“I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world.”
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
It’s a beautiful Palm Sunday morning and before daybreak, I was already up to greet the sunrise and climb the hill which has become for me a sacred place of encounter with the Lord. My couple friends Ren Ren and Josie with their son Ryan joined me as we felt the need to pray together as a family, since gathering together as a faith community as what the people have been accustomed to do in the barrio chapel even in the absence of a priest, has also been cancelled along with the public Masses and celebration of the sacraments in order to curb the spread of the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) pandemic. The world is practically at a standstill for everyone is told to stay indoors in a mandatory lockdown. “Go into your houses, my people, and shut the door behind you. Hide yourselves for a little while until God’s anger is over.” (Isaiah 26:20)
As far as I can remember, I have always been a daily mass goer even way back to my high school years when I began to be involved with a number of religious organizations in my home parish, the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish run by the Claretian Missionaries (CMF) in Teacher’s Village, Quezon City. Those were unforgettable years of my young life for my active participation as a choir member, a lay lector and commentator and as a catechist always had the celebration of the Holy Eucharist at the heart of our prayer and worship as a Christian community. This goes without saying that my parents brought us up faithfully inculcating the Catholic tradition and practices passed on to them by their own parents.
In fact, in the diary of my grandfather Lolo Pistong (Teopisto J. Guingona, Sr.) written during the war years (1942-1945) which I found all written in Spanish, I discovered that he and Lola Pitang went to mass daily without fail. It was like a bedrock of their day to day life that sustained them during those very difficult times of the Japanese occupation and the horrible war that took place when the Americans attacked and succeeded in defeating the Japanese Imperial Army in the country that led to their total surrender. Lolo Pistong was unshakeable in his discipline of waking up early and walking to the Sanctuario in San Juan together with Lola Pitang to attend the first mass. And the only time they missed mass was when typhoon struck and when the battle in Manila became fierce and dangerous for anyone to leave their homes. I am grateful for being able to catch glimpses of my grandparents’ lives in the past through the daily journal entries of Lolo Pistong for his legacy inspires me and edifies my own faith in the face of so many trials and challenges in our present times.
And so as this historic move of the Catholic Church is sadly depriving the faithful to celebrate mass in public specially on a Sunday creates a sense of incompleteness to my day for it has become a source of spiritual nourishment for me all through these years. However, Archbishop Gómez’ message in the Holy Week column, “Our churches may be closed but Christ is not quarantined,” published in the Archdiocese of Los Angles’ multimedia news platform Angelus News is consoling for he said: “This Holy Week will be different. Our churches may be closed, but Christ is not quarantined and his Gospel is not in chains. Our Lord’s heart remains open to every man and woman. Even though we cannot worship together, each of us can seek him in the tabernacle of our own hearts. Because he loves us, and because his love can never change, we should not be afraid, even in this time of trial and testing. In these mysteries that we remember this week, let us renew our faith in his love.”
Hence, as we are treading uncharted paths with the road ahead so dark and uncertain still, God gently reminds us of His indwelling presence in countless other ways not only through the Sacraments officially recognized by the Church, and invites us to be more sensitive of his passing in our ordinary humdrum lives. Karl Rahner in his book, The Mystical Way in Everyday Life tells us that we are called to love this earth and God: God, because without Him, the earth is nothing. The earth, because it is the sacrament of God. It will cost his tears and his blood until the earth is cleansed and until people believe that we can become humans forever without becoming animals or angels.
John Muir further elaborates in the Gospel of John (Jn. 3:16) that God so love the world, the cosmos, the community of life. Nothing escapes His love, even the sparrows that fall to the ground. Even the drying and falling of leaves matter to Him. His love is broad enough for beetles, elephants, bears, lilies, oak trees, mountains and seas.
And so, at the hilltop we set up a makeshift altar on the grass with palm leaves surrounding the crucifix at the center overlooking the panoramic view of the hills and valleys before us. There we lighted a candle and sat in the silence as we took turns in reading the Gospel readings while the stillness of nature allowed us to delve more deeply into the message of God in our hearts. As we pondered on its meaning in our lives, we also join the whole Christendom in the observance of the Holy Week, albeit in a different and creative manner, even resorting to social media to connect with Sunday’s live-stream Mass being celebrated at the Shrine of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Manila. Thus, this simple act of praying together as a family makes homes a domestic church whereby we are called on to bear the burden with patience and charity, united as one family of God. “When two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them”. (Mat. 18:20)
Furthermore, it is inspiring to meditate on the work of the Jesuit priest, theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. In his book, Hymn of the Universe (1961), he dedicated the first chapter “The Mass on the World” in a reality where celebrating the Eucharist was not possible as he found himself in the steppes of Asia without bread, nor wine, nor altar. Thus offering the whole earth as his altar where upon he offered to God all the labors and sufferings of the world.
The following excerpt taken from The Mass on the World is a way of uniting ourselves with the whole of creation in prayer offering while we, the great majority of the faithful cannot gather together to celebrate mass and receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ:
“I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labor. Into my chalice I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.
My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day…
This restless multitude, confused or orderly, the immensity of which terrifies us; this ocean of humanity whose slow, monotonous wave-flows trouble the hearts even of those whose faith is most firm: it is to this deep that I thus desire all the fibers of my being should respond. All the things in the world to which this day will bring increase; all those that will diminish; all those too that will die: all of them, Lord, I try to gather into my arms, so as to hold them out to you in offering. This is the material of my sacrifice; the only material you desire.
Once upon a time men took into your temple the first fruits of their harvests, the flower of their flocks. But the offering you really want, the offering you mysteriously need every day to appease your hunger, to slake your thirst is nothing less than the growth of the world borne ever onwards in the stream of universal becoming.
Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing host which your whole creation, moved by your magnetism, offers you at this dawn of a new day.This bread, our toil, is of itself, I know, but an immense fragmentation; this wine, our pain, is no more, I know, than a draught that dissolves. Yet in the very depths of this formless mass you have implanted — and this I am sure of, for I sense it — a desire, irresistible, hallowing, which makes us cry out, believer and unbeliever alike.”
Moreover, Pope Francis is his encyclical Laudato Si’, On the Care for Our Common Home (2015) reminds us of the interrelatedness of creation: “Just as the different species of the planet – physical, chemical, and biological- are interrelated, so too living species are part of a network which we will never fully explore and understand. A good part of our genetic code is shared by many living beings. Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and Mother Earth.” (LS # 138, 92).
With this in mind, it is already an accepted truth based from scientific affirmation that everything in the universe descended from a common origin and proceeded through a single, unified evolutionary process. Thomas Berry succinctly expresses this fact by saying: “Nothing is itself without everything else. There is no discontinuity. There is distinction. There is no separation. There is literally one Family, one bonding in the universe, because everything is descended from the same source.” And so by principles of common origin and continuity, there is only one world of humans and other living creatures that make up the Earth community. Just as everything in the universe is genetically related, so does every life form on the planet is genetically cousin to other life forms. (Manny Bautista)
On hindsight, it dawned on me that this ongoing crisis that humanity is facing at present is perhaps a way to remind us in a more pressing manner that we are really all interconnected with each other, although in a negative way. Perhaps because we have failed to do so positively as one because of our collective and personal sins of pride, greed, indifference and complacency. Hence, it teaches us to be humble and calls us to change our ways for the better as we realize that we all are vulnerable to this deadly coronavirus without exception. And like so many creatures that have already gone extinct before us, the unthinkable can turn into reality, that we too can become endangered species unless we put our acts together to save our earth community. This pandemic therefore makes us come to terms with how short life is as we recognize our limitations and incompleteness that brings us to the awareness of the need to reach out to one another in order to survive as we strive to rise above the raging storm that continues to threaten and create havoc in the millions of lives the world over.
Finally, I am reminded of a beautiful prayer inviting us to expand the horizons of our narrow minds and closed hearts. It calls us to sail beyond the seas of our fears and apathy and summons us to keep on exploring the vastness of God’s boundless love and mercy in this awesome universe where our beloved home, our only home, the planet Earth is simply a dot in the immensity of the galaxies and each of us, a stardust shining for a moment in time but whose light shall quickly disappear in the twilight of our finite existence…
Prayer by Sir Francis Drake
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundant of things we possess,
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have lost sight of eternity.
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas,
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of lands,
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future,
In strength, courage, hope and love.
AMEN.
Marjorie J. Guingona, SAC
April 7, 2020
Nanga Nangan Tigbao, Zamboanga del Sur
