FROM REEL TO REAL

“Hoy, actingan lang ‘to.” This is how Lola Nidora reminds Yaya Dub every time the latter seemed to take their role playing in Kalserye, too seriously that it seemed too authentic and real. In the gospel, Jesus admonished the Pharisees and lawyers for their hypocrisy. And the word hypocrisy has it origin from the dramas and make-beliefs. 

The word hypocrite has the origin in the Attic Greek words from hypokrisis meaning "acting on the stage; pretense," metaphorically, "hypocrisy," from hypokrinesthai "play a part, pretend." Thus it is related to acting, actors playing a role which does not pertains to the actors themselves. Actors conceals they real identity to effectively communicate to their audience the character they are portraying. In Attic Greek context, there is nothing wrong in being a hypocrite, as there is wrong in being an actors in our present day context. However hypokrisis or acting becomes wrong when place in the context of real life. From reel to real, hypokrisis becomes wrong for in the former make-beliefs are admitted while in the latter make-beliefs are repudiated. Hypokrisis conceals the truth. Placed in real life, hypokrisis is deemed to be unacceptable. In real life, only truth are admitted.

“Hoy, ‘di ‘to actingan.” If Jesus and the Pharisees are alive today, perhaps he would admonish them in this colloquial way. This is no “actingan.” This is for real. This is real life. He might add-up saying “Magpakatotoo kayo, Pharisees and lawyers.” 

Today, bombarded with teleseryes and various soap-operas by the media, we often mixed-up things; reel life with real life, of acting, pretending with living our real identity. We confuse what is for real from what is make-beliefs, ending-up confused on what is the truth. “Ano ba talaga, kuya?!?”

As followers of Christ we have to proclaim the truth by living in the very truth we had come to know and preach. In our midday prayer hymn we often invoke to Help us, O Lord, to learn the truths your word imparts. But we never stop there we continue to ask the Lord Help us, O Lord, to live the faith which we proclaim. And lastly we petition Him, Help us, O Lord, to teach the beauty of your ways. Thus it is not enough that we know the truth. We have to live by it and impart it to others. Ours is not a matter of “actingan” for our lives is not a teleserye. Our life is of truth which we had come to know, live and preach, through the grace of God working in us.  

But why do we sometimes prefer actingan from totohanan? Truth is often difficult to bear. Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Teresa of Avila, a truthful person. Her life is a testament on the difficulty of bearing the truth in this world. When the Carmelite Order needed reformed she initiated it. Though faced by oppositions and lack of support from some quarters of Carmelites, she insisted on the truth that her order needed a reform (for such reform would imply the lapse committed by the Order, and other are not comfortable in admitting such truth about the lapse they may have had committed). She was even threatened with Inquisition. The hostility she received did not undermined her determination to insist on the truth for her Order; to go back to a simpler way of life. She co-founded the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD) in 1593, with St. John of the Cross. To date, she had inspired a lot of persons to live a truthful life in their own ways, even in the face of oppositions; St. Therese of the Child Jesus, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), and Bl. Teresa of Calcutta, to name a few.  

It may be difficult for us to bear the truth, but it is never impossible. The four Teresas mentioned above proved that. We can shunned away actingan in real life, and simply totohanan na.