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INTRODUCTION
Over many years of my existence on this planet, I
have been touched my many experiences. Many were bad but many more were good. I
have had my ecstatic moments of joy when my heart has felt elevated in the
extreme, and moments of downs and total dryness of spirit. After all,
realistically, we all know that life is full of winters and springs, sunny days
and cloudy ones…But above all I count the many gifts and blessings God has
bestowed on me.
With many years of meditation before the Lord, many
insights have come to my mind thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit within
me. It is my intention to share these insights, as I feel it would be selfish
on my part not to do so. Hopefully those who read these insights will be
enriched. My first effort to place some of these ideas into writing was in
1979, when I wrote a book of celebrations with focus on the Christian
Initiation for Children which included ritual and song for each basic theme.
This was in
It is not my intention to be an expert in
anything, though I have had my many studies in diverse disciplines. I intend to
reach everyone who is interested in sharing my insights and not just the
experts. You will realize that I have a great love for Scripture, nature and
above all for the Paschal Mystery with a special emphasis on Jesus' maximum
expression of love for us on the cross. No doubt, being a member of a religious
congregation called the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, commonly
known as the Passionists, has helped to shape my
spiritual life over many years to what I have become today. My whole purpose is
to center on the Crucifixion of Jesus and allow different meditations to flow
from that contemplation. I will allow the Old Testament to be connected to the
New Testament which it naturally is, and particularly to this key moment when
in the New Testament when Christ is crucified. I am inspired by the Typology
used by many Fathers of the Church, beginning with Origen, following Jesus'
example that connects himself with the Old Testament. But I also will allow my own imagination to
make other connections which we can call allegory. I follow in this sense the
definition given to the differences of these two categories by Hansen:
For Hanson, typology was
successful because it discerned legitimate correspondences between two sets of
events, whereas allegory was the name given to arbitrary non-literal exercises
in which no convincing link was discovered between the original event and its
non-literal referent. (Martins 2008)
I've always loved symbols and my rich imagination
loves playing around with words that repeat and intertwine with real events.
Jesus made use of them continually like calling himself the Good Shepherd (John
10:11.14), the Gate (John 10:7.9), the Vine (John 15:1.5) the Light of the
World (John 8:12), the Bread of Life (John 6:35.41)…all preceded with the
divine title "I am" (Exodus 3:14). The gospel of John does this a
lot. Take chapter 6 for instance. There is the multiplication of bread (John
6:1-13), followed by Jesus' announcement that He is the living bread come down
from heaven, as one to be believed in (John 6:32-35). He goes on to link this
experience with the historical experience of the Israelites who were fed with
manna in the desert (Exodus 13:4-13). From there, Jesus goes on to an even
deeper level, stating that the living bread is his Body (John 6:48-51). These
are three different levels. The first part of chapter 6 starts with the
experience of the multiplication of the bread, building on the historical
experience of a past experience mentioned in the Old Testament of Israel being
fed with the manna in the desert: This would be an example of Typology, where
an event from the Old Testament is tied to an event in the New Testament. The
following is a sample of Typology mentioned by Fr. Barnabas M. Ahern, CP in his
book New Horizons:
As Israel was baptized
into its new life with God by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, so
Christ inaugurates His ministry for God by accepting baptism in the waters of
the Jordan (Mt. 3:13-17; Mk. 1: 9-11).
Therefore both
(Mt. 4: 1-11; Mk.
1:12-13). (Ahern p. 39)
These are very powerful ways of leading us into
deep mysteries where Christ reveals characteristics of himself using symbols
like those mentioned, while always leaving more to be said. "I am who am" is an ongoing revelation throughout history of the
mystery of God. While Christ is the full revelation of God, it will take the
rest of human history to unveil and lead us to greater understanding of the
Mystery of God.
As God does not spoon-feed us, he expects us to use
our talents to share in his mission of Salvation. He was among us 33 years and
in a limited geographical area. The rest is in our hands, assisted by the Holy
Spirit: to take Christ’s message to the entire world and throughout the rest of
history. As he says in the last supper, within this context, I believe that we
can build on images expressed in Scripture as the Spirit inspires us to do.
“I have much more to tell
you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he
will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak
what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.” (John
16:12-13)
You will notice therefore, that when Jesus gives
us the rich image of the grain of wheat that must die in order to produce
abundant fruit, I have taken the liberty to build on that image. Or when he
says that he is the vine and we are the branches (John 15: 5a), I
build on that symbolically with the theme of the Church immersed in the Holy
Trinity in tune with Jesus' prayer later in the same setting of the Last
Supper, “that all may be one us” (John 17: 21). All my associations are in the
context of the gospel message. The newness of my message is not so much ideas
but images and symbols that thread ideas together.
Most of the Scripture quotations I deliberately
have inserted in the main text, unless they are repeated or because they break
the flow of the text too much. I indent and bold the quotations so that those
who are not familiar with the text may read them, saving them the hassle of
looking for them elsewhere, while on other occasions, one can skip the text if
one is familiar with it. I also use the same technique for other quotations.
For the Scripture quotations I use the translation of the New American Bible
(Revised Edition) (NABRE).
I also like to link together symbolic words like
wood/ tree/ cross or rock-stone/ mountain or
In this train of thought, all this is part of my
being convinced that life at all levels is connected, all within the flow of
history, while the Paschal Mystery is the center of history which becomes the
"spiritual nucleus" that animates the flow forward through a constant
death to the past and rising to the new in life as we grow and move forward
personally and within a collective history. The Old and New Testaments
therefore are deeply connected, reaching to its peak moment in the Paschal
Mystery. From this pivotal moment, the
rest of history is enlightened and finds meaning. The "do this in memory
or commemoration of me" is a memory that becomes present at each moment of
our life till our final passage into eternity. I am also aware that 'disconnectiveness' is a sign of death. Death, for instance,
sets in our bodies when the cells split up. I also believe that too much
structure that compartmentalizes the elements of faith is deadly! If we see
Mass (Eucharist) as something we are obliged to hear on Sundays and then live
like pagans the rest of our time, then we are in a deadly situation. The
Eucharist should be the source and summit of our life as Vatican II reminds us.
It is therefore interconnected with the rest of our life. It is not something
we listen to passively either, but it is a celebration of life, in which we
partake in. Here is a metaphor of what I express here: it's like the heart,
from which blood flows throughout the body, but returns to the heart to be
re-energized with oxygen.
With this sense of connectiveness,
I take the liberty not only to link the covenant of God with Noah, expressed in
a rainbow, with the new and eternal covenant established from the open side of
Christ on the cross from which water flows, but also link the colors of the
rainbow with the seven sacraments. These in turn, connect us with important
moments in our life, be it being born, feeding ourselves, becoming adults,
getting married, being ordained, being reconciled when we mess up, getting
sick, and dying. So there is a link with Christ the Proto-Sacrament, the Church
as the Sacrament of Christ and the seven sacraments that flow from the Church
reaching out to concrete life's situation. Obviously we can feel the link with
our historical human journey when Eve is formed from the open side of Adam
(where his heart is) with the open side of Christ, the New Adam from which his
Church, the New Eve is formed. This of course is an example of Typology
abundantly contemplated throughout history and obviously in the mind of the
author of the gospel of John himself. The link of the seven colors of the
rainbow though is my inspiration unless others before me have come up with the
same idea of which I am unaware of.
Another way I link the Paschal Mystery and the
Eucharist and the sacraments, is with the history of
Ø
Christ for instance links the Eucharist we receive with
the Manna that the Israelites receive in the desert (Exodus 13:4-13).
Ø
The slavery in
Ø
the crossing of the
Ø
the covenant at Mount Sinai (Exodus
24:3-8) , becomes the focus of Jesus in the last supper, (Mathew 26: 26-29;
Mark 14: 22-24), and when he gives us the new and eternal covenant that
replaces the old one.
Ø
We can make a link with each sacrament. However, not all
the sacraments are clearly explicit. I take the liberty therefore to associate
the sacrament of confirmation with the water which comes out of the rock for
the thirsty Israelites to drink from, which will strengthen them, so to say.
This will give them strength to fight the battle against the Amalekites, while Moses holds out his arms, supported by
Aaron and Hur on each side. This is like Jesus, with
outstretched arms on the cross between two criminals, where the battle against
evil is won. (Exodus 17: 1-13)
On the other hand, I like to make mysteries easier to understand with the
help of images. The interlocking of two triangles to form the Star of David
representing the incarnation is one example. Another is using as mentioned with
the seven colors in the rainbow to represent the 7 sacraments. These are
symbols not only linking us with the past, even before Israel was formed, but
enables us to understand deep mysteries like the incarnation of the Son of God
and the sacraments. Another visual I use, for instance, is crossing the two
tables of the Law to form the Cross of Christ, representing the love toward
God, expressed on one tablet and the love toward humanity on the other tablet.
I use the symbols of the Star of David and of the tablets of the Law with great
respect, as Christianity rose out of
In approaching the themes that emanate from contemplating Christ on the
Cross, there is repetition of quotes from the Scripture from different
perspectives, much as seen in the gospel of John, like in chapter 6 in regard
to the theme of the bread. This is in tune with a more oriental type of
spirituality which centers on the same event while deepening into the mystery
behind it. It is also similar to my consecration as a Passionist, as I spend
the rest of my life focused on the Passion of Jesus and deepening down into its
ever revealing mystery over time. The spirituality of the west in many places
focuses more on novelty, jumping from one event to another, leading to a more
superficial contemplation of reality. Let us not confuse, though, this kind of
change with the developmental changes in life, which is happening all the time
in the flow of history.
Personally, I believe
that (Click link to view) that time is like a cyclical continuum though never the
same, with beginning and end, which makes it also linear. It's like a coil
having a beginning in time but gets closer and closer to meet with the
everlasting continuum at the end of time, which is without beginning or end. We
see the everlasting continuum running through the center of the coil, always
present to every moment in our personal history as well as the collective one.
So, seasons for instance, will repeat yearly, but each season is different from
the previous and the next. This is represented by the coil which never meets as
it advances. Values like love, justice, freedom, truth, joy, and peace are
eternal and are found in the depths of our personal existence and are present
at every moment of history and beyond, as they are found eternally in God.
There are two parts to these meditations. Part I is about my own personal journey
in life in regard to different types of suffering and near-death experiences,
mostly extracts taken out of my autobiography. I try to be realistic in stating
the positive and negative in myself and in others,
just as we see expressed in the Scriptures. For instance, none of the Apostles
in the Gospels are spared from the mention of their limitations! Part II emerges from Part I when I
meditate on the mysteries of suffering and death experiences in life. The
styles are different.
