A world waits to be healed

Beginning from our own country, the Philippines, we survey nations. They are in their continents floating on south orient seas and oceans east and west to the freezing north pole in the Atlantic. These are the lands which God placed in the vast expanse of His creation.

Center is the Middle East, the very place where He set the paradise garden of our first parents believed to be the present Iraq with its twin rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. God saw to it they had everything they needed to make them naturally happy – food to eat, animals who did not bite and were never wild. They needed no clothes, their bodies were innocently naked (not bold like our modern sex-pots) in their pristine loveliness the original handiwork of God. The one and only duty expected of the first man and woman was obedience to God, their Maker who gifted them with a mind which could know and a heart which could love. With that gift they bore a likeness to God.

We would have lived in that original innocence, sinless, had our first parents obeyed God. But they were deceived by the evil one who told them that God gave His first order to prevent man and woman from being like Him. The first disobedience was committed because they wanted to be gods. To the woman God said: "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children". To the man: "Cursed be the ground because of you; in toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life... by the sweat of your face shall you get bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken and to dirt you shall return" (Gen. 2:14.17.19). We know from Scriptures that God did not abandon them in their sin. He promised a Redeemer who in love offered His life dying on the Cross. Thereby, He poured out on humanity the universal flow of Divine Mercy. He chose a people to prepare His way.

The Gospel today is all about Jesus beginning His ministry by healing. Throughout His life He went about doing good healing the physically and emotionally sick, forgiving sins and casting out the evil spirits in possessed persons, in a word, manifesting the fatherly tenderness of God to the suffering. Today, more than ever before, the world is in pieces. Broken families, nations divided against each other, people in government and business out to destroy one another, bitter enmities, abuse of women and children, abortion of the unborn, abandonment of the helpless and the elderly, drug addiction, abuse of women and children, exploitation of workers, and oppression of the poor. Where is our hope in a world crippled by sin?

Humanity today looks like broken glass in the throes of sin, physical and emotional sicknesses, wars, family strife, political upheavals, and every pain the humanity is heir to.

The Mercy of God is above all His works. He wants this Divine Mercy to be manifested through us as it has been the perfect manifestation in Jesus Christ. Today, the apostolate to which everyone both lay and religious are called is primarily the apostolate of compassion, the witness to the Mercy of God.

Compassion literally means "suffering with" born out of a heart sensitive to others. Through compassion we see benevolently the condition of our fellow human beings. What was the best gift you ever gave? You will recall that the best gift was one tied with the heartstrings of the giver, one that included a part of self. Compassion acts like rain upon dry ground. It is the basis of all that is right. The happiness one brings to life is made up of minute acts of kindnesses, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment and countless other infinitesimal thoughts and feelings for the other.

Compassion is being in tune with oneself, the other person and the whole world. It is a goodness at its peak. It is a harmony which opens up itself and permits the flowing out of love toward others without asking any reward.

Thus suffering and death continues on from generation to generation. We are conscious of this from day to day and suffering will always be a part of man’s life until death. Jesus’ mission yesterday, today and to the very end is healing the wounds of a broken world. For this He died on the Cross to give us the forgiveness of God and to show us God does care. May we be all instruments of healing, of peace, love, revelation of Divine Mercy.

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mark 1:29-39