The start of the Ordinary Time in our liturgical calendar early in the new year indicates the refocusing of our attention to the essence of Christian life in the light of faith. We concentrate again on the old call of Jesus Christ to redirect ourselves to the Gospel (Mark 1:14-20). The sights and sounds of daily existence for us Filipinos, with 500 years of Christianity to our name, make indisputable the need for transformation and renewal.
Time of fulfillment
The name Jesus stands for fulfillment: his coming is the fulfillment of God’s promise to send us someone to save us and lead us to the right path. That is why his birth was a joyous event celebrated by the angels, shepherds, wise men, and most especially by those faithful, little people like Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zacharias, Simeon and Anna. People knew only too well that things were far from being good, with so much rottenness around, so much violence, oppression, poverty, ignorance and suffering. Things would be better; that was the expectation. Jesus made his public appearance and declared, “This is the time of fulfillment!” It means, “The reign of God is at hand.” Fulfillment for humankind cannot be against God or apart from God. Our fulfillment is the completion of what our Father and Creator has planned for us.
Filipinos have at times been faulted for being too optimistic or complacent amid so much dross and inanities in our society, not facing real issues but taken up more by the whistling in the dark. “It cannot get worse than this”—self-consolation or resignation? Well, things definitely have to change if we are to improve. It is not God’s plan that we suffer and self-destruct. No people are ever God-forsaken.
The need for conversion and faith
Jesus called out on his listeners to be converted, to change their ways (“bagong buhay, bagong puso”). This metanoia he was demanding of people means both a turning back to God and turning away from old sinful ways. This “turning around” implies facing and living up to God’s will and turning one’s back to and rejecting the world’s enticements. If the fulfillment for us is in connection with the actuality of God’s reign among us, this would be inconceivable in any community disregarding God’s Word and disobedient to His commandments. In this matter of transformation and renewal, we Filipinos are stuck. In our deeply rooted ways, we discover to our chagrin again and again that we easily speak of changing for the better, only to find ourselves snapping back again (our true “resilience”?) to the old rotten “traditions.” How do you fumigate to extinction the pandemic opportunism and greed to make it big and quick at the expense of others and of the commonweal? How do you scrape out of the system the pernicious vested interests that define our traditional politicians on all levels? Can we really ever divest ourselves of these unchristian behavioral patterns?
We change our ways when something or someone powerful overwhelms us; a thunderbolt can jolt us out of the daze of coasting along the old rutted road. Jesus came and demanded that the people believe in him and his Gospel. His first followers literally walked out of their previous lives in order to be with him. Simon and Andrew, James and John left everything on the spot to heed his call; so radical was their identification with Jesus and his Gospel. The lack of such authentic evangelization for so many of us Filipinos pinpoints the cause of our unconverted ways. Changing is a consequence of believing. Without real faith, we can only make empty claims. The 500th anniversary of the coming of Christianity to our land is a clarion call for renewed evangelization. To believe in Jesus Christ is to live according to his Gospel. Without such conversion we have only a pretended Christianity and pretentious religiosity, even as we continue to wallow in our own vomit.
Alálaong bagá, to belong truly in the world of Jesus Christ, we have to change and become his disciples. We know there is neither future nor salvation for us Filipinos in the culture of corruption, greed, violence, deception and self-absorption. The politics of vested interests is in direct contradiction of the Gospel of Christ. If we believe, then we shall do what it takes, individually and collectively as a nation, to institute our personal transformation and our rebirth as a people.
Join me in meditating on the Word of God every Sunday, from 5 to 6 a.m. on DWIZ 882, or by audio streaming on www.dwiz882.com.