Corpus Christi (C)

Short Reflection for the Corpus Christi Sunday (C)

Readings: Genesis 14: 18-20; 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; Luke 9: 11b-17

Selected Gospel Passages: “Give them some food yourselves. Five loaves and two fish are all we have. Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and he blessed them and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied”.

Meditation: The Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ reminds us of the price of redemption.  He broke his body and shed his blood that we may have life!  Thus when we eat his body and drink his blood we share his life.

Today, we, too, journey through arid ways and arduous paths. At times, this journey is characterized by hopelessness and near despair, but in the midst of all these, we are invited to share and break bread with those with none.  We all share our blessings all will be satisfied and we shall fully understand the meaning of Jesus breaking and sharing his life that all may have life. See: www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

"Close to God"

“Close to God” – Awliya’i

Awliyâ'î (singular walî): i.e., those who are "close to" God, probably alluding to the

famous Qur'ânic verses 10:62-64:"...the friends of God, they have no fear and they do not

grieve...theirs is the Good News in this lower life and in the next (life)...that is the Tremendous Attainment"..

The same Arabic term--which also carries significant connotations of "protector", "guardian" and even "governor"--also appears as one of the more frequent Names of God (at 2:257; 3:68; 45:19; etc.).

In most branches of Shiite thought it is one of the many Qur'anic terms taken as references to the spiritual function of the Imams, while in later Sufism--most elaborately in the thought of Ibn ‘Arabî and his successors--the term is usually understood to refer to the particular spiritual state of proximity to God (walâya) shared by the divine Messengers, prophets (anbiyâ') and saints, besides the different spiritual functions that distinguish each of those members of the spiritual hierarchy. (See the more complete discussion in M. Chodkiewicz, Le Sceau des saints: Prophétie et sainteté dans la doctrine d'Ibn Arabî, especially chapt. 1.)

In the influential poetic classics of the later Islamic humanities, this complex of Arabic

terms is conveyed above all by the recurrent, intentionally ambiguous references to the

"Beloved" or "Friend" (Persian Yâr or Dûst, and their equivalents in Turkish, Urdu, Malay, etc.).

There this relationship of walâya/wilâya becomes the central metaphor for the divine-human relationship and the theophanic nature of all nature and experience.

The intimately related theme of the spiritual virtues of poverty and humility stressed in

this same divine saying is likewise reflected in many other hadîth, which together help explain the frequency of terms like faqîr and darvîsh (Arabic and Persian for "poor person", "beggar", etc.) to refer to the saints and their followers in later Islamic mysticism.

(Research on the term done by Bapa Jun Mercado, OMI of  Badaliya – Philippines)

Louis Massignon and Badaliyya

Louis Massignon

1.  Charity.  It is an active and sensitive charity.  Solidarity understood as the ability to suffer with those who suffer injustice.  It is an attempt to liberate … at least to know how to protest with sorrow.  It is to accompany the poor with help and sympathy. Charity is shown with great delicate respect to a person before many and varied religious option.

2. Figure of Abraham.  The figure of Abraham is a mystery of election and exclusion.  Is it also a mystery of acceptance and a mystery of rejection?  Ismael vs. Israel, David and Paul…  Hadith has it: “No one is truly a believer until one prefers not for his brother what one prefers for himself.”

3. Badal – Substitution.  Louis Massignon had “discovered” the reality of BADAL – Substitution for the reparation of injustices and for witnessing to the poor and victims of injustices.  Substitution demands an offer of the total self – similar to the test of fire.  The witness “par excellence” is the one who does complete or offered as a total ransom that is lacking in truth that God knows… Massignon found this in the life and martyrdom of Husayn at Kerbala in the Shi’a Theology.  Husayn is the vivification of the mystery of redemption.

• The Ram in place of Isaac
• The Paschal Lamb for the first born of Israel
• The tribe of Levi for the nation of Israel
• Jesus for humanity.

       4. Examples used by Fr. Louis Massignon…

• The demand on the part of Christians at Najran
• The offer of St. Francis at Damietta
• The Desire of St. Raymund of Lull
• The acceptance of Fr. Massignon mystically to become Badal…

In their lives, each person is assured by Christ, ransomed by him and in return they assure and ransom others … assuming unto themselves all others and standing in the place of others notwithstanding their weaknesses before the mystery of God through via dolorosa unto the violent death of the cross.

        5. Values Lived by Badal…

• Hospitality.  He discovered hospitality when wounded in battle and cared for by Muslims.  “I had been saved in the Muslim land by the virtue of the obligation of sanctuary lived heroically by my Muslim hosts notwithstanding the espionage and betrayal that they denounced before me.” He discovered that in Islam the priority of sanctuary is over the obligation of the just war. The praxis of hospitality made Massignon understand the sense of Abrahamic faith – communicated not by logic but by living intuition emerging from a life lived in their midst.  “I share the trust of the Muslims in the God of hospitality.”  The hospitality of Abraham is the sign that announces the final end of gathering all nations. The host is God’s envoy.  He is the witness – person that welcomes strangers, heals the sick, clothes the naked…

• Person is a Shahid (witness). In Islam the person is above all a witness.  The Semitic language is a language of witness.  Spirituality is intimately linked to language – which one speaks.

• The Person in Prayer (through Remembrance - DHIKR).

Charles de Foucauld

Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916)

·      Birth: September 15, 1858    

·      Death:  December 1, 1916.  He lived for 58 years

·      Personality:  He was Proud, Aesthete, Temperamental, Pleasure-Loving, Hardheaded, Impetuous and Self-Centered.   But He was also Sensitive, Generous, Kind, Honest, and Single-minded.

·      Career:  He was A French Military Officer, Explorer, Monk, Porter at Nazareth, Priest and a Little Brother to the Tuaregs.

1.     He began as an agnostic.  In his unbelief and as a colonial soldier to Africa, He became “captive” of the black continent and fascinated by Islam.  He became truly present in the continent – explored it and learned its peoples and languages.

2.     He came back to his Catholic Faith through Islam.  It was a powerful experience of conversion.  He lived in utter simplicity, became truly poor and lived a monastic life.  He went back to the East, the Holy Land and became a Porter at Nazareth.

3.     He discovered FRATERNITY as the essence of Jesus’ Caritas.

4.     From the Holy Land, He went back to Africa … to be a “little” brother among the Tuaregs… and spent a monastic life almost like a hermit in the desert… in prayer and “welcome” to the pilgrims.

5.     Killed in his hut…

6.     Beatified – December 16, 2005 in Rome, Italy

Charles de Foucauld's Radical Choice

Charles de Foucauld’s Radical Choice…

Charles de Foucauld was not a “perfect” human being, far from it. His life was a radical choice in service of God and his “beloved Jesus”.  He went out to live with the farthest away and poorest of peoples. He spent hours in prayer - in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. His days were spent in welcoming everyone and he became as a “brother” to all who came to his hut.

He did not found a single institute yet there are religious families of men and women born from the profound intuition of Charles.  They are called as  “little brothers” and “little sisters” and they are spread out in the most remote corners throughout the world. These spiritual children of the “universal brother” have made their priority the poorest populations, the most abandoned, farthest from society.

There are also thousands of priests and laypersons who have discovered through his message a way of living the Gospel more fully to the ends of the earth, in fraternal sharing, caring for the smallest among us, and in silent adoration.

There are finally all those who have discovered the grandeur of this personality and its spiritual dimension that do not belong to his spiritual family or even to his religion.

Blessed Charles, who through his trials and errors, his thirst for solitude and for relationships, his great love of God and of his neighbor, still shows us today the way to universal brother/sisterhood! 

He invites us to leave our frivolousness, our reassuring boundaries, our small spiritual comfort, to rise to the numbers of challenges that he confronted without always succeeding. It is up to us to continue the path that he outlined for us”. (Bishop Claude Rault who had served in the Algerian Sahara)