Parabolic Language

Is “parabolic” a word?

Yes, it is, but not in the sense I would like it to be for the purposes of this blog!  We’re in the summer months of Ordinary Time, and especially in Year A (this year’s cycle), we’re hearing a lot of parables about the Kingdom of God.  Jesus told parables to make things easier for merely human minds to comprehend.  After all, the true nature of God, and of Jesus Christ possessing both a fully human and fully divine nature, is hard for us to wrap our heads around.  Some older Catholics might recall being told, “It’s a mystery!  We’re not meant to understand it.”  But, Jesus tries to make it easier for us to try to understand by putting heavenly realities into earthly context.

This past Sunday, we heard about the weeds and the wheat, the mustard seed, and yeast leavening dough.  The week before, we heard about different kinds of soil.  But it goes beyond the physical elements of each simile.  As Father Erik mentioned in his homily on Sunday, It’s not about the seed itself.  It’s not about the soil.  It’s about our souls and the being open to God’s Word at work in our lives.

This is what I would like to call parabolic language!  It isn’t hyperbolic – making something grander than it actually is.  it’s making things more relatable!

Remembering You!

I will surely miss all of you, parishioners of St. Ambrose, with the exact same feeling I miss all of the people I love back home. I am sure you also miss your loved ones if you are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles apart.

It is such a normal thing to miss those we love. The ones we love become so much part of our lives and our beings, that when they are not there to share with us physically, we feel the pinch badly. Then matters get worse when we can’t seem to get hold of ourselves and do something significant and worthwhile even just to shield the pain a little and distract ourselves. No doubt, these are difficult moments. We cannot help but wish sometimes that our loved ones can stay by our side as long and as often as possible.

Whenever the holidays are coming, holidays like Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Season and New Year, it is indeed tempting to cry in our little corners and justify all this by saying that we are grieving or that we cannot help feeling this emptiness because the one we miss are just too important to forget so easily. Then we keep wishing and praying that they would come back to us. Wonderful memories of the past replaying in our minds sometimes have a way of surfacing into our conscious mind and make us wish to have that memories be a present reality.

Undeniably, these memories can be so beautiful and soothing but sometimes they are the very blocks that stop us from moving forward. Imagine if we could all be with all those we love forever. There would be no more grief or sadness from their loss. But that is not reality. Perhaps, the yearning is a foretaste of heaven. We can never really possess God while we are on earth. We have moments of great consolation when we feel his presence and love in those who love us but even that is not forever.

Our prayer then cannot be for God to keep our precious ones with us always. Our prayer ought to be that our love be so deep and so real that it has the power to go beyond time and space and any other physical or psychological limitations.

All of you will surely be missed. Thank you for everything!

Gift and Reward

The Parable of the “Workers in the Vineyard” is a parable NOT ONLY ABOUT JUSTICE but more about the parable of GENEROSITY.

It is a parable of justice because those who worked for the eight (8) hour workday received the usual, regular and just wage for a day’s work.  It is also a parable of generosity because some hired workers received more than what they deserve.

What the Lord meant was that hired men received money from the Lord not because they had to be paid for work that they did but simply because God wanted to give.  It is the same with heaven.  Heaven is not God’s reward to us for not violating the Ten Commandments.  Heaven is not God’s reward to us because we go to Mass every Sunday or because we pray the rosary, or do not kill, steal, or commit adultery.  It is not because of all of these that God must reward us with heaven.  “HEAVEN IS NOT A REWARD; HEAVEN IS GOD’S GIFT TO US.”

If we were to demand justice from God for what we do, we will all end up outside the Kingdom of heaven.  We will all be able to enter God’s kingdom not because we are worthy, but because GOD IS GENEROUS.  We will all be able to enter God’s kingdom not because we are being rewarded for the good things we have done but because GOD IS GOOD.  There is no opportunity; there is no chance for us to buy heaven.  If we try to buy heaven, it will be like buying the whole of California with fake gold, which is valueless.  We cannot buy our salvation.

Our acts of love to our neighbor, our acts of piety, our fidelity to the commandments, our praying the Rosary everyday our going to mass every Sunday, these are only expressions of our love for God.

And at the end of the day when everything is said and done, we can only say, in humility:  “Lord I still do not deserve heaven.  Please be gracious to me, let me enter heaven one day.”

If God desires to give us heaven, let us thank Him.  Heaven is not God’s reward to us.  Heaven is not something we pay for.  Heaven is COMPLETELY GOD’S GIFT to us.

God is generous, God is kind.  God is love.  Let us thank God that He is generous because if God were only just, we will all be outside the kingdom of heaven.  The generosity of God is the beginning of new life.  May we all experience the generosity of God and may we be able to be generous to others as God has been generous in loving us.