Today at The Feast, Bo Sanchez got so worked up unlike I'd ever seen him before - he started jumping up and down and pounding the stage so hard that his glasses fell off. The point that he wanted to make? Every night, 30,000 babies die of hunger. That's 210,000 little children in one single week. Eight hundred fifty MILLION people go hungry every day. Knowing this, how dare we call ourselves spiritually mature Christians if we have no love for these poor people? How? How?, he demanded to know? How!!, he screamed. How!!??!!
Good question.
Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a vibrant new Christian, who, after a major life-changing crisis, had embraced the faith so fully and so wholeheartedly, and was now having lunch by herself in a little canteen. She was looking forward to a prayer meeting later that evening with the community she was serving so well with all her spare strength and free time as well as her faithful 10% tithing ("poster girl" who embodied all the community values, they called her). But before that, she had Mass to attend, and perhaps a good half-hour of Eucharistic Adoration. She wasn't too young of a Christian anymore to be ashamed to be seen in public with a Bible, which at this particular point in time, she'd read twice, cover-to-cover. And this afternoon, since she found herself lunching alone, she had holy scripture as her lunch date, her faithful dog-eared New Jerusalem Bible propped against her lunch tray.
"Ate, Ate."
I (ok, if you hadn't guessed by now, the "poster girl" was me. I'm picking up from an unfinished reflection I started to blog early this year) looked up from the fascinating words of scripture and saw that a pre-teen girl had seated herself on the bench in front of me, and was now eyeing my meal.
Go away, I’m reading God’s word! The thought silently went through my head as I tried to pretend I wasn’t sharing the table with anyone.
“Sige na, ate,” she repeated, and this time I felt a familiar twinge of annoyance. She didn’t look very impoverished at all; in fact, she looked like she had cleaned up earlier that day, and was even wearing a pair of good looking jeans. The rising irritation grew as another young lady, apparently a friend of my seatmate, joined us at the table with a tray of half-eaten food scored from another table.
“Patawad ha,” I managed to squeak out, as I returned to the Psalms or Malachi or whatever the heck I’d been reading at the time, and to the rest of my lunch. I couldn’t enjoy it very much anyway with the two little mendicants in front of me eating leftovers and constantly eyeing my own P50 meal, so I picked up the pace and chewed as fast as I could, quickly taking my leave without a second glance at the kids. I’m pretty sure they managed to clean up the leftovers on my tray even before I’d gone out the door.
Conscience is one of the most unpleasant necessities in life. Mine is particularly irritating in that it nags me to Kingdom come and won’t quit until I acknowledge and give in to it (it’s God’s voice, after all, so He can afford to be pushy). In this particular case, my conscience didn’t hit home until many hours later, and even then I had a (feeble) defense. I just wasn’t ready to help, at that particular moment. Maybe someday soon, when the Lord would prepare me better.
Thinking back, I can only say…what a crock.
At that particular point in time, I could quote scripture at the drop of a hat. I’d received some of the greatest teachings and instruction from talks, exhortations, and retreats – I’d even given a few myself. I could even unabashedly worship the Lord from the frontlines, with the best of His worship warriors.
But faced with a hungry child, I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or if I should do anything at all.
One of my favorite spiritual analogies is that of the Dead Sea and the River Jordan. The former is called such because it continually receives deposits from other bodies of water but does not give anything out; it can hold no living thing in its salty, over-mineralized waters, and thus it is “dead.” On the other hand, the Jordan receives water and minerals from other bodies of water, and likewise gives out what it receives through various tributaries. Unlike the Dead Sea, the River Jordan is teeming with life.
I was unwittingly turning into the Dead Sea in my self-centered, comfort-zone Christianity, and God was carving out tributaries to keep that tragedy from taking place. In the next few weeks, He bombarded me with all sorts of situations and circumstances to soften up my salt-saturated hardened heart. The one recurring character He put in the forefront of all these was His “little pencil,” that modern day saint who lived and loved in the streets of Calcutta and carried the Lord’s light into the darkest corners of destitution. Everywhere I looked, there was Mother Teresa. Her life story left me bawling; her life’s work left me ashamed and inadequate. I knew I could never do what she did, so I wept many, many sorrowful tears over my incapacity. One time, in prayer, during one of those weeping sessions, I implored God for the grace to do what His “little pencil” did. Little did I know that I had asked Him for something He was all too willing to give.
It was almost 7:30 on a Tuesday night, and I was rushing to get to a bible study session at Christ the King in Greenmeadows. We were studying the Old Testament, there was going to be a quiz, and our session leader was notoriously tough on latecomers. My usual traffic route was jammed, so I had to look for an alternative way – and when I found it along Kalayaan Avenue, I had a sudden hankering for a Vietnamese sandwich dinner. I parked my car, placed my order, and crossed the street to a convenience store to buy drinks. As I did, a woman met me from across the other end, sidling up uncomfortably close, while mumbling, “Ma’am, barya po.” I was horrified by the stench that surrounded her like a cloud of putrefied perfume, and avoided her as fast as my feet could take me. This time, my conscience was quick to rise up and cuff me on the neck. I tried to seek out the same woman as I made my way out of the store, but I still had no idea what to do, or if I had the courage to do it. Once again I wept, in frustration, for what I did not and could not do. All these last days I had so looked up to what Mother Teresa was doing, but when faced with what I needed to do for one single person in my own city, I was once again at a loss.
But then it was if the Lord said, just do it.
If there's one thing I've learned from the Lord only fairly recently, it's to step out in faith. To just take one baby step in His direction...and He'll take care of the rest. To step out, just like today's Gospel exhorts, of the man-made security of the boat, and dare to walk on water towards Him, just as Peter did. To face your fears and JUST DO IT, because the Lord is telling you to come to Him. And sometimes the Lord will give you a swift kick in the rear end to get you overboard - just like He did in my case, when I thought I would drown in strange new waters minus my former community-comfort zone and the many friends there whom I was walking with. But the minute I cried out for help, He grabbed my hand and saved me...and I will never ever regret treading upon the waves.
The biggest change I experienced after renewal was not that I quit smoking or a lifestyle of licentiousness, although those things are miracles in themselves. Knowing myself as I was, and as I am, the bigger miracle is how I found God in the faces of His poor. Didn't have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out, because it's all spelled out in Matthew 25:31-40, but it was a tremendous step. And I'm not talking about having a heart for the poor for social justice's sake - don't have to debate with me about that: I served enough indigent clients at the Office of Legal Aid and at the NGO I traded in my white collar corporate law job for, only to find myself disillusioned by the very people I sought to serve. The difference is that today I serve not my fellow man - I would've gone into politics (or at least the ideal of politics) if that's what I aspired for. I serve only one Boss, and that is my God...and I seek to serve Him by doing as He instructed, by loving Him as He lives in my brethren, especially in the least of them. It's more of a walang personalan, Diyos lang kind of deal. Sometimes Tess Bechaida's loud mouth and abusive behavior or the Delta kids' rugby-induced rowdiness can be trying on one's faith and patience, but whenever I realize that God dwells in them, they become objects of love, instead of scorn. I remember that when I was new at He Cares, I used to detest Tess - didn't even acknowledge her presence and could not stand her "rudeness" in the face of all the generosity extended her. But I recall asking God for the grace to see her through His eyes, and, amazingly, my relationship with her transformed - I saw her woundedness and the struggles she has to deal with on a daily basis, and today although she still manages to irritate and horrify me every so often, she is a friend in Christ. I now have many hundreds of friends in Christ, big and small, but all His poor...some of them I know not by name except for the fact that they like to call out "Ate Honey! Ate Honey!" or *ahem* "Ate Ganda!" whenever I pass them by. How amazing. How blessed am I!
For indeed, I believe that when we reach out to the poor in the service of our God, we should never think ourselves to be their Messiah, their savior, their salvation. On the contrary, I believe that they save us, from our self-centeredness and pride, from our selfishness and egocentrism, from drowning in the mires of our own darkness when they expect us to be their light. I see my God in the poorest of the poor, and I can only pray that they see Him in me.
Amen.
