Last January 15, 2015 the leader of the worldwide 1.2 billion Catholics arrived in the Philippines via Villamore Airbase. He has the mission of bringing the message of Christ of Mercy and Compassion to the 80 million Filipino Catholics. Arriving in the said airbase he was greeted by scores of Filipinos including church officials and that of the government. He was greeted with smiles by both the Filipino youth and seniors alike. Also, he was greeted by his constituents in church matters and was greeted by the President as leader of a state - the Vatican.
Cabinet members of the Philippine government pile up to kiss the ‘Ring of the Fisherman’ which is the sign of the pope’s leadership to the flock of Christ. “You are Peter, the Rock, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” Matt. 16:18 says Jesus to Peter, making him the leader of the Church. Their kisses reminded me with the kiss that brought death, death on the cross. After the tragedies happening in the Philippines they seem to wait for the pope before they would do some charity and find a place in the limelight of that Church affair and be dubbed as one of the Good Samaritan. They are like the Pharisees in Jesus’ time who follow and follow the Lord not to learn from his wisdom but finding holes to discredit him. They are kissing and kissing the ring of Peter and yet they forgot the message of Jesus carried by this man: “Tend my Sheep.” John 21:15
I left General Santos City in January 16, 2015 for the Papal Visit. At 7:45 I arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3. I rode a shuttle bus going to Taft Avenue for an MRT ride going to our host parish. This will give us lodging for our next 5 day sojourn in the country’s capital. The parish convent is a modern design building. It has a common air-conditioning system not including the rooms for every room has its own air-conditioning. Life in that parish is very smooth. With parishioners coming from the upper social strata, no jeepney ride comes in front of that Church. Only taxi is the available public transport in that area. With such commodities present in a convent who can ask for transfer? After we arrived in the parish we took dinner offered by the parish priest.
After making it to the parish convent we made our way to the host family who will be giving us also an accommodation. My companions were first to arrive in Manila in the 15th so they told me about the ‘wonder’ inside the house of our host family. We reached the house inside a private village. We were asked what business do we have inside the village and we said the name of our host which they eventually called. After calling we were asked to log in our names in a log book in the guard house and we proceeded. Upon reaching I was amazed by the truth they were telling me. It has three floors and an elevator. 48-inch television is catering our recreational needs and it has an ‘azotea’ overlooking Quezon City. It took me some time to process the feeling I have with the house of our host family. Thinking that we have an unfinished house in a remote barangay in Mindanao the feeling inside this three-storey house is amazing!
For three days in Manila I was in the midst of the upper social strata of Manila. Living and doing everyday things in the way how a Quezon City rich club member would do. I do shower under hot and cold and spent time inside a spacious C.R. Touring and touring Manila with nothing in mind but enjoying life. We also joined a Saturday mass in the parish chapel. We were in the midst of the rich and when the offering part came bills not smaller than Php 100 came out from the pockets.
From my experience inside that village of the Rich I saw the real other face of men. I realized that we should stop stereotyping the rich and realize that they too keep their pace in their spirituality.
The other side of the face of man that I saw is that of the more common – the Poor. I saw that the face of the poor of Manila is different from the poor I was used to. Atleast in Mindanao the poor can be seen but the poor in manila is ignored more. I saw a man pleading just for rice and he was sitting in front a fast-food chain. Nobody who heard him ever listened to him. It broke my heart for during at the papal mass in Luneta there is about 7 million who participated, cried and said: “Oh! I was really transformed!” I doubt if they ever listened to the pope of his pleadings of mercy and compassion and ready to turn the word upside down or were they only there hoping to take for themselves a Papal Selfie.
I stopped at him and later on realized what I asked to the man: “What happened to you!” in Tagalog. I normally don’t do that to strangers but in that moment my feeling was so different that I need to explode. As I look into my wallet for what to give to the man I saw him crossing himself with the sign of the cross. Thanks God he has not lose his hope – in Jesus.
He told me after I asked that exploding words that he was finding a job. But, why? He is lame! How can one man could be so hardworking and not be given the opportunity? How heartbreaking it is to hear from the news the millions and millions or even billions of pesos being lost in the hands of those who promise hope, justice, equality, progress and many other things which could make the lives of these simple people better. Last election we hoped of the best from the son himself of the couple who fought in the front for the people against the regime of martial law and we again were disappointed. He is always there talking and talking about the corruption of the past government that he mask his own puppets in their money laundering spree.
This is the problem with kind words. Rhetorical words put great people to death. Nice and appealing words which took the hearts and souls of those who listens away from God. The Socrates of Athens and the Jesus of Nazareth were speaking of truth and yet put to death for it. The Rizal of Dapitan was shot because of the truth he spoke. The Gandhi of India was assassinated due to the truth he fought. All for the words that pierces more surely than the two edged sword. Martin Luther King Jr., Malala Yousafsai, Ninoy Aquino, Aung San Suu Kyi and scores of others who suffered from the rhetorics of selfishness.
Rhetorical words disillusion us from the truth. As we listen and continue to hope, there come those who take advantage. Most often they are those who has promised. An old anecdote goes that: what differentiates us from those who are in the prison cells is that they were caught and we are not.
At UST I met thousands of others who is ready to meet with the Pope. They were mostly from top institutions of learning such as Ateneo, UST, FEU, etc. In essence we are all the hope of the fatherland for in our hands lies the future. We are the future. This was actually a very old saying said by a man born almost 150 years ago and was also killed because of his fight for truth – Dr. Jose Rizal. Yet, after the years spent where are we?
Jan 15, 2016
May 24, 2015
A Third World Version of 'The Lord's Prayer'
who is in us here on earth,
holy is your name
in the hungry
who share their bread and their song.
Your Kingdom come,
which is a generous land
flowing with milk and honey.
Let us do your will,
standing up when all are sitting down,
and raising our voice
when all are silent.
You are giving us our daily bread
in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn.
Forgive us
for keeping silent in the face of injustice,
and for burying our dreams;
for not sharing bread and wine,
love and the land,
among us, now.
Don't let us fall into the temptation
of shutting the door through fear,
of resigning ourselves to hunger and injustice,
of taking up the same arms as the enemy.
But deliver us from evil.
Give us the perseverance and the solidarity
to look for love,
even if the path has not yet been trodden,
even if we fail;
so we shall have known your Kingdom
which is being built forever and ever.
Amen
May 23, 2015
What is Spirituality?
These are people who, legitimately, shun old and new spiritualisms, unreal abstractions, and see no reason to waste their time.
The word "spirituality" derives from "spirit." And for most people, spirit is opposed to matter. "Spirits" are immaterial beings, without a body, very different from ourselves. In this sense, what is not material, what does not have a body, would be spiritual. And one would say that people are "spiritual" or" very spiritual" if they live without worrying much about material things, even about their own body, trying to live only off spiritual realites.
These concepts of spirit and spirituality as realities opposed to material and bodily reality come from Greek culture. From that, they moved to Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, even English and German So that whatever might be labelled "Western culture" is, in effect, as it were infected with this Greek concept of what is spiritual. The same is not true, for example, of the Quechua, Guaranf or Aymara languages.
Neither did the ancestral tongue of the Bible, the Hebrew language, the Semitic cultural world, understand "spiritual" in this way. For the Bible, spirit is not opposed to matter, or to body, but to evil (destruction); it is opposed to flesh, to death (the fragility of what is destined to die), and it is opposed to the law (imposition, fear, punishment). In this semantic context, spirit means life, building, power, action, freedom. The spirit is not something that is outside matter, outside the body and outside tangible reality, but something that is within, that inhabit smatter, the body, actuality, and gives them life, makes them be what they are; it fills them with power, moves them, impels them; it propels them into growth and creativity in an impulse of freedom.
In Hebrew, the word for spirit, ruah, means wind, breath, exhalation. The spirit is, like the wind, light, strong, flattening, unpredictable. It is, like breath, the bodily wind that makes us breathe and take in oxygen, lets us go on living. It is like the exhalation of our breathing: while we breathe, we live; if we don't breathe, we die.
The spirit is not another life but the best of life, what makes life be what it is, giving it love and strength, looking after it and moving it forward.
We can say that something is spiritual in that it has the presence of the spirit in it. So, from now on, we abandon the Greek sense of the word "spirit" and will take care to use it in its biblical, indigenous, African, not its split "Western," sense.
+Bp. Pedro Casaldaliga
Excerpt from The Spirituality of Liberation, Int. pp. 1
Invocation to the Spirit
May 24, 2015
John 20:19-23
Come Holy Spirit. Awaken our small, weak and wavering faith. Teach us to live trusting in the unfathomable love of God our Father towards His sons and daughters, be they within or outside of your Church. If the faith in our hearts goes out, our communities and churches will soon die as well.
Come Holy Spirit. Make Jesus be the center of your Church. May nobody and nothing take His place or obscure Him. Do not dwell among us without bringing us to His gospel and converting us to follow Him. May we not flee from His Word, nor turn away from His commandment to love. May the memory of Him not be lost in the world.
Come Holy Spirit. Open our ears to hear your call, the one that comes to us today from the questions, suffering, conflicts and contradictions of the men and women of our time. Make us open to your power to give birth to the new faith that this new society needs. In your Church, may we be more attentive to what is being born than to what is dying, with hearts sustained by hope, not undermined by nostalgia.
Come Holy Spirit and purify the heart of your Church. Put truth among us. Teach us to recognize our sins and limitations. Remind us that we are all weak, mediocre and sinful. Free us from our arrogance and false security. Help us learn to walk among men and women with more honesty and humility.
Come Holy Spirit. Teach us to look at life, the world, and especially people in a new way. May we learn to look as Jesus looked upon those who suffer, those who cry, those who have fallen, those who live alone and forgotten. If our way of seeing changes, so too will the heart and face of your Church. We, the disciples of Jesus, would better reflect his closeness, understanding and solidarity with the neediest. We would be more like our Lord and Master.
Come Holy Spirit. Make us a Church of open doors, compassionate hearts, and contagious hope. May nothing and nobody distract us or deviate us from Jesus' plan: to build a more just and worthy world, a more friendly and blessed one, opening the way to the Kingdom of God.
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