PARABLES ARE IMPORTANT TO LEAD US INTO THE INNER EXPERIENCE OF THE GOD OF JESUS

20150723 PARABLES ARE IMPORTANT TO LEAD US INTO THE INNER EXPERIENCE OF THE GOD OF JESUS

Readings at Mass

First reading

Exodus 19:1-2,9-11,16-20 ©

Three months after they came out of the land of Egypt, on that day the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sinai. From Rephidim they set out again; and when they reached the wilderness of Sinai, there in the wilderness they pitched their camp; there facing the mountain Israel pitched camp.

  The Lord said to Moses, ‘I am coming to you in a dense cloud so that the people may hear when I speak to you and may trust you always.’ And Moses took the people’s reply back to the Lord.

  The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to the people and tell them to prepare themselves today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothing and hold themselves in readiness for the third day, because on the third day the Lord will descend on the mountain of Sinai in the sight of all the people.’

  Now at daybreak on the third day there were peals of thunder on the mountain and lightning flashes, a dense cloud, and a loud trumpet blast, and inside the camp all the people trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the bottom of the mountain. The mountain of Sinai was entirely wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended on it in the form of fire. Like smoke from a furnace the smoke went up, and the whole mountain shook violently. Louder and louder grew the sound of the trumpet. Moses spoke, and God answered him with peals of thunder. The Lord came down on the mountain of Sinai, on the mountain top, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain; and Moses went up.

Canticle

Daniel 3:52-56 ©

You are blest, Lord God of our fathers.

  To you glory and praise for evermore.

Blest your glorious holy name.

  To you glory and praise for evermore.

You are blest in the temple of your glory.

  To you glory and praise for evermore.

You are blest on the throne of your kingdom.

  To you glory and praise for evermore.

You are blest who gaze into the depths.

  To you glory and praise for evermore.

You are blest in the firmament of heaven.

  To you glory and praise for evermore.

Gospel Acclamation

Ps94:8

Alleluia, alleluia!

Harden not your hearts today,

but listen to the voice of the Lord.

Alleluia!

Or

Mt11:25

Alleluia, alleluia!

Blessed are you, Father,

Lord of heaven and earth,

for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom

to mere children.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Matthew 13:10-17 ©

The disciples went up to Jesus and asked, ‘Why do you talk to them in parables?’ ‘Because’ he replied, ‘the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are revealed to you, but they are not revealed to them. For anyone who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough; but from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. The reason I talk to them in parables is that they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. So in their case this prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled:

You will listen and listen again, but not understand,

see and see again, but not perceive.

For the heart of this nation has grown coarse,

their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes,

for fear they should see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their heart,

and be converted

and be healed by me.

‘But happy are your eyes because they see, your ears because they hear! I tell you solemnly, many prophets and holy men longed to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.’

PARABLES ARE IMPORTANT TO LEAD US INTO THE INNER EXPERIENCE OF THE GOD OF JESUS

SCRIPTURE READINGS: EX 19:1-2, 9-11, 16-20; MT 13:10-17

Human beings are very insecure.  We want things in life to be clear-cut.  We do not like to live in ambiguity because that implies unpredictability.  Such a kind of life would require us to have a deep faith and trust in God.  For this reason, it is in our nature to want to define everything in life so that we can feel in control of the situation.

Thus, in the area of faith we attempt to conceptualize God and capture Him in words. Indeed, for the older Catholics who were brought up in faith under the old Catechism of the Church where faith was imparted via an approach of question and answer, we pride ourselves in knowing everything about God and what is right and wrong.  Today’s pedagogy has changed.  Instead of a conceptual theology, the experiential approach of using narrative, experience and symbolism is preferred.  In this methodology, we do not provide clear answers to questions of God and of life.  We tell stories and give examples instead.  The truth is that God is and is not what we think He is, or is not.  He is more than what we can even conceive of Him.  Conversely, God is not what we think He is not.   Conceptual truth, which is a logical language, whilst important for a common expression of beliefs, hampers the deeper reality of what one seeks to express.  Truth is not a word but an event.  God is not a word but an event.

In other words, God is a mystery.  This is very clearly brought out in the first reading of today from the book of Exodus.  We are told that when God wanted to speak to the people of Israel, He asked Moses to bring them to the mountain; and it was at the mountain that God revealed Himself.  Furthermore, God did not reveal Himself simply as He is, but through the clouds, the smoke, the fire and peals of thunder.  In other words, what the scripture reading wants to tell us is that God is mysterious and awesome. Even when He chooses to reveal Himself to us, He remains incomprehensible and illusive.

Once we realize the nature of God as incomprehensible and as mystery, then we can understand better today’s gospel concerning Jesus’ response to the disciples’ question as to why He spoke to the crowds only in parables.  The problem with the crowd is that they did not have a personal knowledge of God although they might have had much knowledge about Him.  For this reason, Jesus said, quoting the prophet Isaiah, they “will listen and listen again, but not understand, see and see again, but not perceive.”

The irony of knowing God is that knowing about God can become an obstacle in really coming to know God.  The outsiders, that is, the crowds who came to listen to Jesus, were brought up in the Jewish tradition of God and the Torah.  Thus their understanding about God had already been conditioned and fixed.  Consequently, this prevented them from receiving the novelty of Jesus’ teaching.  And so Jesus remarked in the gospel, “their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes for fear that they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their heart.”

What was even worse is that being brought up in the Jewish tradition about God, they had mistaken that knowledge about God implies also a personal relationship with Him.  For the Jews, therefore, they had substituted a personal knowledge of God for an intellectual or ritualistic relationship with Him.  As for the disciples, Jesus did not need to teach them in parables.  He could tell them plainly about His understanding and experience of God because the disciples, being intimate with Jesus, understood what He was talking about.  There was no need for Jesus to explain to them since they shared in Jesus’ inner experience of God.

To illustrate this point, a person who has knowledge about God is comparable to one who has some knowledge about what a durian tastes like, but has never tasted a durian in his life.  The problem, however, is that his knowledge of the taste of a durian is only based on analogy. His idea of the flavor of a durian is given to him when he compares that taste with other foods that he knows.  But of course, every taste is different.  They can be analogous to something, but even the closest taste between two things is vastly different in reality.  And what is even worse is that he deceives himself into thinking that he knows what a durian is when he does not!

However, for the person who has tasted durians, there is no need to explain further about the pleasure of eating durians.  We only need to say the word durian and he immediately knows what we are talking about. This is true concerning the experience of God. That is why whenever we attempt to describe our God-experience to someone who has never had that experience, that person can never fully understand us.  Either he or she will listen to us with wonder, or condemn us as being irrational.  But both will end in exasperation.  However, if a person has a similar experience as ours, then that person can easily identify himself or herself with us, without us having to try to describe our experience.

Coming back to the use of parables by Jesus for the crowds, Jesus was simply attempting to give some comparisons on what knowing God is like.  Parables therefore are means by which Jesus helps His listeners who have not yet experienced God personally to come to an experience of Him.  He wanted them to move from knowledge of God in the mind to a knowledge of God in the heart. By helping them to relate the experiences that they already know with the story, they could come to have some perception of what God is like.  But such foretaste, so to speak, of the God-experience, is in order that they might enter fully into that experience personally.  In a nutshell, parables, therefore, is the primary vehicle that Jesus used to lead His listeners into the experience of God through a comparison with experiences that they were familiar with.

The challenge before us is whether we are willing to let go of all our concepts of God and all our prejudices so that we can experience Him in a new way.  Today, like the Israelites, we are called to prepare ourselves by cleansing ourselves, not so much externally, but in our minds and in our hearts.  Unless our minds and our hearts are docile to the Lord, we cannot experience Him in our hearts.  In the final analysis, what is ultimately important in our spiritual life is our experience of God deep in our hearts.  Only such an experience will change our lives and give us real joy and happiness.

And when we come to experience God in our being, then we can understand the deeper realities of the message of Jesus, especially when we read the gospel, because no longer do we simply read the word of Jesus as an outsider, understanding it on the superficial level, but we understand His words through His perspective.  Lovers, after all, always have an intuitive understanding of each other even when words are not spoken.  When this happens, it simply means that we have really come to know God in our being and not just in our intellect.  Such an experience is truly an experience and not simply some information or knowledge that we have collected about Him.  With such an experience, our faith in God will be firm and unshakeable, since it is founded on a personal discovery and not from a secondary source.  Conversely, without a God experience in Jesus, we can never share the excitement of the early Christians and their passion in the proclamation of Jesus as their fundamental God experience.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore

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