myself, “Ambo, that’s what you are. You are just a stand from which God’s word must be heard.” Let God be heard, not you. Or better yet, let him be heard through you.

“So how do you prepare a homily?” Some people ask me. After praying my breviary, I soak in the readings while having coffee with Jesus, first thing in the morning. When I find my head too noisy and buzzing with my own ideas, I stop and pray the rosary and put myself in the meditative mode. (The repetitive prayers of rosary have an almost hypnotic effect on me.) After that, when I’m already quiet inside, I talk to Jesus and say, “Now please tell me, dear friend, what you want to say to the people I will celebrate this Mass for.” By experience, it takes a lot of emptying of self, before I could get myself to hear what he wants to say. And when he begins to speak, his words flow like a free-flowing spring.

Like Timothy, I had to do a lot of listening to Jesus in a lot of teachers, people who I felt, did not just know a lot about Jesus, but knew Jesus personally. Like Timothy I too had to be mentored in my faith by people who, I felt, were anointed by the Spirit to speak on behalf of Jesus. Whoever you are who have been following these Online Masses, there must be a reason why Jesus has kept you glued on his words during this pandemic. He is mentoring you so that you can do your own mentoring on others who are hungering for the Bread of Life.

Let me end this now by recalling to you what the bishop said to me when ordained me to this ministry. He gave to me the Book of Gospels and said, “Receive the Word of God whose herald you now are. BELIEVE what you READ. TEACH what you BELIEVE. And PRACTICE what you TEACH.” Believe what you read, meaning, when I read the Scriptures, I must read it in faith and take it to heart. Teach what you believe, meaning, I should not teach what I do not believe; I should teach only what I am willing to die for. Practice what you teach, meaning, I must allow God’s Word to take flesh in me.