A Homily on Oct 15 Readings of the day

Gal 5:18-25 = “Those who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.”

Res. Ps. 1:1-2,3,4-6: “Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life”.

Luke 11:42-46. = “Woe to you, Pharisees! Woe to you, scholars of the law”.

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When, upon arrival at the Mactan airport terminal and getting out of the airplane, we enter the connecting tube and walk along the corridor before going down into the baggage claim area, an arresting image calls our attention. On the wall of the corridor is an over-blown photo of a mammoth crowd covered with a sea of umbrellas apparently attending a religious celebration. We do not see the faces of people. We see only umbrella tops of different colors!

What is the wall photo saying to the airport arrivals? I think the local Tourism personnel who, I believe are religious people, want the visitors to be impressed by the spectacular and external PRACTICE of the Cebuanos’ religious faith. This external manifestation is highly culturalized. But the huge gathering does not tell the visitors of the religious faith which is something internal and PRIVATE, ONE’S PERSONAL relationship with an invisible God.

The 2 Readings from the Letter of Paul to the people of Galacia and the Gospel of Luke show us the positive and negative outcomes of a personal religious faith culturally well manifested, and a loss of this faith culturally manifested in the wrong way. Are these positive and negative behaviors culturally visible in the Cebuano church and society?

St. Paul says that personal faith which is living in the spirit through a life of self-control and mortification is culturally expressed in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control (Gal 5:22 ). They easily follow the Lord’s commands and “ have the light of life” (Ps.1:2) as we say in the Responsorial Psalm. But if this personal faith is lost by the abuse and misuse of the body or flesh in the language of Paul, the cultural outcomes are immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like”(Gal 5: 16-21).

St. Luke’s Gospel presents Jesus as strongly criticizing with stinging ‘Woes’ the pharisees and scholars of the law who personify those people who were without faith or have lost their faith, and now are living as hypocrites and who in their inner selves are stinking graves (Luke 11: 42-46).
The people of faith, those who live in the spirit or are spiritual, are those who can make a place a shrine of God’s’ special presence. Yes, God is everywhere but not every place is a shrine of God’s special presence.

A place becomes a shrine of God’s special presence when the so-called “shriners”, lovers and caretakers of the shrine, have made a Covenant of Love with God in or with a community of faith. And when this covenant is renewed on privileged moments like novenas and feasts, then the shrine becomes a place of grace. How can this happen?

There are two kinds of presence: physical presence, which is a face-to-face encounter with someone alive; intentional presence which can happen when one or a community intentionally becomes aware and conscious of God’s presence through His Sacred Word and through the Sacraments and sacramentals made external and visible by means of material signs and symbols of the local culture. These moments are GRACED moments which make devotees Grace-Full.

In the 16th century St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast we celebrate today, October 15, wrote the famous spiritual book called the Interior Castle, El Castillo Interior in original spanish. It is a beautiful cultural and symbolic description of how a spiritual person journeys and arrives and enters into presence of God, thus sealing a covenant of love forever.

This has been achieved by those who, in the words of St. Paul, “belonged to Christ and have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires”.
To many of us living in this century, it is not easy to follow St. Teresa’s teaching. It is difficult because of what I might call “a cultural divide”.
What I mean is, culture gives expression to faith; and faith is the soul of culture. St. Teresa was using the linguistic sign, the old Spanish language and the cultural symbol of a multi-room castle, to express her personal faith.

A modern rendition of the old Spanish linguistic idioms, a simple description of how Teresa, a highly cultured spanish woman, expressed her thoughts and feelings, and a popular equivalent of a modern house with several rooms, and most especially aided by the Holy Spirit would, I think, facilitate putting into practice this beautiful Teresian teaching, thus bridging the cultural gap.