BROKEN BUT NOT BEATEN; FORLORN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN!
31st Sunday Year C
November 3, 2013
BROKEN BUT NOT BEATEN, FORLORN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN!
I am afraid of heights. I fell from a tree once in my life,
while doing - you know – that childhood
classic Batman stunt! (I will spare you the details!) But for one afraid of
heights, I think I have done a mean feat climbing 14 Philippine mountains, one
of them for more than 12 times!
I am a small man, too, by any standard, including by current
Philippine standards where children of people not any taller than me, end up
being a lot taller than their progenies. (Did we do the Star margarine
challenge right? Or we just didn’t have Cherifer “tangkad sagad” back then?)
Today, I take comfort from the story of Zacchaeus. No … I
don’t mean to gloat over his height (or the lack of it!). I meant, I take
comfort from Zacchaeus, not because he was just as small as me, but because he
was endowed with a big heart. He was willing to go out very literally, on a
limb, because he had a great desire to see, to know, to be blessed, even from
afar.
Many people there are who prefer not to see, not to know,
and not to be blessed by a possible serendipitous surprise of a lifetime. Simon
and Garfunkel (at least before they walked out on each other’s lives) crooned
about them many moons and suns ago … people looking without seeing; people
hearing without listening … The Lord had better words to describe them … “they
preferred the darkness rather than light.”
I am still reeling from a memorable participation at the
recent Philippine Conference on New Evangelization as one of the speakers. I
spoke about a Zacchaeus-like story. I talked about “growing strong in broken
places,” a title I borrowed from Paula Ripple who wrote a book back in the
early 80s about the same topic. I talked about my younger me back in the 70s
wounding a hapless mango sapling. I tied a knot in its young trunk, when it was
not more than 2 feet high, a young tree trying to find its rightful place under
the sun.
It was trying to rise above the other plants and shrubs, to
touch and see the life-giving warmth and rays of the sun, and become part of
the grove that surrounded the public school where I taught Catechism. It was
trying to do a Zacchaeus, running, huffing and puffing, and trying to rise
above the crowd, for he had a desire to see, to experience what the rest of the
pressing crowds were all excited about.
But the great surprise happened. People in search do find,
as the Lord promised: “Seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be
opened to you.” It turned out the Lord was far more in search for him, than he
was for the Lord. “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for I today I must stay at
your house.”
I would like to tell the world today of this great wonder,
this great surprise. It is not so much the fact that we are out in search, as
the Lord being out to extend his compassion and mercy and forgiveness and salvation.
Christian life is not so much about us calling on God, but about God calling
us, beckoning us to climb down from our perches and being surprised by joy, by
life, by everything that has to do with life in its fullness.
The Lord has called the mango sapling to life. But I, sinful
and selfish that I was, had decided one morning to destroy it, by wounding it
gravely. But many years later, when I got back to the place after my
ordination, I saw the tree, fully grown, sturdy and stable and mighty and proud.
I felt for the wound. It was still there – a humongous scar that became the
star of its total being. It had grown strong at its broken place.
The tree now stands for me an eloquent witness of what we
just heard in the first reading: “But your spared all things because they are
yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all
things!”
A tree was trying to live, trying to rise above its natural
limitations and join the rest of God’s handiwork, and find its place under the
sun of God’s compassion and mercy. Like Zacchaeus, broken and sinful as he was,
just like you and me, was trying to see, to behold, to touch the glint of mercy
in the Lord’s eyes.
Zacchaeus got it. The Lord, who never intended to go to
Jericho, ended up staying for a while to do an errand of mercy. God was in
search of sinners. God still is. And he is in search of me and you up till now.
But there is one thing I need to do. Zacchaeus shows me the
way. I must run. I must rise. I must climb up the tree and embrace it wounds
and all, warts and all – including the tree I just wounded horribly. Scarred
trees are beautiful, even as according to Fr. Guido Arguelles, scarred people
are found beautiful by God, in Christ, who himself was superscarred!
I need to see. I need to hear and listen. I need to look and
really behold – the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!
My former student and mentee, Ronan, together with his own
current students now in High School, took up a challenge I posed to them while
preparing for the Conference on New Evangelization. I told him my story. I asked
them to write their take on the story. And they came up with a short film
entitled ANG KWENTO NI BUHOL (THE STORY OF KNOT).
I may be broken, but I am not beaten. I may be short, but I
am not shit in God’s eyes. I may be powerless, but I am not forgotten. “For the
Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”
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