Month: May 2018

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Trying Not to Explain the Trinity

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. Romans 8:14-17

When I was a parish priest, I was always at a loss on Trinity Sunday. I just could not write an interesting sermon (I am making an assumption here that at least some of my sermons were interesting). The miserable words I was able to put on paper looked dreadfully boring and uninspired, unlike the Blessed Trinity. Perhaps my sermons were an attempt to rationalize something that cannot be rationalized. I have heard many sermons about the Trinity. I realized that I am not alone. The preachers who are generally good preachers find it hard to deliver a good sermon about the Trinity. I have read many books about the rational treatise of this subject. My personal favorite is the one by Boethius. I don’t understand most of it and yet, it makes lot of sense. It sounds like a paradox but we are talking about something that is essentially paradoxical.

Maybe I should avoid writing something about the Trinity for this post. Unfortunately, this is an impossible task. The presence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is the heart of what we do. I can’t talk about God without mentioning Jesus and I cannot talk intelligibly about Jesus without the Holy Spirit. If we take the blessed Trinity away from our ministry, then we are just an older couple hanging out with children and teens in the streets. We would be very strange to the children and the people around. Yet, we are in the streets everyday and people seemed to understand why we are there. Most importantly, the children and teens do too. It is strange that no one ever asks the question how or why they understand. Perhaps, the most possible answer would be the workings of the Holy Spirit.

Our children, most likely, have never heard of the Nicene Creed. If they did, they wouldn’t be interested in discussing it. However, our children know that Jesus helps them understand the God the Father. They also sense in their hearts that they are God’s children. Whenever they said this, I used to be a little skeptical. I thought that they were just repeating doctrines and teachings they heard in the streets. I made the mistake of not taking them too seriously when they said that God is their Father. However, I have changed now. How and why I have changed? Well again, it is the Holy Spirit. I realized that I am not the Holy Spirit and therefore, the Truth does not flow out of me. It is possible for others to receive and know it apart from me. I also realized that the Holy Spirit is present in the hearts and minds of the children. When God poured out His Spirit, He generously gave Himself to the world and not just to a select few. His Spirit has been with these children and teens since the day they were born. The children talk about God being their Father not as a theory but a reality. Most of them have never had a religious upbringing. Yet, they know in their hearts that God is the only true Father that they have. This is not a metaphor. We have been helping a lot of our teens get their documents recently and almost all of them do not know the names of their fathers. They have no notion what their fathers look like. There are about two or three in the streets that have fathers. Unfortunately, they are not living at home because of their fathers.

Our children are convinced that God never abandoned them. This is quite amazing. They live on the streets of a commercial district. They see people flaunting their wealth all the time. They see people walking with their families. They are completely aware of their lack. Nevertheless, it never occurred to them that God has abandoned them. Some might argue that this is mere blind faith. It could be that or it could be the Truth. A kind of Truth that goes beyond the superficial presentation of reality. Something that only could be revealed by the Holy Spirit. Our children and teens don’t attend or belong to any church. They don’t feel the necessity to adhere to any religious belief. They live their lives through their intuition. They intuitively know that God has never abandoned them because He always sends people to remind them that He is with them.

We have been helping Wellington this week with his documents. In reality, what he needs is not complicated. He could do it himself. However, he has never done anything of this sort on his own before. He is 18 and he has been involved in crime in the past and has been to juvenile detention centers several times. He is street wise and has gained the respect of the other teens. However, now he wants to leave all these things behind. He wants something better but he doesn’t know how to go about it. He came up to us and asked our help. He needed a parent figure to help him. Even though our interactions have always been superficial despite knowing him for almost five years, somehow he sensed that we would walk with him.

After we got his documents, as we walked back together to where the children were staying, Wellington opened up about his family. He said that he was a squatter in an abandoned building with his mother. It was actually the building that collapsed. I wrote about this in my last post. Fortunately, he wasn’t there when it happened. We were surprised to hear that he was with his mother. However, he quickly added that she never cared for him. She was a crack addict and never had time for anything else but crack. He realized this at a very young age. He decided that he needed to look elsewhere for a family. This is why he stayed in the streets. He did not sound bitter or angry when he said this. It was just the way life turned out for him. However, he doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of his mother. He wants to be free from everything that is detrimental to his life. However, he is not going to be able to do it alone. He needs a family. He needs the Holy Trinity. He did not say this. He does not have the vocabulary but we do. Maybe this is why the Holy Spirit brought us to the streets; to help them discover a new vocabulary. The word, “Trinity”, was a new word born from the spiritual encounters of the Christian community. Unfortunately, they spent many years caught in arguments dealing with the precise and technical expressions of it and something was lost. Something lively and real was reduced to something dry and irrelevant. The “Trinity” is not a theory or an argument. The Trinity is an expression of God’s love. It is the way we understand God is Love.

If I were to write a sermon about the blessed Trinity today for our children and teens, it would go something like this; The Holy Trinity brought us together. We wouldn’t be in the streets if it wasn’t for Jesus. We wouldn’t be in the streets if the Holy Spirit hadn’t spoken to us. The streets wouldn’t be special if the Father hadn’t brought all of us together. It would be impossible for us to become a loving and caring family in the streets if we did not first encounter the love of the Father through Jesus made alive in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. I noticed that everything negative has been made positive through the workings of the Blessed Trinity. Perhaps, this is the best way to think about the Holy Trinity. The Blessed Trinity takes each ‘No’ to abundant life and transforms it into a ‘Yes’. I think that our children would understand this sermon. Thankfully, I don’t have to preach to them. We just live it every time the Holy Spirit brings us together.

 

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Truly Loving in a Difficult Situation

Jesus prayed, “when I was with them in the world, I was keeping them in Thy name; those whom Thou hast given to me I did guard, and none of them was destroyed, except the son of the destruction, that the Writing may be fulfilled.” John 17:12 (Young’s Literal Translation)

The verse above is taken from a prayer that only Jesus can pray. We cannot appropriate it. We cannot use it our prayer books as an expression of our own sentiments. It is something that belongs only to the Son of God. It reveals the humility of Jesus who recognizes His limits. He does not assume that He has the right to demand anything from the Father. Instead He pleads with Him. There is no claim of merit. He admits that He merely takes care of those whom God has given to him. They do not belong to Him but to the Father. He recognizes that He has only one task and stays faithful to it. He has to manifest the Truth to them. This was all He had to do. He has to reveal the Truth to them.

“Truth” has such a complex history. Many things good and unpleasant have been done in its name. Everyone claims to make allegiance to it: religions, sciences, politics, media and even the entertainment industry. For most of these, Truth is a theory or a doctrine or a teaching. In the gospel of John where this prayer is taken from, its author makes it crystal clear that Truth is not a doctrine or some spiritual exercise or political system but He is a person; nothing more, nothing less.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” ( John 14:6)

It is this truth that brings us to the streets. It is this truth that we constantly discover whenever we are with our children. It is not always easy to accept this Truth. It would be easier if it was just a doctrine. We cannot share this Truth. We have to reveal Him through love. Nothing we say can have any meaning unless His love shines through our hearts. This is the tough part because it is not always easy to love.

I have been doing ministry in the streets long enough to recognize when a criminal activity is about to take place. There were three men walking together looking for a potential victim to rob. The way they walk and communicate with each through quick and silent glances gave them away. They caught my attention. I observed them from a distance. All the sudden one of them made eye contact with me. His face changed and he looked slightly embarrassed, even ashamed. He said something to his companions and then approached us. His name is Bruno.

There are a few “Brunos” in the streets. We met this particular Bruno* when we first got here in 2013. He was incarcerated in the juvenile detention center. He was detained for selling cobbler glue for sniffing. His mother had sent him out to do this. We visited him on a weekly basis. His mother never went to see him once. I met his mother once when she was a homeless teen more than twenty years ago. Now, she has about five children or perhaps more. I can’t remember exactly. They were all forced into the “family business.” It is not organized crime. It is very disorganized and involves selling cobbler’s glue for almost nothing. With the little she earns, she manages her household. There are some mental issues too. Bruno was basically born into criminality. I would describe him as gentle and soft-spoken. We celebrated his sixteenth birthday in the detention center. Mary made some special cupcakes for him. We visited him over the course of a year. Eventually, we lost contact with him until recently. He is back in the streets. He looks the same but he is 20 now. He saw us and said that he remembered our simple birthday celebration with him.

Before he was released from the detention center, Bruno asked the staff to place him in a shelter. He thought that his home would just be a reentry back to a life of crime. I have to say that counsellors of the center tried their best to find a shelter for him. Unfortunately, they was unsuccessful. Bruno went to his mother’s house. Now he is part of a gang of robbers.

It is hard for us to imagine that this gentle young man would hurt someone for money. Unfortunately, he is indeed that kind of person. He is part of a dangerous gang. There are two sides of Bruno and they are irreconcilable. I cannot pretend to see only the good side of him. It would be dishonest of me especially when I claim that I am here to proclaim the Truth. I need to face the harsh reality. I know that I am not alone in this dilemma. There are prison chaplains who serve the vilest criminals. They have to struggle not to despise those whom they serve. I don’t despise Bruno. We have a strong affection for him but I hate what he does. Not just him, there is another older teen in this gang of robbers with whom we actually have very close relationship and it breaks our heart to know that they are contaminating their souls doing such things. We still love them but we cannot pretend that they are not dangerous and a menace to society.

When I read the prayer of Jesus, it made me wonder how did Jesus love Judas knowing that he would eventually betray him. Jesus did not treat him any different from the rest. He recognized Judas as one of those whom God has given to Him.

Jesus said, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. John 13:26

In ancient cultures, when the host personally served you a bread he had dipped, it was a sign of intimacy and honor. The rest of the apostles took this for granted and they disregarded the fact that at that particular moment that Jesus was pointing out the traitor to them. Jesus loved and cared for Judas like the rest of them. Judas was the son of destruction and Jesus could not do anything about it. It is strange to even write these words. We think of Jesus as always doing the impossible. However, even God respects the boundaries that He has set. He won’t intervene in our decisions but He still loves us despite our bad choices.

Bruno came up to us and hugged us. He has a strong affection for us and the feeling is mutual. At the same time, there is a gnawing sentiment of disdain within me knowing that he is capable of doing harm to innocent people. I realize that I am also like a Bruno, a torn and divided person. I am not any different from anyone in this world. God wants us to be in the world but not of the world. Perhaps I take comfort in the prayer of Jesus knowing that He still prays this prayer for us.

“Holy Father, keep them in Thy name, whom Thou hast given to me, that they may be one as we are one.” John 17:11

Jesus loved Judas despite knowing what he would do. There was compassion in his words when he said that it would have been better if he was never born (Matthew 26:24). The person who suffered most in the act of betrayal was Judas himself. He will always be remembered for this one thing. His suicide revealed that he never understood the depths of Jesus’ love. Bruno is not Judas nor are the other young men we know that are involved in crime. We can’t see into their future. This is a good thing. However, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to help us become one with Jesus and learn to love with compassion those who do things that grieve our hearts.

 

 

*This is a post I made about Bruno and his mother in 2014.

http://spmercyministry.com/2014/09/18/tragic-tales-of-three-mothers/

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Love comes Tumbling down

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12

A 24 story building collapsed in our neighborhood this week.

It happened on May 1st, the Labor Day holiday. I heard the helicopters flying around our neighborhood all night. These machines are bad omens here in this city. Their presence means that there is a riot or some large scale tragedy. I looked out the window and saw them hovering over a certain spot not far from our home. I knew something bad had happened. It was only in the morning I realized that a building had collapsed.

We got dressed and went to the location. I don’t know why but it just felt like we needed to be there. Obviously, all roads were closed to traffic. The building used to be a government office but has been abandoned for the past twelve years. More recently, it has been home for 150 families from one of the poorest sectors of society. They invaded the building in hopes of getting the attention of the government to help them find affordable housing. There are about 100 abandoned buildings occupied by the homeless poor in the center where we live. These people are not the same as the homeless to whom we minister in the streets. Most of these people have jobs but they cannot pay rent with what they earn. The best option is being squatters in abandoned buildings in the center. Unfortunately, everyone in authority ignores their presences until a tragedy occurs.

As we walked to the site, we passed a famous restaurant along the way. There was a long line of people waiting to eat there. They were talking and laughing away. It was quite surreal. They seemed oblivious to a great tragedy had happened just around the corner. The tragic event was in the news, even the President went to the area. It is hard to ignore such a thing. However, it didn’t concern these people. It has very little to do with their world. It is not our world as well. However, we were slowly making our way there. I am still not sure why.

There were quite a lot of people at the site. They were not mere curious spectators. Many were from the poorer social sector. They were just like us who were drawn to this place. There was almost a melancholic silence that penetrated the souls of everyone there. The press was there with their cameras. The firemen were busy trying to put out the smoldering flames. The city which is usually noisy and unruly could not ignore the silence that permeated the place. The people who lost their homes sat and mourned their loss. No words could console their souls at this moment. Hope was ripped away. There was a sense of total abandonment. Any attempt to comfort them would sound like conventional wisdom. Perhaps silence was the best answer. Some people brought clothes and food. I saw a man going through the clothes and then he walked away without taking a single piece. He realized that he needed something more than clothes and food. He wasn’t sure what. Perhaps, it is hope.

We did absolutely nothing except stand there in silence. We did not feel like we wasted our time. We heard someone calling out our names. It was Sandro. He was the only one of our youths that was present there. It is strange that not more of them were present being close to where they live. In fact, I once went to this very building looking for the mother of one of our boys.

Sandro said that it was the noise of the helicopters that brought him here.

He was a little pensive today. He said that the people made the mistake of living in such a precarious building. It is a comment he heard from some in the streets. It is strange that victims are always the first to be blamed. I told him that the building was built in 1966 and shouldn’t be in such a fragile state. Besides, there is a housing problem in this city. The government has done nothing with this building for the past 12 years but somehow, the victims are being blamed.

Sandro was just trying to understand what happened. He wasn’t passing judgment. I told him that the people were desperate for a home and they took what was available to them. Just I said this, we saw another familiar face. It was Glaucia. She came up and hugged all of us. I knew her since she was 18 and now she is 41. She used to live in the streets just like Sandro. She has had a tough life. She lived in abandoned buildings like these people for many years. She raised her children in these circumstances. We know her sons and they are excellent young men. She heard about the building and came immediately. She knew some people who lived there. However, she also had some good news to share. She was getting a place of her own. She has been living in a slum built on abandoned land and the government decided to remove the people there to make way for some construction. As a result, she was awarded an apartment. It is not free but affordable. It was something that she wanted all her life. After all these years of being homeless, she finally has a permanent address.

After Glaucia went on her way, Sandro asked if it is possible for someone like him to have a permanent address. He had heard people say that everything is possible with hard work and determination. This is another piece of conventional wisdom. The people who stood there watching the building they called home go up in flames were hardworking and determined. I told him that there are no guarantees in life. Today was not a day for easy and quick answers. I told him that many people with material success in life were the first cast the stones at the victims today; calling them lazy and scroungers, etc. I am not sure if we can consider them to be successful people. I know that Jesus would not. Can we, as Christians, consider hateful and indifferent people to be successful? Glaucia is a successful person but not because she has an apartment now. She was homeless most of her life and yet she was still able to love people and care for them. She made a special two-hour trip just to stand in silence with these people who lost everything. No fire can still steal what she has from her.

Sandro looked hungry. Most of the restaurants in the center were closed for the holiday and food is scarce for the homeless on days like this. I asked him if he wanted to get a snack with us. He smiled and we took it as a “yes”. We went to a fast food joint. He ordered only one item. We encouraged him to get something else but he said that he did not want us to spend all our money. We insisted and he ordered something else. He was happy to share the table with us. He asked the same question again. What does it take to be successful? I told him maybe we should strive to be good people. This is something that will always belong to us.

Sandro hugged us and said that he will look for us the next couple of days.

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