From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
SUNDAY, MARCH 24, 2013
NEWS JUST IN FROM AUSTRALIA
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002
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THE PASSION SUNDAY BY FR MAGNUS KOBI, AJ
Readings: Isaiah 50:4-7- Philippians 2:6-11- Luke 22:14-23:56
A principal of a prominent high school in Kampala Uganda has an old elders’ stool sitting in his office. When someone asks him about it, he said it belonged to his grandmother. She used to baby-sit with him a lot because he had poor health as a child. The old elders stool used to stay in his grandmother’s living room, only a few feet away from a crucifix that hangs on the wall above a chair.
One night his grandmother told him the story of Jesus and how he died nailed on the cross. The boy was moved by the story and that night he did not sleep well. Throughout the night he kept turning left and right thinking about Jesus nailed to the cross above the chair in the living room, of the house he was sleeping in.
Early the next morning he got up and went straight to the living room. Climbing up on the chair he took the crucifix down from the wall and laid it on the floor. And there he was trying to remove the nails out of the hands and feet of Jesus.
But he failed to remove them then he began to cry loudly. His grandmother heard him and came out of her bedroom. Seeing the crucifix on the floor and grandson crying besides it she said: “Honey what’s wrong?” “Grandma, Grandma I am trying to get Jesus out of his nails, because it is not right for him to be in his nails, it’s not right.”
His grandmother reached down, picked him up and walked over to the elders stool sat down on it and held him in her arms. Then she began to rock him. When he calm down and was quiet she said to him: “Honey, I know right now you are too young to understand why Jesus was nailed to the cross. But someday you will understand.
When the day for you to understand why Jesus was crucified comes; “The crucifix will no longer be something ugly to you. Rather it will become something beautiful, because it will remind you of how much Jesus Christ loves you.” So the principle said: “That was the morning sitting in my grandmother’s lap on the elders stool I got my first insight into the deeper meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.”
This story is simply beautiful, but more importantly it is theologically sound. This is because: “It focuses not on the suffering of Jesus but on the love of Jesus that led him to suffer.” It focuses on the deeper meaning of the crucifixion as the principle said. Indeed, what is the deeper meaning?
We can summarise the deeper meaning in three simple statements.
(a)The crucifixion is a sign of Jesus’ love. It indicates how much Jesus loves us. It confirms in a very dramatic way what Jesus said often in his lifetime that: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
(b) The crucifixion is an invitation to love. It invites us to imitate Jesus in loving not only our friends but also our enemies. It invites us to love one another as Jesus loves us. It confirms what Jesus said: “Love one another as I love you.”
(C) The crucifixion is a revelation about Love.
It reminds us of something that we not always tend to forget but want to run away from that is: “That true love entails suffering.” It reminds us about what Jesus said often in his life that: “Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”
So our story of the little boy and his grandmother focuses on these important messages of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Let us today discover the limitless love of God for each person, for you and me, revealed in the crucifixion of His Beloved Son Jesus Christ.
In the old liturgy, before Vatican II, the reading of the Passion was greeted with total silence. There was no homily. Even the concluding acclamation: “This is the gospel of the Lord” was omitted. On a day like this, I sometimes feel that the most eloquent response to the word of God we have proclaimed is silence.
Even the best of homilies could be a distraction from the deep meditation in which many of us find ourselves at the end of the story of the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But then also, a homily might be useful to direct and focus our meditation in the right direction. Otherwise we might be like little Johnny who was failing all his exams in the public school until his parents decided to send him to a Catholic school. At the end of the year Johnny came out on top of the class.
When his parents asked him what made him change so dramatically Johnny replied, “You see, the moment I walked into that new school and saw that guy hanging on the cross, I knew that the people here were damn serious; so I decided not to take any chances.”
The crucifix might have helped Johnny to improve his score but it is easy to see that Johnny has misread the crucifix. The man on the cross is not there to scare little boys but to show them how much he loves them.
He is not there to show them what would happen to them if they misbehaved; he is there to show them that he has already paid the penalty for their sins. He is not dying on the cross for what he has done but for what you and I have done; because he loves us. He died for us.
“He died for us:” Many of us have heard this phrase so many times that it now carries with it neither the shock of someone dying on account of what we have done nor the good news of our being delivered from death. For us to hear this message again today as for the first time, the story of a man who literally died for the misdeeds of his brother might help.
Two brothers lived together in the same apartment. The elder brother was an honest, hard-working and God-fearing man and the younger a dishonest, gun-toting substance-abusing rogue. Many a night the younger man would come back into the apartment late, drunk and with a lot of cash and the elder brother would spend hours pleading with him to mend his ways and live a decent life.
But the young man would have none of it. One night the junior brother runs into the house with a smoking gun and blood-stained clothes. “I killed a man,” he announced. In a few minutes the house was surrounded by police and the two brothers knew there was no escape. “I did not mean to kill him,” stammered the young brother, “I don’t want to die.”
By now the police were knocking at the door. The senior brother had an idea. He exchanged his clothes with the blood-stained clothes of his killer brother.
The police arrested him, tried him and condemned him to death for murder. He was killed and his junior brother lived. He died for his brother.
Can we see that this story of crime and death is basically a story of love? Similarly the story of the suffering and death of Jesus which we heard in the Passion is basically a story of love – God’s love for us. How should we respond to it? Well, how would you expect the junior brother to respond to the death of the senior brother?
We would expect him to respond with GRATITUDE. Gratitude to his generous brother should make him turn a new leaf and never go back to a life of crime. He would be a most ungrateful idiot if he should continue living the sort of life that made his brother die. Gratitude should make him keep the memory of his brother alive. No day should pass that he should not remember his brother who died for him.
Finally, if the dead brother has got a wife and children we should expect the saved brother, out of gratitude, to love and care for them. What God expects from us today is gratitude – gratitude strong enough to make us hate sin of every shade and colour; strong enough to make us translate our love of God into love of all God’s people.