Ti Biag ken Pammati
“Life and Faith”
The Father and I are One
Deacon Patrick Constantino | Photos courtesy Patrick Constantino
From Birth to Death
God gives us Life at birth and at our Baptism. Life begins. Faith becomes the experiences during our Life, which leads us to different paths and journeys. These are times we experience Life that confuse us to be good or bad, and learn from it. Good or Bad will help us to know God. How? By praying to Him to help us keep our Faith and Hope alive. He will never deny us. Believe in Him and repent, and you will be healed. When we do this, we will become one in Him.
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John (10:27–30)
Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they know me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hands. My father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are One!”
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
We have just celebrated Easter by having our Lord Jesus Christ rise again to the Father. We also rise in our Lives to experience His Love in new ways and experiences in the present and help us to look to ways yet to come. Let us rejoice and be glad!
Our Easter celebration continues with Divine Mercy Sunday after our Lord has risen. A day of goodness of our Lord. He refrains from harming or punishing offenders. How this works if you haven’t had a chance to make your yearly Confession in preparation for Easter Communion, don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity today, Divine Mercy Sunday, to have all of your sins and punishment forgiven.
The Catholic Church allows about 20 days for Confession, before or after Divine Mercy Sunday, to gain the special plenary indulgence that is being offered today. And so when we are cleansed and clean, we are ready to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This certainly is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad! We start this new season by becoming one with our Father!
During this time of the death of our Pope Francis, we have lost our shepherd of our Church. But we are proud and blessed to be a part of his flock.
Pope Francis lived a simple life. He was a simple man. He lived in his own house, away from the normal living like other Popes, and he was a people Pope and he loved being with children and youth. Children and Youth loved him. And he was buried in a simple wooden coffin.
I remember an interview he had with a priest on EWTN TV, when he was asked, “Why are our children and youth committing suicide?” He said, “We should not let our young ones leave us if they have questions and we don’t help them process their questions. If we don’t help them, they will be confused and make decisions of not being worthy of the situations or decisions. We must help them by talking with them and help get answers or things to talk about. But always be there for them and give them positive thoughts to think about and assure them you are there for them!” Thank you Pope Francis for that advice.
Our God has received another Angel and Saint. Pope Francis died on Monday in Rome but died on Easter Sunday Hawai‘i time. Whatever the day was, I believe he is in Heaven with God our Father. He gave his Easter Blessing to our people, he was anointed, and he died within 20 days of Divine Mercy Sunday. He certainly has risen! May he rest in peace!
“The Father and I are One”
I wonder what people thought when they heard Jesus say these words. I suppose it depends on who you asked. Those close to him were probably used to him saying these sorts of puzzling things.
Those who knew him only a little and yet, were attracted to his message, were probably just curious, wondering what these words could possibly mean. And those who were suspicious of him or maybe even angry with him, almost certainly saw these as a kind of blasphemy—a violation of a person’s proper relationship to God. In fact, shortly after this bit of preaching Jesus had to flee from an angry crowd who was upset with some of his claims. But those who sincerely believed in the things Jesus said were likely drawn to this message.
For many people in antiquity and for the Jewish people God or gods was a mysterious reality—unlike anything they could imagine—often hidden, distant, nearly unknowable. Yet, by saying these words Jesus opened a new avenue to the Divine, provided a kind of access to God that was hard to come by. And for people who accepted that Jesus was remaining close to God, by following Jesus, one was essentially following God; by listening to Jesus, one was in a certain sense listening to God. Put simply—Jesus was kind of a bridge, a tether to everything that was good and holy and true.
And if a person wanted to be close to God, he or she could achieve that by staying close to Jesus. Naturally, not everyone understood that in the same way, even among his friends. And there were varying degrees to which people bought into the idea of Jesus and God being one. Yet, that basic, core understanding has survived to this very day. And while we have more sophisticated ways of talking about these things—developments in Trinitarian theology—that fundamental belief remains.
Strive to know Jesus and you will know God. Strive to listen to Jesus and you will be listening to God. Strive to follow him and you are following God. Strive to be one with him and mysteriously you will become one with God. I am not forgetting the Holy Spirit—it is just that those in Jesus’ time would not have thought in those terms.
Of course, there are many ways, many avenues toward building a deeper and more faithful oneness with Jesus. Prayer. Scripture. Nature. Faithful living. The Church. And of course, what happens at this sacred table—a sacred moment in which we come forward to strengthen our bond, our communion with the Lord Jesus.
And we strive to do so not because we think we have everything in common with Jesus or that we are the same in all respects, or that somehow it is possible because he loves us more than others. Rather, we accept this possibility because we believe God desires it, believe even though God is God and we are not, believe Jesus is God and we are not, believe the Spirit is God and we are not, those deep differences are not obstacles to unity, not obstacles to communion, not obstacles to intimacy and oneness with the source of you, me and all of creation.
Put another way—just because we are unlike God in many respects and certainly often live in ways that don’t reflect all that God is and wants we still are able to be one with the God who made us, the God who died for us, the God who sustains us.
But do we feel one with one another? Do we even think that is possible? You might be wondering what those questions have to do with what we are talking about. Isn’t this about being one with God?
We forget sometimes that our relationship to God is not some sort of isolated thing, disconnected from the created world. Quite the opposite.
The Incarnation tells us otherwise. And that means that to a great degree the oneness we have with our God, the strength of that relationship, only becomes manifest that is, can only be truly real in the concrete relationships we have with one another. That is the only real proof.
We cannot claim to love God, or claim to be close to him, or claim to be in communion with him if we are not those same things with and for one another. And like our relationship to our God, the degree to which we can be bonded to one another, connected to one another, has nothing to do with how much we are alike or not alike, nothing to do with similarities or differences, nothing to do with categories or groups or race or economic status or even religion for that matter.
Our Catholic Church is one of the flocks we belong to—a treasure, an ark, a channel of grace we should never take for granted. And we give thanks to God for all it means to us and to the world. But we also belong to the flock of Christians. And the flock of believers. And the flock of people of goodwill. And the flock we forget most often—the flock of humanity. And make no mistake about it—Jesus is the Shepherd of that flock too, loves every sheep in that flock, reveals himself to that flock, accomplishes good things through that flock, and died for that flock too. And just as he and the Father and Spirit are one, he hopes that we—entire human family—can be one too.
A flock that takes care of one another. And has compassion for one another. And watches out for one another. And forgives one another. And understands one another. And by building that kind of communion—forging those bonds, building those bridges—we are, in actuality, accomplishing those same things with our God—becoming more and more one with the One who is our everything. Shouldn’t we want that? Shouldn’t we all be working toward that? Shouldn’t we believe that it is possible?
If so, let us stop considering our differences as obstacles precluding it from happening. Those are just excuses we use to keep our definition of flock as narrow as possible. God sees one flock. And it contains all of us.
May we see the same! Jesus, I trust in You! Amen!
Deacon Patrick Constantino retired from active Ministry on July 1, 2022. He is still a Deacon in good standing with full faculties to perform all sacraments in the Diocesan of Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Constantino has been ordained for thirty-seven years. He is the first Filipino Deacon in the Diocesan of Honolulu. Prior to his ordination, Constantino was in government, first appointed in 1966 as Assistant Sergeant of Arms by the Speaker of the House, Elmer F. Cravalho. When Cravalho became Maui’s first Mayor, Constantino became his Executive Assistant—the first of Filipino ancestry. Later, Constantino became the first County Treasurer of Filipino ancestry and the first County Grants Administrator and Risk Manager of Filipino ancestry. Constantino is married to his lovely wife Corazon for sixty-four years. They are blessed with four children, eleven grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren.