GOING HOME

Faced with the reality of immanent death, a person begins to speak about the most important and closest to his heart. One may talk about his precious collections, which fate remains certain not until the collector was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Another may discuss his funeral down to the last detail. Being used to a life of order and perfection, even in death, he feels obligated to be that way. But these are rare. Most of the dying persons talk about persons and the life-experiences they have shared with one another, the memories they cherished most with their loved ones.

I remember a patient I visited several times. His name was Mark. He has a Septal Defect (a hole in his heart). Since his birth, the doctors were hopeless for his case. They counseled his parents to bring him home and prepare themselves for his impending death. Mark survived and reached the age of thirteen. Throughout his life, his parents were advised, twice, by their doctors to bring him home, for his case was hopeless. When I visited Mark, his family received, for the fourth time, the same recommendation they had heard in the past thirteen years: Bring him home and prepare for his death. When I asked Mark how does he feel after hearing the doctors, with confidence he answered me "I am excited to go home." He related to me the love and care he had received from his grandmother and the rest of his family; the joy and laughter he shared with his sibling in their home. He was eager to go home, to be with his family, to relish the love they had for him. Mark went back to Bulacan that day. I never heard news about his status. But one thing was for sure. He was happy with his family at home. Who knows this may have extended his life, as it may have in the past when three times they were informed about his death.      

When I am about to die, I want to go home too. I want to breathe the familiar scent of rice fields and the newly plowed rice paddies. I want to taste the food served to me since my childhood. I want to be surrounded by the persons I loved most in my life, my family. My family is not perfect. We all have a share of faults and imperfections of this world. But the love that keeps us bonded makes the difference. Love enables us to care for another despite our shortcomings. No one will love me and accept me unconditionally as my family does to me. At the end of our lives, we shall go home to our family, as we return to the Father's home. 

ON MINISTRY

Ministry is participating in Christ's work towards His people. I thought before, ministry as my work, my contribution to the Church. In my hospital internship, I  realized it is Christ who makes the visits to the patients. If it is not too presumptuous to say, it is Christ whom they ought to see and experience. It is Christ whom I ought to bring in every patient I visit; Christ who is ready to listen to their problems, Christ who feels their pains. I am Christ's instrument. It is wonderful to realize that Christ can use even a fragile, a broken instrument to make His presence felt. As a minister participates in Christ's ministry, he has to be in touch with his own emotions, with his humanity, as Christ did. Without such, Christ the wounded, sorrowful, tearful, hungry, desolated will find it difficult to work through a "super-man."      

A LIVING REMINDER

Henri Nouwen presents in his book "The Living Reminder" a vital source of a minister and his ministry's vitality. This source is the dynamism between spirituality and ministry. Ministry is defined as the service in the name of the Lord. Spirituality is attention to the life of the spirit in us. These two aspects of a minister's life go hand in hand. There is no dichotomy between ministry and spirituality. They form a single being. That is the minister! Thus, praying is as essential as preaching and doing apostolate. One cannot claim that he is a preacher at one moment, and on moment a pray-er alone. One prays as he preaches, and he preaches as he prays. These two cannot be separated.

 Both ministry and spirituality stand proximately on the minister himself. They are palpable to us through the personhood of the minister. Thus a minister brings the gospel to the forefront, through himself, as he preaches and prays. He incarnates in himself the Good News. He becomes a fifth gospel. Faith, hope, love, etc. are understood not in the abstract but through the concrete life-events of the minister. The love of God is recognized through the minister's love for his flock. As Paul VI said "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 41)" The affectivity of one's ministry relies a lot on the status of a minister's spirituality. One affectively preaches from his own experience; from his encounter with God. One cannot preach about love without experiencing and be living love. Else, the minister will be preaching with no conviction. His way of life, his life itself, his spirituality, matters in his ministry. A minister cannot live a double life.

Nouwen describes the minister as a healing reminder, sustaining reminder, and a guiding reminder. The task of healing, sustaining and guiding others in his ministry prospers if the minister himself is healed, sustained, and guided (or even if he is in the process of). For one cannot impart that which he does not have, or never experience. It is essential, therefore, that he is healed from his wounds; he is sustained by God and the richness of their encounters, and he is guided by the lessons he learned in his life. We are not aspiring for a perfect minister here on earth. After all, as the cliché goes, we are but wounded healers. And if I may add, we have sustained sustainers and guided guides. We are on the road to perfection, but that road begins in our admission of our very own imperfections. Our open declaration of our brokenness and fragility set us towards wholeness and holiness. The first step is the admission (for one's need of healing, sustenance, and guidance). Through acceptance, one comes a long way towards becoming God’s living reminder.

 

  

REDEEMING FACTOR

There are thousands of reasons to give up humanity from generation to generation. When you look around, you cannot but be like Jesus in the gospel, utterly disappointed. Our society and the entire humanity may seem to be hopeless and giving it up is the only option left to us.

But despite our seeming hopeless condition; our disappointing actions, God never gave us up. Even though we disobeyed His commandments with much gusto, God continues to exert effort to redeem us, to save us. He does so because He sees in us hope. He could have destroyed us and simply create a new creation, but He did not. God sees in us a redeeming factor.

Truth be told, there are no hopeless cases in this world. There are only people incapable of seeing hope and opportunity in every crisis in life. In us, hope springs eternal (Alexander Pope in An Essay on Man, 1732). We can always find fresh causes for optimism, as God does. Let us not give on each other because the moment we give up on us is the moment we lose hope in our capacity to change for the better.     

Isn’t this is the very reason why Jesus came to this world?

God sees hope in each of us. Everyone has a redeeming factor worth holding on.

From this redeeming factor, hope may spring forth and salvation will be at hand.

What is your redeeming factor?

GOD PERFECTS OUR IMPERFECTION

Almost all of us would like to be perfect, to be strong, to be unlimited. These presuppose our feeling of imperfection, weakness, and limitation. We do not like to have any blemishes on our face. We like to have a smooth, flawless, and white skin. We would like to have plenty of money, for money has become the measure of success. We desire for a long life. Other would go to the extent of seeking immortality in this world. We abhor diseases and aging. We would like to be a superman – a perfect man. In the process, we focus too much of ourselves – me, myself, and I; ako, ako, ako. We become self-referential. Human as we are, we can never be perfect by ourselves. We would only end up frustrated and imperfect.  

What shall we then do with our imperfections? How shall we attain their perfection?

In the Gospel, a boy offered to Christ what he had; two fish and five loaves of bread, to feed thousands of people. Impossible. Imperfect. The two fish and five loaves of bread can feed only a handful of persons, but not by the thousands. They are imperfect means to address the problem of hungry of the people. Christ used this imperfect instruments offered to Him.  He blessed them and distributed to the people. What seemed to be impossible and imperfect was made possible and perfected by Christ. The two fish and five loaves of bread fed the thousands. Christ was able to do so because the boy OFFERED his two fish and five loaves of bread, his imperfect means.

In the Eucharist, we encounter a God through the appearance of bread and wine. These are imperfect/limited materials to represent the Almighty and Living God. When you look at the host and the wine, they do not move. They do not seem to be alive. I was thinking, if God used in the Eucharist a beating heart, all by itself, to make Him present in every Eucharistic celebration, I think millions will remain faithful to Him, millions will adore Him. But God chose a bread and wine to make him present in every Holy Mass. The imperfection of these matters are described by St. Thomas Aquinas in his beautiful Eucharistic poem “Sight, touch, taste are all deceived in the judgment of You. On the cross, only divinity was hidden, but here (in the Eucharist) the humanity was also hidden. “ The bread and wine are imperfect instruments to make Christ present in our midst. But as they are OFFERED, prayed over, broken and shared, they become perfect means to present to us our God who nourishes us, our God who incarnated among us. The Eucharist through these imperfect matters becomes an effective means to strengthen our faith in God, through the Word we hear, through the Grace, we receive as we contemplate God’s sublime presence in the Eucharist.

What shall we then do with our imperfections? How shall we attain their perfection?

OFFER them to the Lord. (Because for the Lord) there is no imperfect offering from a generous soul. From these imperfect talents, physical appearance, shortcomings, and sinfulness, from our two fish and five loaves of imperfections God sees an opportunity to manifest His perfecting grace. God awaits the moment you offer, you surrender them to Him. Only then can God pray offer your two fish and five loaves of imperfection, and make them fruitful to others.

What then are you to offer to the God?
What are you two fish and five loaves of imperfections?