indonesian catholic online evangelization

14^th Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]

July 5, 2020

Matthew 11:25-30

From the previous two Sundays, we learn that Jesus lays down the cost of following Him, how to become His disciples. And they are extremely tough. One has to follow Jesus wherever He goes. One must love Jesus above anyone else. One must be ready to suffer persecutions and hardships, carry his cross, and give up his life for Jesus. It is Jesus or nothing at all. However, following Jesus is not all about hardship and sacrifice. Today we hear that to walking with Him, we receive certain “perks” that others cannot even dare to offer.

Today’s Gospel is one of my personal favorites. Here, Jesus is presenting His other side. Last Sundays, we witness Jesus, who is firm and resolve in following the Father’s will, and He demands the same thing from His disciples. Now, He is showing Himself as one who is gentle and humble. He even promises to give rest to those who come to Him. Yet, there is an interestingly powerful point that Jesus makes: that in order to have rest, we need to carry the yoke of Jesus. A yoke is a device placed on the shoulders to carry weight. For Jesus, rest is not throwing away the yoke. We need to carry our yoke, our daily responsibilities, and mission in life. Yet, despite carrying the yoke, it will be easy. How is that possible?

We remember that Jesus is a carpenter’s son and Himself a carpenter. He knows well that a yoke that does not fit the shoulder will only add more burden and hurt. Yet, the yoke that is designed perfectly to fit the shoulder, will feel easy and even comfortable. This is the yoke of Jesus, a yoke that fits each of us.

The second point is that there is a kind of yoke that can be shouldered by two animals or persons, “a double yoke.” I do believe that this is a kind of yoke that Jesus offers to us. Why double yoke? Because Jesus will bring together yoke with us. He shoulders the yoke with us. And when we feel exhausted, that’s the time He takes over and we find rest.

But, wait, there is more! In the Gospel of Matthew, twice Jesus instructs His disciples to carry something in their shoulders. The first one is to carry the cross [Mat 10:38, and the second thing is the yoke [Mat 11:29]. Jesus seems to make a real connection between the two: His yoke is our cross. If this is true, then the implication is massive. Our daily cross is actually easy because it perfectly fits us and even, Jesus is carrying it with us. I do believe most of the time, it is Jesus who carries our crosses. At first, Jesus sounds exceedingly tough with His nearly impossible demands, especially to carry our cross, but looking our Gospel deeper, we realize that most the time, it is Jesus who shoulders our crosses. That is the reason only His cross, we find the true rest and consolation.

If we find ourselves still burdened and exhausted with our lives, we may ask: Are we carrying the cross of Jesus? Are we bringing the yoke alone and relying solely on our strength? Are we shouldering unnecessary burdens that should be unloaded a long time ago?

Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP

12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]

June 21, 2020

Matthew 10:26-33

Jesus never promises that the disciple will have easy and prosperous lives. Jesus demands the opposite. After being chosen, the twelve disciples are sent to preach that the Kingdom is at hand, and yet they will not go like any royal emissaries with their military escort. No! They will travel as simple men going on foot and carrying minimal provision. They will rely on the generosity of their hosts, and the worst part is that they are going to face rejection.

Naturally, humans as they are, they are growing fear. Yet, Jesus tells them that this mission is just “on the job training,” because they are going to undergo something even deadlier in the future. True enough, after the Pentecost, they will preach that Jesus is Lord, and they are facing severe rejection, terrible persecution, and even gruesome death. As Jesus teaches them, “the disciples are no greater than their master.” If Jesus, their master, is rejected, insulted, and condemned to death, the disciples will share the same path. Peter is crucified upside down, James, brother of John, is beheaded, and James son of Alpheus, is stoned to death.

Jesus understands their human and natural fear, but Jesus tells them that they shall not fear. Why? The answer of Jesus is simple. Why should we fear dying if we will perish anyway? The choices are whether we die as a witness to Christ or die running from Christ?

Furthermore, Jesus reveals the real reason why we should not be afraid: we have God, who is a loving and caring Father. Jesus gives a lucid yet simple explanation: how God treats a little sparrow. Sparrow is a kind of vertebrates that is practically worthless in the eyes of merchants, but for God, this little bird is His creatures, and when He created something, He has a good plan for it, and He sees to it that this plan will unfold providentially. In the word of Christian Philosopher Peter Kreeft, even God loves mosquitos. If God cares and loves the sparrow, would He not care and love for us? Again, Jesus points out a lovely truth: God knows better than we know ourselves, even He counts our hairs!

When a sparrow falls and dies, it is part of God’s perfect plan, and so when the disciples are experiencing rejections, trials, and even death, it is also part of God’s providence. Yes, often, our sufferings can be absurd. Why do we have to lose someone we love? Why do we suffer from incurable sickness? We do not understand, but even these terrible things in life are also parts of God’s providence.

We may not see it now, but perhaps we may see it at a later time, or perhaps, we never discover the reasons because of our too narrow minds. Yet, in God’s eyes, it is totally making sense. The gruesome death of martyrs, for example, is unthinkable. Still, Tertullian, a Christian apologist in 3^rd century, saw it in a deeper perspective and wrote, “We spring up in greater numbers the more we are mown down by you: the blood of the Christians is the seed of Christianity.”

Jesus does not call us to enjoy a prosperous life but to be His witnesses. Though things may turn against us, Jesus tells us not to fear and worry because, in the end, all will work according to His beautiful plan because He loves us.

Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP

Solemnity of Body and Blood of Christ [Corpus Christi] – A

June 14, 2020

John 6:51-58

The solemnity of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ takes its origin from the initiative of St. Juliana of Liege, who asked his bishop and his friends to honor, in special way, the institution of the Eucharist, and the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. The institution of the Eucharist itself took place in the Last Supper of the Lord, and every Holy Thursday, the Church celebrates this event. However, since Holy Thursday is an inseparable part of the Easter Triduum, the attention is given to the mystery of the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord. Because of its rootedness in Holy Thursday, the solemnity of Corpus Christi is celebrated on Thursday after the Trinity Sunday. Yet, in several countries, the celebration is moved to the next Sunday to accommodate the greater participation of the faithful.

 In the Gospel, Jesus insists that His body is real food, and everyone who wants to have eternal life shall consume His body. We may wonder: why does in His infinite wisdom, Jesus decide to give His body as food for our spiritual nourishment? Why not infuse the grace directly to our souls? The answer may surprisingly simple. It is because our body is real and good. God created man and woman in their fulness human nature, including their bodies, as something very good. Though our body comes from the ground, it has been marvelously designed to receive the bread of God, the spiritual life. Our bodies are fundamentally good, and so good that our bodies are inclined to grace. In the word of St. Augustine, “Capax Dei” (capable of knowing and receiving God).

Since the earliest time, the Church has battling perennial heresy called Gnosticism. In essence, gnosticism teaches there is dualism in our creation, and that the spiritual realm is good and the material world, including our body, is evil. Thus, any material aspect of our humanity has to be disposed of. The Church vehemently opposed this because God has created our material world as good and beautiful. The battle continues in time of St. Dominic de Guzman, the founder of Order of Preachers, who fought the Albigensians [the middle age adaptation of gnosticism). Gratefully, the Albigentians were no more, but unfortunately, the gnosticism lives on.

As Christians, we carry the battle of the Church against the modern-day gnosticism. The kind gnosticism is surprisingly simple without any need to learn a complex system of belief. When we consider our body a mere instrument to achieve success, when we abuse our bodies to feel instant pleasures, when we treat our bodies as mere economic gain, when we say that my body is my right, we unconsciously fall into the trap of this heresy.

But wait, there’s more! The feast of Corpus Christi brings us even greater truth of our body. By becoming man and finally giving His body, Jesus teaches us that body is not only capable of receiving grace, but it is also capable of becoming grace and love for others. In the Last Supper, Jesus has given as a supreme expression that is to offer His own body in love. And yet, to be shared, it has to be broken, and yet despite broken, it is offered in thanksgiving.

In this time of the pandemic, we are not able to attend the Holy Mass, and we miss a lot the Body of Christ. Yet, the good news is that it is our time also for us to become the Body of Christ for our neighbors in need. Only through sharing our body in love, we fulfill our purpose as bodily creatures created in His image.

Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP

Pentecost Sunday [A]

May 31, 2020

John 20:19-23

“Happy Birthday!” today is the feast of Pentecost, and today is the birth of the Church. We should rejoice because our Church is getting older by age, but getting ever stronger by vitality and creativity in preaching the Good News. Yet, the question is why we celebrate the birthday of the Church on the Pentecost Sunday?

To answer this, we need to understand the biblical meaning of the celebration of Pentecost and what took place to the disciples on the day the Holy Spirit descended upon them. The word Pentecost means the fiftieth, and the feast of Pentecost takes place on the fiftieth day after Sunday Easter. However, the Christian feast itself is originally a Jewish religious festival: the feast of Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks. The feast took place seven weeks after the grand celebration of the Passover. Together with Passover and the Feast of Tabernacle (Booths), Pentecost are the major pilgrimage festivals that require any male Jews to make their way to Jerusalem. Initially, the feast is agricultural in nature. The people of Israel gave thanks for the successful harvests and offered the fruits of their harvest to the Lord. Yet, it also gained a religious meaning. In the feast of Shavuot, the Israelites commemorate the giving of the Law and the making of the covenant with the Lord God in Mount Sinai.

This explains why many people from different nations gathered in around the place of the disciples: they were pilgrims of Pentecost. This answers a more fundamental question about the identity of the Holy Spirit: Why did the Holy Spirit have to present Himself as fire, and no other image like a dove? If we go back to the Sinaitic event itself, we are going to find something remarkable. When God made His covenant and handed down His Law, He appeared Himself to entire Israel as fire [see Exo 19:18]. The Holy Spirit appeared in fire simply because He was the same God who manifested Himself in Sinai. The Pentecost Sunday reveals the fundamental truth about the Holy Spirit that the promised Paraclete is divine.

In Sinai, the Israelites received the Law and entered into a covenant with the Lord. God embraced them and made them “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation [see Exo 19:6]. Israelites became a nation that belongs to God. In the new Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and instilled in them the New Law of Love. He fashioned them to be new People of God [see Pet 2:9]. The new community of God’s family has been born!

Yet, these new people are even greater. The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to preach the Good News to people from different nations and languages. The Pentecost reversed the negative effect of the tower of Babel [see Gen 11:1-9]. When people were so proud of themselves and tried to become like God with their power, different languages turned out to be a curse that divides them. Yet, with the Holy Spirit that transformed the hearts and instilled humility, languages become a blessing that unites the different people.

We thank the Holy Spirit that gave birth to the Church. We give thanks to the Holy Spirit that has called us to part of the new people of God.

Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP

6^th Sunday of Easter

May 17, 2020

John 14:15-21

In the last supper, Jesus promised the disciples that He would send another advocate to be with them forever. Who is this other advocate?

We all know that He is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Most Holy Trinity. Yet, how did Jesus describe Him in the Gospel of John, and why did He call the Spirit as such? Jesus named Him as the Paraclete, or in Greek, “Parakletos.” This exceptional word comes from two more basic Greek words, “para” means “at the side,” and “kaleo” means “to call.” Thus, “parakletos” can be understood as someone who is called to be at our side, especially in times of need. It is crucial to see the original setting where this word came: it was the court room. No wonder that the word “parakletos” may be translated into English as an advocate like a lawyer who assists us, defend us and speak on our behalf in the legal trial. Yet, as we know, a good lawyer does not only assist within the court room, he is there before and after the trial. He gives his advice and prepares us for the proceedings. In the end, he consoles us if we face severe judgment as well as rejoices if we emerge victoriously. No wonder in English, the word “paraclete” can be translated as an advocate, comforter, counselor, and even helper. But why did Jesus choose this image in the first place?

The reason is that Jesus knew that as the disciples preached His Gospel, they would face many trials. Peter and John faced trial before the Sanhedrin [Acts 4:5 ff]. Stephen was accused of blasphemy and stoned to death [acts 7]. And Paul was put under many judgments before he gave up his life for Jesus. In this kind of reality, Jesus did the right thing: to send the Paraclete. The Holy Spirit would be at the side of the disciples facing trials and hardship as they were preaching Jesus. Indeed, it is unconceivable for these disciples to endure and even give up their lives without the Holy Spirit that were at their side.

In our time, as disciples of Christ, we are facing a global trial caused by the virus covid19. Some of us are luckier because we just need to stay at home. Some of us are fortunate because we can enjoy the livestreaming mass, even twice a day! But for many, the pandemic means losing their livelihood and even their lives. For many, they cannot go to the church even when there was no pandemic.

We indeed need the Paraclete, but one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is that we are also empowered to be a little paraclete to our brothers and sisters. The moment we, the Dominican community in Surabaya, was required to close the church temporarily for the public service, we immediately were eager to provide an online service to our parishioners. We are thankful that many people donate relief goods to our parish, and our parish priests assisted by lay partners work hard to channel this help to those who are in need.

Instead of complaining that we cannot go to the Church or blaming other for the situations, we should ask the Holy Spirit to empower us to become little paracletes and find ways to be advocates, comforters and at the side of our brothers and sisters in need.

Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP