LATE, BUT LOVED NONETHELESS!
25th
Sunday Year A
September
21, 2014
LATE, BUT
LOVED NONETHELESS!
Being late
is a daily occurrence in the country where I was born, grew up in, and still
chose to live in. Our culture was never a stickler for details like being on
time, to start with. Time and space, like everything else, is considered
relative, not absolute values, in our culture. We are a postmodern people
living out certain values of a pre-modern setting. Those invited to parties are
told to come at 8:00 PM, for example, but guests are really too early if they
get to their place at 9:00 PM. Waterways, called “esteros” once upon a time,
dotted the urban landscape decades or aeons ago, but are now nowhere to be
found all over the bustling metropolis, covered over by so-called “developers”
who did more than just develop the city. They enveloped everything, including
those esteros with sellable “prime properties” for the unwary real estate
buyers.
Time seems
not to be the best ally of the ASEAN integration policy planners especially now
that the ten countries that make it up are poised to launch an integrated ASEAN
by 2015. We are late. As usual. And not one of the 10 countries seems to be
ready for it. As yet. As expected … least of all, the Philippines, which is a
laggard in just about all the major areas of concern, including the capacity to
curb corruption, despite all the furious sloganeering being bandied about in
the last 4 and ½ years!
Being late
is not, and has never been a virtue. It may be reflecting a cultural value for
us, but it will never become a virtue.
But today’s
Gospel passage seems to be delivering an altogether different story. The
Johnny-come-Latelies seemed to have been given an edge over those who started
working promptly at 8:00 AM! The whole parable flies in the face of common
sense and common practice in this rat-race world. You need show up on time,
despite the MRT long lines (if it does not get derailed or overshoots the
tracks!) despite the hopeless tangle of cars and trucks all over the
metropolis, inching their way towards their destination during the wrongly
named “rush hour!” (It all seems like that every day, at any given time, is
rush hour in the Philippines!), and you need to take off from your desk on time
(not the way they do it in government offices, where 3:00 PM is merienda time,
and 3:45 is prep time for people to take off, job finished or not finished).
The Lord
does not seem to be fair in this aspect. Those laborers who started doing the
work early had a point. Those who complained that they got exactly the same as
those who got in late had more than just a point. Has the Lord become relative,
too, like the Filipinos, who think of time and space as relative, not absolute,
values? Has the Lord gone the way of the PDAF and DAP conceptualists and planners
who suddenly decided the “just” and “proper” way to do is to skirt around moral
principles and reduce rightness and wrongness to the issue of “good intentions”
– no matter the means, no matter the consequences, no matter the objective
rightness or wrongness of the deed itself?
But the
Lord, in His wisdom, does have a powerful point too. And the point is not the
relativity or stretchability of something that is eminently countable,
quantifiable, and measurable. The point has to do with something whose measure
is precisely to operationalize it, to actualize it and to fulfill it without
measure. It has to do with love, and the measure of love is to love without
measure!
God knows
how many times I have been late for things. I was a late bloomer. I didn’t
“shine” (sort of!) until I was well into my early adulthood. I have experienced
being late in submitting requirements in school, and being late for
appointments for the simple reason that, being a homebody, I could not
calculate properly how much time to give for travel from point A to point B.
But being late is not synonymous with being lousy, at least not all the time.
Being late
could also mean not having the means, not only to come on time, but to come up
with what the world of convention imposes as requirements. Being late could
also mean not being up to par with conditions that one could never reasonably
be expected to have. Being late could also mean not having the wherewithal to
hoist oneself up a high horse, to boot oneself, to propel oneself and take care
of oneself alone by one’s lonesome self … when one is totally helpless and yet
required to play the game in a non-level playing field.
In God’s
definition today, being late could also mean being loved more and favored more,
for as our great Ramon Magsaysay put it decades ago, “those who have less in
life should have more in law.” Being late, but being loved nonetheless is what
this Sunday’s gospel story is all about. And that love is not earned like you
earn SM Advantage points! No one has an innate claim to that love like one
deserves points for charging purchases against your credit card.
Those who
came in late afternoon had no other task to work on. Neither did they deserve
to be given a job to do and a commensurate salary like the others who began
toiling early. But when it comes to God, no one of us has a right to impose our
man-made values and conditions on Him.
Today, we
allow God to be God. Today, too, we allow Him to treat us with love abounding,
and allow Him to approach this same love without subjecting Him to our
pusillanimous and narrow-minded conditions. For in the final analysis, all of
us, apart from having been late so many times for any petty human activity,
really do not deserve to be treated prodigally by a compassionate God, whose
mercy is His justice, and whose justice is also His overwhelming love,
particularly for those who do not seem to deserve it.
Late, yes …
but loved nonetheless! This is great news for each and every one of us!
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