May 17 was the last day of the four part bible seminar on Jesus Sa Kabukiran. Participants came from the parishes of Mabalacat, Guagua, Lubao and Calulut in San Fernando. This seminar was conducted in four consecutive Saturdays beginning April 26 – May 17. Judging from the participants’ evaluation of the seminar, I believe that the seminar was able to reach its objective of letting Jesus be known more deeply by the participants. I guess, they will bring home with them their own reflections of who Jesus is for them in their lives.
As one who has facilitated these seminars, I am simply humbled by the realizations that I had while giving these seminars. The gospels were more than written traditions of the early followers of Jesus. The basic traditions that the early Christians had of Jesus was that he lived among them while preaching about the kingdom of God. Then, he suffered rejection and was crucified and died on the cross, and that he rose again from the dead on the third day. These were basically the primitive traditions of the early followers of Jesus. But as time went by, these traditions gradually evolved into something more than mere traditions. Early Christian communities eventually reflected on the life of Jesus and allowed these reflections to shed light into their own particular contexts and situations. Eventually these reflections found their way incorporated and written into what we now call as Gospels.
It is in this sense that I find these Gospels in a way revolutionary for their times. Their community reflections became part of the Jesus story that we now know. For us living in the present where the Jesus of history seems so far and remote, with a time difference of more than two thousand years, our experience of Jesus should not be any different from those of the early Christians of the early centuries. Jesus is alive and is present as he has always been. Reflecting on his life and allowing that life to cast its bright light on our own situations and life contexts gives us the chance to write about our own experiences of Him who is life and light to our times. Indeed, each of us can write another Gospel about Jesus seeing him with fresh eyes and living with him in the here and now.
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