Weak and Vulnerable

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

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.