Every year on the third Sunday of January, we have a Filipino liturgical celebration of our own—“extending” the Christmas season—the Feast of the Santo Niño. The image of the Santo Niño de Cebu, a gift to the first baptized at the outset of the Christianization of our land, symbolizes for to us today the fundamental option taken by the boy Jesus in the gospel account (Luke 2:41-52).
Taught by a child
While on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the boy Jesus purposely stayed behind in the holy city. He was not lost; on the contrary, he intentionally separated Himself from His family to make a statement, a fundamental decision, to the persons closest to Him. At the age of 12 as a bar mitzvah (son of the law), Jesus has arrived at a phase of His development as a man when He was supposed to be already basically formed and, therefore should take full responsibility for His actuations before God and before His fellowmen.
And the foremost principle in life He personally would like to be identified with and which He now proclaims is that God is His Father, and He is totally committed to be doing His Father’s will. He would like to be, He must be, “in His Father’s house”—where the love of the Father is everything and where love for the Father is life. God is the source of His life and purpose, and the ultimate goal of His everything. Here is wisdom, knowing and accepting the fundamental truth of one’s radical and complete union with God, the basis of a successful and meaningful life. Anytime and anywhere to live in the world as in the Father’s house: to acknowledge and serve God as the first rule for any child of God. It is the first commandment.
In the family
“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” The question-answer of the boy Jesus is not only a statement of His fundamental option as shown by His action but also a big hint from the inspired writer that what Jesus has become is something already familiar to His parents Joseph and Mary. Jesus clearly sounds that He expects His parents to be the first ones to realize what has happened to Him. It is from them that He learned to give primacy to the love of God. He was formed by His parents in the principal values in life. After the incident, He would go down again to Nazareth together with them and continue to be obedient to them and to “advance in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” For the Niño Jesus as for all of us, the family is the natural habitat for the fundamental formation of any person.
Filipinos ritually praise the family as the basic building block of our nation, patting ourselves on the back that we are deeply family-oriented. But our shibboleth maka-pamilya may well be the clue why we are a mess, because we are like prisoners who cannot go beyond our immediate families, many of which are fatally absolutized as the end-all and be-all of the members. Imperative is the reorientation that fundamental values, the nation and the common good take precedence over one’s biological and social family. Our political dynasties and oligarchies, economic cronyism and rampant corruption have their root in our grotesque family traditions that have not inculcated the right values into our growing children.
Alálaong bagá, it is in the family, as shown by the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that principles and values are picked up by the children from the earliest years on, primarily from the examples of the parents and the adults around. Schools and churches may be too late if the growing children have already imbibed selfishness, deceptiveness, bullying and authoritarianism. The love of God is the basis of all values, as the boy Jesus personifies to all of us today.
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.