SPIRITUAL INDIGESTION

Homily for Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter, 20 May 2020, Jn 16:12-15

Have you ever experienced having a stomach ache because, in your rush, you had no time to chew your food properly, so you just gobbled it up? Or have you ever spent a whole sleepless night because you finished up three large blobs of porterhouse steak? They call that INDIGESTION. In today’s language perhaps we can describe it as a “digestive system overload.”

It means your system can only take so much. If you don’t want it to happen ever again, the solution is obvious—chew your food slowly, relish it, don’t rush your meal, stop when you are full. We often see scenes like these on TV: mother prepares a good breakfast, husband and kids oversleep, the school bus is already there when they start to take a bite, husband has his mouth full as he buttons his shirt, sips his coffee to be able to swallow his food quickly and dart away.

Wasn’t this actually the typical urban family scene before the pandemic? People rushing, people having no time to process things, to let them sink in. In this regard, we must say the pandemic has brought some blessings too. Among other things, it has taught us to slow down. It seems to have given us more time, more opportunities to listen to each other, to think, to reflect, to open our minds and hearts, to understand what’s happening around us, what God is trying to tell us.

If there is physical indigestion, perhaps there is also such a thing as spiritual indigestion. Jesus speaks about it in today’s Gospel. He says, “I have much more to tell you but you cannot take it all in now.” No problem. He’s not in a rush. And so he adds, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you to all truth.“ Meaning, he will lead you gradually—namely, at your own pace. As they say in Cebuano, HINAY-HINAY BASTA KANUNAY (Slowly but constantly.)

This reminds me of a vision St. Augustine supposedly had while reflecting on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity. Legend has it that he was walking by the sea and he saw a child playing by the seashore with a bucket and a shovel. Augustine asked him, “What are you doing, my boy?” And the boy replied, “I am transferring the water of the sea into this hole.” Augustine of course laughed and replied with a tone of ridicule, “But that’s silly; how do you expect to fit in all that water into your little hole?” The child supposedly looked up at him and said, “And what makes you think you can fit the whole mystery of the eternal God into your little head?”

In 1 Corinthians 3:12, St. Paul addresses the Corinthian people as “infants in Christ” who still needed to be fed with spiritual “milk,” rather than “solid food,” because they were not ready for solid food yet.” It could only mean he was conscious of the art of gradual spiritual feeding in his preaching. He does in stages, piece-meal, one little bite at a time.

And so St Luke would tell us how Paul would do something like this with the Greeks, when he finally arrived in Athens, the great city of well-known philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the city where people were used to discussing lofty ideas.

On one particular day, he stood in the area called Areopagus, where court trials or Senate meetings were held, and he began a little discourse. First he called attention to the Athenians’ amusing tendency to be “siguristas” as we might say it in Tagalog, in their manner of worshipping. In a row of niches for the Greek gods and goddesses that were standing on pillars and properly identified, he noted one niche which was empty and which had a pedestal with the name, “To the Unknown God.”

“This God,” he says, “is the one I wish to make known to you. He does not dwell in temples nor in images ‘made by human hands, an expression which he repeats three times. God could not possibly have been made by us, because we were the ones who were made by him.

In effect, Paul is telling them the Unknown God remains unknown to them for as long as they try desperately to make him in their image and likeness, or fit him in human categories. God is not what we make of him or what we conceive him to be. He will always be more than what we say of him or portray him to be.

In fact, Paul points out that this attitude is disrespectful of God, especially when we think we can manipulate him, as if he is the one in need of us, not the other way around. This reminds also of that amusing story in the Book of Daniel chapter 13, where the prophet angers the Babylonian king because he referred to their God, Bel, as a “God made by human hands”.

There, Daniel characterizes the temple priests as deceivers, who manipulate the people by portraying their God Bel as a God who had to be constantly fed, a god who got angry when he became hungry. Daniel succeeeds in exposing their religion as a pure racket. His faith is firm—the true God he says, does not need to be fed or fattened with sacrifices. On the contrary he is the one who feeds his people like a Shepherd, his flock.

Back to St. Paul. Paul explains that making God in our image is sheer human arrogance. It reflects our ignorance, he says. We forget that it is the other way around, we’re his image and likeness. We are his representation. And then he proceeds to mention the one who truly showed the face of the Unknown God: Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.

Well, not all the Athenians were disposed for this doctrine which they found strange. Some of them react negatively to the idea of resurrection from the dead. Some of them walk out. It is then that he realizes, there is a system overload already. So he stops and leaves, and focuses on a smaller group: Dionysius, Damaris, and some others who would join him. It means they are ready for more solid spiritual food.