“You, my God, lonesome man,
Love’s bitten tongue
Heaven’s incredible wound”
(Vassar Miller, 1924-1998).
One can say that, on the cross, Christ bit his tongue, as he restrained himself from cursing both his enemies who were insulting him & his faithless disciples who abandoned him. (Do I not also bite my tongue especially when I try to restrain myself from unnecessarily hurting somebody with my words?)
Most of all, Jesus restrained himself from cursing his Father, whose sheer silence & seeming absence at Calvary was Christ’s last & most difficult temptation.
Christ’s last cry on the cross was inscrutable (Mark 15:37) like that of somebody with a severely bitten tongue. Yet this last cry & breath tore the curtain of the temple from top to bottom (15:38) & confirmed the destruction of an institution that no longer could bear fruits of justice & mercy (11:12-21). It was also a cry “for those who hunger & thirst for God’s Reign of justice & peace” (Megan McKenna).
The tempted Christ, the naked Adam on the cross, kept faith in the loving Father’s plan of service in suffering & thus transformed the cruel cross into the new tree of knowledge, power, justice & life.
Every Christian’s cross, whether small or big, is the burning bush of Christ’s faithful presence in each moment.
This is beautifully expressed in the following lines from Vassar Miller’s poem, “A Duller Moses”:
“On time’s bramble bush impaling me
Each moment is a thorn aflame with God
Burning within, without me night & day.”
“I tremble dreaming between sleep & sleep
That He, both radiance & incendiary,
In my heart lies as on the cross He lay
(Which bed is fouler?), making my bone-heap –
Oh, monstrous miracle! – God’s sanctuary.”
With the breath & cry of “Love’s bitten tongue,” Christ on the cross creates a living temple in the believer’s heart, where echo the cries of brothers & sisters suffering with their crosses & hungering for divine justice & peace.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Aquino Petition after November 25 Conviction
At 10:25 in the evening of 25 November 1977, Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino was pronounced guilty of subversion, murder & illegal possession of firearms by Military Commission No. 2, which was headed by Brig. Gen. Jose Syjuco, during the Martial Law regime of Ferdinand Marcos. Ninoy was sentenced to death by firing squad.
On December 2, Attorneys Raul M. Gonzalez & Sedfrey A. Ordonez, representing Ninoy’s mother, Aurora Aquino, filed with the Supreme Court a petition for Habeas Corpus for the release of Ninoy from military custody & unlawful restraint. On this basis, the Supreme Court issued a restraining order against his execution.
The petition emphasized that Ninoy was denied equal protection of the laws & that the trial & conviction under Military Commission No. 2 were void for the following reasons.
1. The judgment of conviction was rushed in an immoral way. (Imagine concluding a criminal trial at night and at such a late hour.) The military counsel assigned to Ninoy failed in providing him effective legal assistance & he was denied the chance to give a closing argument.
2. Jurisdiction over his cases properly belonged to a civilian court, & the Military Commission discriminated against him by denying his motion for the transfer of his cases to the proper civilian court, even though more than 3,000 cases under military tribunals already had been transferred.
3. Ninoy was prosecuted for illegal possession of firearms & other crimes on the basis of presidential orders that were issued only after his arrest. Thus the “legal” basis was laid down after the occurrence of the alleged “illegal” acts.
4. “Leaders & followers [of the Moro National Liberation Front] who have risen in arms against the government & who have killed a big number of government troops in open combat have been pampered, benefited & rewarded while Benigno Aquino Jr is singled out for indictment & public humiliation.”
The petition is reproduced as Appendix C in the book, “Testament from a Prison Cell,” by Benigno Aquino Jr. The second edition of the book was published in 2000 in Makati City by the Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Foundation. My copy at hand contains a handwritten dedication to “dear Pat & Raul (Gonzalez)” by Cory Aquino dated 09 October 2003.
On December 2, Attorneys Raul M. Gonzalez & Sedfrey A. Ordonez, representing Ninoy’s mother, Aurora Aquino, filed with the Supreme Court a petition for Habeas Corpus for the release of Ninoy from military custody & unlawful restraint. On this basis, the Supreme Court issued a restraining order against his execution.
The petition emphasized that Ninoy was denied equal protection of the laws & that the trial & conviction under Military Commission No. 2 were void for the following reasons.
1. The judgment of conviction was rushed in an immoral way. (Imagine concluding a criminal trial at night and at such a late hour.) The military counsel assigned to Ninoy failed in providing him effective legal assistance & he was denied the chance to give a closing argument.
2. Jurisdiction over his cases properly belonged to a civilian court, & the Military Commission discriminated against him by denying his motion for the transfer of his cases to the proper civilian court, even though more than 3,000 cases under military tribunals already had been transferred.
3. Ninoy was prosecuted for illegal possession of firearms & other crimes on the basis of presidential orders that were issued only after his arrest. Thus the “legal” basis was laid down after the occurrence of the alleged “illegal” acts.
4. “Leaders & followers [of the Moro National Liberation Front] who have risen in arms against the government & who have killed a big number of government troops in open combat have been pampered, benefited & rewarded while Benigno Aquino Jr is singled out for indictment & public humiliation.”
The petition is reproduced as Appendix C in the book, “Testament from a Prison Cell,” by Benigno Aquino Jr. The second edition of the book was published in 2000 in Makati City by the Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Foundation. My copy at hand contains a handwritten dedication to “dear Pat & Raul (Gonzalez)” by Cory Aquino dated 09 October 2003.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Fully Functional Instructional Materials Council?
The Instructional Materials Council Secretariat (IMCS) of the Department of Education has this (sole) official mandate: "Provide technical assistance to the Instructional Materials Council in the formulation and adoption of policies and guidelines, in the development, evaluation, and procurement of textbooks and other instructional materials."
The IMCS is the Secretariat of a more important body, the Council, which is supposed to make final decisions on textbook procurement & to oversee the evaluation of instructional materials for all public elementary & secondary schools.
Besides the DepEd Secretary & the 2 directors of the bureaus of elementary & secondary education, who are the members of the Instructional Materials Council? Does the membership include recognized textbook specialists from the private school system? Perhaps the Council should also include a competent representative of a relevant citizens organization or civil society group.
How often does the current Council meet as a whole body? Are there official records of its meetings? When was its last meeting? Is its Secretariat pro-active enough in ensuring that the Council is fully functional & has complete membership that holds meetings periodically or as often as necessary?
On a related matter, the IMCS, the Secretariat of the current Council, seems to be on the verge of persuading some high officials of the DepEd to ask Congress to return to the DepEd the responsibility of publishing the textbooks for the public school system.
Should the tasks of writing and producing the textbooks be returned to the DepEd and taken away from the textbook publishers of the book industry, when the DepEd through the IMCS has not yet been able to establish a solid track record in implementing an efficient and effective evaluation system for the textbooks available for procurement?
What makes the IMCS so sure it can do better in the whole publication process (with research, writing, evaluating, editing, and designing activities)?
The IMCS would point to the past, especially the era of the Marcos dictatorship, when the Department of Education produced its own textbooks through an Instructional Materials Development Corporation. Can the IMCS produce enough studies from independent & competent researchers that have compared textbooks before & after the 1995 privatization of DepEd textbook procurement, & which show that the DepEd-published textbooks were clearly superior?
For public school textbook procurement reform, I reiterate my proposal to remove the actual evaluation of the textbooks from the responsibilities of the Secretariat of an incomplete Instructional Materials Council. The IMCS does not have enough experts of its own, but usually taps many external experts from public and private academic institutions.
Also, given the budgetary constraints of the IMCS, it gives relatively low compensation to the external experts, and thus the IMCS neither attracts the best experts nor provides enough incentives for the experts to exert their best efforts in the evaluation process.
It would be more efficient to decentralize textbook evaluation by accrediting appropriate departments of reputable academic institutions and Centers of Excellence like the UP National Institute of Science and Mathematics Education, the Ateneo de Manila Department of English, the UST Department of Science, the De la Salle University Department of Filipino, etc. to evaluate the textbooks.
The role of a reconstituted & fully functional Instructional Materials Council then would be to accredit those institutions and centers, which can charge reasonably competitive evaluation fees from the textbook publishers. In this way, the DepEd can do away with its complex 5-step evaluation system, which unfortunately has allowed some low quality textbooks to squeak through owing to the loopholes created yet obscured by the sheer complexity of the system.
In this scheme, the Instructional Materials Council would consider for DepEd procurement only those series of textbooks that obtained seals of approval from the accredited institutions and centers, and it should require that the names of the approving institutions and centers be prominently displayed on the textbooks themselves. The risk of ruining their reputations would push the institutions and centers to make sure that they do a good job.
The Council would do occasional random checking in which, if it found a low quality textbook among those that an accredited institution had approved, it would pursue an established process to remove accreditation from the negligent institution.
In this scheme, the competition in the public school textbook procurement system among publishers whose textbooks obtained seals of approval would be on the basis of price and some technical requirements and no longer on textbook quality.
This proposal is consistent with National Book Policy #5, which provides that “the State shall support an efficient book utilization program for educational institutions.” Also, Implementing Policy 5.5 states: “the Department of Education shall initiate measures to decentralize evaluation of textbooks, references and other instructional materials particularly those which are locally developed and/or intended for specific geographic areas or cultural communities.”
The DepEd's over-centralized and complex system of large-scale textbook procurement strongly attracts attempts at grand corruption that involves some textbook publishers and those DepEd bureaucrats who discover the loopholes created and obscured by the complexity of the system.
(Comments are welcome.)
The IMCS is the Secretariat of a more important body, the Council, which is supposed to make final decisions on textbook procurement & to oversee the evaluation of instructional materials for all public elementary & secondary schools.
Besides the DepEd Secretary & the 2 directors of the bureaus of elementary & secondary education, who are the members of the Instructional Materials Council? Does the membership include recognized textbook specialists from the private school system? Perhaps the Council should also include a competent representative of a relevant citizens organization or civil society group.
How often does the current Council meet as a whole body? Are there official records of its meetings? When was its last meeting? Is its Secretariat pro-active enough in ensuring that the Council is fully functional & has complete membership that holds meetings periodically or as often as necessary?
On a related matter, the IMCS, the Secretariat of the current Council, seems to be on the verge of persuading some high officials of the DepEd to ask Congress to return to the DepEd the responsibility of publishing the textbooks for the public school system.
Should the tasks of writing and producing the textbooks be returned to the DepEd and taken away from the textbook publishers of the book industry, when the DepEd through the IMCS has not yet been able to establish a solid track record in implementing an efficient and effective evaluation system for the textbooks available for procurement?
What makes the IMCS so sure it can do better in the whole publication process (with research, writing, evaluating, editing, and designing activities)?
The IMCS would point to the past, especially the era of the Marcos dictatorship, when the Department of Education produced its own textbooks through an Instructional Materials Development Corporation. Can the IMCS produce enough studies from independent & competent researchers that have compared textbooks before & after the 1995 privatization of DepEd textbook procurement, & which show that the DepEd-published textbooks were clearly superior?
For public school textbook procurement reform, I reiterate my proposal to remove the actual evaluation of the textbooks from the responsibilities of the Secretariat of an incomplete Instructional Materials Council. The IMCS does not have enough experts of its own, but usually taps many external experts from public and private academic institutions.
Also, given the budgetary constraints of the IMCS, it gives relatively low compensation to the external experts, and thus the IMCS neither attracts the best experts nor provides enough incentives for the experts to exert their best efforts in the evaluation process.
It would be more efficient to decentralize textbook evaluation by accrediting appropriate departments of reputable academic institutions and Centers of Excellence like the UP National Institute of Science and Mathematics Education, the Ateneo de Manila Department of English, the UST Department of Science, the De la Salle University Department of Filipino, etc. to evaluate the textbooks.
The role of a reconstituted & fully functional Instructional Materials Council then would be to accredit those institutions and centers, which can charge reasonably competitive evaluation fees from the textbook publishers. In this way, the DepEd can do away with its complex 5-step evaluation system, which unfortunately has allowed some low quality textbooks to squeak through owing to the loopholes created yet obscured by the sheer complexity of the system.
In this scheme, the Instructional Materials Council would consider for DepEd procurement only those series of textbooks that obtained seals of approval from the accredited institutions and centers, and it should require that the names of the approving institutions and centers be prominently displayed on the textbooks themselves. The risk of ruining their reputations would push the institutions and centers to make sure that they do a good job.
The Council would do occasional random checking in which, if it found a low quality textbook among those that an accredited institution had approved, it would pursue an established process to remove accreditation from the negligent institution.
In this scheme, the competition in the public school textbook procurement system among publishers whose textbooks obtained seals of approval would be on the basis of price and some technical requirements and no longer on textbook quality.
This proposal is consistent with National Book Policy #5, which provides that “the State shall support an efficient book utilization program for educational institutions.” Also, Implementing Policy 5.5 states: “the Department of Education shall initiate measures to decentralize evaluation of textbooks, references and other instructional materials particularly those which are locally developed and/or intended for specific geographic areas or cultural communities.”
The DepEd's over-centralized and complex system of large-scale textbook procurement strongly attracts attempts at grand corruption that involves some textbook publishers and those DepEd bureaucrats who discover the loopholes created and obscured by the complexity of the system.
(Comments are welcome.)
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Words without Borders
The National Book Development Board believes that the promotion of lifelong learning through readership leads to genuine human development, national poverty reduction, and book industry development in the medium to long terms.
We live in a world of words, words that work and don’t work, words that matter & don’t. Words in books can cross safely and become active beyond the borders of time and space, especially if leaders & policy-makers will continue to adhere to the UNESCO principle & the 1950 Florence Agreement on the free flow of information & knowledge.
Also, words and books that endure and spread are products usually of substantial investments in time, effort & resources on the part of creative persons and entrepreneurs. To develop authorship and the creative sector, the NBDB initiated and guided the enactment into law of the National Book Development Trust Fund to support through annual grants Philippine authorship in science and technology and other learning areas where more Philippine publications are needed.
For the very first set of Trust Fund grants, the NBDB received a total of 24 applications from budding & veteran authors. For our upcoming Book Development Month celebration this November, at least 3 deserving authors will receive grants of a minimum of 200,000 pesos each for submissions under the categories of the English Novel, Health & Wellness, and Environment & Biodiversity including Climate Change Adaptation. As the interest of the Trust Fund grows, a bigger number of grants over a wider set of categories can be given next year.
Like government support for authors, the book industry has improved through the years. The private sector has been the main driver of industry growth. Government has not been & should not be the main driver, but certainly government has the important role of preserving and enhancing the environment for healthy competition and growth in a book market with domestic and foreign players.
Through the years, I have been privileged to witness how the Philippine book industry has grown. With the spread of the digital revolution, I am confident that the fundamentals of our book industry have become solid & strong enough to meet the challenges and to grasp the opportunities of this revolution.
May we see book readership & book development in the coming years flourishing with more Philippine publications in printed & electronic forms that cross the borders of time and space, more books that contribute to lifelong learning, books that help us live with more wisdom, joy, or peace so that, whenever we turn to the book of day-to-day life, we do better in enriching its pages with trustworthy words and meaningful works, words and works that cross the boundaries of ignorance, indifference and intolerance.
We live in a world of words, words that work and don’t work, words that matter & don’t. Words in books can cross safely and become active beyond the borders of time and space, especially if leaders & policy-makers will continue to adhere to the UNESCO principle & the 1950 Florence Agreement on the free flow of information & knowledge.
Also, words and books that endure and spread are products usually of substantial investments in time, effort & resources on the part of creative persons and entrepreneurs. To develop authorship and the creative sector, the NBDB initiated and guided the enactment into law of the National Book Development Trust Fund to support through annual grants Philippine authorship in science and technology and other learning areas where more Philippine publications are needed.
For the very first set of Trust Fund grants, the NBDB received a total of 24 applications from budding & veteran authors. For our upcoming Book Development Month celebration this November, at least 3 deserving authors will receive grants of a minimum of 200,000 pesos each for submissions under the categories of the English Novel, Health & Wellness, and Environment & Biodiversity including Climate Change Adaptation. As the interest of the Trust Fund grows, a bigger number of grants over a wider set of categories can be given next year.
Like government support for authors, the book industry has improved through the years. The private sector has been the main driver of industry growth. Government has not been & should not be the main driver, but certainly government has the important role of preserving and enhancing the environment for healthy competition and growth in a book market with domestic and foreign players.
Through the years, I have been privileged to witness how the Philippine book industry has grown. With the spread of the digital revolution, I am confident that the fundamentals of our book industry have become solid & strong enough to meet the challenges and to grasp the opportunities of this revolution.
May we see book readership & book development in the coming years flourishing with more Philippine publications in printed & electronic forms that cross the borders of time and space, more books that contribute to lifelong learning, books that help us live with more wisdom, joy, or peace so that, whenever we turn to the book of day-to-day life, we do better in enriching its pages with trustworthy words and meaningful works, words and works that cross the boundaries of ignorance, indifference and intolerance.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Naked Christ against the Phallus
It is unfair & offensive to put a phallus or erect penis on an image of Christ, as what was done in a controversial art exhibit at the CCP. Jesus of Nazareth did not develop or acquire a phallic mentality, which pushes males to be “big, hard & up” in their physique, thinking & attitude & which spits at what is “small, soft & down.”
Jesus taught: “unless you change & become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). He also let a desperate non-Jewish woman to broaden radically his view about his mission of being “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” For his initial inaction to her plea for the healing of her daughter, he offered the “hard” reason that “it is not right to take the children’s bread & toss it to their dogs.”
Jesus listened to & learned from the Canaanite woman's “soft” reasoning that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall down from their masters’ table” (Mt 15:21-28). He let her broaden or change his mind. This is another important stage in the development of Jesus’ great faith in the heavenly Father who loves especially the downtrodden & little ones among the scattered daughters & sons of God (see also my 03 October 2010 blogpost).
Jesus became the clear opposite of the phallus when he died naked on the cross, stripped of clothes & bare of friends, as “all the disciples deserted him & fled” (Mt 26:56) & only women followers witnessed his death “from a distance” (27:55). The naked Christ on the cross is a historically true picture of the outward impotence of somebody who did not save himself, in order to save others. No wonder Paul wrote, “Christ crucified: a scandal to Jews & folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23).
While any image of Christ with a phallus is offensive, offended Christians ought to guard against the phallic reaction of self-righteous or arrogant rage against the artist and other blameworthy persons involved.
The exposure of genitals in an artistic work may be meaningful & not crude, vulgar or offensive. For example, an artistic depiction of a totally naked Christ dying or dead on the cross can be authentic & meaningful from the perspectives of history & theology. (See also my 31 March 2010 blog post; your comments are welcome.)
Jesus taught: “unless you change & become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). He also let a desperate non-Jewish woman to broaden radically his view about his mission of being “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” For his initial inaction to her plea for the healing of her daughter, he offered the “hard” reason that “it is not right to take the children’s bread & toss it to their dogs.”
Jesus listened to & learned from the Canaanite woman's “soft” reasoning that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall down from their masters’ table” (Mt 15:21-28). He let her broaden or change his mind. This is another important stage in the development of Jesus’ great faith in the heavenly Father who loves especially the downtrodden & little ones among the scattered daughters & sons of God (see also my 03 October 2010 blogpost).
Jesus became the clear opposite of the phallus when he died naked on the cross, stripped of clothes & bare of friends, as “all the disciples deserted him & fled” (Mt 26:56) & only women followers witnessed his death “from a distance” (27:55). The naked Christ on the cross is a historically true picture of the outward impotence of somebody who did not save himself, in order to save others. No wonder Paul wrote, “Christ crucified: a scandal to Jews & folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23).
While any image of Christ with a phallus is offensive, offended Christians ought to guard against the phallic reaction of self-righteous or arrogant rage against the artist and other blameworthy persons involved.
The exposure of genitals in an artistic work may be meaningful & not crude, vulgar or offensive. For example, an artistic depiction of a totally naked Christ dying or dead on the cross can be authentic & meaningful from the perspectives of history & theology. (See also my 31 March 2010 blog post; your comments are welcome.)
Monday, August 8, 2011
Art and the Good News
It would be beneficial to explore the potency of day-to-day art especially of the poor as a method and expression of the integral evangelization and the renewal of catechesis, worship and the social apostolate proposed twenty years ago by the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II).
“In ancestral communities, art has never been split from the flow of daily activities” (Katrin De Guia). Day-to-day art in non-modern, modern & post-modern communities is art from real life. As an activity, it “improves on what it finds” in the local environment such as pebbles, dried leaves and flowers, and scrap wood, metal and cloth, and recycles and transfigures what will otherwise end up as trash or refuse. An example of day-to-day art by a “Filipino culture-bearer” is that of Gregorio ‘Boy’ Masculino (b. 1960) of Oton, Iloilo.
One has to distinguish the “everyday art” of comfortable communities from the day-to-day art of the poor, whose experiences of chaos, violence, hope and joy are not as pure and simple as some comfortable thinkers tend to think they are.
One can make a distinction between art as a product and art as an activity. The first meaning of art, the artwork, reflects in its authenticity or beauty the infinite beauty of God.
The second meaning is the act of creativity in which the artist participates in the creativity of the Spirit of the Divine Artist and cultivates a field of energy where new or deeper relationships, enabled by the same Spirit of fellowship and communion, can be discovered by the artist and his or her “audience.” In “contemporary art,” there has been a “transition from objects to relationships,” and its purpose “is to create a new space-time experience” (Sebastian Elavathingal).
For integral evangelization, inculturation, and catechetical renewal, the potency of the day-to-day art of the poor includes but goes far beyond the functional or practical purpose of helping them appreciate or digest church teachings. (Comments are welcome.)
“In ancestral communities, art has never been split from the flow of daily activities” (Katrin De Guia). Day-to-day art in non-modern, modern & post-modern communities is art from real life. As an activity, it “improves on what it finds” in the local environment such as pebbles, dried leaves and flowers, and scrap wood, metal and cloth, and recycles and transfigures what will otherwise end up as trash or refuse. An example of day-to-day art by a “Filipino culture-bearer” is that of Gregorio ‘Boy’ Masculino (b. 1960) of Oton, Iloilo.
One has to distinguish the “everyday art” of comfortable communities from the day-to-day art of the poor, whose experiences of chaos, violence, hope and joy are not as pure and simple as some comfortable thinkers tend to think they are.
One can make a distinction between art as a product and art as an activity. The first meaning of art, the artwork, reflects in its authenticity or beauty the infinite beauty of God.
The second meaning is the act of creativity in which the artist participates in the creativity of the Spirit of the Divine Artist and cultivates a field of energy where new or deeper relationships, enabled by the same Spirit of fellowship and communion, can be discovered by the artist and his or her “audience.” In “contemporary art,” there has been a “transition from objects to relationships,” and its purpose “is to create a new space-time experience” (Sebastian Elavathingal).
For integral evangelization, inculturation, and catechetical renewal, the potency of the day-to-day art of the poor includes but goes far beyond the functional or practical purpose of helping them appreciate or digest church teachings. (Comments are welcome.)
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Jesus' Great Faith
The great faith of Jesus empowered him to walk calmly & cross over troubled waters in his life especially in times when he felt a combination of grief, fear & fatigue. He felt grief & fear when he was told that his former mentor, John the Baptist, a prophet of the heavenly kingdom, was beheaded by the shameless Herod Antipas (Matthew 14:1-13). He felt fatigue after a whole day of healing & feeding the souls and bodies of a crowd of thousands of men, women & children (14:14-21).
“He went up on a mountainside by himself to pray” (14:23). Although he was physically alone in his grief & fatigue, he perceived the presence of the Spirit of the loving Father in the sound of sheer silence as he prayed in solitude.
Similarly, while the prophet Elijah felt his failure, fear & fatigue after he fled from the wrathful & vengeful queen Jezebel, he recognized the very presence of Yhwh not in powerful events like a great storm, an earthquake & then a conflagration but in the sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19:9-13).
The faith of Jesus, his faith in the Father’s great love for him & for all the weary daughters & sons of God, was tested in moments of grief, fear & fatigue & it was nurtured in moments of prayer. His Spirit of faith & not our own merit saves us from the destructiveness of our sinful passions & addictions.
“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit itself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26). The sound of sheer silence in prayer is primarily God’s gift & not anybody’s achievement, and thus we ought to be sober and never to be arrogant even toward those who are, or are perceived to be, faithless, sinful, or corrupt.
Jesus, the meek Messiah, learned from an assertive non-Jewish woman, and discovered the inadequacy of his initial understanding of his mission as “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” (Mt 15:24). His faith was enriched by the great faith of the Canaanite woman who wanted the healing of her ailing daughter.
May Christ’s Spirit of faith help believers to cross over troubled waters, to guard against arrogance & to be receptive to spiritual enrichment from the “outsider” & the lowly. (See also my 03 October 2010 blog post; your comments are welcome.)
“He went up on a mountainside by himself to pray” (14:23). Although he was physically alone in his grief & fatigue, he perceived the presence of the Spirit of the loving Father in the sound of sheer silence as he prayed in solitude.
Similarly, while the prophet Elijah felt his failure, fear & fatigue after he fled from the wrathful & vengeful queen Jezebel, he recognized the very presence of Yhwh not in powerful events like a great storm, an earthquake & then a conflagration but in the sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19:9-13).
The faith of Jesus, his faith in the Father’s great love for him & for all the weary daughters & sons of God, was tested in moments of grief, fear & fatigue & it was nurtured in moments of prayer. His Spirit of faith & not our own merit saves us from the destructiveness of our sinful passions & addictions.
“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit itself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26). The sound of sheer silence in prayer is primarily God’s gift & not anybody’s achievement, and thus we ought to be sober and never to be arrogant even toward those who are, or are perceived to be, faithless, sinful, or corrupt.
Jesus, the meek Messiah, learned from an assertive non-Jewish woman, and discovered the inadequacy of his initial understanding of his mission as “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” (Mt 15:24). His faith was enriched by the great faith of the Canaanite woman who wanted the healing of her ailing daughter.
May Christ’s Spirit of faith help believers to cross over troubled waters, to guard against arrogance & to be receptive to spiritual enrichment from the “outsider” & the lowly. (See also my 03 October 2010 blog post; your comments are welcome.)
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