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Moral over merely legal

2012-01-18T16:06:00.000+08:00

(“We are the State’s Good Servants but God’s First”)

THESE days most Filipinos are glued to the Corona impeachment trial in the Senate. Already the clearest realization that impacts us all is the priority of morality over civil law. In fact, civil lawyers, judges and people in the media, both those who favor either the Chief Justice or the prosecutors, talk of taking ‘the high moral ground’ in charting the direction of the trial. Problem is, morality for most of them is whatever serves the law or its enforcement best.

I have no quarrel at all with the civil law of the country. Like all Filipinos, I do recognize its necessity as an instrument of justice, peace and order among us. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum nor is it based solely on what most Filipinos agree on through their lawmakers. What most of us take for granted is that our civil law is itself ultimately based on another law, something more fundamental, more prior, more universally binding and more permanent—the moral law. It is this law that not only determines right (which we should pursue always) and wrong (which we should shun all the time) but also leads us in the direction of the real ‘daang matuwid (straight path), a road which is never ‘matuwid’ or right if it does not lead to God.

But the issue of moral law over civil law reminds me of a question we argued about in high school: “In any given town who has the higher position, the parish priest or the mayor?” I remember a fellow teener saying that it’s the mayor because he has under him not only Catholics but also non-Catholics. But there was a well-thought out answer from another teenager who said, “The parish priest is in a higher position because he represents the Lord and the Church while the mayor only represents the people in the town. That is why a priest can go any place and still be a priest but a mayor cannot go to another place and be a mayor there.”

We can also, at this point, ask: “Which is higher? Civil law or moral law.” But we have to define our terms first. Moral law is the law which tells us in our conscience what is right and to follow it as well as tell us what is wrong and to avoid it. Morality is something that comes from God and which we come to know through the Scriptures (the Bible) and Apostolic Tradition as taught by the Church. That’s the Catholic perspective. It may not, and this fact we accept, be positively received all Christians, let alone by all people. But we know we have solid bases for making such claims. On the other hand, civil law refers to a body of laws passed or written and decreed by a body of human lawmakers regulating human behavior or conduct in a certain place (whether town, province, state or country). For us Christians the answer to the question should be obvious and firm: The Moral Law being from God is higher than Civil Law. Civil Law can only be worthy of a believer’s obedience if it conforms to the Moral Law. When it violates the Moral Law believers have the right and the duty to oppose it and to campaign against it.

In the first book of Samuel we are told of how the vocation of Samuel as a prophet all started with a prayer of his own mother for a child (1 Sam 1:10-12). It was a prayer heard by God and of which the priest Eli had knowledge. Consequently, as a sign of gratitude and discernment of God’s higher purposes for her son, Anna the mother offers and consecrates her son back to the God who gave him to her. This action by Anna speaks volumes of her faith. But it also speaks of the reason why human beings must follow God and his ways. The human person comes from him and is bound to return to him. Therefore God and his ways must be the clear and constant source of guidance and direction in human living. The words of Anna are a code of conduct for all believers: “As long as he lives, he will follow the Lord” (1 Sam 1:28).

In her Magnificat (song of praise) in the gospel of Luke Mama Mary, in an eternal paean, teaches us not only the primacy of God and his ways but also how God favors the humble and the lowly instead of the powerful, the mighty and the wealthy (Lk 1:46-55). She reminds us how the things that God holds dear often run counter to ours. For instance, remember the three Gs of GUNS, GOONS, GOLD? Or, shall we say, ‘Violence, power and money’? These are the things that most people, not the least Filipinos, consider as means to reach the top as far as our society is concerned. But this is not so with God, not so in heaven, and ergo, not so in that society which is the “seed or beginning of the kingdom of heaven” on earth, namely, the Church. Mama Mary tells us that she who was lowly, powerless and money-less was showered by God with “great things”. What’s more, God does not only favor the humble and the lowly. He also shows his power over the powerful and, in God’s own time, deposes the abusive and arrogant power-wielders. “He has shown might with his arm; he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty kings from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:52).

What does this tell us? First, that God and his ways must be prior in our minds and hearts because God is higher than any other authority in heaven and on earth. Pope John XXIII’s encyclical ‘Pacem in Terris’ (Peace in the World) he states that civil “authority is a postulate of the moral order and derives from God. Consequently, laws and decrees enacted in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience” (PT, II). St. Thomas Aquinas reaffirms this by saying that every “law made by man can be called a law insofar as it derives from the natural law. But if it is somehow opposed to the natural law, then it is not really a law but rather a corruption of the law” (I-II, q. 95, a. 2).

Why are these considerations important for you and me? Because in our present realities, the order is often reversed. Sadly, we Christians and people of faith do not even give this pass so much as a murmur. What is legal or secular is held dearer by the elite of Philippine and world society. Which is why it is entirely possible that our civil authorities may pass laws that oppose God’s law or the moral law as we know it, such as the RH Bill, or certain laws may be passed allowing divorce, euthanasia or homosexual unions as well as qualified abortions.

In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Blessed John Paul II, declares: “Christians, like all people of good will, are called upon under grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil” (EV 74). It is true, the Holy Father says, that in the NT Christians are “reminded” of “their duty to obey legitimately constituted public authorities (Rom 13:1-7; 1 Pt 2:13-14)” but they are also taught that “ ‘we must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29)” (EV 73).

When Henry VIII separated from Rome and founded the Church of England he decreed that all his subjects obey him. One of his most trusted aides, his Chancellor, a man named Thomas Moore, opposed the king because in conscience he felt the king was in the wrong. He was put in prison and eventually executed. When he was asked to explain his opposition to the king, he said: “We are the king’s good servants, but God’s first”. That is why, as Catholics, if and when our own civil laws are against the moral law, we can and must also say, “We are the state’s good servants, but God’s first.”

Seeing in the dark

2012-01-04T16:05:00.000+08:00

I WAS driving about four meters away from the Loom Bridge in Borongan when I spotted a young boy of ten signaling all vehicles to stop. He was crossing the street with a man, obviously blind, holding on to his right hand and walking nervously behind him. I felt sorry for the blind man. Still, it occurred to me, “How lucky of him to have someone, maybe a son or a nephew, guide him, where he goes.”

But it also dawned on me: We are all really blind and walking in the dark. And every New Year provides proof for that.

We are all blind because nobody really knows what’s bound to happen tomorrow, the next day, the next week or the next few months. There are those who say the year 2012 will usher in the end of the world. But didn’t they say the same thing in 1999 about 2000? There are those who say, based on scientific prognostications, that we are in for unprecedented and more destructive weather patterns due to global warming, our wet seasons will become wetter (we already have the terrible floods in many parts of the country as advance warnings) and our dry seasons drier (we also had bitterly dry El Niño months in previous years to give us a prior idea of what to expect). Politically the impending impeachment trial at the Philippine Senate on eight articles against Chief Justice Corona of the Supreme Court could potentially further erode confidence in the Philippine judiciary, at the least, or fan political instability, at worst.

Because we are blind and walking in the dark, it is understandable why, at the start of every year, astrologers, experts or pseudo-experts in predicting future events, are the darlings of the media. That to me is our human psyche rebelling against the dark and rising, determined, to dispel it with whatever means available, valid or not, good or bad, scientific or fake. We simply do not want to walk in the dark or dread the idea of having to. With self-proclaimed experts of the future surrounding us, we feel we can now lick the darkness and begin to embark on a journey into the unknown.

But actually all we need to do is have a little child to guide us.

The Child Jesus.

This is the option of faith. It is to walk in the dark alleys and side-streets of life with Jesus, the new-born Babe, taking our right hand and leading us in the real “daang matuwid (straight path)”. The option is based on his own words, words worth relying on because he is of God, he is Son of God: “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the dark. He will have light and life” (Jn 8:12). It is the option based on the experience of so many who have made it through the pitch black night by holding on to the Son of Man and, in the end, reaching the right destination—heaven. Church and even secular annals are replete with miraculous events attributed to the intercessions of saints, and are an indubitable proof of one thing: They have really arrived in heaven, their faith proven genuine and rewarded. As by-standers watch by the sidelines of life, another truth stares them full in the face: There is such a thing as heaven, then. If so, then that other place of eternal torment must also be real.

But first, we need the humility of the blind man behind the child guide. He wouldn’t have been where he is if he didn’t come to terms with his own blindness. That, I believe, is where most of our problem lies. We find it so many times too hard to accept our unseeing. We often think we can find our own way in the dark or even see through the dark. The wound of concupiscence (the tendency to opt for what is wrong or evil) born of original sin is nowhere more evident than in the pride we display as we come face to face with the dark. We sometimes call this self-reliance or freedom or independence. But call it by any name, it achieves the purposes of the prince of darkness—get us away from going to Jesus Christ and confessing, with the blind men who would receive healing: “Son of David, have mercy on us” (Mt 20:30-31).

With humility, we also need the courage to take the risk, nay, the gamble of holding on to someone else’s hand. The blind man by Loom Bridge had that courage because he knew his guide. Do we know our real Child Guide? How deeply? This determines our commitment to gamble our life on his kingdom, taking his right hand and never letting go of it. “Tenacious,” a wise old Boronganon once told me, “is what you see when a crab gets you by the hand and never lets you go even if you smash it to pieces against a rock.” This is what we see in martyrs. They hold on to Jesus Christ and will never ever let go of his hand even if the worst persecution or death runs against them like a berserk freight train. (Two of them were Pinoys: St. Lorenzo Ruiz and Blessed Pedro Calungsod. Which is proof enough we are very capable of world-class tenacity too) They have the courage to go with their humility.

With humility and courage, we also need docility and obedience. It’s astounding how, today, young people and even the not so young anymore could be so docile to yoga, sports or dance gurus. What is so difficult with being docile or obedient to the Savior of the world? The wisdom of docility and obedience was visible in the blind man I saw by Loom Bridge. He would not have crossed the street safely had he hesitated or refused to follow the boy’s lead. He could have been hit by a vehicle had he been on his own. When Jesus heard the two blind men calling him, the evangelist Matthew tells us that he stopped and called them over to him. Because they obeyed him, Jesus had a chance to ask the all-important question: “What do you want me to do for you?” and they had the chance to answer, “Lord, open our eyes” (Mt 20:32-33). Because they obeyed first, they were healed.

By faith they were enabled not only to see but also to conquer the darkness.

Christmas is all about presences

2011-12-06T16:03:00.000+08:00

IT all began with a fascination. I was simply struck one day by the story of two men sharing the same experience with God’s Presence (the ‘Shekinah’). No ordinary men these two, with names enough to send anyone yawning—Abraham and Moses.

Their experience may, at first, ring familiar. But I wouldn’t suggest that we take it lightly. A story is told of their encounter with God and the Bible presents it as an encounter with his living presence. For instance, even as he reaches the age of ninety-nine, Abraham is visited by a peculiar phenomenon. The Lord appears to him saying: “I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless…” (Gen 17:1). On his part, when Moses expresses self-doubt regarding his worthiness to represent Yahweh before Israel and pharaoh, the Lord replies: “I will be with you; and this shall be your proof (the sign) that it is I who have sent you: when you bring my people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain” (Ex 3:12).

There is a dispute among scholars as to the meaning of the sign being spoken of here. Some say that the sign follows the fact of the liberation of Israel from Egypt and, therefore, it is the worship to be rendered to God on the mountain (Horeb). But other scholars also say that the “I will be with you” assurance of God’s presence with Moses is itself the sign that God had really sent Moses (cf. Richard J. Clifford, S.J.). No matter what the angle anyone adopts, the experience of both patriarchs is that when this God calls, he brings his total presence to those he calls and he expects that they reciprocate. When Yahweh calls Abraham and Moses, he makes clear that he is with them and demands that they be with him too.

So far, are you with me in this?

It is because of the presence of God with them that Abraham and Moses are able not only to enjoy bountiful blessings but also to endure challenges, trials and even, especially in the case of Moses, perform wondrous deeds. Think of the blessings of property, wealth and especially of progeny, i.e., being a “father of many nations” through Isaac that went to Abraham because of Yahweh’s presence in his life. But also consider how Moses engineered the ten plagues in Egypt together with the final liberation of Israel from slavery because of Yahweh’s presence with him too. Besides all these, think of how Abraham passed the greatest trial of his life, i.e., God’s command that Isaac be sacrificed, or how Moses weathered the hard-headedness of Israel, the fierceness of their enemies as well as the envy even of his brother Aaron and sister Miriam because of Yahweh’s presence with them.

I often hear engaged and married couples say to one another that because of the presence of the other person in their lives, their lives have never been the same. I know of a sickly woman whose boy friend has been a constant source of strength for her in dealing with her dreaded health problems. I know of a man who has left his entire past of drugs and debauchery ever since a woman he loves has been with him as his wife for the past twenty-five years. I know of formerly ill dressed, unkempt and dirty children who suddenly bloomed in grooming and behavior when their mother arrived from abroad and is devoting plenty of time and attention to them. If the presence of certain persons in our lives can make so much difference, how much more if it is the presence of the personal God?

In the seminary we were constantly told to cultivate a sense of the presence of God in our lives. We were amply encouraged to heighten our awareness of his presence through prayer, especially through the Eucharist and our visits to the Blessed Sacrament, through the apostolate and compassionate participation in the struggle of the poor for justice and peace. But there are things we can learn from Abraham and Moses in their cultivation of God’s presence. In both of them we see faith as expressed in terms of obedience to the word of the Lord. But we also see them being asked to give and keep an external, palpable sign of their cultivation of the presence of Yahweh. For Abraham and his descendants it is the practice of the circumcision in order that the bond born of the covenant might not be forgotten (Gen 17:10-14). For Moses and the people of Israel it is the keeping of the charter, the Ten Commandments, as further delineated and exposed in the succeeding laws decreed by Moses.

From this we gather that the cultivation of the presence of God involves not only the internal realities of faith expressed in terms of obedience to God’s will but also external realities such as written rules and regulations by which that will is expressed in the many circumstances of daily life. In a word, the cultivation of the presence of God in us and with us involves our total life and our total being, not just our souls or spirits nor only of our material or bodily selves. God makes a total gift of himself to us. The only right response is also our total gift of ourselves to him. He is totally present to us. We must be totally present to him.

And don’t we see the real good news? Yes, and it’s been staring us full in the face. Christmas is nothing but the physical actualization of ‘Shekinah’ (God-With-us): Jesus makes God permanently present to us by becoming one like us, a human being.

Or let me put it this way. Most of us love music. And most of the music we love are love songs. Who among us hadn’t noticed, as I have, the fairly numerous songs that have the clause “I’ll Be There”? Last 1995 there was a survey that singled out one song that was constantly being played in public places, elevators, restaurants, airports etc. It was the overwhelming choice of so many people, especially the young. The title of the song? “I’ll Be There for You (You’re All I Need to Get By)”. Then an Italian song captured the hearts of many people in 1998 when it was sung by a blind singer named Andrea Boccelli. It was entitled “Con Te Partiró” (With You I Shall Leave) and tells of how the presence of a loved one gives one light and the possibility of realizing dreams.

I have a theory that the reason behind this is that there is a deep longing in each human being for someone who is always there for us. Lovers think it is their loved one. Children think it is their parents. Couples think it is their spouses. A barkada thinks it is friends. The only problem with these is that, however we feel strongly about it, the need for someone who is always there for us cannot be filled in by another human being. Somehow or other our loved ones or friends have to leave our side.

In the middle of all this we hear a prophecy in the OT from Isaiah. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Is 7:14). The gospel of Mt explains the word “Immanuel” saying that it is “a name which means ‘God is with us’” (Mt 1:23). This is part the address of the angel to Joseph reassuring him that the baby in the womb of Mary his wife comes from the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:20). Lk specifies the name of the child to be born of Mary through the angel’s words to her: “You shall conceive and bear a son and give him the name Jesus” (Lk 1: 31). In a word, Jesus himself is the Immanuel, the God-with-us .

We don’t have simply the testimony of Mt and Lk. We also have that of Jn. At the very start of his gospel he declares solemnly: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory: the glory of an only Son coming from the Father, filled with enduring love” (Jn 1:1, 14).

I remember a young man I know who met someone through the social media. He thought he found the woman of his dreams, someone he would love to be with and who would love to be with him the rest of his life. They agreed to meet in a restaurant. But, alas, when he saw her, he felt like running away. Her e-photo and his idea of her somehow didn’t quite match the real person in front of him. She felt the same way about him. They had to part ways in a huff. The wisdom that we learn from experience, and which had been articulated by St. Augustine, is that we will never be able to find any special someone who is always there for us among our fellow creatures, no matter their beautiful or caring ways, no matter the advances of social communications.

Only God in Jesus Christ fills up this need.

He is the Word who is God who “pitched his tent” among us in order to be our permanent companion. Exactly the whole point of Christmas. The evidence? How about the Scriptures where the Word, Jesus Christ, permanently addresses and transforms countless human beings who care to hear and do what he says. Or take the Eucharist, the sacrament of Christ’s permanent presence where his Body and Blood bring us his whole person daily wherever we are. Or how about the Blessed Sacrament where Jesus always awaits us and makes good his words in Mt’s gospel: “Behold, I am with you all days till the end of the world” (Mt 28:20). And how about you and me who always find him even after sin sometimes snatches us away, only to drop us into pits of agony.

Are you with me still? Oh, thank you very much, but what really matters for you and for me is that he always is. And it does matter tremendously for him that we be with him too. From this Christmas on.

Man: crown or frown of God’s creation?

2011-11-06T16:00:00.000+08:00

I WAS once on my way to Borongan and was driving very slowly as I climbed a hilly road at Brgy Can-abong. In fact, my speed was between 30 to 40 KPH. All of a sudden a dog crossed the road. I remember reducing my speed to 25 KPH. To my horror, as it reached the other side of the road, the dog made a turn-around and ran back to the middle of the road right smack against the car. It was too late. I had neither way nor time to avoid it. Before I knew it, the car hit the dog. I heard an incredible noise as I automatically stepped on the brakes. I said to myself, “I could have killed a dog today.” But, to my surprise, the dog was not hit by the tires. It simply ran through the middle of the car’s tires and, when I looked back, I saw it running away in the direction of a house. I breathed a sigh of relief. But a thought occurred to me, “What if it was a child?” I felt a cold sweat run through my neck.

Why is it that when drivers talk of running over dogs or chickens there is not much concern? But when they talk of accidentally hitting a child, the equation changes radically? The answer is simple. Because it involves a human life and a human life is notches higher than those of dogs and chickens or any other animals. But where did we get this idea? Where else but from the Scriptures, specifically from the book of Genesis 1:26-27. It is only when he creates the human being that God makes a radical change in the form and substance of his act of creating. Form because he no longer just wills and commands into existence a creature he envisions. He seems to speak to another person or other persons with him, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”. Biblical experts are at variance about what this signifies.

There are those who say the expression is just ‘majestic plural’ underlining God’s transcendence. But there are those who say that these words contain the seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity. However, our point at issue is the high value of the creature, the human being—in God’s image and likeness. Scholastic philosophy had taught that this can only mean that the human person shares in God’s properties of intellect and will. Genesis does not explicitly explain what it means. But we are given an important hint when it speaks of how the human being must have “dominion” over creatures under him, namely, the birds, the fishes and all others lower in rank. Gaudium et Spes again declares that it is a unanimous teaching of “believers and unbelievers alike” that “all things on earth should be related to human persons as their center and crown” (GS 12).

Psalm 8: 5-7 is even more explicit: “What is man that you should be mindful of him or the son of man that you should care for him? You have made him little less than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, putting all things under his feet.”

This is why we say no to extra-judicial killings, the capital punishment, wars, murders, homicides, abortions and, by extension, to contraception. Why no to contraception? Let me illustrate from our everyday experience. Why do we fence our houses or lock our doors especially when we are resting? Because we want to defend our lives and the lives of those inside the house. Saying no to contraception is our act of fencing around human life, whether or not that life is already in the womb or still to be formed. We want to defend it because it is not just any creature’s life. It is the life of God’s ‘image and likeness’. We say no to suicides for the same reason. By what logic do we appropriate for ourselves the act of ending life since it is not our own to dispose of but God’s? We certainly are alive but only because God has gifted us with life. In the case of human life the receiver does not own the gift.

Not only that. Human life has such a soaring value because, as the gospel of Luke 1:26-38 attests, the Son of God became a human being through Mary. As the Blessed Pope John Paul II once taught, when the Son of God became a human being, he effectively united himself with every human being. In other words, human life is valuable not only because the human person was created in God’s image and likeness but, more so, because the human person through Christ has become God’s son, God’s child. When people tell me of times when they are tempted to give in to thoughts of abortion, abuse or contraception, I tell them about my first-year college friend who is fond of the words “paradigm shift”. And I would say, “Why don’t you too make a paradigm shift to more positive thoughts on the dignity of human life and how before the Lord every human life is sacred because it is life that has no identification other than ‘of God’, ‘for God’ and ‘with God’ as his child?”

When we consider the mystery of God becoming man, Mary provides us the example of how to respond to God’s action. She is disturbed when the angel tells her of the news because, apparently (as the early Fathers of the Church taught) she was not intent on marriage. But as God’s plan becomes more transparent, with the involvement of the Holy Spirit and God’s power, Mary decides by faith. She gives her assent and, with it, her complete and full obedience to God’s plan. “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to your word.”

I was struck by a nun’s story of a woman who wanted to have an abortion so she could apply for a visa to Japan. She was brought to the nun’s convent. Thinking she could get an abortion there, she was given counseling instead. Still determined to have an abortion, the nun just entrusted her to the Lord in prayer. The next time the woman called, she informed the nun she had decided to keep her baby and say goodbye to Japan. That, to my mind, was a definitive paradigm shift. When a healthy beautiful baby was born, the happy mother said how right her decision was and thanked the nun for her counseling but, especially, for her prayers.

The only paradigm shift worth taking is one that leads to preserving human life because the human person who possesses it is the crown of God’s creation. The opposite paradigm makes the crown a tragic frown.

What should be happening to our beautiful land

2011-10-10T15:59:00.000+08:00

BLESSED John Paul II is deeply revered in the Philippines.

Unknown to many Filipinos, some of the things he taught urgently apply to us today as we witness the tragedy of frighteningly more severe typhoons, as PAG-ASA warns us, floods that refuse to abate or the imminent specter of harsher and longer droughts ultimately related to climate change which is itself traceable to environmental degradation. The abnormal will be the norm, as a local government official sadly remarked in an interview. All because we disobey the most basic one.

In his January 1, 1990 message for the World Day of Peace entitled Peace With God the Creator, Peace With All of Creation Pope John Paul II once described a situation that rings familiar: “In our day, there is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts and continued injustices among peoples and nations, but also by a lack of due respect for nature, by the plundering of natural resources and by a decline in the quality of life. The sense of precariousness and insecurity that such a situation engenders is a seedbed for collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty [italics in the text]” (PWGCPWAC, no. 1).

I can’t agree more. Peace is certainly compromised and even diminished, if not entirely lost among victims of calamities traceable to the abuse of the environment. It strikes me, however, that Blessed John Paul II was not content in simply citing a destructive fact. He also pointed to human factors that are at play in such a situation, realities that are also at the root of the problem: “collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty”. I find this striking because such a focus is what we often miss as we grapple with the ecological crisis in our midst. After a tragedy we usually start playing the blame game. We ask: Who are responsible for the evil we suffer? We do everything we can to identify its human causes.

Naturally the exercise is helpful and even necessary to a degree. But the late pope even now is reminding us that there are deeper causes, still human, but more sinister because they lie inside humans. They influence human thinking, decisions, behavior and lifestyle. Whether we like it or not, they are as real as the names of criminal individuals or groups we wish uncovered.

“Collective selfishness” truly explains our behavior when we choose money or profit in exchange for our mountains, lands or bodies of water being ravaged by deforestation, irresponsible mining (we need to ask when has mining been responsible in our country), tons of garbage or runaway pollution.

When we mind only our convenience and throw our waste anywhere, when we see only revenue coming in from the mining or logging industries and turn a blind eye on the devastation they generate on the patrimony of the future generations, do we hear the Holy Father’s warning of our wanton “disregard for others”?

When we try to justify the abusive exploitation of our natural resources by the jobs it generates or the economic development it intends to achieve, don’t we close our ears to the Holy Father’s exhortation that we avoid “dishonesty”?

At the bottom of the ecological crisis are not simply the names of failed officials or government agencies. More fundamentally we face its moral roots.

Earlier, the Philippine Bishops in their January 29, 1988 Pastoral Letter entitled What Is Happening To Our Beautiful Land assessed our situation then with brutal honesty: “To put it simply, our country is in peril. All the living systems on land and in the seas around us are being ruthlessly exploited. The damage to date is extensive and, sad to say, it is often irreversible. One does not need to be an expert to see what is happening and to be profoundly troubled by it.”

Then the document brings out in greater detail indicators of the catastrophe: “Within a few short years brown, eroded hills have replaced luxuriant forests in many parts of the country (a situation already becoming critical in a number of our towns and barangays in Eastern Samar). We see dried up river beds where, not so long ago, streams flowed throughout the year (ours are river beds becoming polluted by toxic waste from unregulated mining ventures or becoming depleted by excessive quarrying and improper disposal of human-generated waste). Farmers tell us that, because of erosion and chemical poisoning, the yield from the croplands has fallen substantially. Fishermen and experts on marine life have a similar message. Their fish catches are shrinking in the wake of the extensive destruction of coral reefs and mangrove forests. The picture which is emerging in every province of the country is clear and bleak.”

One wonders if there had been any progress at all since this 1988 statement. Even then the Bishops already warned us of the injustice waiting to happen even on a people yet unborn: “The attack on the natural world which benefits very few Filipinos is rapidly whittling away at the very base of our living world and endangering its fruitfulness for future generations.”

It is clear that the alarming abuse of our environment reveals its moral roots. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines morality as the state or condition of our human acts being ‘good’, that is when they lead us to our “last end”, namely God himself, or ‘bad’ when they lead us away from him (CCC 1749-1761). If I give you food out of compassion when you are hungry and unable to provide food for yourself, I do a very moral act. It is precisely moral because it brings me to God or closer to him. On the other hand, if I curse or stab you out of hatred for you or the beliefs you espouse, I do an immoral act and it is precisely immoral because it leads me away from God who is my ultimate end and whose nature is Love, the opposite of hatred or selfishness. Now let’s turn to the issue on hand. Human attitudes, decisions and acts leading to environmental abuse are outlined by Pope John Paul II as: “collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty”. Of course there are other names and more specific roots behind environmental abuse, such as “greed” or the “insatiable desire for profit” and the inordinate drive for “power”.

Karl Marx once uttered an observation Marxists consider a maxim: “The material base determines the lifestyle”. In other words, the extent of my wealth (material base) could measure the kind of behavior I may exhibit (lifestyle). If I were wealthy, that would place within my reach the best clothes or food denied to others but, with it, also a capacity to an exploitative lifestyle. Wealth, moreover, will give me power that I could use to abuse people and even the earthly goods at my disposal. When I mindlessly exploit the environment, for example, I might say I am doing it to feed my family or the families of people I employ (deception and dishonesty) when I actually do so for the considerable profit I stand to gain (insatiable drive for wealth), I doubtless do a grossly immoral act. The reason is simple. My actions do not bring me any closer to God but to things that I could use as substitutes for God. Moreover, my action of environmental abuse cannot be moral because I do it in total disregard of the welfare of others, including that of the future generations. God is love and when my behavior is not motivated by love, it cannot lead me to him. As John the evangelist reminds us, “He who does not love does not know God for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).

What should be happening to our beautiful land?
Our own CONVERSION as individuals and as a nation.

Lola Goria

2011-09-29T15:57:00.000+08:00

SHE is 91 going on 92. She lives in a rundown nipa hut just across San Roque chapel in Sitio Nabiyawan. You would be utterly mistaken if you think her hut’s conditions reveal hers. Of course, she is not in the best physical state. Every day of her life since she was rendered unable to walk she sits on a meter-and-a-half long and a foot-wide bench by her window. It’s there that she recites her daily rosaries, reads her novenas, some still of Spanish vintage, and talks to her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren (if they happen to be around) of God and of right living. She is the most senior woman I know in Nabiyawan (‘oldest’ is a word that, in my considered judgment, would not describe with justice the grace with which she carries her age and character).

I marvel at her energy, sharp wit and prayerfulness. Two of her grandchildren live with her and take care of her. There’s no visible bed nor bedroom in the house, only a bare floor of bamboo and wood, a curtain to create instant privacy, a mat and an altar at a corner. The bathroom is somewhere outside the house and I was debating with myself how she, with only two boys with her, could stay as clean, dignified and composed as she is when I give her communion, what with the boys’ obvious dutifulness to their lola often intermingling with their normal playfulness and nonchalance.

Remember the smell that ordinarily greets you when you enter a bed-ridden senior citizen’s place? Lola Goria has none of that. “And, Father,” her grandchild told me, “she still does the sewing and with her bare eyes still gets the thread into the needle’s eye like she is twenty-three.”

If she were in America, Europe or the affluent countries (as some Filipino senior citizens are when they are lucky enough to have children there), she would be in a nursing home or in some state-run institution for people her age and condition. But here in poor Nabiyawan she stays in the same old nipa hut, with two grandchildren and relatives taking turns taking care of her and she, in turn, keeping a role only she or people like her can provide: a source of prayerful guidance and example for the young.

I remember meeting some very elderly Filipinos in nursing homes in Long Island, New York and San Diego, California. I recall, too, how well-cared for they were and how organized, clinical and proper their daily routines. Their children, grandchildren and friends would visit them regularly and just as regularly go back to their lives, leaving them to professional care-givers. Quite a few of them are terribly lonely and miss their families; still others don’t even remember they have families at all.

Then I look at Lola Goria, her grandchildren and her relatives, and how they would pray rosaries together or, in silence, let her pray her novenas and listen to her as she tries to correct misbehaviors or instruct them how to cook the priest’s merienda (you are right, this is something I just imagined, as the merienda is already cooked when I get there). I am positively certain my friends in Long Island and California would shake their heads and express how sorry they are for Lola Goria.

And I would tell them: Who is to say Lola Goria is in a sorrier state than if she were in a nursing home or in a government-run institution for the elderly? Would she be happier than she is now?

Can anyone who is constantly in touch with God and the saints be in a sorry state?

In the final analysis, our weakness (poverty, family ties) is also our strength.

The Secular Mindset and Christian Faith

2011-07-05T15:51:00.000+08:00

SOMEONE (or is it a collective?) has opened the closet in our country again. Now its occupants are out. I seek pardon from all closets but I compare the culture of death to one of them. I assume a number of so called “churchy” people—which include clerics and many lay Catholics who take their faith seriously—would have noticed not only the seemingly endless rains and flooding (and been alarmed, too, by them, naturally) visiting us these days in the Philippines with cruel regularity.

They would have also noticed how in the heat of the on-going national debate on the RH Bill, some vociferous groups have begun efforts to introduce divorce to congressional legislation and others have even gone further by performing same-sex marriages in Baguio City or elsewhere. To me the force of Mother Nature only indicates the presence of another force slowly flooding up our shores. To be sure, it’s actually been there for a long time.

I call it the secular mindset. We know a growing number of Filipinos today would insist on being Catholic Christian through and through but also on being firm advocates of the RH Bill, divorce, abortion, same-sex marriage and even some qualified form of euthanasia. Indeed, truth could be stranger than fiction. If they were to ask me what I mean by “secular mindset”, I would say, “Do you remember the anecdote of a small fish asking another fish what an ocean is and is answered, ‘You are swimming in it’? Well, you ask me what a secular mindset is. Let me say the same thing: ‘You are swimming in it’.”

One of the things from our Latin classes in the seminary that has stuck with me to this day is the word ‘secular’ being rooted in the Latin ‘saeculum’ which means world. I find it startling how the ancient Scriptures are so revealing of our contemporary situation in the meanings it unwraps of the term ‘world’. In the first place, world can mean the dwelling place of man where his human existence unfolds (Jn 1:9; 16:21). Secondly, it can mean human beings taken separately from other creatures as subject of redemption, as in, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that those who believe in him may not perish but may have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). It is this world that God has willed to reconcile with himself through the cross of his Son Jesus Christ (2 Cor 5:19) who abolishes its sin (Jn 1:29).

But, the current secular mindset is relevant when we turn to the third meaning of ‘world’. The evangelist John also speaks of ‘world’ which means the present state of creation in which human beings are organized without regard for God or his values and, in fact, could be at enmity with him because it is dominated by the “prince of this world” (Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). The impact of this meaning came to me one evening when I watched a replay of a televised debate between pro- and anti-RH Bill advocates. A pro-RH Bill lawyer could no longer contain her exasperation with the seemingly solid wall type of argumentation from the other side, especially the ones quoting Scriptures. She said point-blank that religion has no business in legislation. Religion should not interfere in the making of laws. How easy it is to forget that religion originated human laws: e.g. outlawing murder and adultery.

I marvel at how uncannily accurate the insight of Scriptures on the two ‘worlds’ existing side by side then and, especially, now here in the Philippines and throughout the whole earth: a ‘world’ which opens itself to the Redeemer and a ‘world’ that is both closed and/or hostile to him. The trickery of the prince of this world is so sophisticated that it has convinced promoters of ‘world’ as organized humanity without or against God to be themselves bona-fide members of the ‘world’ as theater of God’s redemption in Christ. How else could we explain Catholics promoting with dogged determination contraception, divorce, legalized abortion, same-sex marriages, euthanasia etc. and believe they are still Catholics? Can a circle call itself a square? Can the color black convincingly be declared white?

The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has been warning Catholics and all Christians about this kind of ‘world’ in the secularism so pervasive in many societies and cultures of the contemporary setting. And he has done this for the longest time. Apparently in the Philippines the warning has been hardly heard. Or the louder voices of various hostile ideological groups have tuned it out.

Again John the evangelist utters eye-opening words: “The light came into the world, but men preferred the dark to the light” and “He was in the world and through him the world was made, yet the world did not know who he was” (Jn 1:10).
But there are three things that should make us take heart.

One, Jesus the Redeemer has already conquered the ‘world’ (Jn 17:33).
Two, the hatred of the ‘world’ is a sign of salvation because the ‘world’ hates what it does not have (Jn 15:19).

Three, those who are begotten by God conquer this ‘world’ and “the victory that conquers the world is our faith” (1 Jn 5:4).

But what is this faith that conquers? I suggest to all parties of the debates to ponder the teachings of the Scriptures. And Scriptures not only recommend faith but also describe the faith that conquers and saves.

One, it is the faith that listens to the Word of the Lord. “My sheep listen to my voice” (Jn 10:27).

Two, it is the faith that gives its assent to the Word. Here our model is Mary the Mother of God’s Son, our foremost model of faith: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).

Three, it is the faith that commits one’s whole self to the Lord and completely relies on his Word. Here our model is the centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But only say the word and my servant will be healed” (Mt 8:8).

Four, it is the faith that involves a sharing of life with the Redeemer, having a personal relationship with him. The faithful believing community manifests this. “I know my sheep and mine know me” (Jn 10::14, 27).

Five, it is the faith that obeys the Word. “My sheep follow me” (Jn 10:27). That is to say, true faith is shown in our obedience to the Lord, not to the world. A Christian having a secular mindset? John’s answer is a description of the Christian: in the world but not of the world (Jn 15:19).

Raging against the RH Bill

2011-05-10T15:49:00.000+08:00

THERE is out there a bitter battle whose roots are inside our souls. It is actually born of a war much bigger in magnitude, much deeper in reach and much more comprehensive in scope. And, by the way, this is no mountain out of a molehill I’m making. Paul the apostle to the Gentiles speaks part of what I’m saying as he warns the Ephesian Christians: “Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the evil one. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against the world rulers of this darkness” (Eph 6:11-12). This is not quite a description of pro-RH Bill advocates. And I don’t intend to enter into a name-calling game with any party to the issue. All I wish to make is perspective. Paul’s words remind us of the real war. What we have in the Philippines is a battle within it.

The poet Dylan Thomas once wrote a poem that makes a counsel: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

That is what the Church in the Philippines seems to be doing. The Philippine Church at this day and age appears like a raging bull against the raring RH bill train. At least to me the observation holds. To the local media, though, caught in the habit of making a one-sided spin favoring the bill itself, the Church seems a raging bull, all right, but not against the dying of the light. Rather it rages against the light itself perceived as the rational, pro-poor, pro-chance, pro-development population plan that the bill embodies. The pro-RH Bill proponents are cast as enlightened, pragmatic, patriotic, compassionate and more numerous while the anti-RH Bill advocates to which the Church aligns herself are seen as antediluvian in thinking, narrow-minded, extremely malicious allies of Padre Damasos that are behind the ‘dark ages’ mindsets they represent. Very often pro-RH Bill critics argue not against the Church’s position but against the persons perceived as Church, namely, the hierarchy. The Church’s stance cannot be supported, so the reasoning goes, because certain priests and bishops are child molesters, sex offenders, closet fathers etc. You can’t argue against the message. Hit the messengers. You can’t destroy their argument. Destroy those you argue against. Or cast them as very few in number. Let democracy rule.

This reminds me of a news conference former US President Jimmy Carter once conducted in which he was asked if it was not fair that women who can afford abortions get them while women who cannot afford them are precluded. His reply: “Well, as you know, there are many things in this life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can’t. But I don’t believe that Federal Government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved.”

To this Pnoy this strikes the heart of the matter. There is a moral factor involved in the RH Bill and the bill as well as its proponents scarcely take it as crucial, which it is. Ironically, its principal proponent, President Noynoy Aquino, speaks of doing the “right thing”, walking the “matuwid na landas” as his reason in advancing the bill. There is no ‘right thing’ or ‘matuwid na landas’ that leads people away from God and his ways. The slip by Secretary Hillary Clinton who explained “reproductive health” in terms of giving people access to “contraception and safe abortions” indicates not only where the RH Bill may be ultimately headed but also what it ignores.

It ignores the moral factor and when it does, what ‘landas’ (path) can be ‘matuwid’ (right)?

The addict and the resurrection

2011-04-28T11:48:00.001+08:00

EASTER is not abstract. Easter is not just a feast. Easter is very personal. Easter is a fact in people’s lives. This I found out years ago in a strange encounter.

The parish secretary told me a man was looking for a priest to talk to. When I appeared, he began to speak but halted, as if unsure of himself. He seemed in some kind of pain. No, he was not ill, if by ill you mean bodily illness. He hesitated once more. But he did not hide. “I’m an addict, Father,” he said tersely. I remembered conjuring images of heroin or other substances of the same kind and bottles of alcohol. I was getting ready to dismiss our meeting with, “I’m sorry, I may not be competent to give you the help you really need.” But it was my turn to hesitate. On the other hand, he seemed like a bird trying to force its way out of a cage. “I’m an addict to porno, Father. I’ve been into porno at the internet…I have collections of porno materials, shows, films, literature. Name a porno show or film, I probably have it. I’m here because, because I’m looking for spiritual help…”

I tried to be encouraging. I commended his courage to face up to his ‘enslavement’, if I may call it that way. I said that I was glad he was specifically looking for spiritual help from a priest and that his problem also has other components that a clinical psychologist or doctor may be better equipped to help him. He promised me to see one after the meeting.

It was almost a whole afternoon chat on prayer, the sacraments and especially the sacrament of Penance, of the Paschal Mystery, of how Moses leading Israel out of Egypt speaks of the living God who abhors people being in the grip of slavery, and that our basic slavery is to sin and its many ugly faces and tentacles, such as his addiction to porno which, I stressed, is basically rooted in the distorted view of the body as an object man can treat at his pleasure instead of temple of the Spirit he ought to reverence. There is only one way out, I said—Jesus Christ whom we can access through the Scriptures, prayer and especially the sacraments. He offered no resistance to what I later feared amounted to a spiritual bombardment I was giving him. But, to be honest, I saw no signs in our conversation that it was getting through. Until he asked me to hear his confession, that is. It took almost four hours for him to decide to go to confession. But the decision didn’t surprise me at all. It seemed of a piece with why the meeting happened in the first place.

Having given the absolution, I recall feeling relieved he will be in somebody else’s hands to help him deal with the other aspects of his ‘addiction’. One blissful aftermath of being a minister of the sacrament of Penance is the sense of being an instrument of someone’s inner liberation. On a personal level, another is forgetfulness. People seem surprised when I say this but whenever I turn away from a confession most of the time I feel my mind is a blank sheet once again. As we used to say in Latin class of a classmate who understood nothing of the day’s lesson, “tamquam tabula rasa”.

Then, several weeks after, I stumbled again into my friend the “addict”, unintentionally and without warning, in church. He asked me if I still remembered him. Of course, I said. “I just want to thank you, Father, for that afternoon meeting. After my confession, I made a decision to get rid of all my porno files and materials. What stuck in my mind was the body as ‘temple of the Spirit’. I never knew how good it feels to be free…” As if his smile didn’t say it all.

While he was still speaking my own mind raced to a privileged visit I had to a place whose specific name I couldn’t recall near Bethany in mid 90s. I was in an organized tour of the Holy Land by priests and a few lay couples. Someone took a picture of me as I was coming out of what tradition says was the tomb of Lazarus. My hands were extended in an unmistakable imitation of the UP oblation. I was trying to catch the feeling of the resurrection, nay, resuscitation of Lazarus (with apologies to the experts).

But here was Lazarus before me. His resurrection was no less real.
And the words of the Liberator poured into my ears seemingly out of nowhere: “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me, even if he dies, will live…”

My Father and Evangelization

2011-03-29T12:09:00.000+08:00

IT was March 9, 2001 when my father passed away. Allow me to print my thoughts regarding a man I owe a lot to.

I was a scrawny sickly boy. My father—just ‘Tatay’ to all of us his children—was a mechanic and a copra truck driver, mostly one and occasionally the other. My mother—‘Nanay’ to all of us—was a public elementary school teacher. She taught in places either too far or too hard to reach, at least in the initial stages of her career. I remember times as a child, when I was down with fever and my stomach aching so unbearably and my head throbbing, I would call out, “Nanay, Nanay” in pain (I often wondered why it’s the mother we first remember in dire circumstances). But she wasn’t, no she couldn’t, be there. My father, God bless him, would force himself to be there. Now I realize it was such a sacrifice for him. He had to take a leave off work and that meant no money for the family. Still my earliest memory of my father, I mean the one that has stuck to this day, is still very clear. I was a boy of two or three, shivering in thirty-eight-or-so degree fever and in pain, he was carrying me in his arms and rocking me gently, then again gently rolling a bottle filled with warm water over my aching tummy. And, miracle of miracles, the pain would go away. He would them hum or softly sing me to sleep. It seemed all the medicine I needed.

When my father passed on to what I call “the fuller life” on March 9, 2001, a poem which later became a song thrust itself to me through the two words I described him by during a wake I presided over: “GENTLE SOUL”. Yes, my father was to me a gentle soul. He was gentlest to us his children. There were countless times when some of us made him very angry, as when we simply did the opposite of what he asked us to do, and when it seemed he would hit us with his hand or anything near him (as I noticed other fathers did), he would behave in a way that baffled me. For instance, when my sister Annie fell off the roof of a shelter fronting the house we lived in as growing children in my mother’s hometown, it was because we didn’t listen to him telling us not to play on the shelter’s rooftop. He was so angry at our disobedience and raised his hand, I thought he was about to hit us as our just desserts. But when he saw my sister who was in pain as a result of our disobedience, he simply stopped and wept. He simply couldn’t hit us. The effect on us was just as baffling: We never played again on the shelter’s rooftop without making sure we were on its safer side and had our father’s permission.

In so many words I’m simply saying how lucky or shall I say “blessed” I was to have a father like my father. He made it easier for me to pray the “Our Father”. He made it easier for me to understand that God is my Father too whose love is what has made all human beings who we are, what we are and where we are meant to be. My father’s love mirrored God’s love for me and for my siblings in a way no one among us could gainsay. I often felt sorry for other children whose fathers would hit or shout at them in a way that was unlike our Tatay. Incredible as it may seem, he wasn’t any of that. Even when he seemed pained, angered or disappointed with anything we had done, I never sensed for a second that he stopped loving us.

If my father could love us his children the way he did, I often asked myself: “What would it be like to experience the love of God as Father”? His love must be infinitely more and better than my own father’s love for us his family. But now, after so many years, I realize how grateful I should be that my own father had proclaimed to me in anticipation, perhaps unbeknownst even to himself, the love that had led me to the love of God the Father of all.

My father was my first evangelizer. Now, as a priest, I try not to be a bad copy.

Unmasking the ‘Crab Mentality’

2011-02-15T10:47:00.001+08:00

A man in San Francisco, it is told, once received notice that his brother in Manila sent him a huge basket full of crabs from the Philippines. But when he went to claim it a customs officer had the names and labels accidentally mixed up. The man ended up being made to choose from among three huge baskets full of crabs the one sent to him. At first, the man appeared upset; then he hit upon an idea. He opened all three baskets and watched. In no time two of the baskets had crabs climbing up to the rim unbothered. The third basket, on the other hand, was oddly quiet. The reason? Every time a crab climbed up it was dutifully pulled down by the others. The man’s face lit up into a smile. Triumphantly he said, “This is it! This third basket is the one from the Philippines!” So goes one more legend of the Pinoy ‘crab mentality’.

The first time I heard this story from a priest in a conversation, spiced up with other hilarious details and embellishments, I remember all six of us laughing so loudly my sides ached. But we all agreed. There’s nothing so Pinoy, so real, so human and so destructive of unity as our so-called ‘crab mentality’.

But what is it about? Why do we have it? What do we do about it?

Some critics say that the ‘crab mentality’ is basically positive; it’s about Pinoys’ collective desire for justice and equality. No one must be given special treatment, all persons being equal (in dignity); all must be treated as such before the law etc. Understandably then, when someone thinks he’s better and deserves better, Pinoys pull him down. This seems fine except that it doesn’t apply in all the social classes. Poor Pinoys are seldom known to practice ‘crab mentality’ in regard to rich Pinoys; and the opposite is unthinkable. The ‘crab mentality’ seems to thrive best when Pinoys are in the same social, professional, work, family and local conditions.

Other critics say that the ‘crab mentality’ is nothing but pure and simple envy. Nothing else explains better, for instance, when a very successful Pinoy or Pinay is showered accolades by everybody but fellow Pinoys. Or when a Pinoy neighbor reacts to a kabayan who acquires the latest SUV or high tech ‘toy’ by himself buying a similar, better and/or more expensive one. Or when a Pinoy/Pinay who becomes an elected leader in a community of kabayans suddenly loses very good friends who later form other Pinoy groups in which they maneuver themselves to leadership positions. “I hate to tell you this,” an American husband said to his Filipino wife, “but what’s keeping you guys from being united is that every time you form an association everybody wants to be president!” Indeed our ‘crab mentality’ has nowhere better to be than the Hall of Shame.

There’s not a single explanation why Pinoys have it or particularly associate Pinoy culture with it. In fact, an Australian, upon reading it being talked about in Manila, promptly called the ‘crab mentality’ an Aussie reality too. Or maybe an American who comes to understand it would also say it’s an American reality. In truth, it’s a human reality. Perhaps we Pinoys have it only to a greater or lesser degree than others. I have a sense that, if we delve into our history a little more deeply, we might discover in our colonial experience of being regarded a race well below that of our colonizers part of the explanation.

But deal with it we must today. Let me suggest that, first of all, we must name what it really represents. If it represents the real aspiration for justice and equality in social relations, in giving and receiving equal services, in seeking equal treatment before the law, then the ‘crab mentality’ is the right mentality. But if it represents envy, then we had better listen to our conscience and the voice of our faith. Those who are the object of the ‘crab mentality’ do very well when they put on humility because the success, wealth or power that set them up above fellow Pinoys are passing gifts in a temporary existence; they do even better when they use these things generously to express compassion and service to others. When we are tempted to adopt the ‘crab mentality’ we must listen to St. John Chrysostom when he said: “Would you like to see God glorified by you? Then rejoice in your brother’s progress and you will immediately give glory to God. Because his servant could conquer envy by rejoicing in the merits of others, God will be praised.” St. Thomas More saw the things that invite envy differently. “If we were to…esteem everything according to its true nature, rather than according to men’s false opinion, then we would never see any reason to envy any man, but rather pity every man—and pity those most who have the most to be envied for, since they are the ones who will shortly lose the most.”

‘Crab mentality’? For crabs maybe. For us Pinoys, I think there’s only one option: ‘Pinoy mentality’.

Flooding

2011-01-17T10:04:00.000+08:00

Most of us here in the province of Eastern Samar will readily agree, if only it’s possible, to share a great bulk of pure unadulterated water we keep receiving from heaven since the first rays of 2011 appeared in our skies. Anyone interested? Please call St. Peter’s office immediately. Or visit the pertinent website at we.share.heavenly.water.net. Of course, there had been respites from the rains (and we are very grateful to the Almighty for them), including sunny January celebrations of the Feasts of the Nazarene and the Sto. Niño (the latter only partly). Our processions (at least in my parish of the Assumption of Our Lady) were a showcase of one miracle—absolutely dry sunny weather. Which prompted one parishioner to say, “Gosh, the Lord doesn’t like being wet in his parade!” But those respites were extremely short.

The rains have come back with a vengeance and, as I write, they have even enlisted the company of strong winds that blow hard and howl mockingly over roofs and windows of nipa, wooden and concrete houses alike, in an almost rare display of impartiality. But all this talk of the rains being fair to everyone is just that—talk. Actually fairness is never a virtue of Mother Nature. She merely gives back, sometimes in a greater measure, what we humans do to her. Because we have polluted our land, air and water, destroyed our forests and trapped the sun’s heat through our greenhouse gas emissions, the melting glaciers have now become hordes and hordes of attacking liquid armies that have nowhere to go but down on our homes, farms, rivers, seas and mountains. And, like uninvited rouge guests, they love creating havoc, such as mudslides and—from Brazil to Australia, from Albay to Eastern Samar, from St. Bernard to Agusan—good old-fashioned flooding. Like mini replicas of Noah’s scourge, flooding in our era distinguish neither rich nor poor, developed nor developing (a euphemism for undeveloped really) countries or communities. Who would have thought that Queensland, Australia would have worse flooding that, say, Can-avid in Eastern Samar? But then again people of Can-avid could say, “They are only worse off because people are not used to seeing richer communities suffering the fate commonly tied to poorer communities such as ours—flooding.”

Still it is not uncommon for people to adopt explanations for their fate other than from science. For instance, some people in my province say, “We have been flooded because we have a government that cares little about our welfare. Floods have made it clear how bad our roads and services have become, including how bad some of our choices for leadership positions are….” Flooding from bad governance? Undoubtedly there’s a point in that. One only has to bear in mind how bad governance in Eastern Samar or in the whole country for that matter has allowed illegal logging, mining (which has been anything but responsible in our islands), unmitigated quarrying, improper disposal of solid waste and many other offenses against the environment and Mother Nature. If love is paid by love, what do we expect Mother Nature to reward us for our irresponsibility and greed?

But all is not lost. This is what sets us apart from the cynics. It has become clearer too that people working together can make a difference. The media must be thanked for showing realities that rarely get the attention of the nation, let alone of the authorities that make far-reaching decisions and actions. Some government officials ought to be cited for seeing beyond the ravages of nature into their man-made causes and even now for trying to find long-lasting solutions, not merely temporary relief operations done ostensibly to score media mileage (or, as they say, ‘pa pogi points’). Most of all, we need to also cite the affected communities themselves that did not wait for outside help because they have decided to extend it to one another, who until now are picking up the pieces of what’s left of their homes, properties, families and lives, minding that others could be worse off than they are. I know even of some parish communities, even when they themselves suffered the ravages of flooding, that have nonetheless contributed money, clothing and food to other communities hit just as hard. In many cases it hasn’t been a matter of the comfortable aiding the afflicted but of the afflicted taking care of their fellow afflicted.

By instinct a number of people see the wisdom of Pope Boniface VIII who once said, “Anything done for another is done for oneself.” Which, I suppose is the reason why St. Vincent de Paul could exclaim: “Love is infinitely inventive.” Let’s pray and work hard that love such as this thrive in our long-suffering archipelago.

A new and happy year? Be or Stay pro-life

2011-01-02T09:00:00.002+08:00

FR. William Baush tells of a cartoon first published in the magazine The New York World in 1925 to celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. The cartoon has become a classic. In it two farmers from Kentucky are chatting over a fence. One says, “What’s new? Anything new happened lately?” The other farmer answers, “Oh, nothing much. Just a new baby born in Tom Lincoln’s place last night. There’s really nothing new around here.” Then Fr. Baush delivers the punch: “I’m sure there were folks who said the same thing in Bethlehem on the night Jesus was born. I can picture them—can’t you?—standing on the corner, just outside the inn. ‘Anything new happened around here?’ ‘No, just a baby down in the stable. Nothing much ever happens around here.’”

In other words, we tend to miss the point of Christmas or even, to a degree, New Year. Just as Americans in Lincoln’s time didn’t realize his greatness when he was born, we Christians in our time don’t realize the awesome significance of the birth of Jesus. We tend to notice the sensational and basically what pleases us. We miss the real LIGHT and LIFE wrapped in the utter simplicity and poverty of the manger and the swaddling clothes of Baby Jesus.

These first few days of 2011 we will be greeting one another, as in every circumstance years earlier, “Happy New Year!” Maybe we should ask why we have such a fetish for the new. New pieces of news, new clothes, new shoes, new ideas etc. I believe it’s basically because we are seeking the transformation that satisfies our inner desires for goodness, beauty, truth, justice, peace, all the absolutes in life. Since nothing earthly really brings us contentment, we settle for the sensational and whatever catches our attentions at the moment. Result? We miss the eternal and the lasting.

All the more reason then for us to hear the late John Paul II’s plea that we work for a transformation of our culture and society, such that lasting values start to put on flesh. “And the Word was made flesh”, so declares St. John’s gospel that we read on Christmas Day (Jn 1:14). The Eternal conjoined himself with our mortal nature. Isn’t that enough indication of the direction of true transformation? That direction must, to read the mind of John Paul II, lead us to the “Gospel of Life”, Jesus Christ himself (Evangelium Vitae, 29). The Incarnation is our clue. He must also take flesh in our daily life. Only he promises Life and fulfills it too. “I came that they may have life and have it to the full”, says he (Jn 10:10).

I believe that in re-reading Evangelium Vitae we get ample guidance on how to live the Incarnation and have newer, happier lives.

First step: Develop a “deep critical sense, capable of discerning true values and authentic needs” (EV 95). His quote from St. Paul is extremely helpful: “Walk as children of light…and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness” (Eph 5:8, 10-11). Is this decision/action/object my family and I have chosen following the Gospel or pleasing mostly to my friends at the office or my political circle?

Second step: Unite your faith and your life, starting at home, in your own choices, in your own family, in your community (EV 95). I remember a lady who works for a Catholic institution and very proud of it. But she is a firm advocate of the RH Bill. People ask in whispers: “Hello, don’t you see your slip showing?” Why declare yourself Catholic Christian but deny it by what you do?

Third step: Submit to conscience formation that must include two important criteria: (a) inseparability of life and freedom; and (b) inseparability of freedom and truth (EV 96). That is to say, whatever hurts life, hurts freedom, and vice versa; whatever is not based on objective truth does not lead to true freedom. If I say that my shirt is white when it is black (objective truth), then I’m not free from having told a lie. If I say happiness means good sex and material comfort (lie) instead of union with God (objective truth), my freedom suffers from slavery to false values.

Fourth step: Submit to, and work for, an education towards respect for life from its origins, sexuality according to its objective meaning fulfilled in the gift of self to another in marriage, chastity respecting the ‘espousal meaning of the body’ as well as responsible parenthood founded on moral values (EV 97). In a word, listen to the many ways the gospel of Jesus Christ is being made flesh in our life today.

Fifth step: Promote a “new lifestyle” following the primacy of being over having, of the person over things (EV 98). Am I or is my family/community more concerned with being good human beings and Christians rather having more money, earning, profits, possessions? Am I or is my family/community more into improving relationships among ourselves and with other people rather than into achieving the best financial status or the most number of projects?

Sixth step: Reconcile people with life and give witness to the true meaning of love in self-giving and in the joyful acceptance of others (EV 99), Do I see other human beings, even babies, as threats to my space and my share of the earth’s goods? Or do I feel a genuine sense of brotherhood with them because of my faith in Jesus Christ who dwells in every human being and to whom I owe the gift of myself no less?

Again let me illustrate a bit. A boy of ten went caroling with friends one December night in a far barangay. When he came home, he didn’t have as much money or goodies as other kids of other groups. But he was surprisingly happy. His mother asked him why he seemed happier. He said, “Because we gave more tonight than we received, Nanay. Most of the houses we went to said, ‘Utang la anay’ [Waray for ‘Patawad’ (We owe you)…” He realized he was giving when he sang carols receiving nothing in return.

Who says it’s impossible to understand the true meaning of Christmas and Happy New Year?

Of mission and being missionaries

2010-10-13T07:34:00.000+08:00

Reflections for World Mission Sunday, October 17, 2010

LET me tell you about Ate Melanie (not her real name), a distant relative. You would think ‘distant’ is an apt word because she and her family live on the far side of my hometown. I remember watching her when her son Jojo was stricken with tetanus. I thought she was desperate when she asked me to give him the Anointing of the Sick. It struck me that her son’s every spasm of pain also registered on her face and body. She was always by his side, forgoing eating or sleeping except when she was half scolded by her older siblings to do so. From her I saw the power of a parent’s love. It is a power that enables one to share in a loved one’ pains. If Jojo was celebrating a happy moment, you would have seen his happiness on her face too. Also that power enables a person to endure, even cast aside, one’s own suffering or hardship to bring relief to a loved one. Consider this: Ate Melanie, sleepless and hungry, pestering her son’s doctor and nurses just so that her son may be saved from death.

Jojo eventually recovered. Only then did I see a smile on Ate Melanie’s face.
I often think of Ate Melanie when I think of mission. The love that impelled her to go through anything or, as they say, “do anything, come hell or high water”, is to me symbolic of God’s love that pushes us on to mission. This is how I picture our whole situation. God sees our terrible suffering when sin has separated us completely from him. His heart bleeds. In response he sends his only-begotten Son, his most precious jewel, enduring the immeasurable pain of losing him from heaven’s infinite security and glory. As though being exiled from heaven was not enough, the Son, the first Missionary, had to endure poverty, hard work, obscurity, later misunderstanding and, worse, rejection from the very people whose loving acceptance was a logical response because they were the first object of God’s love. It’s small wonder then that the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, stresses the power of this love in his Mission Sunday message this year. We who engage in mission need to ever savor and allow ourselves to be like a collective sponge and soak ourselves in God’s love. “Nemo dat quod no habet,” our Scholastic professors constantly told us in college seminary. “Nobody gives what he doesn’t have.” I believe we should ask ourselves constantly: If God’s Love is not in me, how can I even try to proclaim it? “It is only from this encounter with the Love of God that transforms our existence,” the Holy Father insists, “that we can live in communion with Him and among ourselves and offer our brethren a credible testimony, giving reason for our hope (cf. 1 Pet 3:15).”

The power of God’s love is at work in the way he answers the prayer of Moses being supported by Aaron and Hur in our first reading this Mission Sunday. In a real sense the love of Moses as well as of the men supporting him for their own people merely reflects the love of God for Israel, and for us. It is the all-powerful love of God that saves Israel from the forces of Amalek just as it is the all-powerful love of God that saves us from the forces of sin and death. It is this love that makes Israel a community anticipating that community of God’s Love we call the Church, a community approached by representatives of the human race with the request: “We wish to see Jesus (Jn 12:21)”. The power of God’s love is also at work in the widow of our gospel endlessly, relentlessly pestering an unjust judge for her just rights. We need to imitate her in relentlessly pestering our unjust world for justice to our poor, hungry and downtrodden. In fact, this power needs us, our bodies and spirits as disciples, as its instruments, as its servants.

Because our bodies breathe, we live. When our spirits breathe, what they do is pray. Prayer is our spirits breathing in God’s breath, God’s Ruah, the Spirit. And the Spirit? He is “God’s Love in Person” according to Pope John Paul II (Dominum et Vivificantem, n. 8). Because of this the Spirit is also the “principle of evangelization” (DeV 45). Prayer therefore is key to mission. It is our life-blood. When we don’t pray, like Moses’ hands falling down, we also fail in our missionary responsibilities. The Spirit does not enliven our efforts, we end up becoming the donkey pursuing people’s hosannas that truly belong to the One on our back.

True prayer teaches us humility. ‘Humus’, the root of humility, reminds us of the earth from which we came and with Abraham we exclaim, “I am bold indeed to speak like this to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27). It teaches us that, contrary to our own feelings of self-sufficiency especially after experience, study and immersion in people’s lives have enabled us to forge strategies and approaches that confidently ensure success, everything still depends on God. It is his love that we must, in the words of the Holy Father, “make visible”, not the efficiency and glory of our talents and abilities.

As I write I must confess that I’m a bit struggling with fear. My responsibility as pastor calls me to go to a far and difficult barangay in my parish. Even now I can see in my mind’s eye the daunting mountain climb that greets every traveler to the village and slippery, rocky mountainous pathways I need to negotiate to reach it. I think of some of my companions who had slipped into near deaths. But now I also pause to pray for fresh courage. I remind myself: It’s God’s love that I bring and must make visible, not my fears and hesitations. So please help me, Lord. Then I think of Ate Melanie and the power of her love as a mother. Now, more than ever, I pray for the humility that will help me put myself in the palm of God our Father’s hands, the power of whose Love is visible on Cross of his Son Jesus Christ.

Together with Ate Melanie, I also think of my friend Mel. Forgive me for introducing him rather late. He is a shy painter who loves obscurity but paints such glowing colors of life as anyone can see in his paintings. I once requested him to restore the then time-worn and fading old Stations of the Cross portraits in my former parish church. The results speak for themselves: the mysteries of the sufferings and triumph of Jesus in living color. But it struck me one day how those bright living colors need the lowly canvas to be what it is in order for the artist’s ideas to be visible. That, I said to myself, is the same thing with every Christian and with every Christian missionary.

God is the painter. It is his Love that is beautifully made visible first by Jesus Christ. Our mission, so says Benedict XVI, is to continue making it VISIBLE in the world of our day and age. St. Ignatius of Loyola once encouraged his brothers with the words: “Make yourselves liked by all, become all things to all men in humility and love…” We best do it when we acknowledge the truth that we are the mere canvas, not the painter. We do so when, in faith, we put ourselves in God’s hands through prayer and then allow the power of his Love to propel our efforts to proclaim the Gospel. Our aim is to do all we can, in obedience to the Spirit, so that our fellow human beings may be able to say with St. Therese of Lisieux: “One glance at the holy Gospel, and the life of Jesus becomes a perfume that fills the air I breathe.”
That life has the power of Love written large in the Gospel, enabling anyone, especially the missionary, to climb the steepest mountains.

Pastoral Ministry in the Context of the Empowerment of the Laity

2010-10-04T05:55:00.001+08:00

Introduction

When we prepare for Communion as priests presiding over the Eucharist we first divide the consecrated host into two parts. The Body of Jesus, we explain this act, is broken so that it may be shared. So now, let me divide my reflection into two parts, so that I may better share with you my message. The first part would be on Pastoral Ministry itself. The second part would deal with how we might empower the laity.

Pastoral Ministry

Like it or not, there’s one thing we share with waiters and waitresses in restaurants. We feed people. But the food we serve is for people’s spirits while that by our counterparts in restaurants is for people’s bodies.

There’s another sharp difference. Waiters and waitresses are required to please us with their service. But they are not required to love us. On the other hand, priests are not only required to serve God’s people by feeding his flock with his Word and sacraments. They are also required to do so from a pastor’s love. This is the heart of what we call ‘pastoral ministry’, which essentially is really living out Jesus Christ’s ‘pastoral charity’. That is to say, a priest who is a pastor or shepherd of the Lord’s flock must, by definition, be a lover of God and his people first. A so-called ‘servant-leader” without love is a living contradiction. He is no better than a waiter.

That is why our pastoral ministry is based on our ‘configuration to Christ the head’ (Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 2). It is Jesus who first loved us with the Father’s love. And the Father is the One who so “loves the world that he gave us his only Son so that those who believe in him may not perish but may have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). Without this love of the Father, visible in Jesus the Son, our ministry becomes empty, at best technical, at worst mechanical.

Suppose I was the best sculptor in the whole of Leyte and Samar. And you asked me to carve out your whole figure to serve as a statue. Suppose I perfectly carved out your whole bodily figure including the measurements, your face’s warts and all. Still the resulting perfect figure is not your replacement. It’s the same thing with us. Ordination may have configured us into Christ the head. But we do not replace Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd. It’s not in our mission to do this. Our mission is not to be Christ’s substitutes but to be “signs and instruments of his presence and activity” (PCP II, 516). It’s not our love that we bring but the Father’s love visible in Jesus the Good Shepherd.

We need to ask: What does it mean for a ministerial priest to be a ‘sign and instrument’ of Christ’s presence and activity? It is here that Vatican II answers: “It is Christ himself who through their (priest’s) signal service preaches the Word of God, administers the sacraments, incorporates new members into his body and directs and guides his people on their journey to eternal salvation” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 21). Suppose you write a letter by your pen, paint a face by your brush and stand by the sacristy in your cassock. Suppose further that your pen, your brush and your cassock claim to be you. That will draw the biggest laugh. They are just signs and instruments of your presence and activity. Neither can we ministerial priests therefore claim to be Christ or his replacements. We are just instruments of his presence and activity among God’s People and God’s world.

That is why our pastoral ministry must not only be characterized by charity but also by humility. When we say we are configured into Christ the head, we must understand Christ’s headship correctly. It’s not about lording over others. It’s about being a servant, a footwasher. We are leaders. But we lead by being servants. “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).

Often we are embarrassed by the poverty and insignificance of our country. Add to that too the poverty and smallness of our people, the people that we serve. Add to that even further the poverty and smallness of the way our people see and feel about themselves. But, happily, in the perspective of the Scriptural God, poverty and insignificance characterize his favorite people. Figures such as the shepherd David, the prophets, Samson, Gideon, Ruth and others in the Old Testament as well as Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna and the fishermen apostles, not to say Jesus himself, were poor, insignificant people during their time. But God’s majesty and power completely shone in them. Their humility helped them greatly in their faith as well as in their love and service of the poor to whom they proclaimed God’s Word.

A Jesuit brother advised a newly-ordained priest: “Forget your dignity. Assume your responsibility.” It’s very instructive how in the history of the Church, when we emphasized the priestly ordination as a reception of “sacred powers”, titles and priestly dignity were the most prized commodities. But when, as a result of Vatican II and PCP II, we started looking at the priesthood from the point of view of the Scriptures and Jesus’ own words and deeds, ministry, service and responsibility became the buzz words.

It has taken us a long complicated process to realize a simple interconnected network of truths. One, that our pastoral ministry is a service, a total giving of self to God and to his people. Two, we cannot truly serve without the love of God in us. Three, we cannot truly love without putting on the humility of the small and insignificant, the anawim, Jesus himself being the foremost among them, who are God’s favorites.

Now why do we need the humility of the anawim in our pastoral ministry?

The answer lies in the nature of our ‘ministerial priesthood’. It is so-called ‘ministerial’ because it is basically a service. Because a servant serves his master, the master realizes his identity as master. In the same way, while “the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace—a life of faith, hope and charity, a life according to the Spirit—the ministerial priest is precisely ministerial because he is a servant of the royal priesthood that it may fulfill and become itself, a priestly people called to offer prayers and gifts to God the Father. For this is how he becomes truly configured to Christ the Head” (Lumen Gentium, n.10; PO 2, 6).

How Do We Go About Empowering the Laity?

Before we answer this all-important question, we need to make some clarifications. First, how do we understand ‘empowering the laity’? Does this mean that ministerial priests give the lay faithful any sort or form of power? The Second Plenary Council itself admits that the new-found regularity of the term ‘empowerment’ was an offshoot of our Edsa People Power experience (PCP II 325-326). Millions of Filipinos, by their presence and shared convictions against the Marcos regime’s excesses, drove out the former strongman and installed peacefully a new government in a democratic way that awed the world. Out of ‘People Power’ came the popularity of the term ‘empowerment’ to mean promoting participation from formerly marginalized groups, such as the urban and rural poor etc. In other words, applying ‘people power’ through the word ‘empowerment’ on our laity appears to be related to encouraging their greater participation in the Church’s life and mission.

But let’s make some things clear. We priests do not give any power to our lay faithful. Whatever power they have as children of God comes directly from God himself through the Holy Spirit’s action in the sacrament of Baptism they had received. The Archbishop Emeritus of Palo, Archbishop Pedro R. Dean, once observed, and rightly so, that the term “lay empowerment” could be a “misnomer” because there is no power any human being can give the laity since that power is already theirs by means of their Baptism. In other words, all that we do as their pastors is to recognize and allow the realization of the power given to them to be sons and daughters of the Father (Jn 1:12).

How do we do this as their pastors? Let me cite some of the ways.

1. By our Witnessing

Let me illustrate the ‘empowering’ nature of witnessing. A priest was dismayed to see plenty of plastic wrappers scattered indiscriminately on the white-sand beach at Divinubo Island (still part of Borongan). Without thinking he started picking up the wrappers and putting them into trash cans. At one point, he looked around and was so surprised to see children and young people suddenly doing what he was doing. He reflected that just as doing wrong can be infectious, so is doing right. When the lay faithful see their priests praying, that can generate their own prayerfulness. When priests are seen as not too ‘money-conscious’, that edifies people into doing service that is also less concerned with monetary returns. When priests struggle to be faithful to the Lord in his ministry despite his weaknesses, that is a positive push for parishioners to also strive to be faithful to the Lord in their distinct responsibilities as Christians and as citizens of their country.

2. By a Greater Recognition of the Laity’s Christian Dignity as Catholics

We cannot deny a fact of history, namely, our laity’s being sidelined for a long time. Partly in reaction to the excesses of the Protestant Reformation, in which, for example, anybody could just read and interpret the Scriptures, lay men and women in the Catholic Church were often found passive. Henry Cardinal Newman once remarked humorously that, during his time, lay Catholics could only do three things: “to sit up, to pay up and to shut up”. One of the timely reforms of Vatican II was the emphasis on the equality of all the baptized in dignity and their participation in the life and mission of the Church.

Unfortunately Vatican II is taking a long, long time being received. Many lay Catholics still remain passive and sidelined. One big factor is their priest. Does he truly recognize their identity and dignity, rooted in their Baptism, in ways that go beyond mere words during homilies, talks and chats? Does he encourage them to live by their identity and dignity by actively and systematically forming them through adult catechesis to be Christian witnesses and missionaries? Let’s all ask ourselves these questions and not be contented by ‘no’ for an answer.

3. By Enhancing the Poor’s Sense of their Human and Christian Dignity

We minister to mostly poor people. Even our so-called rich parishes are still populated by the majority who are poor. It is a fact that our poor are also mostly sidelined in church life. Our BECs have wonderfully turned the tide in many places. But a lot more of our poor are not reached by the BEC. For reasons both legitimate and not, there is real hesitation, if not resistance, even among the clergy to go all out with BEC. One reason is the hard work and constant need to follow up on our poor who constitute most BEC clusters. Unlike faith communities that seem to have internally galvanized mostly middle-class lay Catholics into evangelization, mission and proselytizing, the BEC appears to need the steady active role of the clergy to survive and thrive. I submit that one thing we take for granted is the low self-esteem and self-image of our poor. There is no substitute to a good catechesis on the real implications of Baptism to respond to this situation. But catechesis needs the help of priest-encouraged solidarity-building between the poor and better-off parishioners of our communities. Forming faith communities and other mandated religious groups and organizations in the BEC spirituality and tapping them to participate in evangelizing, forming and building BEC communities in which the better-off interact with our poor as brothers and sisters in one big family is a step in the right direction.

4. By Cultivating a More Human and Christ-like Relationship with People

Even unbeknownst to us, our laity looks at us as men of power and privilege. I am struck at how it seems a big thing for people to discover that their priest is “kind” and “considerate”. Priests who are so perceived have the ability to bring people out of their shells. Conversely, priests who are seen as cold and harsh drive even the educated Catholics away from church and church life. A lay parishioner mistreats an ordinary-looking man. To her shock she discovers the man is actually a priest. She apologizes to him but blames him for not wearing a clerical. The priest answers: “Even if I did not wear a clerical, all human beings are entitled to be treated like human beings.” Well-said, Father. But that doesn’t mean we must abandon the clerical. It means, however, that clerical is a sign that we priest must be the first to act human in the way we treat others because we carry the presence of Jesus Christ in our person. Jesus was most human not only because he has shared everything we humans have and are but also (and especially) because he acknowledged the humanity even of the downtrodden, the poor and the outcasts, and treated them as such. It must be very good to be truly human because the Son of God became one and acted like one. St. Irenaeus, in fact, exclaimed that the glory of God is the fully human person. That is what we see in Jesus Christ in which perfect love of God is completely one with perfect love of people. There’s no reason for his priest to be any less.

5. By Recognizing, Appreciating and Maximizing the Laity’s Potentials

Some priests are happy to discover parishioners with various talents and abilities. Other priests feel threatened by them. We must clearly reject the second option as un-Christian and un-priestly. Here’s why: To each human being, especially to each baptized Christian, the Holy Spirit showers gifts and charisms according to God’s wisdom for the sake of building up his kingdom on earth and Christ’s Body. It is precisely for this reason that we must spot, recognize, appreciate, tap and maximize these gifts and charisms for the sake of the Church and the spread of the gospel. In a concrete parish it’s not hard to see this need. We need parishioners who can be lectors, others who can be commentators, still others who can be altar servers, collectors, ushers/usherettes, song leaders, psalmists, prayer leaders, Communion ministers, caregivers, catechists, preachers, etc. That is to say, no one can be so empowering as a priest who, with the help of his parishioners, recognizes the Holy Spirit’s gifts in the potentials and charisms of people and taps them to the maximum for God’s kingdom. I know a priest who observed that any pastor who does not recognize, appreciate and maximize his lay leaders commits a practical heresy. I asked what he meant by ‘practical heresy’. He answered: “It means that, even if you believe correctly that the Holy Spirit enriches each baptized Christian with his gifts and charisms, once that belief is not put into practice, you become a ‘practical heretic’. The reason is that your practice is the exact opposite of your belief.”

6. By Accepting People’s Weaknesses and Moving Forward Despite Them

All human beings, including priests, have both strengths and weaknesses. For most of us life goes smoothly as long as our strengths dominate our weaknesses. But in a pastor’s life weaknesses of parishioners or his own could get more attention for one reason or another. Let’s try to be as concrete as we can. A member of the Parish Pastoral Council has a way of speaking and acting that is annoying. Parishioners keep telling the pastor how his homilies are bookish (another way of saying ‘boring’) and his voice so high-pitched and painful to the ear. A confraternity member is always late for meetings. A group of ladies often backbite other parishioners and the parish priest. A men’s group have a drinking problem, sometimes dragging the parish priest into their sessions. The list could go on. We must distinguish between weaknesses that are destructive of people who have them and the people around them, and weaknesses that are simply distracting or annoying. For the first we must do our best to give people who have them the appropriate help. For the second we must simply remember and observe the word of our elders regarding people who have them: “Pasayloon”, that is, deserving our forgiveness. St. Augustine once said that of all the alms we can give, “none is greater than that by which we forgive from our heart…”

7. By Giving Second Chances

Sometimes life surprises us with how doing a simple thing we take for granted in our ministry could have lasting consequences. For example, a priest had a problem with his temper. But he learned to hold it and cultivate patience through an experience with an altar server who habitually makes mistakes at the altar. Every time he is tempted to flare up over another mistake, he recalls how the boy’s elder brother joined the born-again group ‘U-Turn for Christ’ because his own father tried to forcefully make him stop coming home late. The priest confessed that perhaps one reason why the younger brother has remained Catholic is the string of ‘second chances’ he extends to him when he overlooks the boy’s mistakes. Of course, these second chances have only been effective because mistakes were eventually corrected in a way the priest judges to be consistent with the gospel. The priest admits he was helped by Jesus’ own injunction in Matthew’s gospel about fraternal correction—to do it step by step: first privately, then with witnesses, then with the whole church (Mt 18:15-20). The priest thought that if he flared up, that would be known by the whole Church and, in effect, reverse the gospel process. Giving second chances is wise.

8. By Consulting the Laity in Matters Affecting Them and Their Parish Community

Imagine coming to a presbyteral assembly and hearing the archbishop make this announcement: “Brothers, for purposes of transparency and efficiency in our financial system, I have decided to send auditors from COA to all our parishes effective next week…” I think I will not be exaggerating if I say that there will be, first, shock among the clergy, then anxious clarifications, then an uproar if not an openly livid opposition (but not a ‘hostage crisis’, I can be sure of that, because there will be no financially viable hostages available). The biggest and strongest reason behind the opposition is this: There were no consultations. We priests are so used to being consulted that we do not hesitate in pointing out how unfair and unjust it is when there is no consultation in matters affecting us as priests and pastors. On the other hand, we need to ask if we make consultations ourselves with the people we serve in matters affecting them and their communities. If we do, we show concretely our recognition of their dignity as members of the New People of God, and the rights and duties that come with it.

9. By Encouraging the Laity’s Participation According to Their Charism and Field of Competence

Filipino priests who have an experience ministering in some parts of the United States often tell a common story. During weekdays they do almost everything in church. They open the doors, sometimes do some cleaning and physical arrangement of the place, prepare bread, wine and other Mass paraphernalia, set up their own vestments, become the lector especially when Mass-goers are mostly elderly and also become their own altar server as well. (Thank God they don’t have to respond to their own declaration, “The Lord be with you”, with “And also with me”.). What comes out clearly here is how comical church life is when there is little or no participation. The reason why the Holy Spirit has gifted all the faithful, lay and clerical, with diverse gifts and charisms, is precisely that the Lord wants all the baptized involved in the building up of his kingdom on earth. This is implied in Jesus’ command in the gospels to all his disciples to preach the Good News to all nations or to all creation. However, involvement is only one aspect of participation. The other aspect is that this is done according to one’s charism and field of competence. It is not right, for instance, for a lector to be assigned choir master (sometimes this happens) or for a lawyer parishioner to be assigned PPC auditor (sometimes it also happens) or, again, for a novena prayer leader to be Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. A number of priests have a special group of people close to him, aside from the PPC, that advises him in many matters in the parish. The question a priest must always honestly answer is: Are these people truly competent to advise me in such and such a matter? Nothing is more empowering than to allow people to do their part in the whole tapestry of church life and mission but according to their charisms, abilities and field of competence.

10. By Applying Honest but Compassionate Evaluation of the Laity’s Performance

One natural mechanism in human life is that when we do good or right, we get praised and when we do wrong or fail, we get criticized or censured. We call this ‘feedback’. A praise is a ‘positive feedback’; a censure or a disapproving criticism is a ‘negative feedback’. We all need a feedback after we perform a task or a responsibility, especially because a feedback can help us achieve a goal or objective better. Even Jesus asked for a feedback when he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Mt 16:13). It is clear that he wanted to know if people had a correct idea of who he is and what his purpose/mission is from his preaching and works. When Peter gave him the correct answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16), Jesus responded with a positive feedback, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven” (Mt 16:17). In a word, Jesus is saying, “You got it right, Simon. My Father in heaven has given you the grace of insight!”
What has this got to do with empowering the laity?

Plenty. Our laity, many times after doing their tasks, no matter how simple, rarely get a feedback unless it is a negative one when he/she fails, especially from their parish priests. We take for granted how empowering an honest feedback can be. Think of how empowered you become when the bishop praises a well-done program or project in your parish. If it works for us priests, it certainly will work with our laity as well. But there is a no-no here. Let us not give dishonest feedback just to make our lay brethren feel good about themselves. A lie will eventually show itself and only add to the problem.

Priests do better to be honest in giving feedbacks to their lay parishioners regarding mistakes committed. But one could do so with compassion by focusing not on the person but on the erroneous act. Instead of saying, “You are a failure as a lector”, it is much more helpful and compassionate to privately tell the person in question, “You showed good effort but i noticed there were words that you mispronounced, like ‘booth’, ‘fishes’ etc. Could you practice with someone before the actual reading and also lower down your voice tone? The pitch was high I found it a bit painful to the ear, listening to you.” Feedbacks such as these are not condemning nor judgmental. They rather focus on things that can be corrected. Any person will come out of it empowered to improve in future performances of his/her task.

What have we been saying here? A simple message to the clergy: EMPOWER THE LAITY, EMPOWER YOURSELVES.

Beauty, anyone?

2010-08-17T04:52:00.000+08:00

IT IS said that there are only two kinds of men: men who admire those who are beautiful and men who think they are beautiful. I’m astounded at how more and more obsessed our world has become with beauty. Add to that how we take for granted that obsession. I’m equally amazed at how more and more sophisticated people have become in making themselves look good or better. Again, add to that how that preoccupation could be regarded a thing so natural it’s taken in the same league as breathing, eating or drinking, or a goal so fundamental it’s regarded by so many as a sine-qua-non of the pursuit of happiness. Isn’t it amazing how some people think not being beautiful means not being happy? In fact, I’m amazed that I’m amazed.

But let me drop these rambling thoughts and get down to the business of reflecting.

First, it’s at least clear to me that the ancient thinkers have different perspectives on beauty. Socrates once said that beauty is “a short-lived tyranny”, possibly because beauty, say in a woman, can make her the cause of a variety of afflictions in people, particularly in those under her spell, from having to carry its possessor’s luggage to committing graft or even murder on that person’s order or wish, if actual events were to be our gauge. But, perhaps fortunately, physical beauty is characteristically ephemeral and yet, let’s face it, the fact that beauty fades in time, even if somewhat slowly in a few, is the agony of people whose number is beyond counting. As Mėrė once declared: “Beauty is the first present nature gives…and the first it takes away”, evidently an extension of Plato’s earlier opinion that “beauty is a privilege of nature”. In a word, though it does not come to a person by way of merit, its possessor gains an incomparable edge in the society of all-too-flawed humans such as ours. Of course, we say in no way is beauty on the same footing as achievement. A man or woman who has a successful career—for instance, as a lawyer, doctor, accountant, artist or writer—by logic has more reason to feel proud than a man or woman who simply possesses beauty or a handsome appearance. Still, in real life, we all know how physical beauty can so enthrall or even possess people that it becomes a veritable source of power and influence for its owner. The ‘artistas’ and people in showbiz are a perfect example. People with beautiful faces, handsome appearances and crisp well-chiseled bodies could, to repeat Socrates, become tyrants, if often unintentionally, simply because they command people’s attention and adulation, despite sometimes not having the talent or competence in any given endeavor they get themselves into. All the more reason we are not surprised when Aristotle, even in ancient Greece, already said that “beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in the world”.

On the other hand, we realize, sooner than later, that physical beauty alone, though admittedly a form of power over others, is only “skin-deep”. Genuine beauty, our finer instincts tell us, has deeper roots.

In fact, lesser known thinkers already lead us to these deeper roots. For example, Quarles said that “the fountain of beauty is the heart”. Bacon, as if in response, asserted: “The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express”. But I am most taken by the words of Bovee to the effect that “when a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul—when the beauty of a face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, it raises our thoughts to the great Creator…”

All these confirm the insight that genuine beauty is within and involves the heart and one’s inner attitudes and conduct, though admittedly external physical beauty helps. But the really profound observation is that beauty takes us to God himself. Ironically Pinoys find it funny when, to the question of “Is she beautiful (Maganda ba sya?)”, they hear the answer, “She’s kind (Mabait sya)” in an apparently polite way of saying, “No, she’s not beautiful” and a deft way of not having to say the ‘U’ word (if you, dear reader, want to know what that is, please don’t ask me). In the process we miss the deeper insight that ‘kindness’ is at the heart of true ‘beauty’, bearing in mind Pope John Paul II’s teaching that the “heart of God is compassion.”

This is where Mama Mary comes in. When St. Juan Diego saw the Blessed Virgin Mary whom we call now Our Lady of Guadalupe he saw, in his words, “a lovely lady dressed in Aztec dress”. We wonder how Mama Mary’s beauty could be so unfading, what with two thousand years having passed. But from the angel’s words we clearly hear of God’s action in her and, no wonder, it is a touch of beauty. Bovee’s words quoted above are a reminder of a universal sense among human beings that when physical beauty is coupled with virtue, such as modesty and humility, it becomes a powerful sacrament of God. In his words, “it raises our thoughts to the great Creator”.

When the archangel Gabriel declares to Mama Mary God’s plan of making her the Mother of his Son, he calls her kecharitomene. Earlier translated as “full of grace”, later scholars render it (the) “favored one”. ‘Grace’ indicates not only Mary’s beauty in its fullness, both physical and spiritual, but especially its character as a gift from God, which is also clear in the concept of ‘favor’ being showered on Mary, a name which in Hebrew means “excellence”. Although the physical beauty of Mama Mary is often not stressed in her apparitions, it’s also just as factual, and this we gather from visionaries of her in Lourdes, Fatima, Lasalette etc. But it’s also true that in the gospels, attention to the physical beauty of Mama Mary is beside the point. Rather what we read and hear about is the beauty of her heart, her total innocence when she asks the archangel Gabriel how she is going to be a mother in the absence of a man’s intervention (a remark that some early Fathers of the Church interpreted to mean Mary’s intention not to get married), her indomitable hope and courage at the foot of the cross, her deep humility in regarding herself as merely the “handmaid of the Lord” but, most of all, her faith and obedience apparent in her surrender to God’s will, i.e., “Let it be done to me according to your word”.

This is what makes Mama Mary truly beautiful. By her humility and obedience Mama Mary easily makes herself the perfect dwelling place of God. And indeed she is the ‘new ark of the covenant’ because in her God the Son dwelt even as the angel declared, “The Lord is with you”. Now, when someone is filled with God, she must be the most beautiful creature in the whole world for, as St. Augustine once said, God is “Beauty ever ancient, ever new”.

Now here’s the best part: This is a beauty everybody, male or female, can possess. That is, if, with God’s grace, we could also imitate the virtues that make Mama Mary the quintessence of true beauty.

Then the matter of distinguishing those who admire the beautiful and those who are beautiful wouldn’t matter anymore.

Meet Virgilio, child laborer

2010-07-20T04:47:00.000+08:00

TRUTH is stranger than fiction, so I heard. Take Virgilio’s case, for example. He is from Brgy Cabalagnan (literally, a place with vines), one of those villages in my parish that can be so easy to forget because they are so hard to get to. Looking back, I feel now that my meeting him was a cross between accident and destiny. Cabalagnan is more than an hour walk from Brgy Camada which is a ten-to-fifteen-minute ride from Brgy Lalawigan, the center of my parish. At that point I had lost track of the exact number of kilometers to measure the distances. I had just celebrated the Eucharist and received simple but generous “thank you” gifts of root crops, veggies and bananas from the villagers for the efforts my companions and I made to reach them.

Actually when I saw them with broad daylight smiles bringing said gifts during the Offertory, I was more worried than glad. You guessed right. It meant we had to carry added burdens aside from our bags on our way back. You would react the same way, too, if you were in my boots (I was wearing a pair). Yes, I decided to use a pair of boots because the last time I was in Brgy Cabalagnan, some zigzagging, up-and-down and just plain pathways were under water or muddy. I remember wishing I had boots on instead of the rubber shoes I was wearing then. This time I saw that having boots was a big mistake. The road surfaces were dry, rough and tough because of El Niño. My feet were swollen from walking because I refused to put on socks out of some misplaced pride in my ability to endure the boots with bare feet. I had to eat my pride for breakfast when I went asking to buy a pair of socks from a parishioner in the village. Thankfully, I found what I needed.

But let me go back to my story. The Brgy Chairman sought and easily found someone who would bring the rather onerous offertory gifts. But I gasped when I saw a rather diminutive boy carrying some native backpack loaded with our root crops, veggies and bananas bulging on his back. I felt I couldn’t take what I was seeing.

“What’s your name?” I asked. “Virgilio po.” “How old are you?” “Ten po.” “Do you go to school? What grade?” “Yes po. Grade three po.” So that’s why he speaks partly in Pilipino, I thought. School can make people speak Pilipino. But that’s no guarantee they’ll act like they are, I said to myself. “I don’t think I’ll let you carry all that load,” I said, trying to be manfully righteous. “Even I won’t dare to do that nor ask you to, not only because my own bag is heavy enough but also because you are a child…” “Padre, it’s ok. I can carry as much as 30 kilos, as a matter of fact…” “What?” I exclaimed. “You carry 30 kilos of what?” “Copra po. There are no vehicles that can come here. Our roads can be very difficult and dangerous. So they hire us sometimes.” “And how much do they give you for 30 kilos of copra?” “Depends, Padre. Some copra dealers just give twenty pesos, others are even more miserly because they give less.”

I was furious at being unable to dissuade Virgilio. Yet, frankly, I couldn’t, for all the manly pride I had in my physical abilities, take the load off his back. I had to admit I wouldn’t be able to walk and carry that load at the same time. And I couldn’t ask him to go back to the village either, as he behaved like the bulging basket on his back was just a piece of salukara (our local rice pancake) compared to 30 kilos of copra. But I felt terribly sorry for him and the reasons why his parents wouldn’t hesitate to allow him to do child labor.

In fact, parents in Brgy Cabalagnan and in its environs assume not only the rightness of this awful practice but also demand child labor from kids like Virgilio as though it were among their parental rights. There certainly are anti-child-labor laws in the Philippines. But who would enforce them in this law-and-order-forsaken place? Who would not be compelled to ask little children to do heavy adult labor when there are no farm-to-market roads worth the name to Brgy Cabalagnan and not even a shadow of them to Brgys Banuyo, Canyupay, Hebacong, Benowangan, Baras, Pinanag-an and Bagong Baryo?

In other words, child labor in our benighted land is a direct product of the virtually ‘invisible’ services one expects from a working government. You might say, “Why doesn’t he simply admit it indicates bad governance?” One could say, “What governance? There’s nothing you can call that here.” Maybe I’d say “minimal governance” after a season of maximum political propaganda (the recent elections). Different shells, you might retort, same eggs. Believe me poverty can rob you of the ability to distinguish things.

Virgilio and I had a long chat about school. “How is school?” “Ok, Padre. Grades One, Two and Three are all in one classroom. Masaya pero maingay (fun but noisy).” I tried to give him my cap. “Take my cap, so it won’t be too hot while you walk with that load.” It was a very humid El Niño day. I thought it was the least I could do to ease his burden. He refused. “Salamat na lang po, Padre (No, thank you, Father). Sa ‘yo na lang po (Please have it for yourself).” I sensed that he thought I needed it more than he did. I was put to shame by his deliberate toughness.

The day’s mood was sunny but, as I hiked with Virgilio, I remembered the song about laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. That’s how I felt for myself, for my homeland, for Virgilio and children like him, for my parish, for Borongan my hometown of which these villages are a part, for my province Eastern Samar, for my country. I asked myself, “Until when do we refuse to learn and finally stop going round and round in circles reaping the fruits of a sick political culture that makes money decide elections, bringing leaders that hardly lead, servants that barely serve?”

As we reached Brgy Camada I thanked Virgilio and gave him something more than the usual fee for 30 kilos of copra. I saw his eyes flash gratefully. But I knew it was still a pittance for all his pain. But I was not prepared for what I would see next.

I saw a smaller boy, around eight years of age, by the waiting shed, sweat all over his body and a huge ‘sarasad’ basket full of veggies, root crops and house items on his back, which he ever so slowly laid down. On the other side of the road his mother was barking commands to his younger brother, around seven years old. He too had an identical huge ‘sarasad’ basket on his back that seemed to dwarf him. Both were about to get their rest, still breathing hard and perspiring profusely after a long hike. It seemed to me that they were Virgilios carrying the burdens of our sins…

As I watched them with bated breath I soon found myself wrestling with another question: Will a smiling tomorrow ever overtake these boys?

The answer depends on whether you and I will do something about it.

Elections and the Filipino

2010-05-04T07:27:00.000+08:00

I’ve always ached for words to describe the way we Filipinos regard elections. The closest is, you guessed right, ‘circus’. For most other people elections are just one of those ho-hum exercises of freedom. For us elections are big time show, party and politics in one. I had two chances of watching the U.S. presidential elections: in 1992 and in 2009. Except for their heightened interest in the debates most Americans simply tolerated the exercises the way a patient tolerates a doctor’s knife in the O.R. The young almost always avoided politics like the plague. A recent exception was during the candidacy of then Senator Barak Obama to the highest office of the U.S. when he inspired many people by what Colin Powell called his “transformational figure” looming large in the horizon, coupled with his soaring rhetorical skills.

For us Filipinos elections offer, for now, little such promise. That doesn’t dampen our spirits though. Elections often seem the democratic marijuana that we inhale with abandon. But nothing reveals our national psyche better.

Elections uncover us as a festive people. Colors greet you everywhere you go in the archipelago, and I’m not just talking about campaign posters, streamers or ads. I’m talking about the kind of persons we become when we run for office or express support for our candidates. The basic color of our skin is not brown. It’s celebration. No matter how poor we are, how bad our economy or how terrible the way we are governed, we will always find a reason to celebrate. In our collective mindset elections are one of those reasons. For one, elections offer an open door even to the poor. And shouldn’t that be cause for celebration? I’ve always thought President Quezon shouldn’t have uttered those words about his preference of a Philippines “run like hell by Filipinos” to one “run like heaven” by our favorite foreigners (who else?) because that seemingly has become our lot from Day One Filipinos started running their own country. But ask any Juan or Juana de la Cruz on the streets. And he/she will tell you, “Be that as it may, Sir/Ma’am, we have this one chance to get back at our tormentors, incumbent or future. Elections are our singular weapon to a new tomorrow or to forget today!” And so let the music go blaring, let the politicians go baring their slogans and platforms, let celebrities mix with and entertain the hoi polloi, let candidates believe they are undiscovered singers, dancers, comedians/comediennes. We the people don’t mind. We know the truth anyway. I wonder if our politicians ever realize how all their efforts rarely earn them any serious attention, not to say votes. On the other hand, I think they do and still go on with the show because everybody just wants to celebrate nothing in particular except life that, thank God, is still under some semblance of democracy.

Alas, elections also unwraps the violent streak in us. The Maguindanao Massacre is, to date, its worst and most egregious expression. But before that there were other lesser known or remembered killings and political assassinations. No, it’s not only that some Filipinos and their families believe they have power in their genes. Power is also a tool in keeping a family’s grip on dominance in a turf, its survival or blossoming; violence is a tool of power, yes, violence in arms as well as in words. That explains the mud-slinging and character assassinations that, though also true in other countries, are uniquely Filipino during elections. Verbal and armed violence is a way of advancing the cause of the tribe, defending its turf and honor or eliminating a threat. The sooner we acknowledge the violent streak in us, which finds expression in black propaganda and in actual bloodletting, the better for us in our crusade to find ways of taming it by an informed conscience, more effective laws and internal as well as external restraint. We are no more violent than other races and it’s no use making comparisons. We can only compare ourselves with the best our own history offers. Violence may be a streak in our national character but it doesn’t define us. Wasn’t there an EDSA Revolution of 1986, unique and unrepeatable but also ongoing even as I write, that once served notice to all the world how change can also happen without or with very little violence, with millions of Filipinos at its helm? Wasn’t that our own message in a bottle to ourselves that, yes, we can also go beyond violence to effect change? And, as Catholics (with no prejudice to those who aren’t), don’t we feel justly proud to observe how our faith had something to do with our national tryst with non-violent change?

Alas, elections have also put in display our circuitous relations with discipline. The late president, Ferdinand Marcos, often regarded a dictator, had an uncanny insight into our situation when, in trying to promote his New Society, he coined the motto: “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan (For the country to progress, discipline is necessary)”. I couldn’t agree more. But the use of external force and Martial Law to instill what is necessarily an internal reality only created more evil than the woeful lack of discipline in our character. Martial Law triggered abuse of power from large sections of the military, engineered assassinations and deaths of perceived enemies of the powers-that-be, normalized human rights violations in the name of national security and nearly consigned us to the dust bin of history. Still Filipinos have scarcely developed any kinship with Lady Discipline. This is particularly clear during elections. You see it in the way our politicians and their supporters skirt elections laws prohibiting display of political ads on trees, electric posts and such other non-designated places (in the province it seems to me there are no non-designated places). But how do we solve a problem like undisciplined Filipinos? Maybe a really professional military and more police presence can help. Maybe better law enforcement can help. Maybe the elimination of criminal impunity can help. But nothing will truly help until Filipinos themselves welcome Lady Discipline into their daily lives not as an imposed companion but as necessary partner, friend and relative in the family clan called development.

Alas, elections have uncovered a collective lust in many of us for money or power. We cheer our democratic space, but have we not made elections a way of making as much as of losing money? The billions of pesos now being spent boggle the imagination. TV networks, advertising and printing companies are only some of the gainers. There are even candidates who run with very little chance of winning and suddenly withdraw from the race at the homestretch. They invite talks, such as: “Oh, he’s got his money already. That’s why he’s calling it quits.” On the other hand, I have personally met some politicians who have lost unimagined amounts of property and hard-earned cash to the bottomless pit of election campaign drudgery to which they succumb in order to gain even a modicum of power. I’ve been amazed no end at how the quest for power has often impoverished otherwise well-off citizens and enriched once poor ones. The medieval search for the Holy Grail sometimes even pales in comparison to the Filipino frenzy to obtain power at whatever cost financially or otherwise. Why? Not in order to serve but because for some it’s the surest road to more money and money is the surest road to more power. And our poor? Oh, they know all this by instinct. In my hometown and I suspect in others too, they have a day or two of spending spree because of elections, never mind a rainy day tomorrow.

Indeed, rainy tomorrows will always be our lot unless we use elections to elect the leaders we need, not the leaders who need to be elected.

Is the Filipino self-image in perpetual search of poise?

2010-04-10T07:22:00.003+08:00

Just when we thought Filipino bashing is a thing of the past an Italian-American comedian recently rouses us from stupor by his unkind remarks on Manny Pacquiao and our ‘supposed’ sex tours as the only things going for this country and for the race that produced Rizal. Of course, he apologizes the day after, mainly because of an avalanche of animated (at best) or irate (at worst) responses from Pinoys all over the world. Quite possibly the comedian just wanted a little attention for himself, which he clearly achieved from an unspecified number of members of the aggrieved party (us), but my sense is that he also expresses a view by certain foreigners of Filipinos and the Philippines which they can’t quite put into words in polite conversations. I remember an American friend, one of a few, who made bold to ask me: “Father, why are things in your country such a mess most of the time?” I suddenly had a barrage of images in my head showing why he had such a dim view of us: typhoons, the Ondoy flooding, the El Niño drought, the endless political scams, file videos of Smokey Mountain, high corruption indexes, negative confrontational politics, the Maguindanao massacre, polluted air, seas, rivers and garbage everywhere… I said: “For some of it, nature is to blame. For most of it, we are to blame. But, give us the credit, at least we’re searching for a way out.” Until when the search ends I don’t have any idea. Nor most Pinoys, I gather.

Sadly, the dim view I speak of is what many of us Filipinos ourselves adhere to but would, nonetheless, not tolerate foreigners publicly airing such an outrage. Now, I’m not saying that many Pinoys actually believe that only Manny Pacquiao and our ‘supposed’ sex tours define who we are. I’m saying, however, that many of us have very low image of ourselves such that when sensational champion athletes, like the Pacman, or artists, like Charice, do us proud with their gifts, or when our villains put us to shame with sex tours, high corruption and other abominations, we treat them with habitually screaming headlines to the effect that we drown out attention to other things that express the better side of who we are. And why we hardly see how, by and large, foreigners only take their cue from us, frankly, escapes me.

But do we believe in our better side? Is there such a thing? we ask. To my mind, the better side of who we are is also real and beyond reasonable (or unreasonable) doubt. I know you would say you would grant that we as a people are capable of so many good things despite our so many not-so-good circumstances… Pardon me, but I’m not speaking in the abstract. This is very well manifest in doctors or nurses we meet who prefer to stay in the country despite their low pay and less-than-ideal working conditions; teachers who teach children in far-flung barangays despite the untold sacrifices it takes (I habitually witness three teachers who once a week literally claw their way through slippery rocks and jungle paths to reach children they teach); government workers who stay honest despite the culture of corruption breathing on them; political candidates who advocate non-popular but correct (that is, even from the moral perspective) viewpoints and standpoints despite survey results; voters who reject even the very idea of getting money for their votes despite having to forego sometimes generous amounts of money; journalists who tell the truth behind the facts despite their own biases or political leanings; students who live up to the idealism of their youth despite gaining in age and experiencing a corrupt system; politicians who avoid gutter politics and choose instead to address the real problems of their constituents and of the nation despite losing opportunities to put down rivals; poor farmers and fishermen who work hard, not allowing their family’s future to fall into the hands of fate or unscrupulous politicians, despite the latter’s heavy influence in their own families, neighborhoods and the society at large.

Behind these words are real people. These real people should be our sources of insight into who we really are.

We do not owe our dignity to our athletes, artists, politicians, economists or to our economic-socio-political systems and conditions, however much good or evil we discern in them. Nor do we owe it to foreigners, comedians or non-comedians, journalists or plain ordinary folks with or without objective outlooks. Neither do we owe it to our own race and nation, whatever native praiseworthy or unworthy traits we might have. We owe our dignity only to God; and the dignity he has gifted us with surpasses all our weaknesses. It is a dignity that deserved the life of his very own Son when we lost it and when only God could buy it back through God’s own self-gift. And buy it back he did; in a larger sense (as saints and theologians remind us), God raised our dignity higher that it was. Now we are not just images and likenesses; we are sons and daughters in the Son. In a War Memorial I once visited with friends I saw in one section the words written in bold letters: “Freedom is not free.” The same thing can be said of the restoration and exaltation of our dignity. We were not bought back without a struggle nor simply by the blood of our heroes then and now. We were bought back by the blood of the only Son.

The real question is: How have we Filipinos been treating our real dignity? To put it differently: Do we allow the questions put to us by the priest on Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday to direct our real, daily on-going self-evaluations? Or have they just become components of a tired and empty ritual act? Consider these: “Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?” “Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?” “Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?” “Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?…Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord?…Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?” After rejecting Satan and all evil, we are asked to believe. That is, we must also ‘be’ and ‘live’ who we are.

In other words, how we truly deal with Easter’s questions in our daily grind determines whether or not we will finally achieve poise in our search for the self-image that finally matches our dignity.

Silence, Listening, Action

2010-03-01T07:20:00.000+08:00

I once had a dream. I found myself having a conversation with Donald Trump the multi-billionaire (who someone I know said “is just outrageously wealthy”), the one with the famous quip: “You’re fired!” I heard myself saying, “Mr. Trump, you have so much wealth. Perhaps you could use some of that not only to build casinos, towers and golf courses but also to put up really great shelters for the homeless and big feeding centers for the hungry around the world.” With eyebrows meeting and eyes squinting he said to me, “Excuse me? What did you say, er-Sir?” I repeated my words. But he shouted, “I’m sorry. I really can’t hear you. It’s so noisy where I am.” With a sigh I said, “In that case, Mr. Trump--” He almost screamed, “In that case what?” I said, “In that case, Mr. Trump, you’re fired!” End of the dream.

I couldn’t believe I fired Mr. Trump in a dream (in reality he can be anything but). I rewound that conversation in my mind. I wondered why he said he couldn’t hear me in the noise where he was. Then it occurred to me that our attachment to possessions can dispossess us first of silence and the ability to listen to others and, especially, to God. By possessions I mean not simply hard cash or money in the bank, jewelry, real estate, cars etc. My ideas, my perspectives, my plans, my desires are also my possessions. And they can create as much (if not greater) noise in me as my material possessions can cloud my mind. As loud music shatters a conversation, lack of silence and listening keeps us from the right action.

***

The silence that a disciple of Jesus Christ needs is not only external silence but especially inner silence. Jesus himself models this silence for us. “Though he was in the form of God,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, “he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave coming in human likeness; and found in human appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). Jesus dispossessed himself of his divine glory (inner silence) before he was even born in a manger (external silence). We are told by the gospels that Jesus could spend nights in prayer (cf. Lk 6:13) which required a huge amount of external silence. But that was because, as he says in Jn, “my food is to do the will of him who sent me” (Jn 4:34) which means he had an equally enormous amount of inner silence. From the start he let go of his own plans, perspectives, desires and focused on that of the Father. Because of this inner silence Jesus was able to go through the external humiliation and suffering of the cross. His resurrection is the Father’s proof that both the inner and external silence of Jesus has truly allowed the God of Life to fully reveal himself. This isn’t unlike the inner and external silence of the death of winter giving way to the explosion of life in spring and summer. Indeed April showers bring in May flowers.

***

After Jesus there is Mary. For me our Lady is like the moon to Jesus who is like the sun. The moon’s light reflects that of the sun. So does Mary reflect Jesus. This is so true especially in the matter of Mary’s silence. The silence of Mary is first of all inner because from the start she made a decision: “I am the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38), as she said surrendering herself to the Lord’s plan announced to her by the Archangel Gabriel. Because of that inner silence should we wonder why in the pages of the gospel we seldom hear Mary utter a word? In fact, in the whole New Testament it’s only in the first two chapters of St. Lk and the second chapter of St. Jn that Mary speaks. In Mary inner silence flows right into external silence. Even at the foot of the cross, grieving, Mary stands silent. This reminds me of a woman who said, “I love my mom not only for what she has taught me but especially for the moments in which she simply kept quiet.” Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement has, to my mind, the best way of putting it: “Mary is the silence through which the Word of God speaks”. If the drama of salvation were to be staged Mary would be the backdrop through which the Star breaks into light. By her silence she is able to receive Jesus in her womb as well as in her heart and mind. She pondered the Word in silence, treasuring that Word in her heart. Then she translated what she heard by her obedience. “Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it” (Lk 11:28) is really Jesus’ tribute to Mary. No wonder she is the foremost disciple of the Lord. She did not stop at receiving Jesus the Word. She also enabled the Word to be brought to fulfillment and was first to share it with others; thus, in the language of PCP II, Mary, “the first to be evangelized”, was also “the first evangelizer”.
After Jesus and Mary could there be you and me?

A more meaningful Lent

2010-02-15T07:18:00.000+08:00

I USED to know a priest who weighed more than two hundred pounds. We were seated at table when the conversation turned to the question, “What are you giving up for Lent?” It was his turn to give his answer and he looked at us gravely as though the issue was a matter of life and death. Then he said: “Physical exercise.” I always have this suspicion that Lent is, for most of us Catholics, a break from our excesses during Christmas, New Year, Sto. Niño and other festivities that go before or come after it, principally motivated (or shall I say ‘dampened’) by the cultivated consciousness of the Lord’s suffering and death on the cross we would be meditating on and which, being more or less inspired by tons of guilt-feelings over our immoderations, leads us to embracing “acts of penance”, namely, the Stations of the Cross, fasting and abstinence, somber prayerfulness, charity (if that’s not too distracting of us going through the preceding motions). Of course, there’s basically nothing abnormal about that. It should pain us though that despite all the catechesis we have received and continue to give on the essential link of Lent to the renewal of our baptismal promises, we still think of Lent as a time of ‘giving up’ instead of a ‘taking up’.

It’s not that I disagree with the ‘giving up’ part. It’s just that I think we often forget the ‘taking up’ component that completes it.

We give up some food or drink (by fasting and abstinence) in order to take up our responsibility to the hungry and the disadvantaged among us. There’s a great ascetical value to our saying no to our appetites but that value becomes eternal when it becomes an avenue to love and charity. In this sense fasting and abstinence is not confined to food and beverage but, in fact, can include anything we can convert into something that expresses love for God and neighbor. When I refrain from cursing during traffic jams or from hurling invectives at politicians I intensely disagree with or from abusing my authority as a priest by imposing especially on the poor high fees for my ‘services’ (a word that, in effect, becomes a ‘misnomer’), I am also doing fasting and abstinence as much as when I refrain from food or meat. The point is that when I deny something I really would like for myself, it’s clearly an admirable act. But when I do that so I would be able to give something good as an expression of charity to another person who needs it probably more than I (such as food, clothing, respect for one’s dignity, support etc.), a merely admirable act becomes a Christian act. In the Philippines (particularly in the rural poor where this author ministers) meat is mostly food identified with the rich or middle class, the poor being only able to indulge it in certain times and circumstances, such as during fiestas or major celebrations. I remember a priest explaining how fasting can mean eating only once in a day to a barangay community when a gaunt-looking man remarked, “In that case I’ve been fasting all my life, Padre…” If our fasting does not help raise our hungry and disadvantaged to the level their dignity deserves, then our fasting could become an empty show. In a word, we give up food and drink in order ultimately to take up our responsibility to struggle for real justice as a way to real peace in our archipelago.

There are other things I suggest we give up during Lent as much as afterwards.

We must give up merely relying on human sources of strength in order to connect to our real Source. This is the whole point to the time we must spend in prayer and silence during and beyond Lent. Jesus, the gospels tell us, spent whole “nights” in prayer, being connected with the Father. At most, we spend fifteen to thirty minutes of the same. And we complain whenever there are efforts to prolong the time of prayer and silence in the church or in our gatherings. Isn’t it vulgar that we can spend hours and hours in meetings, deliberations and conversations among ourselves, in discussing programs and policies, in dissecting the news and politicians’ idiosyncrasies, in watching television and a limitless variety of film, and yet have very little time with the One who Matters Most who also makes things really matter—namely, the God of our salvation? If the problems of the country and the Church in the country are so grave—and there’s no disputing that, whatever sides we take in the political or social arena—then why are we not spending as much time getting in touch with the one who has the greatest power to help us?

We must give up cynicism and indifference in order to take up our responsibility to raise our country from the pit of hopelessness. The cynicism and indifference in the masses of Filipinos could be palpable in the general lack of approval we give to our leaders and our lack on faith in our democratic institutions, however deserved. But it doesn’t take genius to realize how after giving in to cynicism and indifference we are still where we are as a nation. Real penance means that we cast away these two incentives to inaction and non-involvement.

We must give up listening mainly to politicians, economists and technocrats in order to take up our responsibility to listen to the real voices of the poor. If you listen to the politicians (the incumbent ones especially) in my province you would think we are on the brink of prosperity. The truth is, we are somewhat in between being on the brink of pity or popular rage because of the crass and unacceptable gap between what we hear (political propaganda) and what we see (perpetually bad roads, unemployment, unproductive lands, unexplained loss of public revenues, unexplained wealth of people in power etc.). The effort to listen to the real voices of the poor has been a struggle even for us in the Church. But we must begin and, where we have begun, we must not close our ears even when the truth is not pleasant to hear. The reason is simple. Only with our poor, in their massive number, can we expect to truly to co-discern where the Spirit is really leading us in our feeble efforts to finally arrive at a place called “Freedom of the Children of God”.

A SECOND LOOK AT THE SECOND PRIESTS’ NATIONAL CONGRESS

2010-02-01T07:13:00.000+08:00

“It was the best retreat I’ve ever made!” (I wonder how old the priest who made this comment was). “I have never made a retreat like this!” So said some priest participants (if I may repeat Cardinal Rosales’ quotes during his homily in the congress’ last Mass) regarding the Second National Congress of the Clergy of the Philippines held last January 25-29, 2010. I felt bad I missed the first national congress because I truly cherish the second. And so do most other participants. I was outside the country then and on a sabbatical cum research mission when the first took place. From majority of the comments it seemed to me that the second one was better received and appreciated than the first. Priests have a penchant to speak their minds freely in small groups and conversations (they’re like other humans after all) and that was where, it appeared to me, the direction their remarks mostly took. Still, some things on the minus side need not be sneezed at.

In sum, the experience, I think, was a mix. To the many it was a spiritual-social event; at the same time, it was also R & R, albeit on the wings of retreat.

I know that needs some explaining. Let me put it this way. I had taught Christology at St. John the Evangelist School of Theology in Palo, Leyte for years and I remember reminding my students how the Council of Chalcedon was pivotal in our greater understanding of who Jesus Christ is. Chalcedonian Christology has made us more formally aware of the double nature present in Jesus Christ—the divine and the human. In a sense, the recent priests’ congress was Chalcedonian. Some aspects of the experience evoked of the divine; quite other aspects reminded us priests how we and all our efforts are just too human. Even in the conduct of the congress it was so clear.

We are who we are because of the Spirit of God. The talks and reflections of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa and Bishop Chito Tagle made priests focus on the Holy Spirit and other aspects of the faith and the priestly ministry often taken for granted. I found it spiritually reinvigorating to once again re-focus on the Divine Person of Power given us in a special way through ordination be recognized again as the power that had conquered the primeval abyss in Genesis’ account of creation and transformed it into a cosmos, the well-ordered universe as we know it. Fr. Cantalamessa underscored what I’ve always felt to be a neglected role of the Spirit both in the universe outside us and the universe within us. He transforms whatever chaos our humanity puts us in and turns it into a cosmos. That for me leads to another insight: Without the Spirit of God our inner and outer worlds return to the primeval abyss. In priests’ personal and ministerial lives that can easily be proved. Any priest could attest to how his mere efforts alone could reap from even the most well-planned and systematized pastoral program a letdown instead of a success. For instance, even the seemingly well-oiled and tested B.E.C. program a priest continually struggles to launch, keep alive or rekindle often becomes an exercise in frustration when it does not give any real justice to the Spirit’s role. The B.E.C. could well be simply a product of hierarchical effort instead of being a fruit of the Spirit that it should be. That, I believe, is why in many places the B.E.C. sputters and pants for air rather than ablaze with spiritual fire. Simply put, our B.E.C. programs should be truly placed under the auspices of the Spirit, the real principle of evangelization. I’m not saying it is not so right now. I’m saying that insofar as the Spirit’s role is concerned there is plenty to be desired in the present reality of BEC-building in our dioceses.

Because the Holy Spirit is ‘Love in Person’, priests who move in his light live and move in love. Of all realities a priest deals with in his life, love is probably the one most taken for granted. It is a sine-qua-non in his vocabulary when preaching, teaching or counseling. But, if I may be allowed to put it differently, love is scarcely a reality positively and expressly acknowledged behaviorally by priests. In the priests’ sub-culture love is better done than talked about especially in ordinary conversations or in the humdrum of everyday life and ministry. Love sounds like a corny joke when uttered by a priest who hardly attends priests’ assemblies and gatherings, constantly whines about anything, habitually gossips and backbites against fellow priests or cares little about his poor parishioners’ inability to cope with his ever increasing fees for services. Another insight that struck some priests from my diocese was the challenge to assess our diocesan structures as to whether or not they incorporate love. In contrast to ‘structures of sin’ should be ‘structured love’ made real in diocesan programs, policies etc. I remember a priest asking rather soulfully if our policy of financial centralization is driven by love or the need to implement a program.

Sublime thoughts during talks and shared reflections; near chaos afterwards or during the in-betweens. One of the ironies of priestly life is how, while we try to proclaim and reflect the Christ-life, we could end up imitating the world and the local culture instead. The just-concluded priests’ congress provided ample samples. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying we priests are incapable of discipline. We are, there’s no doubt about it, thanks to years of seminary formation. But all those years often easily fall by the wayside when, during meals, we try line up for food and beverage or when, during group meetings, there are donations or gifts to share. Then and there we abandon years of seminary discipline behind us and reflect the local culture—that is, engage in organized chaos to be able to get ahead of the rest of the pack. It is so easy to switch from community to crowd in big priests’ gatherings.

Host families: blessings and ‘blessferings’ (if you know what I mean). We are eternally grateful and indebted to our lay host families. We appreciate their sacrifices and often unbounded hospitality and generosity. (For instance, there was this family man who bought the priest he was hosting, together with a troop of other priests lining up, tickets to the ‘Avatar’ at the Mall of Asia’s IMAX theatre. Each ticket amounted to 400 pesos. This author deeply regretted he had already bought a ticket before he met the very generous host.) On the other hand, I can’t help feeling for some of us who had to travel for three hours in the morning daily to reach the venue of the congress because host families live somewhere far in the metropolis. There was a priest who had to share the same bed with a companion priest (he confessed it was the first time he ‘slept with another man’, a pillow in between them like the Great Wall) because the host family’s only boy would not give up his bed for the other priest. (I don’t agree either that the boy should have been deprived of his own bed even for a priest). That’s what I call ‘blessfering’ (from ‘blessing’ and ‘suffering’ as one). The priests took all this good-naturedly (who says priests can’t be gracious guests too?) as extensions of their “seminary immersion days”. But one did wonder loudly, “I thought I was here for a retreat, not immersion”. If I may suggest to the organizers of the congress (this is shared even by some priests of the host dioceses): How about religious houses, rectories, seminaries or hotels owned by sympathetic lay brethren to accommodate participants in future priests’ congresses? That is, aside from the lay host families who reside not too far from the congress venue. Another suggestion: Could the activities in host families’ homes be sliced down a bit so priests don’t have to go through other ‘mini-retreats’ or ‘retreat extensions’ on top of the ‘congress retreat’ itself? To our organizers and hosts: CONGRATS and A MILLION THANKS!

The Priest is Called by God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

2010-01-07T07:13:00.000+08:00

A priest once told his confreres over dinner of a childless middle-aged couple in his parish who hired a barrio lass as housekeeper. She turned out to be an excellent cook too. Unfortunately, she had a habit of listening to the couple’s private conversations. She noticed how the wife calls her husband from time to time. “Darling, your newspaper is here”, “Darling, please check our electric bill”, “Darling, your compadre Peter just texted you” etc. One evening, after the table was set for supper, the wife told her: “Call my husband now. It’s time to eat.” The housekeeper dutifully went upstairs and, within the hearing of the wife, called out to the man of the house: “Darling, dinner is ready!” The wife nearly had a heart attack. The lass mistakenly thought ‘Darling’ was the man’s name.

A person calls another person always for a specific purpose. When God calls each prophet in the Old Testament it is specifically to bear and declare his word to them, whether of joy or of judgment. When Isaiah is called, for instance, it is to bear God’s Word declaring his will to call all people to himself, not simply Israel. The barrio lass in our story could not share in the couple’s exclusive relationship. But the same thing is not true to God’s relationship with Israel. The prophet puts it in terms of calling all peoples to his holy mountain. “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ministering to him…them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer” (Is 56:6-7). This is clearly a judgment passed on some Israelites’ mistaken sense of having an exclusive right to being God’s People. I remember an OFW friend in Rome who shared how his Jewish “employer” often taunted him: “You Christians stole everything you got from us Jews. But make no mistake. Only Jews are the Chosen People.” One could probably also say: “Oh yes. But also make no mistake. Isaiah says God calls all peoples to his holy mountain, not simply Israel.”

On the other hand, the priest of the NT is an agent of this universal call. Israel according to Isaiah’s vision is precisely God’s People so that through Israel all peoples, all nations of the earth, could be called to share in the blessings of God’s People. In fact, the priest of the Catholic Church mainly comes from every nation other than Israel. He is a living testament of this universal call.

But the point is, it’s God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who extends this call to the person he wants to be a priest. As the Catechism for Filipino Catholics says, the call that every Christian hears, especially the priest, to follow Christ, “is a free gift of God, grounded in the Father’s free loving choice, who blesses us in His Son, Christ Jesus, and seals us with the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13-14)”. But how does this apply to the priestly vocation? Pastores Davo Vobis teaches that it is by virtue of consecration in ordination (PDV 12). Through Sacrament of Orders, “the priest is sent forth by the Father, through the mediatorship of Jesus Christ…in order to live and work by the power of the Holy Spirit in the service of the Church.”

This truth has sobering consequences. First, it tells us, yet again, the true origin of the priestly vocation. I had once a conversation with a mother who was heartbroken that her son left the seminary. I had to tell her, “It’s not we, it’s God who calls anyone to the priesthood. No matter how good our intentions are, it’s still God who makes priests.” Second, it also clarifies to everyone, especially the priest, why his vocation is inextricably tied to ‘community’. At times we priests and lay people alike talk of community building like it’s the latest craze in contemporary Church life. It barely scratches the surface. The truth is, since it is the Divine Community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit who calls certain persons to be priests, that call is understandably both to share in the Trinitarian life and to extend that life to others. The fruit of his response is always a community he builds after the image of the Trinity.

Weak and Vulnerable

2009-12-11T18:35:00.000+08:00

Sometimes conversations linger in your mind. One did in mine. I mean the one I had with Lola Nena (not her real name) several Advents ago. She used to take care of a barangay chapel where I would celebrate Mass on schedule. I remember one rather murky Advent Sunday when I casually asked her a standard question after Mass: “Lola, what’s your Christmas going to be like?” I was caught off guard by her honesty. “Maluya, Padre…” ‘Maluya’ is the Waray’s way of saying “Nothing much”. But what struck me is what it literally means. It means ‘weak’, ‘vulnerable’. I don’t recall what I said to her but her word kept haunting me like a ghost past Halloween.

At first I thought of what she meant. That she didn’t have much money to celebrate the holidays by. That living alone and raising a grandchild almost single-handedly wasn’t exactly her idea of a ‘perfect Christmas’. That being virtually forgotten by her relatives who pretended she lived somewhere far (maybe, I thought to myself, for fear of being asked to play Santa Claus to her) and by her own children who themselves were struggling to survive in a place called Manila didn’t sound like ‘silver bells’ to her even when noisy carolers said so. That being made to subsist on what her children sent her—quite infrequently—and what she could eke out of selling ‘bibingka’ (rice cake) and ‘salokara’ (rice pancake) didn’t give much cause for singing ‘hosannas’ in celebration.

But in all this what I found even more baffling was, Lola Nena’s voice didn’t have any trace of complaining. To her everything was just a statement of fact fully noted, assessed and accepted. To her everything was said simply to answer my question.

Nonetheless, the word wouldn’t go away. In fact, it came back to me with the full force of impact not unlike a Manny Pacquiao’s left hook to the jaw (sorry for the analogy to non-boxing fans) when I saw the image of the baby Jesus being carefully placed on the crib during that Christmas Midnight Mass. Exactly. The baby Jesus struck me as ‘maluya’, as weak and vulnerable, just like Christmas as described by Lola Nena, just like Lola Nena herself and, if you wouldn’t mind, just like you and me, just like the rest of humanity.

Perhaps without meaning to, Lola Nena took me to the very heart of Christmas. The only Son of the Almighty God preferred to leave the inestimable power and glory of being at the Father’s side in order to share our weakness and vulnerability as creatures, as human beings, so he could later take us where we could share his life. Long ago it was heard that the God of Abraham was a God who loved Israel as a son. It never occurred to anyone that this God is Love itself. Nor did it dawn on sages and kings that this God didn’t just talk the talk. He also walked the walk. In fact, he walked the infinite distance between heaven and earth, between Godhead and humanity so we would have a glimpse of Love, his Love, that it is as real as the sun, the snow and the rain, as well as the joy and the pain of being human.

There were Christmases I spent in some places of opulent Europe and America as a student priest. But I must confess that I often missed the stark Christmas of Lola Nena. And I wondered why. I stumbled into an answer after one Christmas Midnight Mass in an Italian village as I watched people sang carols, shook hands while exchanging greetings and kisses, and disappeared into the night leaving behind a deafening silence. A thought crossed my mind. How easy it is to hide your weakness and vulnerability behind a multi-layered façade of efficiency, wealth, comfort, sense of power and self-sufficiency. How easy it can be to make the crib just a piece of decoration when you think you need nothing, unmindful of having received everything.

To me Lola Nena’s assessment of her Christmas nearly equaled the experience of being inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and being shown by the tour guide the place where Jesus, according to tradition, was born. I was shocked to find myself in a cave-like compartment so small, dingy, damp and remarkably unimpressive. “Maluya,” as Lola Nena would say.
The bottom line is: Love isn’t love unless it makes us weak and vulnerable, just as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity had become. The shining testament of Love isn’t a Taj Mahal or a Palace in the Sky. It is a baby so weak and vulnerable he knows what you go through when you are hungry, tired or thirsty, when you are full of energy and happy, when you are sad or lonely.

No wonder God loves the weak and vulnerable. He used to be one himself. No wonder we should also love the weak and vulnerable. We love ourselves in them. Nay, we love our God in loving them.

Have yourself a blessed little Christmas!

Armless Christ

2009-10-25T10:37:00.000+08:00

There is an armless Christ on a crucifix hanging on the wall facing my room. It’s been there for a long time now. The sacristan told me it was taken off the Catholic cemetery chapel’s altar after the crucifix fell on the floor, an incident that broke the right arm of the Christ image. Till now nobody can tell me where the missing arm is. And, as I pondered all kinds of stories about the missing parts of the Christ image in other places and times, including the rather expected but now-worn-out exhortatory insight that has been the stuff of homilies, talks, PTA or graduation addresses etc. (“We are the arms, the hands, the feet etc. of Christ”), I wondered if and how I could find ways to have the arm restored and the whole image repaired.

Then it struck me.

The armless Christ speaks of who we are. We are mostly a poverty-stricken people who often feel powerless (yes, armless) not only over the forces of nature exacerbated by global warming, such as typhoons, torrential and flood-causing rains, earthquakes etc. but also even over our seeming inability to find solutions to problems, like bad governance, corruption and a tainted culture which feeds it. For instance, in my home province of Eastern Samar we have been badgering our leaders to have our roads repaired only to find piecemeal responses (only selected stretches are repaired), following standards that even simple common sense sees as way below par (how about new asphalted roads that already have craters or those that feel like you are sailing over a rough sea?). And, lest I be accused of being too parochial, how about a fundamentally sound economy that little translates into good economic conditions for the people? Or how about claims of our having democratic elections that, in reality, are not decided by the ballot and informed choice but by money, celebrity or personalized transactional politics?

The armless Christ speaks of why we are where we are. The missing arm is what we do not extend to one another. It sometimes takes powerful disasters to interrupt our bad habit. But most of the time Christ’s right arm is missing because ours is missed by others who need it. We are busy taking care of our families, our hometowns, our province, our region. We forget about nation and country. We are active parts busy ignoring the whole. It could be argued that we are an archipelago geographically, politically, psychologically and, hence, culturally. Nonetheless, our present conditions only reinforce the truth that we can only sink unless we swim together.

The armless Christ points to where our salvation lies. The right arm is missing. Mostly what is missing in the country—and the world, for that matter—is a ‘strong republic’ sense of what is right in our politics, economics and social relations. We have to begin restoring ourselves by being and doing right. Right is not decided by might, sight or fright. Right is decided by what is already inside our hearts, nay, in a special center called ‘conscience’. It is decided by what brings us closer to the One who speaks in it and towards the ones with whom He asks us to be one in faith, hope and, most of all, in caritas—yes in that love which Vatican II says we are called to be perfect in order to be holy.

Now I see your eyes wide open as if to ask: “You’re saying all this just because you saw an armless Christ?”

Maybe. But here’s one more. Our Christ has no right arm because it is out there busy saving people—not excluding ourselves.

On being Pinoy during the time of calamity

2009-10-13T10:36:00.000+08:00

SOME of our kind say that being Pinoy is almost synonymous with ‘calamitous’. And, like it or not, there are tons of reasons behind their saying so.

First, there is the reality of our predictable, permanent, yearly visitors’ program reserved to the most unwelcome tourists, namely, TYPHOONS and their notorious relatives, such as flood-causing rains, life-and-property-devastating winds, diseases, family displacements, unemployment, rise of criminality. I might have missed mentioning their other relatives but I swear Pinoys never miss them one bit. As far as most of us are concerned the only other thing worse than being in the path of typhoons is being unable to relocate the country to, say, somewhere below Hawaii.

Then there is also our calamitous politics that largely runs on our patronage and transactional culture for fuel. For the educated Pinoy this one is among the most frustrating occupants of our National Hall of Shame because it keeps on leaving the hall in order to incessantly ravage and possess our people who transfer its bad spirit on to our politicians. The culprit, we all realize, is less our poverty than our stubborn resistance to change a deeply-ingrained quid-pro-quo cultural mindset. You want my vote? not a few voters seem to say. Then give me my advance share of your lucrative access to our money once in power. Even well-meaning politicians are aghast over this hushed-over disease but eventually succumb to contagion. Money is expected to abound on the way to next year’s elections, our poor could behave like ‘instant millionaires’ destined to be ‘instantly impoverished’ in subsequent days. Could massive, no-nonsense voter education programs such as those being contemplated by many sectors, including the Church, help? Something in me aches to think so. But reality check might dampen our enthusiasm. For a good start, we should collectively pray for a miracle to cure the moral cancer inside our culture that basically wrecks havoc on our spirits.

We should not by-pass our chronically challenged (read: lack of a) sense of discipline. The massive environmental pollution in our urban centers and our ubiquitous traffic mess (“Why are Filipinos unable to obey traffic rules?” many foreign visitors ask in bewilderment) are classic cases in point. I wouldn’t be surprised if, upon honestly assessing the latest flood disaster in various places in Metro Manila, we will simply acknowledge a simple truth: we are mostly the cause of the disastrous effects we see around us. We do not dispose of our garbage properly. We hardly follow building rules for our houses and establishments. We do not observe our own traffic rules. Now we literally reap the whirlwind.

No, I don’t believe in mere self-flagellation. I believe in acknowledging the truth, which is why we need to talk turkey about ourselves, as, I believe, I had tried to above. But there is also so much that is good in being Pinoy. We need not mention how but, especially during the time of calamity, we also show our better selves.

We keep on rediscovering we can be heroes by our simple ‘bayanihan’ spirit, ‘bayani’ meaning hero. Neighbors rescuing, feeding and sheltering neighbors are a staple story in our every disaster experience, not excluding that from ‘Ondoy’. When my sister’s family residing at De Castro, Pasig City, ran out of food as they were battling more than ten-feet flood, their neighbors came to offer a share of the little food they had. Scenes like that were multiplied in many other neighborhoods.

We also happily realize the power of praying together, the living praying together, the living asking the prayer of saints or simply invoking the all-powerful name of ‘Jesus’ to spare fellow Pinoys and the whole country from further suffering born of the much-hyped Super-Typhoon ‘Pepeng’. When my sister panicked on seeing flood waters reaching their house’s second flood (thank God, they have a second floor), with the rains continually pouring, I counseled her to keep calm and to pray with me. After fifteen minutes, she texted back and informed me that just as she finished the rosary, the rains stopped. “Please offer our dawn rosaries specifically for the super typhoon to spare our people in Luzon,” I beseeched some parishioners after morning Mass. I saw most nodding in deep sympathy. Wonder of wonders, ‘Pepeng’ veered away from its feared route, even if Northern Luzon was eventually hard hit. The point is that Pinoys rediscovered the power of praying together, something that even a political phenomenon like Edsa 1 showed them.

Most of all, people like us in Samar Island who think we know most what typhoon victims go through, now could offer our most profound sympathy, for a change. We have been typhoon victims ourselves since time immemorial. As my small barangay parish prepared to send the little aid we can afford to our brothers and sisters in Metro Manila, I remembered, as a child, horrible typhoons that twisted and felled down our coconuts, trees, crops and houses. Yet we simply picked up the pieces the next day. There was very little evidence of government-sponsored rescue operations. And I don’t remember anyone complaining about it. We simply relied on family, neighborhood and community. Recently a true-blooded Eastern Samarnon whose name I wouldn’t wish to mention here in print made a remark: “I used to have a classmate in Manila who kept on asking me a question I often took for an insult: ‘Ano ba ang bagyo?’ (‘What is a typhoon?’). I’m sorry to know his area was recently flooded. But, at least, I see one positive spot here. I don’t need to answer his question anymore.”

The Cross We Often Would Rather Avoid

2009-09-13T10:31:00.000+08:00

For me September is not only the month when summer is practically gone. It’s also the month when the Feasts of the Exaltation of the Cross and of Our Lady of Sorrows come knocking on our fun-engrossed vacations with somber reminders. One, it’s not pleasure that is the center of our universe as Christians; two, it’s the cross of Jesus Christ. Three, pleasure doesn’t necessarily spell joy; four, nor does the cross necessarily exclude it. In fact, the Christian faith makes us aware of how the cross brought us the joy of salvation. A few summers ago I was a subway- and bus-rider in NYC not only because the parish I was assigned to had no extra car for a guest priest like me but also because I found public transportation the easiest way to get around the Big Apple. It could be, pardon the pun, a cross too. And here’s the irony: It’s in the subway trains and the buses of NYC that I’ve realized with the force of visual clarity how far the cross has come. From being a symbol of crime and an object of shame in the time of Jesus when Rome crucified criminals and rebels the cross has become an object of fashion I often see worn on necks, ears, wrists etc. of other subway- and bus-riders. I don’t know, though, how far our understanding of it has gone.

Our world has always been opposed to what the cross stands for. That’s a given that stares us full in the face. We live in a world that worships convenience, comfort and quick satisfaction of wants, more than of needs. If science and technology could, we’d all be freed from any pain or suffering. But I always remember how sobering sounded the words of an old song (that I rarely hear these days): “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden along with the sunshine. There’s got to be a little rain sometimes.” It reminds us of the voice of God through the prophets and, most of all, through his Son. My former pastor at St. Barnabas Church, Msgr. Francis Xavier Toner, who himself went through a lot of pain (he had a type of aneurysm) before going ‘home’ to the Lord, was known for a signature saying when referring to life itself and particularly to Christian life: “It’s not easy!” For him the cross isn’t simply the center of worship; it’s the very stuff of life that we must embrace. But its meaning lies in Christ Crucified.

This is exactly what our human nature rebels against. We want everything easy: from the way we’re served food (“fast food”) to the way we’ll receive salvation (“instant, struggle-free salvation”). This last has particularly made some Christian evangelizers make compromises. They tell you straight on television, “Just believe in Jesus Christ and confess in your heart that he is your personal Lord and Savior and, presto, you’re saved!” I find this personally confounding because it contains a truth that is so constantly hammered on and made to appear it’s the only truth about the Christian life. But to that I often would want to say, “Is that right? And what about the hard saying of Jesus that if anyone wants to follow him, he must deny his very self, take up his cross and come and follow him, that’s the staple of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke?” The kind of Christianity we often want is founded on what the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen called “the cross-less Christ” because we often see in life only the “Christ-less cross”. But the real Christ is the Crucified One; the only glorified cross has Christ on it.

Israel, too, thought life would be easy after Egypt. But when the Israelites were tested in the desert by hunger, thirst and the harshness of the terms of the covenant—we were never alone in struggling with the Ten Commandments, for example—they started longing for the fleshpots of Egypt. Better to be slaves wallowing in satisfaction, they collectively thought, than liberated but agonizing in the pains of living up to the expectations of Yahweh. The deadly saraph serpents reminded them of the terrible consequences of separating from God. Which is what sin is all about; it’s not God who punishes but the consequences of our rebellion because they spell what separation from Life itself is. But it was a bronze serpent that saved the afflicted Israelites when, as instructed by Moses, they looked up to it from their agony (Numb 21:8-9). Jesus himself relates it to his cross, its most profound meaning. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14). In the desert God provided Israel a remedy from the very source of its affliction. That points to the irony of the cross too: the symbol of death and shame became transformed into our source of life and salvation.

A priest that I know once surprised his congregation one morning of Sept. the 15th. While giving his homily he asked them to stand to commemorate a most poignant moment in the drama of salvation: Mary “standing by” at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25). To stand by is to be in a state of readiness. Mary was always in a state of readiness for her Son but, especially like him, for the Father’s will. The sequence after the first reading on the Feast of our Lady of Sorrows says it poetically: “At the cross her station keeping stood his mournful Mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last…”

That tells us the place where we, too, should be.

Cry not for the Icon

2009-08-02T10:29:00.000+08:00

ERICc Hoffer once wrote: “How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.”

I submit that the statement is mostly true. On the other hand, President Cory Aquino was, doubtless, one such person. News of her parting certainly spoiled many Filipinos’ breakfast last August 1, 2009 and has left such a void not only in her family but also in her country, one that even fewer will ever consider attempting to fill. It could even be asked if there would be, among our present crop of leaders, those who would measure up to her standards of public service. Now that she has left this side of life people have, virtually in a wink of an eye, realized what precious human jewel the country, nay the world, has lost. She has been variously called “an icon of democracy”, “the Joan of Arc of the Philippines”, “Mother of Philippine Freedom”, “a leader who combined power and virtue” and many others.

I know that much has already been said and written, and will still be said and written, of her and her significance to the Philippines and to democracy the world over. Death somehow makes appreciators of the dead those they leave behind. Not that it is a sign of ingratitude, rather only of the natural oversight we often make of fellow humans who still breathe the same stale air of earthly reality as we do.
Among the many voices that we now hear or read on how we are to see President Cory Aquino’s meaning and significance to us Christian Filipinos who deeply care about their country, let me add mine.

I agree that she was an icon of democracy. But she was also more. To me she was a living sign of the challenge of Christian discipleship in the contemporary effort to positively transform society according to gospel values. Even when her adherence to Catholic teaching on certain policies of her government could be doubted, one would be hard put to question her sincere desire to serve the poor and make the government institutions strong and independent enough to be truly democratic. Praying presidents we have had many. But praying presidents who validated their prayerfulness with morally unquestioned acts of governance we are not sure to count with our fingers. Still, how blessed we are that there was one President Corazon Aquino. In a word, for contemporary believers she could be an embodiment or, at least, a reminder of the Vatican II vision of the Catholic lay faithful, not one who separates faith and (secular) life, but rather brings that faith right into her/his acts of social engagement.

That she was a woman and a wife with an elite family background had been made much of by friend and foe alike as among her minuses. But she transformed them into pluses because, precisely as a woman president and a former wife of a senator, she courageously stood up to serious coup attempts and the difficulties of rebuilding democratic institutions to meet the nation’s so many serious problems and needs. Even as she was being faulted for her inability to turn her back on her own elite background as the reason behind the lack of true land reform during her watch and beyond, yet she disarmed critics by her simplicity and numerous quiet efforts to help countless poor people through micro-financing and other poverty-alleviation efforts through non-government organizations. She remained true to her declaration that her stepping down from the presidency would not mean ceasing to be involved in safeguarding the welfare of her country. She left government but she did not stop being a leader in espousing causes that, in her view, uphold that welfare.

In a political culture that feeds on greed and ambition for power she dared to say “Maraming salamat at paalam (Thank you so much and goodbye)” to the highest office of the archipelago with no visible hesitation. That she did so even when her own critics admitted that she could argue against being covered by the constitution’s term limit of six years for the presidency precisely because her government pre-dated the very constitution it helped establish spoke volumes of her strength of character and her admirable detachment from the intoxication of power. In President Cory Aquino we realize that a person does not have to be materially poor to be considered, to use biblical language, among the “anawim” or the ‘humble poor of Yahweh’. Often looked down upon, perhaps even despised, by her harshest critics for being a woman and a simple wife, she, like Mary, was a visible testimony to the Magnificat truth, to wit: “[The Lord] has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:51-52).

Above all, her prayerfulness, compassion especially in regard to the poor, sincerity of intention to be of service to what is best for the country even if it meant standing against former allies and friends to uphold moral governance evince a noble Christian heart. President Cory Aquino now completely has what Michelangelo once called the “two wings that bear the good person to heaven”, namely “love and death”. Of her it is worth listening to St. Cyprian: “Our brethren who have been freed from the world by the summons of the Lord should not be mourned, since they are not lost but sent before.”

No, don’t cry for the icon. She is not asleep. Rather, she has finally awakened to never-ending day. Cry for her nation instead—to the God in whom she lives, that the light she left behind may not cease shining in this country’s darkest places.

Greed and Ambition

2009-07-01T21:29:00.000+08:00

“Power corrupts,” so says Lord Acton, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I disagree. It is not power that corrupts. We corrupt power by our greed and ambition. We corrupt power by subjecting it to the unrelenting drive towards self-preservation, such that, rather than serve the common good, power is used so as not to lose the inherent advantages it brings. That’s how Cha-Cha proponents and its main beneficiary look to many Filipinos and, no matter their efforts to assuage the massive mistrust Cha-Cha has generated, it helps very little that the inexplicable rush taken in the adoption of its legal measure was done under cover of “night” a la Judas when, also at “night” according to the Scriptures, he inflicted his terrible treachery on Jesus.

Haste indeed can make waste of truth and our most cherished democratic principles of participation and freedom. But people of faith that we are, looking into what propels the Cha-Cha train is in order not only because we need to confront the real specter behind its mask but also because they represent twin root-causes of our personal and social ills in this beautiful land.

Once I was watching a television footage of a vast crowd in a totally unrelated rally when I spotted a poster that seemed to highlight a message for Everyman but especially for those who have almost ninety percent of the wealth and power all over our Un-Strong Republic: “The world has enough goods to serve our needs but not our greed.” Greed? Yes, the inordinate desire for and accumulation of the world’s goods meant for everyone. And why is it at the root of our social malaise?

Nothing explains better the unacceptable gap between the wealthy among us who are very few and the very poor who are so many. How else do you explain that these same wealthy families also hold, in the main, political power all over our benighted republic and are unable to let go of it—and there is just a dizzying number of instances to prove it—unless to another family member, blood or political. Nothing explains better than greed the huge sums of public money being lost to graft and corruption committed mostly by the already wealthy and powerful. If they already have so much, what, we must ask, motivates them to get what in justice already belongs to the greater majority of our people who still have to contend with each other for a piece of the crumbs that fall from their tables?

Greed is the black hole inside our souls when God does not find a home in them. It gobbles or tries to gobble up everything and scarcely achieves satisfaction. When power and wealth become substitutes for God, the black hole syndrome ensues. After all, one of the spiritual masters of all time, St. Augustine, in his oft-quoted prayer, constantly counsels us that our hearts will be “restless” unless they rest “in Thee (God)”.

All this sounds perfectly logical, you say, but what about ambition? What’s wrong with being ambitious? Isn’t it what thrusts humans to excellence? I agree, there is no discounting that ambition is behind human beings who dream big and eventually achieve their deepest potentials. But ambition is like an inner weapon that a person can use for good and for ill. Ambition can make a leader do all he can to obtain for his dirt poor barangay the best road system for their crops and services. Ambition can push a poor lad to go through years of struggle and difficult sacrifices to finish a college education and end up a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer or what have you.

But ambition can also be responsible for secret political machinations and conspiracies to catapult or extend some people’s hold on power. Ambition can also blind the wealthy and powerful to the primary purpose of political and economic power that transcends narrow selfish or family interests, such as service to the needs of people and society such that they collectively become an anticipation of God’s kingdom. Ambition can transmogrify an otherwise decent human being from someone building a good legacy to the next generations to someone bent on making himself/herself the perpetual legacy even to unwilling present and future generations.

A story is told of an overly greedy and ambitious man who died. After passing through St. Peter’s strict preliminaries at the Pearly Gates, the Almighty Himself summoned him to his presence and assigned him a place at the you-know-where. St. Peter noticed something strange and he asked God about it. “Heavenly Father,” he paused, “may I ask why you did not rise from the heavenly throne, as you usually do, when you met Mr. A?” At this God sighed and said, “Peter, why would I give that poor man an opportunity to grab my throne?”

In fact, we know that God’s throne deep in our hearts is what greed and ambition can and do grab away. No wonder the Philippines and the world are what they are today.

Shooting the rapids to "Bagong Baryo"

2009-06-03T11:52:00.000+08:00

RECENTLY I was installed new pastor of the Parish of the Assumption of Our Lady in Bgy Lalawigan, one of two barangay parishes born of the Borongan Cathedral Parish. Even days before I left my former parish a kindly elderly man paid me a visit twice to make sure I was informed about the agreed upon date of his barangay’s yearly celebration of San Isidro Labrador’s feast scheduled on the third week of May. I simply called him ‘Mano Mayong’. I asked what his barangay’s name was and how far it was from the seat of the parish.

“Bagong Baryo,” he said, pausing. “Modesty aside, Padre, it’s a barangay I founded in the seventies and the farthest in the parish. But don’t you worry, Padre. You’ll get there in a little more than two hours.”

I asked the former pastor what he thought and he said: “No. Three is more like it. Enjoy the ride.”

Soon everything about the place intrigued me and I asked some parishioners what I needed to know as a first-time visitor. What I heard both challenged and scared me.

It was almost a quarter past nine in the morning of May 20, 2009 when we left Bgy Camada by motorized banca. May 21st was Bagong Baryo’s fiesta and I had to spend the night there for the eve’s liturgy. Suribao River beaconed like the Amazon. I may be exaggerating but I think it is our Amazon. I felt fully oriented about what lay ahead. But the calm of the waters lulled me. When the jolt came I was in a stupor.

“First station,” said one of my companions, a teacher on a break, laughing. What that meant became clear to me when the men, except the boatmen and myself, disembarked and hit the river bank to walk to the calmer spot where we would pick them up. We who stayed on the motorized banca braced ourselves up for the rapids. I watched the river running wildly, almost violently, against us. I realized we were moving squarely upstream. I breathed in and forgot about breathing out. The boatmen steered the banca through rampaging waters. Silently I uttered a prayer asking the Lord to get us safely through. To my credit I also asked San Isidro, Bagong Baryo’s patron saint, to do his share in praying for our safety. My relief was palpable when we made it. I said thanks to the Lord and to the farmer saint.

But the first station was soon followed by a second and a third, a fourth and a fifth until we reached the spot called ‘Hilangris’.

“This is where people shriek and cry out when they go through the rapids,” Enyeng, our guitarist, told me. “That explains the name.” In fact, to me the name ‘Hilangris’ sounded like ‘hinagpis’ (Tagalog for ‘groaning’). Again the men disembarked to lighten up the boat’s weight against a most unusual sight I’ve ever seen—the rampaging waters looked to me like giant boiling bubbles over which we were soon helplessly tossed about but bravely carried forward by the now feverish sound of the boat’s motor. Twice in our whole trip the motor’s blade hit a rock and twice we had to stop to replace it.

Then, to my amazement, I was enjoying the intervals in between the rapids. The river was like a witch. It could be calm and enticing when it wasn’t on a rage. The lush greenery of the rainforest on the way to Bagong Baryo and the sheer diversity of flora mesmerized me. From time to time I could see water falls by the river banks. I thanked God for Eastern Samar’s underdevelopment. Otherwise we would have lost these treasures by now. But in no way does this mean we have no predators. In fact, on the way to Bagong Baryo we passed by at least three groups of men loading countless sacks of the Suribao River’s gravel and sand into big motorized boats. Unscrupulous construction businessmen, I said to myself, with some local officials probably in cahoots. They were the river’s human rapids.

Before I was lost in my thoughts again I found us finally stopping by a small river port. ‘Bagong Baryo’ looked to me like an old village out of nowhere. The huts and concrete stairs leading upward to its inner recesses greeted us like ghosts of a bygone era. Unwashed faces of children and adults registered questions more than ‘welcome’ as they met our eyes. Poverty was written all over the place. Virtually only two houses had a functional toilet, including the hut where my group and I were “assigned” to stay. You would think they haven’t been touched by civilization yet. But as I cocked my ears to what the young men were singing, I could make out some of the latest pop and local rap music.

But the thought that possessed me was that I have finally arrived at ‘Bagong Baryo’. I saw myself in the shoes of a missionary some centuries ago. In fact, my homily was already playing in my head even before I celebrated the Eucharist which, I was told and understandably, is a rarity. I looked at my timepiece. It was 12:15 PM.

“Bagong Baryo,” I spoke later, my voice booming through a decrepit speaker, “thank you so much for your welcome. My name is Fr. Euly B. Belizar. I’m your new Cura. But let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about you and your barangay. ‘Bagong Baryo’ (New Village), to me, is a symbol of the ‘New Jerusalem’ which is also a symbol of heaven, God’s kingdom. Do you know why? Because I realize that coming here is so much like going to heaven. Let me explain. Coming here means going against the river’s currents and the rapids. And that is exactly what going to heaven also entails. It means many times going against the currents of the world’s and the Filipino cultures. On the one hand, we have a culture that glorifies money, pleasure, violence, power and everything material obtained by any means. On the other hand, we have a faith that urges us to turn away from selfishness and pride and to take up the often heavy cross of our Christian identity and its responsibility to proclaim the gospel in word and action. If we want to reach our real home, just like when you want to reach your home, we must be ready to shoot and go against the rapids…”

I was met by Mano Mayong and his wife after Mass. “Padre,” they told me, “we were almost outvoted by those of us who didn’t want to invite the priest and have the Mass and baptisms. But we refused to give in. We will never allow, as long as we are alive, a fiesta without the Lord’s Word being preached and the Lord’s Body being given.”

Only then did I realize how every rapid was worth shooting after all.

“Reshuffling”

2009-05-14T09:03:00.000+08:00

THAT is the local lingo among some of us diocesan priests when we talk of changes, which often mean transfers, in our (parish or other) assignments. This is where we are now in my home diocese. I was probably absent during the priest’s assembly in which the word was adopted and soon gained fame or notoriety among priests. Webster explains the word ‘reshuffling’ in terms of ‘redistribution’ or ‘restructuring’ of various elements within a system, as when a prime minister ‘reshuffles’ his cabinet. I ask myself if our almost natural penchant for the word could indicate our having allowed some invasion by the political into the realm of the sacred. But then again I realize how naïve I could be for asking the question in the first place.

But what does ‘reshuffling’ mean in concrete? I look at the books, sheets of paper, letters, notes, envelopes, cards, cds, DVDs and just plain trash all about my room that I am trying to sort out so I could pack up those I will be bringing home or to my next assignment. It is then that I receive an urgent message about an article I need to submit pronto, to which I could only utter, “Oh, Mother most compassionate…” Still, I leave the chaos in my room aside and begin to type away my grief and joy at the thought of leaving my present assignment and of arriving at a new one.

In the first place, ‘reshuffling’ means putting on a smile to hide a disappointment over a dreaded, unexpected and difficult (which explains the first two adjectives) assignment. It means, sometimes, feigning ignorance of how some parishioners are relieved you will be ministering somewhere else (any pastor knows this part only too well). But it also means genuinely trying to find ways to console parishioners who think, wrongly of course, that you need to be rewarded for your hard work through an extension of your term. “Do we need to write the bishop a petition?” a lay leader asked me. “Please don’t do that,” I answered, embarrassed. But, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell him, “Please, if you think I have to be rewarded for my hard work (a word which could be debatable in the parish context, not to say in my own conscience), how could a reward take the form of an extension of hard work?”

It is then that I have recourse to my next act. I tell people—and frankly I have become convinced how Spirit-inspired the idea is—that the diocese needs to go through the ‘reshuffling’ of its clergy to remind us collectively of three things.

One, priests cannot become good shepherds if they do not have the Good Shepherd’s mindset. And just what is that, you may ask. I find the Good Shepherd’s words instructive: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I have also to lead them and they shall hear my voice” (Jn 10:16). The priest is not in a position to object. He is transferred because, in doing so, he manifests the Lord’s concern for the flock other than the ones he is ministering. ‘Reshuffling’ is our concrete statement of the universality of the call of salvation.

Two, God’s love is everlasting. What has this truth got to do with priests’ transfers? It is stark to me. When a pastor leaves, another takes his place. In a word, pastors are human instruments that come and go but the One who uses them to express his love for his people always walks with them. I remember a groom who requested a singer friend to sing for him to his bride the words of a song that say: “Tomorrow morning when you wake up and the sun does not appear, I will be there”. Being there for those one loves is a quality only God can really do (I’ll take objections to this but won’t back down). And, truly, he is always there for his people in particular through his priests and pastors. Isn’t this what exactly happens when, as one pastor leaves, another pastor takes his place to continue ministering to God’s people? In fact, ‘reshuffling’ is a living testament to the words of Jesus, “Behold, I am with you always until the end of time” (Mt 28:20). Priests and pastors who willingly, freely and lovingly submit to this sacrifice become instruments to the Lord’s faithfulness to this promise.

Three, everything is temporary and passing in our pilgrimage on earth. I remember being with a group of priests and we were on our way to the rice terraces of Banaue when we stopped by a church under the care of a Belgian missionary priest. He asked us where we were going. The most elderly priest among us almost immediately answered, “Father, we are just passing through.” I was kind of expecting the missionary priest to retort, “So am I.” He simply nodded with a knowing smile. That, for me, is what best describes not only the human condition but also the human aspect of all ministries, including that of ministerial priests. I find the grief of some parishioners, not excluding the priests themselves, over priests’ transfers not unlike the grief of the bereaved. In fact, a few days ago I saw some parishioners behave like their pastor who is being transferred to another parish has just died. There is an analogy of dying in priests’ ‘reshuffling’. But that is also where its positive note lies. I believe both priests and parishioners could take tremendous comfort from the words of the Lord himself: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God and have faith in me. In my Father’s house there are many mansions. Otherwise how could have I told you that I was preparing a place for you? I am indeed going to prepare a place for you and then I shall come back to take you with me that where I am you also may be” (Jn 14:1-4).

I must confess that I’m often tempted to tell the parishioners of my next parish that we should work together so as to make the rectory I’ll be residing in become a good ‘anticipation’ of those beautiful ‘mansions’ the Lord talks about. But then they might petition the bishop to bring their former pastor back. So, up until this writing, I have prudently chosen to keep my lips safely shut.
Those who grieve over priests’ ‘reshuffling’ say: “The trouble with hello is goodbye”. But, with those who choose the upside of ‘reshuffling’, I answer back: “The good thing with goodbye is hello.”

“Running the race…fixing our eyes on Jesus”: Reflections on Heb 12:1-2

2009-04-13T21:03:00.001+08:00

“WHAT a cloud of innumerable witnesses surround us! So let us be rid of every encumbrance and especially of sin, to persevere in running the race marked out before us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the founder of our faith and who will bring it to completion. For the sake of the joy reserved for him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and then sat at the right hand of God” [From the Christian Community Bible] (Heb 12:1-2).

The first thing that is rather surprising about the Letter to the Hebrews is that it is not really a letter. Most scholars would say today that it is actually a written and extended homily. Unlike the letters of St. Paul and other NT letters, Hebrews makes no preliminary greeting and no mention of any particular addressee(s), be it specific persons or churches. Besides, it appears that the last part, Heb 13:22-25, was just added by another author to give the document the semblance of a letter. If I were to write my Sunday homily and towards the end added these words: “Before I park my pen, I just would like to extend to Rosita, Jose and all the kids my best regards. God bless you all. Please take good care because I care. Sincerely yours, Fr. Euly”, I would have done something that would not be too unlike the Letter to the Hebrews. Another surprising thing about this document is that, contrary to a long-held belief, it was not written by St. Paul since its style and form are markedly different from his other letters that we are familiar with. The third surprising thing is that its addressees were not necessarily simply the Hebrews but all Christians, especially those on the verge of apostasy, although there is basis to believe that originally it may have had in mind Christians of Jewish ancestry.

What is not surprising about this document is its popularity, especially among Christians who are trying to re-discover, and more deeply, who Jesus Christ is, who they are and what the journey or pilgrimage of faith in life to the heavenly Jerusalem is all about.

Let me reflect on several themes from the text that, to my mind, open to us what Hebrews teaches us on who we are, namely, as disciples of Jesus Christ.

1. “Cloud of Innumerable Witnesses”: Discipleship as a Team Effort

Hebrews speaks of OT heroes of faith in chapter 12. It makes mention of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and many others, presenting them as models of how to believe. Rather than simply focusing on the exemplary character of their lives of faith, it is also clear that this cloud of innumerable witnesses is bonded by faith in the reality we call God’s People and, precisely because of faith, links them with those witnesses of faith who are followers of Jesus Christ. Faith makes a community out of believers. In other words, these witnesses and heroes of faith are, in relation to us, fellow members of the People of God, both in the OT and now the NT. We do not stand on different grounds. We belong to the same family God calls his own. This sense of family and community among believers applies even to the seemingly exclusive unit in the Church called ‘presbyters’. For us priests in the Philippines this is especially made significant by the teaching of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, namely: “The priests of the New Testament are by their vocation to ordination set apart in some way in the midst of the People of God…(PO 3). Priests and their ministry cannot, therefore, be understood apart from this community setting. The ordained priest does not stand outside the Christian community. He remains in the community. He is ordained for the community” (PCP II, 510). Community living is expressed in communal or team ministry. It is not only individuals but also communities or teams that live as Christian disciples serving other Christian disciples, the royal priests, as ministerial priests. Team ministries among priests are not only ideal; they are an expression of discipleship.

2. “Ridding Ourselves of Every Encumbrance and Sin”: Discipleship as Continuing Conversion.

The first thing that Jesus does in his public ministry is to proclaim: “This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Good News” (Mk 1:15). Metanoia, the Greek for repentance, is a military word that means a one-hundred eighty degrees about-face from a life of rebellion to a life of obedience towards God. As an ROTC cadet I remember marching ahead of my battalion during a routine drill. We were on a grassy field and were not alone. Carabaos were all over the place, some wallowing in quagmire. We were marching directly into one, my eyes and emotions wide open with fearful anticipation. As I was about to put one step onto a mud hole, our commanding officer barked a command: “Ready, halt. One. Two. About face!” Sin is like a mud hole into which we make wrong decisions to step and then regret later what we did. That opens us to conversion. Hebrews, I think, sounds a similar reminder when it urges us disciples to rid ourselves of “every encumbrance” that is what sin is essentially, for sin hinders us, in the language of Hebrews, from “moving forward to our heavenly goal”.

In a word, we are to make an about face constantly from our wounded nature’s inclination towards rebellion and sin. Unless we make an about-face from sin discipleship would be a continuing non-reality, a sham. There are two movements in conversion: first, the U-TURN from sin; and the second, facing up to Jesus the Master. PCP II teaches us: “The spiritual life of the priest, like that of all Christians, begins with an encounter with Christ, with faith and conversion. This is the beginning of all spirituality and leads to union with God in grace, a state of being in love with God” (PCP II, 533). Continuing conversion is a continuing challenge to us priests because we are its mouthpiece. But as far as conversion is concerned, I’m reminded of the late President Ronald Reagan who said to the USSR when it claimed it was for disarmament: “We want deeds, not words.”

3. “Persevering in the Race”: Discipleship as Commitment

A friend told me of their former parish priest who must have been a hundred years old. He was celebrating his seventy-fifth ordination anniversary. As he thanked God and all the people who had helped him in one way or another, he also made a heartfelt appeal. “Please,” he said, “pray for my perseverance!” My friend and the listeners were smiling and he told me he mused, “You’re seventy-five years a priest and you’re asking us to pray for your perseverance? At one hundred years of age, what do you need perseverance for?” The truth is we need the grace of perseverance till the day we die. Or the old priest could be compared to the swimmer who crossed the body of water between Tacloban City and Basey, Samar. He was about five meters to the Basey shore when he felt the undercurrents getting stronger. So he did what he thought was right. He swam right back to Tacloban. The point is, he was almost at his goal. But he didn’t persevere. He lost the grace of commitment. That would be a tragic thing to say of any Christian disciple whoever he/she is.

There are two important moments of commitment for a Christian disciple: one, an unswerving loyalty to Jesus Christ as the Supreme Value and Treasure of life itself; and, two, a decision to bring to the future our choice for Jesus Christ and the values of the kingdom. One of my professors in College English literature was named “Ivy”. She had a suitor who sent her a card which I happened to read when it fell from her table. The card spelled her name: “I-V(alue)-Y(ou)”. I think I learned from him one aspect of discipleship which is also true to loving. It is to hold Jesus the Master as our foremost treasure and value above all others. If I truly see Jesus Christ this way in my life as a Christian and as a priest, commitment would be my natural response. Secondly, commitment reminds me of a permanent deacon I’ve met years ago, who married to someone who contracted cancer. When she was extremely ill, it was he who would bathe her, carrying her in his arms almost daily and caring for her. When friends asked him how he got the strength to do what he was doing, he said: “Well, I’m only being true to my word when I married her!” That deacon taught me how commitment made bringing the choices or decisions I made in the past (Baptismal, ordination, marriage vows, for instance) into both my present and future circumstances as well.

4. “Fixing our Eyes on Jesus”: Discipleship as Christ-Centered Living

I once had a conversation with a mother. Our topic was the hard times that we call ‘global economic crisis’. I asked her how she and her family were coping. She mentioned her fears that her husband may lose his job and her children may stop going to school. She has two children in college and that made her extremely worried about their future. We had other topics but I noticed that whatever things we talked about, she would always relate them to her husband and her children. Then it hit me. Her family is her center. When we speak of ‘fixing our eyes on Jesus’ and on Christ-centered living, I propose that we learn from her by bringing all the concerns, issues, nooks and crannies of our life, personal, social, political etc. into the same pattern: considering them always in terms of our relationship with Jesus Christ our Master and our discipleship. The document of the Hebrews unfolds to us three precious reasons why our life must be centered on Jesus Christ. One, Jesus Christ is the Word of God who reveals most perfectly the innermost being of God himself, deserving better attention than the Word of God as spoken through angels, Moses or the prophets (Heb 1:1-4:13). Two, Jesus Christ is the eternal High Priest whose one sacrifice has done away with sin once and for all, bringing about a new covenant between God and humanity (Heb 4:14-10:31). Three, Jesus Christ is our perfect model of faith because he gives us insight into the heavenly world of reality, the object of our pilgrimage of faith on earth (Heb 10:32-12:29). In Jesus Christ we see the fulfillment of the Hebrews’ own definition of faith: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and being certain of what we cannot see” (Heb 11:1).

5. “Enduring the Cross for the Joy Reserved for Christ”: Discipleship as Sharing in the Paschal Mystery

We are taught and are always endlessly reminded in the liturgy that it is by the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that you and I are saved. If Jesus didn’t suffer and die, there wouldn’t have been any resurrection; and without the resurrection, there wouldn’t have been any salvation for you and me. Salvation is crossing from the darkness and terror of sin and death to the bright light of grace and life. When Jews ‘commemorate’ their passage from their slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land through the crossing of the Red Sea, it is remarkable how they understand and use the term ‘memorial’. For them the Passover isn’t simply mentally recalling but actually being with their ancestors as they experience God’s liberating action leading them out of Egypt’s clutches. This sense is what we Christians also embrace when we celebrate the liturgy “in memory” of the Paschal Mystery of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The past is being made present and we are with Jesus in his suffering, in his dying and in his rising. Why? Because though our Baptism we actually share in the Paschal Mystery which is our real ‘Passover’ from darkness and death to light and life. How? By the power and action of the Holy Spirit who brings to us in this place and in this time the very events of our salvation. But it is the suffering, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ that constitute the bridge that has enabled you and me to make that crossing.

Paschal is a word that comes from ‘Pesach’ which means to cross or pass over. The ‘Pesach’ experience of the Jews is made perfect in the ‘Pesach’ experience of Jesus. On the other hand, this ‘Pesach’ experience is not a dead thing of the past; it is very much living and it is a reality in which Jesus the Master wants us to share. St. Paul reminds us of this: “Are you not aware that we who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-4). Paul only re-echoes what the Master himself says in the gospel: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself” (Lk 9:23-25).

Self-denial, our old, almost endearing ‘short-cut’ term for this gospel injunction includes making concrete the taking up of the cross in our own everyday lives: a priest saying ‘yes’ to a difficult assignment or transfer from a well-loved place or community or person(s); a husband saying ‘no’ to an ego-boosting relationship with an attractive woman in order to be true to his wife and keep his family intact; a wife setting aside personal conveniences to respond to her family’s needs or to spend more time with her husband and children; a politician saying ‘no’ to personally beneficial ‘power extension’ political efforts to say ‘yes’ to the people’s true needs, and so on. The point is, there are simply an unlimited number of ways to bring the Paschal Mystery into our personal and social realities.

The sharing in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ is not because we love suffering and pain for their own sake, the document to the Hebrews reminds us. It is for the sake of the “joy reserved for Jesus Christ”. You and I know too well how easily we can miss this one. And how easily for us to even think it a bit naïve. But the reality of the Paschal Mystery is not complete without a sense of joy even in the middle of suffering, pain and crisis. Joy isn’t being immune to sadness or suffering, as Pope Paul VI used to remind us Christians of today. It’s not having a smiling face even when things are serious. It’s having a sense of the presence of God, a sense of his victory over evil, over darkness, over death from sin. Isn’t it tragic when we lose a sense of the ‘eschaton’, of what the document to the Hebrews consider the end-goal of faith: “certainty in the things we cannot see” (Heb 11:1)?

Rene Voillaume has this to say to us: “By believing in Christ we are believing in joy, by embracing the crucified Christ, we are embracing joy without knowing it, and the Cross expands within us our capacity for the happiness to come.”
St. Teresa of Calcutta has something more practical: “One filled with joy preaches without preaching.”

An Unlikely Hero

2009-04-01T22:50:00.001+08:00

HE was Albert Einstein’s namesake. No less a hero but no celebrity was he. I would have been deeply honored to meet him. But when I did meet him it was too late. He was already in a coffin, waiting to be buried.

It all started when I came home to the rectory from two Sunday Masses and two sick calls. I just wanted to take a nap and forget the world for a while. But I heard some gentle knocking on my door. I wanted to say, “Please leave me alone for a while. I have to get some rest.” But I soon noticed I was dragging myself to the door. It was then that I saw this lady who behaved rather strangely.

She left her slippers on the rectory stairs. I realized it was a gesture of courtesy. Simple barrio courtesy. “It’s just about Albert, Padre,” she said. “Please allow us to bury him today. We couldn’t afford to have him embalmed for the nine-day wake (as is the local custom). Neighbors contributed pieces of wood and slab for his coffin. Please, Padre. We only have two hundred pesos. May we have a Mass for him, please?”

“Of course,” I said. Actually I just wanted to get rid of her and get my much needed rest. “Bring him at two o’ clock this afternoon.” Then she haltingly started to tell a story that woke me up the rest of the day.

Albert was her fourteen-year-old nephew from Barangay San Mateo. He was the eldest of five children. His father, a rice farmer, didn’t come up with much in this year’s harvest. And while his mother also does other jobs, such as washing laundry and selling vegetables, the family income was not enough. So he did what he thought best. He stopped schooling and got himself a job in a local bakery. He ended up mostly by the firewood-fed oven. It was tough and the heat could sometimes be unbearable. But he couldn’t and wouldn’t complain. He was glad he could work and help the family. But his body was not superman’s. Recently he ran a fever and felt weak. He asked to be excused. But his employer threatened to dismiss him if he misses work, especially that it was two or three days before the month’s end. Albert naturally didn’t want to lose his job and decided to go on working. He made it to payday. He brought all his money home and having given it to his mother, said: “Now I just want to rest and sleep…”

Albert never woke up again.

As I presided over his funeral I was both angry and depressed. “How could any human being threaten someone not even qualified yet to work to fire him just because he was sick?” But other deeper questions were raging in my mind. How could a young man with such obvious love for his family, a young man with such promise fall into a fate as cruel as Albert’s? How could his parents be powerless to even consider seeking for justice? I searched the faces of Albert’s mother and father. I saw in them anything but protest. Both have now accepted Albert’s fate as inevitable. Both now eyed me with profound gratitude for giving him a sung funeral Mass for two hundred pesos. Never have I felt so depressed over a funeral.

But I found myself continuing my homily. “Albert expresses, oh yes, Albert continues the sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary. And we are all witnesses to this. The world, much less his country, has no idea that he did. But we do. But God does. And it’s all that matters. Albert has made it clearer to us what the sacrifice we celebrate during Lent is all about. May his sacrifice give his family more life the way the sacrifice of Jesus brought us a sharing in the life of God.”

I glanced at the faces of Albert’s brothers and sisters. They seemed calm. But one thing bothered me. They seemed to say to me: “Father, we know Lent. When do we know Easter?”

Is there really hope that springs eternal?

2009-03-05T14:31:00.000+08:00

THE present global crisis together with our own moral quagmire has many of us worried sick. We fear the consequences they bring. Not that we have experienced any relief from the state of crisis Pinoys have felt their country to be embroiled in since time immemorial. This time something is different. The whole world is also in it. And for Pinoys who always thought that “going abroad” to a world out there with endless possibilities was a way out of misery at home, nothing could be more morally damaging. Thousands of Pinoys abroad face lay-offs along with their local counter parts and, though other countries abroad offer opportunities, they may not have the skills, training or profession being demanded. Every day the government tries hard to downplay the crisis’ impact on the country. Every day facts and realities that are the stuff of news underline it.

If crisis feels like the air we breathe, suffering seems like our twin brother or sister. And, oh, he/she likes to play around and spread the mess. Almost every branch of government, from the executive to the legislative to the judiciary, is now under the thick cloud of public distrust due to mounting reports from both local and foreign observers of pervasive corruption. Worse, our social and political mechanisms meant to expose and check them do not seem to work. Congressional and senate investigations of alleged wrongdoings are mostly going nowhere.

We used to complain of the Pinoy sense of shame being not deep enough to sustain real moral values. Now even that is in danger of extinction. Still, all these bring pain to us all. They must. The pain indicates there’s still a better side of us that is yet alive.

This Lent the ancient book of Sirach, to me, is a mine of wisdom. For one, Sirach reminds us that difficulties, that is, suffering in plain language, do not come from economic or even socio-political sources alone. What’s more, they even come with efforts to toe God’s line. “My son,” it counsels, “when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in time of adversity…” (Sir 2:1). He provides some reason for the effort: “For in fire gold is tested and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation” (Sir 2:5).
Sirach inspires hope. For an Old Testament writing, it glows with New Testament fire.

Shakespeare once said: “The miserable hath no other medicine than hope.” I couldn’t agree more. But, pray tell, old master (and may I speak to the Catholic Shakespeare), is hope enough to lift us up? And what is there to hope for, anyway?
Sirach answers better than Shakespeare. “Study the generations long past,” he continues his counsel from his time and place, “and understand: Has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed?” (Sir 2:10). I would imagine that anyone who would doubt Sirach by saying, “Yes, I’ve hoped and am disappointed!” would hear a counter question: “Have you really hoped in the Lord?” The psalmist cites himself and confirms Sirach: “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry” (Ps 40:2).

Hope in the middle of crisis, ah, that’s just what we need, I hear you say. Not quite, I answer. We rather need its source. If we have its source, then we would have it always. This time St. Paul seals the deal for us: “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

Hope doesn’t give us salvation. But it keeps us after its trail. It protects us, too, from falling into despair. “Let us… put on the breastplate of faith and charity and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thes 5:8).

The breakdown of human and worldly sources of hope should teach us, then, to look for its more lasting Source. Only then will the words of S. Smiles truly bring us smiles again: “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.”

Coping with the crisis

2009-02-17T15:22:00.000+08:00

LATELY the headlines are as much telling as they are alarming. Otherwise reliable companies report huge losses. Or that they are closing. Millions are losing jobs worldwide. Locally the country’s supposed economic resiliency, often touted by the government as something we can count on, are getting painful reality checks. OFWs are losing their jobs by the thousands; so are local workers in affected companies, for now foreign-owned ones. Hunger and criminality are on the rise. Fuel, food and fare rates continually do a see-saw. Hence, the pervading sense of gloom.

The twin products of the global economic crunch, very palpable even where we stand, are fear and a certain desperation. It’s not too hard to sense that the degree of their seriousness could be greater in families, cultures and societies habituated to more materially prosperous conditions. I find it instructive to go back to 1929 America through the eyes of the movie The Day the Bubble Burst which zeroes in on the stock market crash that led to the era of economic depression in the U.S. Then, as now, fortunes and jobs were lost, and with them, hope. Recently the tragedy of a California family, flashed globally in the headlines and promptly forgotten by the public in the cacophony of other competing news items, continue to haunt me to this day. A father who lost his job, savings and financial resources due to the economic crisis caused the deaths of all his family members and his own (he shot himself). It appears that when all hope is gone, so is sanity.

On the other hand, although we encounter cases of this sort in the Philippines, in the average Filipino psyche the father’s deed, with or without the wife’s and his children’s consent, is almost unthinkable.

I remember talking last Sunday to a group of churchgoers during my homily in a poor barangay chapel of our parish. “Naabat ba kamo hit’ krisis? (Do you feel the economic crisis?)” I asked them. They smiled and said, “(Siempre, Padre) Of course, Father.” It struck me that they could just smile at the mere mention of the crisis. Then it hit me: They have been going through economic crisis all their lives (it’s also called ‘rural poverty’). “When have we been out of a crisis, anyway?” someone asked me facetiously. “The only difference these days is that it’s now being shared by more and more people in the world.”

I say the attitude of our rural poor in that chapel has educated me on what living faith does. Material deprivation (as many of our rural folks are characterized by) does not necessarily mean an impoverished spirit. When faith is misdirected, say, when it is put in material prosperity alone or mainly, any economic crisis could understandably challenge and even ruin some people’s grip on life. “When money is everything,” our bishop, Bishop Bai Varquez, once remarked, “the moment it is lost also means everything is lost.” But when faith is rightly placed in God, the economic and whatever crisis we go through just become a test and a means of purifying that faith.

The figure who, I believe, needs to be recognized on a global scale during this time of global crisis is Job. No, I don’t mean ‘work’, that scarce commodity of these times. I mean the biblical character who lost not only all his material wealth and properties but also his family to an unexpected tragedy. But there is no parallel to his indomitable faith as is obvious in his words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb; naked shall I return. The Lord gave; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be his name” (Job 1:21).

To that we can only say, “How true, how wise Job’s words are.” Our nakedness on the day we were born is a loud testimony not only to our dependence on God’s love and generosity for everything we now have and are but also to real freedom. Yes, the freedom that comes from attachment to God first and foremost, and detachment from his gifts, material things included. It is truly the Lord, says the wisdom of faith, who gives and takes everything away. Without him not only is everything already lost; there is really nothing to gain.

But with him every crisis does not have to end in tragedy but in courage over fear, compassion over self-absorption. This is what I see in people living in faith. And, since Job is a type of Jesus, we must find in Jesus the perfection of the right response to each and every crisis. In the way he eased the sufferings of others we must see our real program in the face of the crisis. Our program is not to simply meet our needs and remedy our sufferings but likewise those of others. In the way Jesus accepted his own sufferings and death to lead us to the victory of his resurrection, we must rediscover self-sacrifice and selflessness as among the essential keys to personal, communal, national and global recovery. This crisis, after all, as US President Barack Obama observed, “was prompted by the greed and irresponsibility of some.” It must be met by the generosity and self-sacrifice of all.

As St. Pio Pietrelcina puts it: “The most beautiful act of faith is one made in darkness, in sacrifice, with extreme effort.” That must also mean the one that the few who are rich can do for the many who are poor. That, further, must also mean the act of faith that does justice and humble, loving service especially to those who suffer the most in this and in every human crisis.

Therein lies the way to peace (personal, national and global).

Afterthoughts on the Devotion to the Santo Niño

2009-01-22T10:45:00.000+08:00

I MUST confess that I often have mixed feelings about the devotion to the Santo Niño. Now please don’t get me wrong. I will defend it as best as I can. But to be honest, there are times that I feel embarrassed watching the devotion’s supposed-to-be cultural or artistic expressions that seem often rooted in showbiz and tourism-related commerce rather than in authentic prayer or worship. That’s not to say that I have become a self-appointed judge or an expert on the cultural expressions of our devotions. That’s just to say that, to my mind, there are impurities in our devotions, particularly to the Santo Niño, that even an ordinary Catholic, in the simplicity of his faith, must be able to distinguish and sift from its genuine elements.

First, true devotion to the Santo Niño is definitely not in the same league as our devotion to saints. In our devotion to a saint, for example, we mainly enlist a fellow believer and disciple who is in heaven to intercede for us, to pray for us in our needs. On the other hand, our devotion to the Santo Niño is essentially aimed at praise and worship of him who, though truly human, is also truly God. It is therefore a grave mistake to treat the devotion as just one of the many we cultivate towards saints. The Child Jesus, as one Catholic school’s name rightly declares, is “divine” to whom worship, not simply veneration, is due.

Two, focusing on the Child Jesus doesn’t mean the devotion’s significance is chronological or biological. A story is told of a Pinoy non-Catholic, baffled by the devotion, asking a Catholic friend why after celebrating the feast of the very adult Jesus Nazareno every ninth of January, Filipino Catholics revert to the childhood of Jesus in the Santo Niño. “How could you go,” he asked, “from the adult Jesus backward to the child Jesus without being downright silly?” Now the Pinoy Catholic was fast on his feet, “’Igan (friend),” he paused. “You have to remember that Jesus is both God and man. As God he certainly can do anything. In other words, he can be both a child and grown man just so he could be with his people. Isn’t that the language of love?” This answer might contain some profound theology. But let’s not miss the point: The Child Jesus and Jesus Nazareno is one and the same person. The devotion to the Santo Niño’s significance is not chronological but spiritual.

Speaking of spiritual significance, we ask: Who is the Santo Niño for us?

One, he is Jesus himself, the “light of the world” (Jn 9:5). Isaiah foretold his coming in no uncertain terms. “The people who walked in the darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone” (Is 9:1). Why so? Isaiah continues: “For a child is born for us, a son is given us. Upon his shoulder dominion rests” (Is 9:5). I have a sister who would tell me that even if she arrives home tired and weary from work, her face always lights up whenever she sees her little boy coming to meet her. Meeting Jesus the Santo Niño is infinitely different because this child, again in the words of Isaiah, is meeting the “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace” (Is 9:5). The joy born of this meeting is infinitely different (in the sense of ‘better’) too.

Two, the Child Jesus is God who has shared with us completely our own humanity. The “God-Hero” and “Prince of Peace” had become a “child with Mary his mother” being visited by shepherds and representatives of humankind, the Magi (Mt 2:11-21). The clear and simple message of the childhood of Jesus is the humility of God that humans like us need to learn again and likewise put into practice. Whenever the president or a high government official visits victims of calamities in the country, it touches many. But they do not cease to be high government officials. The president eventually returns to Malacañang and to comfortable life; so do other government officials. When Jesus became a human being, as is seen in the Santo Niño, he completely took upon himself our human condition without returning to the comfort and glory of heaven even when things became difficult and tough except after his mission was accomplished. He has truly become the ‘Emmanuel’, that is to say, “God-with-us” (Mt 1:23). Because the Child Jesus is truly man and truly God, it is most appropriate to pray to him. In fact, a growing number of people, including non-Catholics, attest to how the Santo Niño hears and answers their prayers. Stories about this, in matters big and small, abound. And it’s no wonder because this baby is Jesus Christ himself in whom God blesses us “with every spiritual blessing in the heavens”, such as being “chosen” in Christ “to be holy and blameless in his sight…predestined…through Christ Jesus to be his adopted sons and daughters” (Eph 1:3-5).

Three, the Child Jesus is a powerful gospel statement long before the gospels were written. The statement simply tells us that in heaven the greatest is the child and only in becoming like little children will we be able to enter God’s Kingdom (Mk 10:14-15; 9:36-37; Mt 19:14). Whenever I ask people why Jesus considers children the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, they almost always point to the innocence of children. But this is not quite the teaching of Scriptures. Rather the Scriptures underline the instinctive recognition by children of their dependence on others. We always see children, for instance, together with people they love and depend on: parents, siblings, relatives, friends. Only when a child is lost that that child is alone. Only when we acknowledge our dependence on God and other members of the human family will we begin to understand what heaven is all about. The song that says, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world”, now takes on a new meaning.

Four, Jesus in becoming a small vulnerable child gives us a direct call to protect, defend and care for him in the small, the weak and vulnerable among us. Worth mentioning are the defenseless, ‘poorest of the poor’ children in the womb and in abusive homes as well as the sick and the elderly who can no longer give nor be of use to society. In his Midnight Mass homily on December 24, 2006 the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, brought this point home to all Catholics. The Baby Jesus is the face of everyone who is completely under our power, utterly dependent on us to not only survive but to also grow in humanity: the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the persecuted, the oppressed. Devotion to the Child Jesus has one test: taking up the struggle for social justice and the preferential option for the poor.

Finally, it’s undeniable that the Santo Niño is tremendously popular in the Philippines. His image is seen in virtually anywhere, such as in our homes, stores, places of work, business, in cars, hotels, vans, buses, tricycles etc.

But the Santo Niño needs to be in the most important place of our lives—namely, our hearts.

Housing our homeless God

2009-01-11T18:16:00.000+08:00

IT was uncanny (to say the least). I was with a group of parishioners, members of the Parish Pastoral Council and a few high school teenagers from one of our parish youth choirs. We were caroling for a church project that had run out of funds. My presence was calculated to ‘encourage’ generosity. I even decided to wear my clerical. And it proved to be a smart move. In more than one instance a homeowner or a member of a family would, upon hearing our voices, decide we were worth only twenty pesos (thank God that was the minimum) but, on seeing me, would apologize profusely for what apparently in their mind was almost an unpardonable sacrilege (the twenty-peso evaluation of our singing, I mean). Then the twenty peso bill would promptly be taken out of our sight and in its place would appear a five hundred or one thousand peso bill.

That together with big smiles and offers of a beverage or snack. Naturally I’m not saying we were given the same reception or treatment in all the homes we went to. But it soon became clear to me why our group was ecstatic when I decided to come along. A priest’s presence may not necessarily work miracles but something close to one is often enough. For instance, a remark from a member of our group almost bowled me over. “Receiving a response from this family is like squeezing juice out of stone,” she mused. “Now that they see a priest with us, they seem so hospitable and giving.”

In all this I would never forget coming to a rest house on a street corner. The manager seemed to me to be just patiently tolerating our presence and singing with a smirk. Apparently my presence even absolved our singing deficiencies. I don’t even recall how much she adjudged our singing to be worth. But, as we were leaving, I saw a sign hanging by the main door. “SORRY. NO MORE ROOM INSIDE”. “What a strange coincidence,” I said within her hearing. “Did a man named Jose and a pregnant woman named Maria come before us?”

I don’t remember any more what the manager’s answer was.

To be honest, it mattered little to me, as we both knew I asked the question in jest. Something else arrested my mind in its tracks. I found myself marveling at the thought of how God’s Son came into the world homeless, like the thought came to me for the first time. Maybe, I thought, if Jesus came as a Roman Catholic priest with a Roman collar, I strongly suspect (I could be wrong, of course, given today’s views on priests) he would not be met with “SORRY, NO MORE ROOM AT THE INN”.
But God’s homelessness wasn’t a phenomenon that happened on Christmas Day for the first time. I couldn’t help remembering the words of David in the second book of Samuel read on the Fourth Sunday of Advent of Year B: “Here I am living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God dwells in a tent!” (2 Sam 7:2). David was feeling downright ashamed at the utterly incalculable injustice of the situation: he, a human king, living in a splendid palace of cedar while the God of hosts, Creator of the universe, was dwelling in a tent. Even then God was homeless. And he didn’t seem to mind. He was more into making David’s house impregnable. David’s generous thought was answered by a generosity whose immensity could only be measured by eternity. The homeless God who owns all homes made David a promise that has impacted you and me. “Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever” (2 Sam 7:16).

To say that God cannot be outdone in generosity is an understatement.
That David’s offer was met by God’s “No, thank you” and “I’ll give you a better offer” response staggers the imagination. Even when Solomon finally finished the temple of Jerusalem God’s homelessness was scarcely resolved. In truth, God continued to look for a home.

Then came the Annunciation. As the archangel Gabriel slowly made clear to a simple barrio lass named Mary the outlines of God’s request that she become the mother of his Son, after her famous hesitation (“But how can this be since I do not know man?” (Lk 1:34), she let go of her other famous declaration: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).

At last God found a home. His real home: His own people best represented by the best of the human race, “our tainted nature’s solitary boast” (Wordsworth), a woman named Mary. And her generosity was met with a return that cannot be paralleled. She not only shared her Son’s Resurrection by her own Assumption into heaven (Fourth Glorious Mystery). She was also crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth (Fifth Glorious Mystery). Even Mary’s supreme generosity couldn’t equal God’s.

And so, why do we hesitate till now to house our homeless God?

The Phenomenon of Globalization and Sin

2008-12-10T23:12:00.001+08:00

I SAW a picture of a McDonald restaurant (‘McDo resto’, young people say) in China many years ago. In fact, I used to have snacks in one as a student priest in Rome (they were inexpensive, pretty much affordable to those of us who subsisted on meager scholarship allowances and Mass stipends). You see them in Metro Manila and in many of our urban centers. Go anywhere in the big cities of the world, chances are, you will see ‘McDo restos’ and their familiarity gives you the illusion you are home.

While in one in Rome I asked a fellow priest during the semestral break where he was going for the summer. He answered matter-of-factly: “To Iceland to see my auntie.” I asked, incredulous, “Are there Filipinos in Iceland?” “Of course,” he said, eyeing me like I came from the boondocks (true: boondocks of Samar). McDonald restaurants everywhere. Filipinos everywhere on earth. That in brief is what we call globalization. Its root being ‘globe’ (world), globalization refers to the reality in which any human activity, operation, presence or institution reaches the different corners of the world.

Now here’s the catch. If McDo restaurants are global, so are their carbohydrates-and-fat-rich menus. If Filipinos are now global, so are our ‘crab mentality’, ‘destructive regionalism’, ‘Filipino time’, ‘intrigue’ tactics etc. Isaiah in our first reading denounces Israel’s sins but also those of the whole known world as embodied in the wayward human practices of his time. All this is a statement that just as a neutral or even virtuous human activity or behavior could be done anywhere in the world by most human beings, so are our human sins too.
Take greed for profit and the deceptions behind the ‘melamine’ scare which started in China. Milk and milk products packaged by certain Chinese companies have been found contaminated with this substance which is responsible for kidney stones and even death in babies. The wonder is, its reach is now global. Almost all countries have warned its citizens against buying contaminated products from China and are carefully testing other products as well for other defects.

Jesus in his time did not go global. He was confined within Palestine. But he had a global outlook. For instance, in the gospel of Matthew he excoriates sinful people in the sinful cities of Chorazin and Behsaida (Mt 11:20-24). They are both located near the Sea of Galilee, Jewish enclaves. He compares them to the sinful Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia and holds the Galilean cities more reprehensible. Now, that is certainly daring and prophetic to tell your own people their true faults rather than deceive them with praise releases. The point is that Jesus is indeed aware of how sin and iniquity is true not only in one part of the globe but also in others, that it could be less or more serious in some rather than in other places. Most of all, it is equally abhorrent the whole world over.

Call it negative human solidarity. Warays call it ‘tapon’ (contamination that spreads). Bible experts are one in saying that Jesus’ denunciation of these sinful global cities is meant to ‘shock’ them to conversion. Is their hard-headed, hard-hearted reaction a mirror of ours? That, too, is proof of the ‘global’ manifestation of sin. On the other hand, is the repentance of Niniveh reflected in our personal lives, our families, communities and society? That likewise points to the global dimension of conversion.

Our Pre-Advent Experience

2008-11-26T10:06:00.009+08:00

They jolt you. They shake you up. They send you off your seat and bring you rudely back. At some places they delude you into thinking you're a baby again and it's just your mother's arms rocking you once more, gently, rhythmically to the tune of her lullaby, and you start to believe the illusion, leading you to succumb to sleep. Until the jolt becomes a shock. You have just hit a major snag.

I'm talking about the bad roads (which the Inquirer called "roads from hell" [PDI, 11/21/2008], a rather strong phrase but to which we can't object) we in Eastern Samar suffer from these days. But I could also be speaking of our Philippine socio-economic-political realities. Doubtless, nearly all of them jolt and shock the living daylights out of our consciousness. That is, unless we have given up on our situation and now take everything as mere indications of the damaged culture we have caused on ourselves. Nonetheless we can never give in to despair. No Christian worth the name does. With faith comes hope and hope must lead to love. Or we are not who we say we are.

It's Christ the King Sunday as I write these words in my room. We had just concluded the four-o-clock Mass with a solemn procession, attended, to my happy surprise, by a good number of young people, followed by a benediction to which they also obliged. But my mind already races to next Sunday, the first of Advent. The booming voice of Advent's crucial-and-at-once-tragic figure, John the Baptist, rings in my ears as he echoes Isaiah: "I hear a voice crying out in the wildernes, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. The valleys will be filled, the mountains and hills made low. Every crooked thing will be made straight and rough roads will be made smooth. And every mortal will see the salvation of God" (Lk 3:4-6).

Rough roads. Ah, how they make travelling from point A to point B so unfriendly and so harrowing, you wonder if you'd ever do it again. And, oh, in my home province especially, how they multiply (I strongly suggest the government subject them to zero population growth control, and only rightly so, at least at no further expense from the taxpayers for contraceptives). On my trip homeward from our annual retreat in Tagaytay City recently, for which I had to travel from Manila to Tacloban City and from there to my hometown, Borongan, I was so amazed at how fast the rough roads worsened and multiplied. I had to go through what the open letter to the president from our local bishop and the clergy describes as "an agonizing experience" negotiating our roads "characterized by crowding craters and potholes, of an increasing number and sizes." Imagine taking a ride over an uninterrupted series of humps from Glorietta to Mega Mall. And you are just close to having an idea of Eastern Samar's road conditions in their pre-Advent phase (close because humps tend to be of the same size, unlike our craters). I say pre-Advent phase, given that Advent is the time when rough roads are being made smooth in preparation for the Messiah's coming. This is exactly what isn't happening now in our province and all indications do not point to it happening in the near future (letters from our local authorities simply counsel patience, as they are preparing to defer action and wait it out until the seasonal rains stop). (And I could hear our Latin 4 teacher repeating the words of rhetorical lament, "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? (Until when will you abuse our patience, Catilina?")

Rough roads inspire rough humor. From Bgy Buenavista to my hometown, I noticed people responding to the jolts and bumps with protest humor, if cynically. For instance, in the thick of the bumpy ride, a fellow traveller said, 'Ramdam na ramdam ang kaunlaran (Progress is being felt)" in reference to the administration's nationwide slogan. Another passenger even suggested, "We should ask the Supreme Court to declare Eastern Samar's roads unconstitutional." "Why unconstitutional?" someone asked. "Because," came the answer, "these roads are abortifacient. And isn't abortion banned by the Philippine constitution?" We laughed. The upside of Pinoy humor is that it allows us to express otherwise repressed anger and frustrations. The downside is that it didn't make the jolts and bumps go away. We should make our humor work in our favor. It's good we can laugh at our problems; it's even better if we do what we can to solve them. This is a lesson the local Church has learned the hard way.

But look at the big picture, we must. There are lots and lots of rough and bumpy roads in our society's realities. Take our own country, la patria adorada. On our way to being a first-century Philippines, we keep stumbling onto the rough roads of corruption, the ever widening gulf of social inequality and injustice among Filipinos coupled with our massive poverty, and the ever ineffectual governance we experience, bedevilled as it is by patronage politics. The constant threat of Cha-cha endlessly keep us from confidently arriving peacefully at our democratically destined transition to new leadership. With the string of scandals, from the never-say-die allegations of a stolen presidency to ZTE to the fertilizer scam via one Joc Joc Bolante, the roads to a 'strong Republic', even just to a 'respectable' one, are extremely bumpy, not unlike those of Eastern Samar. Perhaps ours are, as it were, a parable of the national malaise.

And my suggestion for Advent and beyond? Let's make John the Baptist our national secondary patron saint. Or, even better, let's be John the Baptist for our local Church, for our country now. But why, you ask. So the Messiah might more easily reach our shores and make us "see the salvation of our God".

Losing Gracefully

2008-11-19T07:51:00.001+08:00

A FEW days ago, like millions of people all over the world, I watched the US presidential elections come to an end. I was simply awestruck by the victory of an African-American, Senator Barack Obama, over a white American, Senator John McCain. But, frankly, it wasn't the historic character of the triumph of a person of color (I'm completely perplexed why Americans simply refer to President-elect Obama as a black man when he isn't completely one, as his mother was a white American from Kansas) to the highest office of the acknowledged dominant superpower of the world. What struck me most were three realities of the American electoral exercise: the vast territories that it covers; the peaceful transition and the credibility of the results. The fourth thing that struck me most was the inevitable question: Why doesn't our diminutive country have the same democratic experience? It matters little that we are a small country but it certainly matters like no other that our electoral exercise wherever and whenever they are held be peaceful and credible as well. Is the Philippines capable of all that?

Americans, as McCain exemplified, often call their country "the greatest nation on earth" and there's no use arguing about that, especially when, as Barack Obama solemnly declared in his victory speech, we see another proof from their latest political act that that "government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from the earth". In contrast, some conscientious lawyers that I know often see ours as a "democrazy" that has "a government off the people, buy the people and poor the people". It is a peculiar political creature regularly featuring politicians who do everything to gain votes and equally fight tooth and nail against ever admitting or conceding defeat. And, to our chronic embarassment, it is a reality in not only one dark spot of the archipelago. Nay, it is as ubiquitous as wherever Filipinos run for public office. The cynic's joke is not even funny: "No Filipino candidate loses an election. He only gets cheated."

That explains why I was simply bowled over listening to Republican John McCain's
concession speech. In previous days he was a driven man pushing hard to prove that he was better than his opponent to be president of the United States and it seemed to me that he was prepared to move heaven and earth to block Senator Obama's election to the presidency. But I saw none of that "angry" and "grumpy old man" the press made him out to be. I saw a humbled but a self-possessed man. This was all the more remarkable because between the two candidates, he had the most to lose. His age alone shuts him out from a possible future presidential comeback. His many attempts to distance himself from President George Bush may have also cost him precious political and social connections. In short, just as Barack Obama's election is historic, McCain's political ambition is now history.

But I didn't see nor heard a bitter John McCain. Rather I heard a calm and composed
man accepting the American people's verdict with sadness, yes, but also with high praises hopes for his opponent's triumph and for the democratic tradition.

Every Filipino, I think, should be green with envy over foreign politicians capable of such graciousness in defeat. It is not that we don't have the genes. I remember distinctly how
the late Senator Raul Roco very graciously conceded the election to then candidate Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2004 but, realizing the serious credibility problems of her victory, later poured cold water on the whole thing. Of course, it could be argued, and with justification, that that election didn't reflect the true results. The specter of a Joc-joc Bolante haunting the incumbent president for whom he allegedly masterminded an illegal transfer of agricultural funds to her election coffers is too loud and too obvious to ignore.

If I were to identify two stumbling blocks to a Filipino losing gracefully, one would be the amount we spend (and I'm not simply talking of legal campaign expenses) and another would be our value of "hiya" carried to excess. That is, we don't want the social stigma of election defeat, so we blame election cheating. It seems to me a strange irony that election cheating has always plagued us and, thus, had provided a convenient fodder to sore election losers. The poverty of the masses is always the favorite escape goat for all the sins that lead to what we now see as our "inauthentic" and "immature democracy". Those who use that escape goat may have a point. But it does not explain all or even most of what is wrong in our psyche or character that shows its ugly heads in our society's anomalies. Either we submit to an inner and structural overhaul such that it can be tested externally in our actual political conduct. Or we will keep on seeing and being sore losers.

The Social Dimension of Sin

2008-11-05T07:53:00.000+08:00

ALL over the front pages are two rather related stories: the possible filing of charges against the so-called ‘Moscow generals’ for the allegedly illegal possession of millions of taxpayers’ money as well as against Mr. ‘Jocjoc’ Bolante and his co-conspirators for the alleged misuse of public money meant for farmers’ fertilizers. “What a team effort by these people,” I said to myself. Then I remembered. I was showing a group of high school students some areas of the seminary where I was assigned as a new priest. At one point one of them, a female sophomore, saw the television room and the refectory of the Fathers. She exclaimed, “Wow, sosyal!”

It was the first time I heard that word which even then I understood to be a part of teen lingo. I knew, by reading her approving look, that ‘sosyal’ meant something people (“Don’t they constitute society?” I could only imagine her saying) like or find appealing, a bit like “cool”, such as a ‘sosyal’ television room or a ‘sosyal’ dining room. ‘Sosyal’ reminds us of how important it can be for us Pinoys (or for human beings anywhere for that matter) to have the approval or support of others on anything we do or say, have or are. The downside is that it does not by itself guarantee God’s approval, which is all that matters for a Christian.

Still, the social dimension of sin does not merely mean a team of co-conspirators applauding a person’s every wrongdoing or egging him on (could you imagine the beneficiaries of an act of malversation saying to Mr. B, ‘Wow, what a ‘sosyal’ act you did!”) Nor does it just mean that the wrong that I do affects others in the society or Church community where I live. This one is the most obvious sense. People know, for example, that if, as a priest, I get drunk and challenge anyone to a fistfight, that certainly would scandalize the community and, hence, illustrate the social dimension of my unethical behavior.

But the social dimension of sin is not exhausted in that sense. It also means that a whole body or group of people can, by their attitudes and concrete acts, offend God and alienate themselves from him and from other members of the community or society at large. One example from Genesis 11:1-9 is in point. The whole body of human beings during scripturally ancient times is sent by God to spread themselves across the earth. Instead, they choose to settle in a city and build a tower, later known to be the Tower of Babel. Their sin lies not in deciding to settle in a city (that would make living in Metro Manila a sin, which is unthinkable) or even in deciding to build a tower. It lies in their disobedience and the pride that push them to seek glory for themselves apart from God. They refuse to accept and take their rightful place as creatures under God. Here we see sin in its roots: selfishness that leads to disobedience; pride that leads to self-glorification.

On the other hand, Jesus in the gospel of Matthew 12:38-42 presupposes the social dimension of sin. It is not an individual he denounces but “a generation” who, as in the Tower of Babel, refuses to listen to him who is greater than either Jonah or Solomon to whom their own “generations” listened. The point is that when we, as a community or even as a whole society, alienate ourselves from the Word of God by refusing to listen and by choosing to be led by selfishness and pride, we end up with negative attitudes and destructive courses of action.
The Catechism for Filipino Catholics speaks of “negative moral attitudes and acts or failure to act that are common to a community or particular society”, resulting in “unjust structures”, such as “racial or sexist prejudicial structures, unjust economic taxation systems, established military and political customs and unfair immigration legalities” (CFC 1804). The Second Plenary Council of the Philippines speaks further of “structures of sin” or “social sins” which “consist of situations, collective behavior or structures that cause or perpetuate social injustices. Such structures are created by the accumulation of many sinful attitudes, ‘two of which are very typical: on the one hand, the all-consuming desire for profit, and on the other, the thirst for power, with the intention of imposing one’s will upon others’” (PCP II 270).

Think of groups of people in public or private capacities conspiring to put or perpetuate someone in power by all means, including illegal and immoral acts. The same thing with groups and corporations doing everything to sell a low-quality or contaminated product or denying the truth collectively in public. Or consider whole offices, entire companies or associations of wealthy and powerful people buying favors from public authorities through bribery or worse to avoid fulfilling legal requirements. Or how about the most typical election scenario—a whole community of voters selling their votes. Think further of cabals of politicians buying them to get to power and, in consequence, shortchange voters and understandably so (“Haven’t we already bought them?” their body language so speaks) by irresponsible legislation (such as the Reproductive Health Bill) or negligence (such as bad roads, low agricultural productivity) etc.

The social dimension of sin must be met by our clarion calls and acts toward social and communal repentance as well as communal reparations. We the Church must show the way by the power of our example and not by the example of our power.

Looking at Fatima

2008-10-26T06:56:00.000+08:00

IT’S October once again. On the spotlight is the devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, particularly when we recall the last of her apparitions on October 13, 1917 culminating in the famous ‘dancing of the sun’ or ‘miraculous solar phenomenon’ (that Pinoy Catholics are in awe of). Lest we forget, they were not simply a grand display of God’s power at work through Mary’s intercession. They were an urgent call on people, sinners like you and me, to conversion. Take away conversion and we’re roundly off the mark on Fatima.

The apparitions at Fatima and their calls to prayers and sacrifice for the conversion of sinners are seldom talked about in our day and age. But they reveal an ever urgent message for our personal, political and social lives. That message is ageless.

In the first place, it is an echo of the very first summons by Jesus himself. “This is the time of fulfillment,” he declares as he begins his ministry. “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the good news!” (Mk 1:15). It shows you and me how Mama Mary fulfills even until now her identity and mission as the foremost disciple of Jesus Christ the Savior. It reveals deeply how she is a most faithful human collaborator in the work of salvation. Which argues much for our devotion to their Twin Hearts. Our Lady of Fatima is in perfect sync with her Son in fulfilling the saving mission from the Father.

Second, the extraordinary sufferings of the visionaries, Francisco and Jacinta Marto who, together with Lucia their cousin, relayed the message of conversion to humankind with courage and love, are a testament to the continuing reality of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus in and through the witness of Christians. Simply said, we find the deeper meaning of our sufferings by offering them to the Father in union with the sufferings of Jesus on the cross at Calvary. In a word, our sufferings can be redemptive when seen and embraced in union with those of the Crucified Redeemer. The irony of the Christian life that we see especially in the heroic sacrifices of the visionaries Jacinta and Francisco is that the more we spend ourselves for the salvation of others, the more we are guaranteed our own salvation.

Third, the visions that, for a long time, were kept in secret are both a warning and a source of hope for us. A warning for all of us sinners as to the utter self-destruction awaiting our persistence in sin. The brief vision of hell is in point. We should not take the message of Fatima for granted in regard to conversion in our own personal life and in the life of our fellow human beings. Have we really “been there, done that” as a program of living? On the other hand, when we truly heed the message of Our Lady through the child visionaries, God’s mercy abounds and rescues us from sin’s clutches.

Fourth, the Holy Rosary is both our way of communing with Our Lady and the child visionaries as well as our spiritual means to be suffused, so as to live, by the mysteries of the Lord’s life, suffering, death and resurrection that are key to our salvation. We pray for salvation not only for ourselves but for all mankind. The saying, “We’re in this together” is nowhere more right than in our human journey to salvation.

Finally, we who call on Our Lady of Fatima are ever challenged to join Mama Mary’s continuing crusade. Devotion to her must lead us to humbly face up to our sinfulness and, with confidence, to rely on the power of God to aid us as we rise to follow Jesus on the way to the realization of his Kingdom on earth. Mama Mary’s powerful intercession and witness are a cause for hope and source of strength.

St. John Chrysostom said: “When you perceive that God is chastening you, fly not to his enemies…but to his friends, the martyrs, the saints, and those who were pleasing to him…” (Oratio, viii, Adv. Jus., 6). One of them stands out—Mary, Our Lady of Fatima.