the sign

"Lord, give me a sign..."

no, i haven't fallen victim to overly melodramatic movie lines. on the other hand, i actually did use these words while attending mass last sunday (Redemptorist, Cebu City). you see, i have been increasingly dissatisfied with matters regarding the church but not necessarily my faith. to a point that i am debating whether i should even attend mass.

i was asking myself if i wanted to attend mass given the fact that the church is getting more political. sure, i understand liberation theology and standing up for what is morally right. but that is exactly the same thing that has been bothering me, the moral thingy.

the local church is proclaiming that the current administration has no moral leadership. i am not refuting that claim, on the other hand, the church could have said the same thing about itself. except that they rather not comment on anything when it comes to issues facing the institutional church. and there are tons of dirt, make that hundreds and hundreds of years worth of dirt. spanish influence and centuries of theological (make that psychological) conditioning makes me feel a bit of guilt by saying that loud.

the priest prefaced his gospel reading by some announcement that is related to reading a pastoral letter of some sort. i expected that it is going to be something about the manila situation and what we should be doing to support calls for PGMA to step down. i have had enough of the news for the past few days, add to that the aggravation of seeing lozada's crying telenovela act on tv. i certainly don't relish the thought of hearing more about THAT.

here's the interesting part: the priest was about to deliver his scripted homily and the church suddenly had a power outage. complete silence, people confused, uncertain how to react, most sat down and fidgeted on their seats. one can hear the growing buzz as people started having conversations.

i took the time to have my own conversation with God, silently.

everyone completely missed the homily except for the last part when the power came back and the priest said "i hope that we make the correct decision..." or something like that.

i prayed for a sign and there it was, SILENCE. as if God is telling me, "use the time to go to mass to commune and talk with Me, you don't have to listen to THEM."

amen to that.