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.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
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!
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!
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