The WORD in other words (2009) by Fr. Erasio Flores, SVD – Catholic Trade Manila
Saturday 4th Week of Lent
Today’s Gospel reminds me of an experience I had not so long ago, while I was celebrating a “street-Mass.” It was not really a street-Mass, as it was held in a small covered space between two concrete houses, a few meters away from the street. (By the way, I love saying street-Masses. I observe better the people’s act of worship and how they respond to the Word of God.
As I was saying Mass, a few people passing by the street were talking aloud, another was pounding something like he was repairing a furniture. And it was not only once. Every now and then, there were loud conversations from passersby. One young girl, noticing the disturbance, went out to remind them not to speak so loud. Someone from the congregation also went to tell the person pounding something to stop making the noise. I followed these up with a public address during my homily by saying: “Please, respect the congregation’s public worship. We have respected your freedom to attend or not our celebration, so please, respect our worship too. Respect God.” The distractions stopped.
In today’s Gospel, the obvious impression one gets is the diversity of reaction to Jesus’s words, some positive, some negative. Some of the guards even wanted to take action against him: “Why did you not bring him?” While the other guards were overwhelmed: “Never before has anyone spoken like this one.” One even judged the crowd as “accursed.” But why this diversity of reactions, this confusion?
There’s a saying in Latin: “Tot capita, tot sententiae.” It means, there are as many options as there are heads, each one has his /her own mind.
Here we come to the core of the problem. Each one has his/her mind; his/her own opinion. But this brings us to a more crucial problem: the problem of mind-formation. It determines one’s thinking, one’s attitudes, one’s responses or reactions.
Many years ago, an editor of a religious magazine figured out that by the time a child reaches the age of 13, he/she will have seen some 18,000 violent scenes on TV; now, for sure, much more. And what are we doing with our mind? Do we fill it with good things, or do we feed it with trash?
The letter to the Hebrews tells us that God’s laws are written in our hearts: “I will put my laws into their minds and write them in their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people” (Hebrews 8,10). That is why, in each of us is a kind of a sense of God we popularly call “conscience.” So, nourish well your minds with good things, especially with the Word of God.
