In Christ’s wounds, we the fallen rise to heaven

“Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” And as [Jesus] said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them. – The Gospel of Saint Luke,

24:39-43

THE priest and the youth raised the same question, reflecting on Scripture and the pandemic: is God around?

In his Saturday Mass homily yesterday morning at St. John Bosco Parish Church in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, Fr. Remo Bati voiced the question raging in many a soul in the face of so much disease and death among family and friends.

“When tragedy, sickness, hardship and death strike, it becomes easy to wonder: Where is God?”

Amid financial distress, illness and despondency among loved ones, the Salesian cleric said, many may ask: “How can God let this happen to me and the world?

Is there really a God?”

Two nights before, doubts about the divine also came up at the online Bible sharing for youth scholars, convened every Thursday night by this writer and Fr. Gerbert Cabaylo of the Oblates of St. Joseph, parish priest at Santuario de San Jose in Greenhills.

Several the teenage girls and boys had recounted Thursday after Thursday how family and personal burdens during the pandemic led them to doubt God and sometimes miss prayers as they wondered if God was around to help in their travails.

Well, is He?

God on the water and at table

Fr. Remo’s homily was about the episode in the Gospel of St. John (Jn 6:16-21) when the Apostles sailed without Jesus, and a strong wind stirred the sea. Then they saw our Lord walking on the water toward the boat, and “they began to be afraid.” But he calmed them: “It is I. Do not be afraid.”

Noting that the miracle of walking on water came after the feeding of the five thousand, Fr. Remo said that Jesus “is showing both the disciples and us that he came to save us, and he has power over us and nature. He is capable of providing for all our needs and more, and he can come to our aid immediately, even when we are out at sea.”

The homilist continues: “God is always in control and He loves you. God has assured us that He will work out things for our own good. Every opportunity, joy and success we experience, as well as painful losses and failures are part of His plan. God’s work is in progress in our daily lives.

“God is there to listen to the hurt you feel. He understands your pain, confusion, fear, suffering, and asks you to put them on His shoulders. God does not think your feelings are irrational or over the top. … God is not judging you. He wants to be there for you.”

All very comforting, but truthfully, do we believe all that, especially in the moments we are face to face with disease, deprivation and death? What assurance do we have that our Lord is there when things are going bad?

That’s where today’s Sunday reading from the Gospel of St. Luke (Lk 24:35-48) offers surety and solace. Partly quoted above, the Evangelist recounts the risen Christ appearing to his disciples, showing his wounds, and asking for food.

As or after he ate baked fish, Jesus told them “that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled … that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

Uplifting our fallen nature

Now, as coronavirus disease 2019, or Covid-19, surges worldwide, decimating families, communities and economies, how is Jesus eating fish and citing