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It has been a year, dear God our Father, since we went into this journey into the wilderness of this COVID-19 pandemic. It has become very similar with the wandering in the desert of your chosen people during the time of Moses that like them, we have become impatient too.
But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!” In punishment the Lord sent among the people seraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died.
Numbers 21:4-6
Of course, we know you do not punish for you are love, O God; you even took that occasion to foreshadow the dying on the cross of your Son Jesus Christ for us.
Very much like them, we have been grumbling and complaining with you, forgetting all your goodness to us while we have been remiss with our own duties and responsibilities.
How ironic that the more they spoke of the tastelessness of the food you sent from heaven called manna, the more they revealed their own tastelessness as people.
And that is what is sadly happening with us too — our tastelessness as a people: our tastelessness in choosing our leaders in government, our tastelessness in giving value to your many blessings in life like family and country, our tastelessness in tolerating corruption and all the evils in our society long before this pandemic came.
We have lost our sense of taste, Lord, like being afflicted with COVID-19 — exactly like what your Son Jesus declared to his enemies always seeking ways to entrap him.
He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.”
John 8:23-24
Send us your Holy Spirit, O Lord, to enlighten our minds and our hearts, to be simple and humble like those folks in Jerusalem who came to believe in you because you spoke in such a way (Jn.8:30), unlike the learned Pharisees and scribes who, despite thei education, remained tasteless like many among us.
O dear Jesus, give us some tastes! — a taste for what is decent and good, a taste of heaven and holiness, a taste of true order and beauty found only in you. Amen.
