The Beatitudes

One of the most beautiful places in the Holy Land is where the church of the Beatitudes is located. It is built on a grassy hill with an amazing view of the lake of Gennesaret. It is one of those places that hasn’t changed much. It is situated on the northwest side of the lake, three kilometers from Capernaum. The area is called Tabgha, meaning seven springs, still flowing down towards the lake. There are two other churches in proximity, on the site of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, and the primacy of Peter. The church is built in an octagon, in remembrance of the eight beatitudes. You can walk around the outside of the church on a covered veranda, contemplating the lake and the surrounding countryside. You are tempted to keep circling the church watching the panorama and praying about the Beatitudes.

The Prophets of old used to preach from the top of the hill for people to be able to hearthem. We see here a classic depiction of Jesus inscribed in our minds, preaching the Gospel to the crowds, sitting down while people remain at his feet, listening to him, completely absorbed in his words. Pope Francis stresses the importance of “how the proclamation of this message happened: Jesus, seeing the crowds that followed Him, climbs up the gentle slope that surrounds the Lake of Galilee; He sits down and, addressing His disciples, proclaims the Beatitudes. Therefore, the message is directed to the disciples, however, the crowds are on the horizons, namely, the whole of humanity. It’s a message for the whole of humanity.” It is the attitude we must have for entering the kingdom of heaven.

It is not easy to preach about the Beatitudes, to give a meaningful commentary about them. We priests try to avoid them. Why? Maybe because you need to be very close to Jesus to be able to explain them well. Thank God they speak for themselves. You only need to read them and pray about them, listen to their voice. Once they left Jesus lips, they have a life of their own. Their sound keeps moving through time, amplifying their waves among the history of men.

They are simple and profound. They speak to us in many different ways. They are very practical, proposing ideas for our own lives. We can try to live them now, today, during the course of the day. They push us to make small resolutions that will bring us closer to God and to others. This is why it is so difficult and so easy to talk about them: they become very personal, suggesting down to earth ideas, like bubbles of soap, popping out from the tube, that resonate specifically to each one of us. This is why we don’t like to read them very often; too many desires come to our minds, with dangerous changes in our way of life. We prefer to close the book and leave it for tomorrow.

Maybe I have been a bit negative in my outlook today. The Beatitudes are very demanding and I am getting old. Time makes things more difficult. It is easy to become discouraged. We tried them and we failed. We didn’t find them wanting, but we found ourselves failing. We need to keep trying, hoping that one day God will lift us up, whenever He wants to.

josephpich@gmail.com

Follow me

Jesus begins what we call his public life calling twelve men to follow him, to accompany him, to share his life. We call them apostles, the one who is sent out. They are going to hear his message and to be entrusted with the task of passing it on to others. Most of them were fishermen, rough guys, not very smart; one of them betrayed him and the leader of them denied him three times. At the end, all of them but John ran away from his passion at Calvary. Their weaknesses give us hope. We too begin a new year in our lives and we have an opportunity to make a renewed commitment to follow Jesus a bit closer. Last year we ran away from the cross. Hopefully this year we can keep him company.

”Follow me.” This is what Jesus told them, how he called them. He is asking them to follow him, to walk behind him, to try to place their feet in his footprints. This means to imitate him, to become more like him, to keep his pace. To follow a perfect man. It was love at first sight. They were all attracted to him. There is nobody like Jesus. We can try to find the perfect person, but we will never find him. Only Jesus can fill all our expectations; he is the one we have been looking for. And this is what he is reminding us today: “You have been created to love me; only in me can you find happiness; that’s why I am asking you to follow me.” Every year, every day, every hour, he is telling us the same. Because we don’t listen, because we stray from the path, because we get distracted, because we follow him from a distance, he is never tired of repeating the same: “Follow me.” It is the best for us.

“Follow me.” Follow my footsteps, follow my direction, follow my pace. It is not easy. We go either too fast or too slow. We can be doing too many things, with plenty of activity, but we are not concentrating on what’s important. We don’t have our priorities right. Saint Augustine says: bene curris, sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. Or maybe our laziness is in command, we procrastinate, we become indifferent, and we are going at a tortoise pace. Jesus’ pace is the right one for us. He knows us well. If we go too fast, we overtake him; if we go too slowly, we miss him. For us to know the way is to follow him. We all would like to know what is ahead of us and plan accordingly. But God wants us to fix our eyes on Him and not to worry about what lies ahead of us. We should trust Him as a good loving father. We only need to look at Him to know we are on the right path.

Is it a command or a request? It is a gift. It is a hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, a bright diamond, a big star shining in the night sky. If we know where we are coming from and where we are going to, it is easier to recognise the value of our treasure. It is a big grace, an amazing offering, that God presents to us. Many are called but only few are chosen. Here we are. And we follow him dragging our feet.

We are chosen for two tasks: to be with him and to be sent to others. To get to know Jesus Christ and to introduce him to others. The more we know him the better we can present him to our friends and relatives. We need to discover him, to recognise who he is to be able to show him to others. A treasure cannot be hidden. A great treasure becomes greater when it is shared.

josephpich@gmail.com

The Lamb of God

John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus passing by, he pointed him out to his disciples with these words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” This second time John recognized Jesus. The first time was when Our Lady met her cousin Elizabeth; he didn’t remember it. This time John wanted to show his disciples who the Messiah was. He wanted his two best men to follow Jesus, to offer them to him. John and Andrew took the hint, followed Jesus and became his apostles. Do I point Jesus to others? Do I give Jesus the best of me?

Why did John use this expression? It is a representation foreign to us. It doesn’t make sense to us to see God as a lamb. But for the Jews it was something very familiar, coming from their own tradition. Isaiah had compared the sufferings of the Messiah with a lamb going to the slaughter. The blood of the paschal lamb was painted on the door of the Israelites to protect their firstborn against the angel passing by. It became a promise and a figure of Christ, the true Lamb. Every year the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed in the Temple recalling their liberation from the Egyptians and their covenant with God. In the book of Revelation Jesus appears victorious and glorious as the slain lamb, surrounded by angels and saints.

Three characteristics of the lamb can be applied to Jesus. First, the humble and meek condition of a lamb, who goes about in a simple and trusting way. In the same way a lamb goes to the slaughter without saying anything, as a gentle animal going to its fate, Jesus during his Passion kept silence; he let them do whatever they wanted, without rebelling against the will of his Father God. Second, the spotless whiteness, and the soft and pleasant touch of the wool of a lamb. It reminds us of the purity and innocence of Jesus in front of his accusers, who with amazing violence and force, expressed their hatred in their treatment of Jesus. Third, the offering and satisfaction produced by the lambs sacrificed in the temple of Jerusalem. It is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, who came to give himself up for each one of us. Now no more lambs have to die anymore. Jesus died once and for all.

Every time the priest during Mass lifts the host in front of us before Communion saying “Behold the Lamb of God”, we are reminded of this reality. The priest presents Jesus to us in a very graphical way; he shows him to us, he points him out, like John the Baptist. Once a priest told me that sometimes he felt like Pontius Pilate, introducing Christ to the crowd: “Here is the man.” Ecce Homo. He feared that the crowd could answer again: “Crucify him.” We don’t want him to rule over us, we don’t want his kingdom. The priest should try to hide his face behind the host, to disappear, and let Jesus shine: he is the one; what are you going to do with him? It is a good moment to make an act of faith. Do I believe that behind the appearances of bread is hidden the Son of God? If I believe that, my life has to change accordingly.

“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He is the only one who can take all our iniquities, imperfections, shortcomings, frustrations, away. We can leave them behind for ever. He’s got the power. All we need to do is to believe in him and let his mercy rain on us; apply his forgiveness through Confession to that baggage all human beings carry with us. Today is a good moment to unload the weight of that rubbish that makes us bent over, weighed down, unhappy.

josephpich@gmail.com

Baptism of Jesus

With the Baptism of Jesus, Christmas time comes to an end. It is a pity because we love Christmas and we have to wait for another year; but we are beginning a new year, with all the excitement that this brings about. Today Jesus begins his public life, a life where he manifests his divinity and gives us the good news of the Gospel. And he starts in the same way we begin our Christian life: washing away with water our original sin.

Jesus is God, sinless; he didn’t need to be baptised, but he wanted to go through John’s baptism, to purify the waters and give them the power to cleanse us. John the Baptist didn’t want to baptise him; he wanted to be baptised by Jesus and we understand him. They almost had a fight, but John was sympathetic to Jesus’ request. The early Church was a bit ashamed of this baptism, finding difficult to understand it, because Baptism is meant for the salvation of sinners. Eventually they realised that Jesus, like in his death on the Cross, took with him on his shoulders all our sins, our iniquities, our infidelities, and buried them in the waters of the Jordan River. In the same way the waters of a river wash down everything in its path, the same happens to us when we are baptised.

Do you remember your Baptism? Most of us were baptised when we were babies and we don’t remember anything. Some of you maybe have videos of the moment and maybe you can see yourself crying because the water was too cold and you were sleeping peacefully beforehand. But it is a good moment today to think about what happened to us at that moment. If we could see the change in the soul of the baby, the moment the water is poured onto his head, we would be amazed and greatly surprised. It is an automatic transformation, from a soul closed to any grace from a God, pitch black, surrounded by darkness, to a completely clean surface, full of light and shining, everything bright and white. Suddenly the sky is open and God appears like the sun in all it’s splendour, telling us that we are his children, taking us into his strong arms. Almost similar to what happened during the Baptism of Jesus, when the heavens opened and the voice from above declared: “This is my beloved son.”

We are baptised in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Today we have the great manifestation of the Holy Trinity. We see in action the workings of the three divine persons, fully present. The Father represented in the voice, Jesus, the Son being baptised, and the dove, the Holy Spirit. It is the first time in the New Testament, that we have a graphic image of them, acting before our senses in an exterior manner. It is a good representation of what happens to our soul when we are baptised, when we are in a state of grace, when we share friendship with God, that the whole Trinity comes to our soul and abides in us.

Baptism means to immerse. Today we can have our immersion, we can plunge ourselves into the immensity of God. We can die a bit to ourselves, to become a new creature, ready for this new year which begins for us, full of hope and promises. We come out of the water like the Phoenix, renewed and transformed. In the same way the water of the River Jordan touched Jesus’ skin, today we allow Jesus’ grace to touch our soul, washing away all our imperfections.

josephpich@gmail.com

Epiphany

The three wise men saw the star and followed it. This is the story of their lives, of their encounter with God, of their place in history. It is an amazing one; by following a star, they met a baby, and they discovered the Messiah. Humanly speaking it was crazy. Why did a passing star provoke that reaction on the Magi? How do you follow a star? Where or when is it going to stop? These are questions that belong to our lives. We too discovered a star, we are following it, and hopefully it will lead us to Jesus. It is crazy, but it is a divine adventure.

How do we discover the star? Good question. It is not easy. The three wise men dedicated their lives to astronomy, to the study of the sky, looking for clues to their own existence. Man has always looked at space to try to understand where we come from and where we are going to. We too need to spend time discerning the signs, the sparks, the footprints, God has placed in our way, to discover his will for us, to find our path, to hoist our sails towards the right wind. It is a work of prayer, contemplation, silence and reflection.

It is not enough to discover the star, but we need to follow it. Many people see the star but they don’t do anything about it. Others begin to walk, but they get discouraged; they stop and they go back. It is not easy to persevere on an unknown quest. We don’t know how long it is going to take, where it is going to finish, if it is really the right path, or we lost our way; perhaps we even missed an important crossroads. Sometimes the road goes through a desert, through a rough terrain, across wild plains, deep gorges, dense jungles. Other times there are robbers waiting for us, to attack us when we are distracted; there are beasts ready to devour us, unexpected rivers in flood, precipices that stop us from going ahead, fires raging from the bush threatening our path, sand storms, plagues of locusts and lightning strikes. From time to time, the star disappears behind the clouds and we think she is not there anymore.

As Pope Francis says, “Jesus allows himself to be found by those who seek him.” We know that we are not alone, that he travels with us, even though we don’t see him. To seek him we need to leave behind whatever slows us down; to travel light, we cannot carry much weight, to be able to keep pace with the star; and to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon, without getting distracted with the marvellous things we come across in our way. The devil is trying to slow us down, to get us stuck in the mud, to deviate us from the right direction, to turn us back to where we came from. If we persevere, we will find him. Whatever happens, the star is always up there.

We arrive at the crib empty handed. We came naked from our mother’s womb and we leave without anything. Pope Francis’ grandmother used to say that the shroud we are going to be buried in won’t have any pockets. What can we give to baby Jesus when we arrive in his presence? We haven’t got much. All we can do is to offer ourselves. It is easy; a baby brings out the best in us.

josephpich@gmail.com

Mary Mother of God

We begin our year with Mary our mother, and we celebrate her most important feast: Mary, mother of God, her divine maternity. We used to celebrate today the feast of the name of Jesus, Emmanuel. But the Church with wisdom swapped the feast, because when we have a baby, we have a mother. There is no baby without a mother. He is so defenceless, that Mary these days is the important one. We normally represent Jesus sitting on Mary’s lap, seat of wisdom, throne of glory. Baby Jesus became conscious of himself, when he realised another was looking after him. His first identity came from his mother, who gave him all the love and affection she had in her heart. She fed him with milk, kept him warm under woollen clothes, chaged his nappies, sang lullabies to put him to sleep, rocked the cradle, taught him to talk, held him whe he began to walk.

Today we celebrate this feast because nine months ago Mary said yes to God’s plans for her. It was the beginning of the incarnation, God becoming man, taking our human flesh, coming to us in the same way all of us enter this world. It was the beginning of our salvation, the work of our redemption. And all started when a young girl answered to God’s call. It reminds us of the importance of following God’s plans for us, without being afraid of their consequences. We don’t realise how God in a way, conditions his designs to our affirmative decisions.

The dogma was defined in the year 431 during the Council of Ephesus. It was necessary because some people were calling her just the mother of Jesus. But the logic is clear: if she is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, therefore she is the mother of God. Not of his divinity, but of the person of Jesus Christ. It was an important definition, because it has a lot of consequences for us. It places us close to Mary and close to Jesus. She is our mother, the mother of Jesus and my mother, the mother of all human beings. Therefore Jesus is our elder brother and we all are sons and daughters of God.

The closer we are to Mary, the closer we are to Jesus. To access Jesus as a baby, we need to go through his mother. We cannot bypass her. She is our short cut. It is a pity Protestants have some apprehension about the mother of God. The devil hates her, because he knows her power, coming directly from her Son. It was foretold at the beginning, when the serpent attacked Eve, and the coming of a new Eve was prophesied. He knows that he cannot do much against her, and tries with all his might to separate us from the help of our mother.

Saint Josemaria was very proud of his love for Mary. You could almost feel it. He used to say that if anybody wanted to imitate him, it should be his devotion to her. He wrote a strong statement about her: “We go to Jesus, and we return to him, through Mary.” Once somebody asked him if he would write this again, thinking that it was a bit too strong, and it could be criticised by people who didn’t share his love for her. Saint Josemaria said yes, defending what he had written, but then he stopped, thought for a moment and said: “I would write now: Mary, the only way.”

josephpich@gmail.com

Holy Family

Once we have a baby, we have a family. The Church uses three different Gospels for this feast day, the presentation and finding of the child Jesus in the temple, and today the flight to Egypt. In them we see the Holy Family together in three very different settings, today flying away from Herod who wants to kill the baby. We see Joseph sleeping peacefully, after the coming of the three wise men. Pope Francis has a lot of devotion to the sleeping Joseph. He’s got a statue of him on his desk. Joseph is peacefully dreaming about what to do with the gold left by the Magi, either to buy a faster donkey or to refurbish the old kitchen at home. It wasn’t to be; the gold is for the trip. He can still do with the old donkey.

We are getting used to the angel appearing to Joseph in his dreams. We are also normally used to seeing Joseph getting up in the middle of the night, taking the mother and the child and running away from Herod’s soldiers. But let us take for one moment the place of Joseph. If an angel of the Lord appears to me in a dream and asks me the same as Joseph, my first reaction when I wake up would be of rebellion: that was a nightmare! Or maybe it is the devil. My second reaction would be to challenge God: Why do we have to move? Can you get rid of Herod? Is this baby truly the Son of God? But of course, Joseph is not me, and did what God wanted him to do, without complaining, without asking questions, waking up straight away, without waiting for the morning to say good bye to the people in Nazareth, just in case Herod’s soldiers were at the door.

The Holy Family went to Egypt to fulfill the Scripture. But it could have been written differently. There are places in Egypt that today still hold the tradition of the passing of Jesus through their land. Joseph gives us an example of docility and trusting in God’s will. We all have the experience of many things that happen to us that we don’t like, that we don’t understand, that we complain about. We rebel and we ask: Why me? The question should be: Why not me? Some things we’ll understand later on; other things we need to wait till eternity. We should be patient. Eventually everything will make sense.

Again we are used to seeing the flight to Egypt in traditional paintings as something beautiful and romantic. It wasn’t like that. They didn’t book a flight on the internet. It was hard, in the middle of the night, looking back to see if they were followed, going to a new country with a different language, with hieroglyphic handwriting, as refugees. Joseph had to begin again, find a job, build a new house, make new friends. They even didn’t know how long they had to be there.

After few years of hard work, the Holy Family were settled. They built a beautiful house, Joseph had plenty of work and Mary made good friends. Jesus began to talk with an Egyptian accent. Joseph was again dreaming about a well deserved holiday at the beach, at the mouth of the Nile, when again an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him to go back home. And he went back without complaining. Then he spent his years surrounded by the most amazing treasures you can have in your life: Jesus and Mary. God’s plans for us are always the best for us. When we get older we realise that he knows best. And the opposite; when we do our own thing, things go wrong and we get frustrated. Joseph died accompanied by his two greatest loves. Let us follow in Joseph footsteps.

josephpich@gmail.com

Christmas

During this Advent, in our quest for Jesus, we have been following the example of John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. They have led us to him. We have arrived at our destination. We have reached the center of our lives and the focus is a baby. Now we realise that baby Jesus is all that matters. These days of Christmas are days of calm and serene contemplation of baby Jesus. All we need to do is to look at him, to plunge into the mystery of God becoming man, admiring the mingling of humanity and divinity. Just that, to look at him, and nothing else. Trying to enter deeper and deeper, into the infinite abyss of God’s love for us, a bottomless pit of his majesty and power. And all this is concentrated in a little tiny baby.

Why did he have to come to us? He didn’t. But he wanted not only to live with us, but to become one of us, and go through the same things we are going through, except sin. And he is now as we were when we were born, just a baby. A baby that cannot open his eyes, doesn’t have teeth, he cannot utter a word, and he’s got his little hands closed. All he does is eat, sleep, cry and dirty nappies. He is completely useless, a hundred percent dependent on his mother. All he can take is his mother’s milk. A God so defenceless, that if you leave him alone, he would die. At this moment he cannot even smile. His face is red and he doesn’t have much hair. If we could open his eyelids, we would see his beautiful brown eyes.

And this baby is what we need to contemplate, even though he cannot look back at us; he is sleeping. It is a one way gaze, trying to learn from his professorial chair, from his cathedra, from his open book, the book of his life, his first lessons of his life on earth. He could have come to us as a grown up man, but he wanted to start from the beginning, because we are slow learners. We need hours of patient contemplation in front of the statue or a painting of him in the manger, suffering cold, or in his mother’s arms, sleeping peacefully. Two simple, important lessons we learn straight away: poverty and humility. He came like us, with nothing, and when he goes, his only possession is going to be the wood of the cross. And what about humility? Can you find a better example than God coming to us as a baby?

And now in front of this baby, what do we do? We don’t need to do much. What do mother’s do with their babies? They look after them, giving them attention, love, tenderness. Many of us we don’t know how to look after a baby, but we can give him plenty of love. Some people don’t know how to love. This baby can teach us how to do it, just hold him in your arms, being careful not to drop him. We drop him many times a day. We can also offer ourselves to him. A baby brings out the best in us. In front of him we cannot say no. We need to be ourselves. The first thing he tells us when we get closer to him: get rid of your fancy clothes; be yourself. We cannot pretend, show off or try to deceive him.

But maybe the best thing we can do is to sit down in a corner of the cave, out of the way, hidden in the shadows, and contemplate how Mary looks after Jesus. It is an amazingly beautiful scene. She tends him knowing that he is God and man. She teaches us how to deal with his humanity and his divinity. You cannot become tired of looking at the mother and the child. Many artists tried to catch a glimpse of it. It is all in our imagination.

josephpich@gmail.com