Gazing at the Poor King

           Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas, President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) just issued a pastoral message that opens 2015 as the Year of the Poor on the First Sunday of Advent. As the Year of the Laity ends, the Philippine Church moves on with its 9-year plan towards 2021 in preparing the faithful for the 500 years commemoration of the Christianization of our country.

          The message is accompanied by an insightful logo: two disciples gazing at the crucified Jesus; theirs is a loving look. The message is a disturbing evaluation of the scandalous situation of our land and challenges our people, both the powerful and the powerless; the pastors and the faithful, to a profound self-examination. What touched me in this letter is the realization that the poorest of the poor is Jesus Christ himself! “Jesus hangs from his Cross stripped of his clothes, his dignity, his possession, his power, his strength.” The greatest pain he felt was the thought that even God, His Father, had abandoned him at the lowest point of his life: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:45). No one can be much poorer.

At the opening of the Year of the Poor, our catholic leaders would like us to reflect on poverty in the context of our faith in Jesus. Moreover we are to see Jesus in the poor and work towards becoming a poor Church for the poor. Pope Francis affirms that this is “how God works.” He does not reveal himself cloaked in worldly power and wealth but rather in weakness and poverty. Jesus did not seek poverty for its own sake but, as St. Paul says "that by his poverty you might become rich."

We see poverty in the face every day. A child begs. Homeless people sleep in street corners. Old women sell candles to earn few centavos. Entire families live in shanties beside creeks and in the slums. The sight is common. We think it is normal that it does not unsettle us anymore. We no longer cry at the news when a child is sick and dies for lack of medicine. We are no longer saddened when a person has nothing to eat. Government statistics tells us that out of 100 million Filipinos, 29 million live below the poverty line. Yet we don’t find this alarming. Is it an indication that we are becoming heart-less?  Have we become desensitized and “manhid” to the cries and pains of poor? Or we simply shrug the thought and say: “we’re not responsible for them anyway.”

Again Pope Francis reflects: “So what is this poverty by which Christ frees us and enriches us? It is his way of loving us, his way of being our neighbor, just as the Good Samaritan was neighbor to the man left half dead by the side of the road (cf. Lk 10:25ff ). What gives us true freedom, true salvation and true happiness is the compassion, tenderness and solidarity of his love.”

In this Year of the Poor we are challenged by Jesus to imitate his love by becoming neighbors to one another. It is a love that teaches us to be sensitive towards the poor and experience conversion in the way we see them. We are not simply to become “good Samaritans” to so many helpless individuals in society. More than just statistics, we should see them as our brothers and sisters, our “kapamilya” in Jesus. The poor are not just people to whom we can give something. They are disguises of Jesus for whom we can share God’s love concretely.

In Calvary the disfigured face of Jesus veiled his real identity. The spectators were gazing at the sight of a poor and powerless King. His resurrection revealed the splendor of his glory. But the dramatic “last judgment” of Mt 25:31-46 will finally show His full majesty when He will separate the goats and the sheep on the criterion of love. In the end, we will be judge by the measure of our love.

I know two sisters who are identical twins. Both are very much the same in looks and in ways. What distinguishes them is their health. One had a kidney malfunction several years ago. Instead of having dialysis, the healthier sister donated one of her kidneys to her twin. Today both continue to live their normal lives. Each realizes they need to care for each other. Each realizes they need to share both blessings and sufferings. Both realize they are responsible for each other.

Unless we realize we are all brothers and sisters, we will never create human solidarity. It is only by love that we can swim against a throwaway culture and become true neighbors for each other. We need to look at Jesus!

One Beautiful Life

       My friend Cheryl invited me to celebrate the funeral mass of her high school classmate from St. Theresa’s College. It was difficult to refuse a divine function; for to pray for the dead is a spiritual work of mercy. As I was rushing through A.S. Fortuna Street towards Rolling Hills amidst a crazy Saturday afternoon traffic, my mind was also racing through a sermon outline I needed to deliver. The sad thing was, I had no personal knowledge of Farah Noel Tan. She was then a total stranger to me. I was praying to the Holy Spirit for the grace to give me the words of faith and comfort that the grieving family needed in such a circumstance.

I was given scant background information of her death. She actually succumbed to ovarian cancer at a young age of 41 leaving a grieving husband and two kids. But I was not prepared at the end of the Eucharistic Celebration to have the opportunity to know her story and have a glimpse into some of the details of her amazing life. I came to perform a function; I went home enriched after hearing her struggles, her courage and the kindness of her soul. When Marlon, her husband, and other friends started to narrate inspiring moment of her short life, I was given a crash-course of the ups and downs of family life. Each person is really a miracle!

Marlon revealed that his family really prayed for Farah’s healing. It was devastating to see her gone so soon as if God had turned a deaf ear to their plea. But he also saw “the hand of God” in the support, the presence and the love of friends and relatives in their lowest moment. The brother shared a coincidence of taking her picture with a “halo.” It was his way of focusing not so much “the loss” but having gained an “angel in heaven.” Another friend reminisced Farah’s natural capacity to love her friends just as they are. The depth of her love goes beyond her death which her fragile body could not contain. From these insights, it dawned on me how beautiful a death can be marked by a life of intense love and goodness.

Jesus, in this Sunday’s Gospel, compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He says to all the invited guests: Come to the feast! I could imagine God preparing a banquet for Farah and inviting her with a big smile: “Share the joy of your Master!”

It is only by faith that allows us to visualize this. Jesus calls this beatitude or real happiness even in the midst of sorrow. It may seem that everything in our society is calculated for the attainment of a good life. We are led to believe that happiness has a price. Yet we know there are many things money cannot buy! Through the beatitudes Jesus teaches us how to ground our life with a strong foundation. The life patterned after the beatitude can only be developed through the instrumentality of the family. In order to promote the good of every individual it takes a family support to nourish and build up every member. A beautiful life can never be had without the family. Indeed it is in the family where prayer is taught and caught; where God is loved and lived.

Showing a deep concern for the care of modern families, Pope Francis called for an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops this week. The global gathering of Church leaders which invited married couples and experts is meant to discuss the “pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelization.” Through this Synod, the Church renews its commitment to journey with families and married couples because it sees marriage as a place of growth of the human person.

I was not able to join the family and friends of Farah in her interment. But that short experience of a beautiful life was enough to leave a lasting mark in my soul. Requiescat in pace!

God's Way

         My dad just turned 73. The number shows he is already a senior citizen. But he is not that senior looking. Yes, he is retired. But he is not tired from life. His newest venture is farming. He has so much passion for it. Though he is not an agriculturist by training, his heart is one. He has spent so much time in personal research to discover and learn the latest techniques in farm development. He is self-taught and continues to learn from others, from observation and from experience. For him, this is not just a personal passion. This is his contribution in order to change the paradigm of our community in Bantayan Island. He wants to show the importance of the land and how to maximize it.

          Dad is one of the one hundred million Filipinos in this country. But he is more than a statistic indicator. He is more than just a number for us who know him and love him. We celebrated with joy the day of his birth to thank God for the gift of life. As always, he is never alone when he celebrates his natal day because he was born as one of the twins! For whatever reasons, his mother called him Teopistes and his twin brother, Teofisto; he is Titing, the other is Totong. If we were to look at their throwback photos, they were really identical. Even now. Same height, same build, same good-looking faces. Yet so vastly different because when God creates, He does so with quality. He fashions each of us in style. God makes it sure we have our own personal identity.

          The twins were born three months before the war of 1941. Two other siblings preceded them. One could imagine the difficulty of giving birth in a small island town. No hospitals or doctors were available. They just had “hilots” (quasi-midwife) to aid the women in their pangs of birth. When the war broke out, my dad’s family had to hide in a cave in a forested area to survive. Life was difficult. Yet they survived. They had to work hard. And never did they doubt that God was there all along. Through war and peace, God was not that distant. If things went wrong with my dad then, I wonder if I would still be his child. The thought might seem hypothetical. To me, it’s a mystery.

          In those days, the survival of the child hangs on the family.  Parents had to do great sacrifices to feed, protect and nurture their children. It was a great burden but it was done with great love for every child is considered a gift from God. Every gift is a treasure with a built-in responsibility. Parents saw it that way. They still do so today believing it is God’s way of raising a family.

The other Sunday, Pope Francis married 20 couples at the St. Peter’s Basilica, part of the Church’s effort to bring people especially couples to Jesus. In his homily, he reminded them: “It is impossible to quantify the strength and depth of humanity contained in a family: mutual help, educational support, relationships developing as family members mature, the sharing of joys and difficulties. Families are the first place in which we are formed as persons and, at the same time, the "bricks" for the building up of society.

The Pope gave the couples sound advice telling them that their wedding bliss will be tested but reassured them that Christ would be able to help them resist the "dangerous temptation of discouragement, infidelity, weakness, abandonment." He also added: “the love of Christ, which has blessed and sanctified the union of husband and wife, is able to sustain their love and to renew it when, humanly speaking, it becomes lost, wounded or worn out. The love of Christ can restore to spouses the joy of journeying together.”

The ceremony was the first time since Pope John Paul II presided over a wedding in 2000. That event highlighted Pope Francis’ desire to focus on the care of the Christian family. Next month he has called for an extraordinary synod (meeting) of bishops on October 5-19, 2014 to discuss on the “pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization.” Despite humanity’s progress, the human family continues to be the basic channel for God’s blessings to flow in the world. It is God’s way of showing He continues to care. It is God’s way of renewing the world from within. Thus the hope of humanity is still through the family.

At 73, my dad has so much to thank for. As his family, we are blest for the life he shared with us!

(This article appeared in Cebu Daily News, September 21, 2014)

 

St. John Bosco, a gift from God

              199 years ago on August 16, a poor boy was born in a small town in Becchi near Turin, Italy. His name was John Bosco. There were no signs in the sky that would foretell his future greatness. His arrival into the world was so quiet; not even his parents had any idea that one day he will make so much difference in the lives of countless young people in the world. The year 1815 marked the unification of Italy. A certain revolutionary spirit characterized the European climate. Somehow, it was the worse time to be born. Yet in the plan of God, everything has a reason. All things just fall in place when seen in the greater scheme of things. And into these chaotic times, God sent this child who will become a sign of God’s love for youth.

          When John was growing up, he became aware of certain supernatural interventions in his life. His reflective soul heightened his awareness of the presence of Jesus and Mary in the phases of his growth. But he had to struggle a lot. He had to work and study hard. His poverty introduced him to the harshness of reality. But his indomitable spirit and deep faith gave him all the courage to face his daily difficulties with joy and optimism. Having lost his father at an early age, his mother taught him to balance the strength of character and the tenderness of heart. He was able to unite this in his person making him both patient and kind. These are among the qualities, later as a priest, that will make him an effective “father and teacher of youth.”

          Then as a young country priest, he found himself thrust into a new world where there was no shortage of problems affecting the young people in society. He discovered a cruel society that preyed on them. In fact, people in the upper classes felt that these young people were not and could never be capable of civilized living. Many of them were illiterate, ignorant, law offenders and irreligious. There was only one solution for them – the juvenile prison! But here is where the creative vision of this priest, Don Bosco, would shine. He looked at this situation with a different perspective. He saw not just prisoners but possible upright citizens, not just scums or street boys but boys who could become good Christians. He saw them beyond the trappings of their present situations. Given the opportunity and the conducive climate, they can even be future saints!

          Don Bosco’s way of seeing things was marked by his great empathy and love. Because he was able to walk in the shoes of poor youth, he was able to understand them and their needs. Most of all, he was moved by the heart of the Good Shepherd who has deep compassion for the lost and the stray. It is this empathy and compassion that is most needed even today. Like the incarnate Son of God who identified himself with the vulnerability of the lost, the least and the last, we are to learn the value of being in contact and close to those who suffer.

          It is for this reason that St. John Bosco is a gift to the Church and to the world. In one of the articles of the Salesian Constitutions, it says: “With a feeling of humble gratitude, we believe that the Society of St  Francis de Sales came into being not merely as a human venture but by the initiative of God… Through the motherly intervention of Mary the Holy Spirit raised up St John Bosco to contribute to the salvation of  youth. The Spirit formed within him the heart of a father and teacher, capable of total self-giving … The Church has acknowledged God's hand in this, especially by approving our Constitutions and proclaiming our Founder a saint.”

          Things have so much changed since the time of St. John Bosco. The needs of the young have also become more complex. Modern technology and scientific advancement have created so much gap between the digital immigrants and the digital natives. Yet the principle that moved him is still relevant. St. John Bosco teaches us to contemplate the youth situation through God’s eyes! Young people will always be the center-piece of God’s affirming love simply because they are the future of both Church and society.

          On a more personal note, as a son of St. John Bosco, many times I am both challenged and overwhelmed by the vastness of the field of mission. At times, I wonder if I have made a difference at all for youth of today. Yet I feel consoled by the thought that I am not alone. There are thousands of us who keep the dream of St. John Bosco alive. We only have to walk the talk for the gift to become a transforming presence!   

Mystery of Faith

The headlines of these past weeks were disheartening. Most of the news reported were about death or destruction: a patient shoots his doctor then himself; a plane from Taiwan crashes leaving 40 people dead while the world is still stunned by the specter of an entire Malaysian airline passengers’ demise; the raging conflict between Israel and Hamas escalates in Gaza resulting to almost a thousand lives lost. Tragedy is a constant ingredient in the drama of human reality! We breathe the scent of evil in the air. Yet we know that there are also many good things happening daily.

Jesus in his gospel uses simple parables as pedagogical devices to show us how the things of daily life speak to us of God. When he spoke of a field where the master sowed wheat and later that night an enemy sowed weeds, he wanted to highlight the tension and conflict of good and evil in the world. God’s patience allows both good and evil to thrive.

Sadly, some people just focus on seeing the dark side of life. They get depress and lose hope. Indeed the world’s disasters loom big. The national scene is somber as the country continues to be entrenched in progressive squabble about our coffers being mismanaged by our leaders. On top of all these is the interplay of our own personal and emotional struggles we go through. Among the news item that caught my attention was an item tucked within a section of a newspaper. It concerned a sixteen year old girl from Alcoy, Cebu who hanged herself because she got fed up! She wrote a suicide note which read, “Ingat kayo pa at mga kapatid. I love you. I’m sorry. Dili na nako makaya” (Take care pa and to my brothers. I can’t take it anymore).”

World Health Organization reveals that depression is the Number One cause of illness and disability for both boys and girls aged 10 to 19 years. In this age group, and suicide ranks number three among causes of death. Worldwide an estimated 1.3 million adolescents died in 2012. A psychiatrist from Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center for Behavioral Sciences confirms that indeed “teens are at risk of committing suicide because they encounter various emotional struggles.”

As I see it, depression strikes everyone like a virus. According to studies there is a group of neurons in front of the brain that seems to be strongly linked to depression. Interestingly, this area of the brain is also known as the “me-center” of the brain because it is the active area when one “thinks about oneself or worrying about the future.” Hence there is truth in the saying: “selfishness is the fantastic way to be miserable.”

Moreover, I think that our culture of convenience has contributed much in making our young people soft. It places no premium on sacrifice or renunciation anymore. It has succeeded in convincing them that life is about living comfortably; that the measure of life is being happy. Hence suffering is something to be avoided! This throwaway culture has taken away the meaning and value of suffering and sacrifice. Thus when they experience pain and pressure, they give up.

Faith allows us to see the bright side of life. It allows us to find strength in a power greater than ourselves. It gives depth to ones character and allows plenty of hope and optimism. When Jesus tells the parable of the hidden treasure, he invites us to see the hidden God present in our lives. When he compares the kingdom of God like that of a merchant who found a precious pearl, he challenges us to make the effort of seeking him hidden behind our struggles, our sufferings and our sacrifices. Faith gives us an amazing ability to cope up. It is faith that unravels the many mysteries of life. When we believe, we will find ways to rise above the challenge.