FALLEN AND FRUITFUL!
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
July 13, 2014
FALLEN AND FRUCTIFYING!
I was in the flood-devastated areas just a month after
typhoon Sendong unleashed its unprecedented wrath over Northern Mindanao some
years back. Rains fell. Waters cascaded down from the denuded mountains,
causing massive and sudden flooding over parts of Cagayan de Oro City, and
brought humongous trunks of felled trees down Iligan City, causing the untimely
deaths of scores of people who were stricken dead as they slept in the dark and
dead of night.
Falling rain is usually a welcome gift from the heavens. It
does not return empty handed, but makes the land bear fruit in plenty. This
much, Isaiah tells us in the first reading. But rampaging floods carrying huge
log projectiles are a different matter. They are destructive. They bring death,
not just destruction … along with a whole lot of the usual hand-wringing from
officialdom, looking for someone else to blame except themselves.
But come to think of it, natural calamities are simply that
– natural. We cannot control them. We cannot prevent them. We cannot, even at
times, predict them, as in the case of earthquakes. But calamities that are
directly caused by humans, like wanton and illegal logging, and the rape and
pillage of mother nature are a different matter. Natural calamities, of
themselves, are not evil, per se. They are all part of the law imprinted in the
world of nature itself. But human neglect, human greed and selfishness, what
theologians would refer to as “secondary evil,” are a totally different
reality. They bear fruit. They bring a train of other evils. They cause the
downfall of many, and affect the lives of many, for the worse, not for the
better. They bring down suffering on innocent and helpless people, and untold
misery to countless others.
This is suffering that happens due to the evil that other
men and women do … evil that takes place when otherwise good people allow
themselves to be instrumentalized by primary evil, Satan and his cohorts. But
not all suffering can be traced back to either primary or secondary evil.
Suffering is part of the whole complex of mystery of the human condition that
arose when we fell into sin, subject as we all are to the ravages brought by
original sin.
Today, our readings refer to this paradoxical situation of
man subject to the effects of sin and the evil than people do, or evil that
people allow themselves to be instruments of.
This kind of suffering falls like rain from some place up,
unbidden, unwanted, undeserved. Such is the mystery of human suffering. Bad
things do happen to good people, and evil men seem to triumph over good men.
Good girls finish last, and good boys seldom make it to the top of the heap.
In such situations, it is easy for anyone, most of all
myself, to lose hope and question God … What is the meaning of all this? What
good can come out of this senseless evil?
God’s answer is unequivocal … Rain does not go back empty
handed. It makes the earth fertile and fruitful. There is meaning behind the
pain as there is a silver lining behind every dark cloud. “The sufferings of
this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for
us.”
Sendong brought untold tragedy to hundreds if not thousands.
So did Pablo. And more recently, and much, much worse, Yolanda (Haiyan). When I
first saw the massive destruction, I could not hold back tears. But now I see
countless little miracles like plants abloom in dry deserts and in the midst of
so much desolation: seeds sprouting life and hope to all who plant … fishermen
getting back to the only livelihood they know after receiving boats that
generous people give. From the tragic loss of lives and property and livelihood
arose new hope from people they do not even know, from near and far.
But for these miracles to happen, ironically, they have to
come from situations of brokenness. They come from experiences that have to do
with falling, dying, and then moving on to rising once more.
And this, my friends, is the good news – the paradoxical
nature of new life that arises from having to fall and die, so that the new
might be born.
But, as in the case of Sendong, Pablo and Yolanda, there are
victims and there are victims. There are those who fall and remain down, and
those who fall, but strive to rise. There are those who give fruits in return
and those that merely suck in what others painstakingly give. There are soils
that enable and empower and soils that just receive, with nothing to give in
return.
I would like to believe that the call today is for us to
decide on what type of soil we ought to become. It is not about deciding not to
fall, or not to be rained down upon, for into everyone’s life, some rain must
fall.
Bring it on, then! Like the martyrs, like the saints, like
everyone who fell in the darkness of night, for God’s sake, and for others’
sake, we will not fall down in vain. We might be down, but not out; stricken,
but not written off; fallen, but still fructifying … a hundred, sixty, or
thirty fold!
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