Acts 7:55-60 / Apocalypse 22:12-14, 16-17, 20 / John 17:20-26
For whatever reason, the date Friday the 13th is being termed as unlucky in the mild sense and eerie in the extreme sense.
We may recall a horror movie series that has the title “Friday the 13th” that has plenty of blood and gore in it.
Although it may be seen as just some kind of superstition, some people are not taking any chances about it.
No one would consider getting married on a Friday the 13th. It is estimated that businesses, especially airlines suffer from severe losses on Friday the 13th.
And even if the Friday is taken out of the term, the number 13 does not go well with people and places.
There is this fear of the number 13, so much so that many high-rise buildings, hotels and hospitals skip the 13th floor and many airports do not have gates numbered 13. And having 13 people at the dinner table is considered bad luck.
The day Friday and the number 13 may be deemed as superstition and it has several origins. And surprisingly one of the origins is linked with Christianity.
The speculation was that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th one to be seated at the Last Supper, and Jesus was killed on a Friday due to Judas and his evil doings.
Whatever we may think of Friday the 13th, it is impossible for a whole year to pass without a single Friday the 13th.
And for this year, Friday the 13th happens to fall in this month, the month of May.
Whatever the world may think or say about it, and whatever we may think or say about it, we need to remember what happened on May the 13th in the year 1917.
On that day in 1917, something astonishing happened in an obscure village in Portugal called Fatima.
There, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, appeared for the first time to 3 shepherd children; Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, and she continued to make her appearances to them on the 13th of each month, with her last appearance on October the 13th.
Appearing to the children, the Blessed Virgin told them that She had been sent by God with a message for every man, woman and child living in that time.
Coming at a time when civilization was torn by WW I and bloody violence, Mary promised that Heaven would grant peace to the world if Her requests for prayer, reparation and consecration were heard and obeyed.
Our Lady of Fatima, as she is called, explained to the children that war is a punishment for sin and warned that God would further punish the world for its disobedience to His Will by means of war, hunger and the persecution of the Church, the Holy Father and the Catholic faithful.
Mary also prophesied that Russia would be God's chosen "instrument of chastisement," spreading the "errors" of atheism and materialism across the earth, starting wars, annihilating nations and persecuting the faithful everywhere.
Certainly it was a terrifying fire-and-brimstone kind of message. In a way, it forced the Church and the world to look up to heaven for the answer to the turmoil and distress the world was facing.
Today’s gospel opened with this line: Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and He said a long prayer to His Father.
He too was in turmoil and distress as suffering, pain and death was waiting for Him.
But even in His turmoil and distress, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and prayed for His disciples that they will be united as one so that the world will may believe that God sent Jesus to pour out His love on the world.
Yes, Jesus prayed for His disciples that they will be united as one in their own turmoil and distress so that they can show the world how much God loves the world.
To raise up the eyes to heaven in the midst of turmoil and distress is to be have faith in God and to keep on loving so that the world can be saved.
In the 1st reading, Stephen raised his eyes to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus at God’s right hand, even though he was facing mortal danger.
Yes, we are called to raise our eyes to heaven in the midst of the turmoil and distress of our lives and the turmoil and distress of the world.
The message of Our Lady of Fatima tells us to do that through prayer and penance.
It has been almost a hundred years since Mary had appeared at Fatima. And how have we heeded her message and her call to prayer and penance?
In the turmoil and distress of our lives and as we see the world in turmoil and distress, will we raise our eyes to heaven in prayer and to pray as one?
This coming Friday, the 13th of May, is the 99th anniversary of the first appearance of Mary at Fatima. Her message then is still relevant now and maybe even more relevant for our time.
On that day, Friday the 13th, we will gather at Mary’s shrine and raise our eyes to heaven and pray the Rosary for peace in the world. It was at Fatima that Mary urged to children to pray the Rosary for peace in the world.
So we will gather to pray the Rosary for peace in the world, for peace and unity in the Church, and for peace and unity in our families.
For some, the combination of Friday and the number 13 may seem to be unlucky and fearful. But with Mary, we will raise our eyes to heaven and turn it into a day of joy and blessings.
Acts 18:23-28 / John 16:23-28
Mention the word "hospital" and immediately some thoughts come to mind.
Thoughts like illness, pain, loneliness, suffering and even death. The mood is certainly depressive.
But like what Jesus said, He came not for the healthy but for the sick, and to call not the virtuous but sinners.
So in a sense, the hospitals are places of grace, and places where prayers are often answered.
Hence, hospital ministry and pastoral care for the sick is one of the top pastoral priorities of the Church.
In their pain, the sick turn to Jesus and those in the hospital ministry and pastoral care for the sick are the answer to their prayers as they bring them comfort, company and communion.
And that's what Jesus said in the gospel - Ask and you will receive, and so your joy will be complete.
Jesus may have ascended to the Father but He is still with us till the end of time.
His presence will be felt in the way our prayers are answered.
So no matter how depressive or desperate or despondent the situation may be, prayer is the answer.
Life is fragile, but it can be handled with prayer.
Acts 18:9-18 / John 16:20-23
We may want to think about that last sentence of the gospel passage that we have just heard when Jesus said: When that day comes, you will not ask me any questions.
Yes, we will always have our questions about life, about our faith, about God and about eternity.
And of course we want answers. Yet we only want the answers we want to hear.
For example, when we are having it difficult or when we are suffering, we only want others to sympathize with us and to hear our complains as we wallow in self-pity.
We feel that everybody is against us and everything is so bleak, and hence the only thing we want to hear is that everybody is wrong and that we are right.
Yes, that is the answer we want to hear when we are having it rough.
But as we heard in the 1st reading, St. Paul had it rough and tough.
He could have just called it quits and not even bothered to listen to the Lord.
But he listened to the Lord and had faith in the Lord and believed that the Lord was with him.
Indeed the Lord was with him and protected him from harm.
The Lord will also protect us from harm and we will even be able to rise from our troubles and difficulties and find joy in life.
When we listen to the Lord's answer, then indeed we will have no more questions.
Acts 1:1-11 / Ephesians 1:17-23 / Luke 24:46-53
In this feast of the Ascension, it is understandable if we were to visualize or imagine Jesus ascending and going back to heaven.
We are even more inclined to think that Jesus is up there now, waiting for us to join Him eventually.
As the disciples watched Jesus ascending into heaven, the last they saw of Him were probably the soles of His feet.
And as He disappeared from their sight, it was back to life and back to reality, with their own feet on the ground.
But it is no more the same ground that they used to tread on.
Because where once Jesus walked with them, now He is no more with them.
And we share that same feeling with the disciples. Since Jesus had already ascended into heaven, we may also think that He is absent from us.
And after a while, we may get used to this absence, and we may forget that there is something more important in this life.
We forget that while we are living in the temporary, we are also heading towards eternity.
Yes, we may get so absorbed in the things of earth, that we forget all about the things above.
But all these are just consequences of thinking or feeling that Jesus is absent from us.
But this feast of the Ascension prepares us for a deeper presence of Jesus, a presence brought about by the Holy Spirit.
Today is the beginning of the Church’s Novena – 9 days of intense prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
In these days of prayer, we reflect about the temporary and about eternity.
We reflect about the things of earth and about the things above.
More importantly, we prepare our hearts to receive the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the power from on high that Jesus promised to send to the disciples and to us.
Our prayer for the next 9 days can be just these three simple words: Come, Holy Spirit.
With the power of the Holy Spirit, we will feel Jesus being present with us and walking with us.
And indeed, the ground that we are standing on will not be same again. Because it will be our mission ground as we go forth to be witnesses of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
So let us rejoice and pray and wait to be clothed with power from on high.
Acts 17:15, 22 - 18:1 / John 16:12-15
Every school or institution of higher learning has a library and that is an important resource center.
Even though there is the Internet with search engines to get a multitude of information, the library is still a necessity.
We may not be able to remember all the information there is, but there is the world of books in the library that we can delve in.
The knowledge contained in there is almost inexhaustible.
But if knowledge is inexhaustible, then truth is inextinguishable.
By inextinguishable, it means to say that the truth is already planted in our hearts and we only need to let the light of truth keep shining for us.
Hence, any enlightenment, and realization, any insight, is simply the seeds of truth in our hearts that are bearing fruit.
And that is certainly the work of the Holy Spirit.
That is also what Jesus meant when He said that the Holy Spirit will lead us to the complete truth.
So for the questions in life and about life that we do not understand and do not have the answers for, let us pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and to journey on in faith.
One day we will know, one day we will understand, when we let the Spirit guide us.
1 Cor 15 : 1-8 / John 14 : 6-14
From the gospel accounts, we know quite a bit about the characters of some of the apostles like Peter, James and John.
But with apostles like Philip and James (son of Alphaeus) we only have snippets.
Yet from these snippets, we can make out a picture of who they were.
Philip was the type who wanted to see the reality before going any further.
That was why in the gospel, he asked Jesus to let them see the Father, and then they will be satisfied and hence can proceed to the next step or the next stage.
So even when at a much earlier time in the gospel, when Philip told Nathanael about Jesus, his persuasion was just a gentle "Come and see" (John 1:46).
That was Philip. He needed to see first before he could move on and ask others to do the same.
Philip and James saw Jesus but they took a long time before they came to really know Him and to understand Him and eventually loving Him.
And when they came to love Jesus, they also proclaimed Him and made Him known.
Such is also our spiritual journey. We may know quite a bit about Jesus, but there is certainly much more that will be revealed to us.
So how we live our lives and how we proclaim our faith, that will show how much we know Jesus and how much we love Him.
Let us always pray that we will grow deeper in our love for Jesus.
Acts 16:11-15 / John 15:26 - 16:4
The human heart has been described in many ways, from hard-hearted to kind-hearted, and also many other descriptions in between, like soft-heart, cold-hearted, faint-hearted, etc.
So not every heart responds in the same way to a word or an action or to an emotion or to a principle.
So what is objectively true and good and right and just, may or may not be perceived as such.
In the 1st reading, we heard that Paul preached to a gathering at a prayer meeting. And among those who listened to Paul, the Lord opened the heart of one woman, Lydia to accept what Paul was saying.
The response that she gave was amazing such that she invited Paul and the rest to come and stay in her house and she would take no refusal.
The truth, that that encompasses what is good and right and just, has the power to open hearts so much so that they will even open their homes, as in the case of Lydia.
There is no further mention of Lydia after this account, but it can be said that she went on to be a witness of the truth as she carried on her life and in her business of the purple-dye trade.
In the gospel, Jesus said that He will send the Spirit of truth to us and in turn we must be witnesses of the truth.
Let us pray that our hearts will be opened to the Spirit of truth and to experience the power that will strengthen our faith.
Then we will be open to the promptings of the Spirit and open the other areas of our lives to the Lord.
