God of small numbers

Over dinner a few days ago hosted by Jun and Menchu Lopez of Rustan’s and Starbucks (by the way, thanks Menchu for including bacalao in the fabulous dinner menu), Jun shared with the group before the prayers a Christmas message that, I believe, touched everyone around the dinner table.

The message read by Jun Lopez was from Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J. as posted on the ADMU website. I have lifted verbatim to share with all our readers the thoughts of Fr. Nebres on why we celebrate Christmas. Here it is.

"A week ago, Anne Candelaria, director of our Ateneo Center for Educational Development (ACED), emailed me about the request of two of the four public elementary schools we work with in Payatas for Christmas food packages for the 400 poorest children in their schools. It would be a very simple package worth about P100, which the principals said would feed a family of five for three days, since they usually ate only one meal a day. The response of our community has been immensely generous and so today they will be preparing the packages and tomorrow Anne and other volunteers would be distributing these food packages to these 400 children.

"Christmas is a time when we pause from our usual concerns and look with new eyes at the people around us: our families, our colleagues, the street children knocking at our car windows, the beggar tugging at our sleeves as we move along the sidewalks, the children in the public schools where we work. Thus these last few days we have found time from our busy concerns to reach out to the poorest children in our Payatas schools, our student organizations are carolling to raise funds for their apostolate communities, we will be celebrating Christmas with our Ateneo GK sites in Payatas 13 and Gabaldon. It is a time when we pause for the simple human concerns that we often pass by during the year.

"A meditation of Carlo Cardinal Martini entitled ‘Through Moses to Jesus’ may help explain this Christmas tug at our hearts. Moses, he says, was a man of big numbers and he cites the census in the Book of Numbers, ‘The total for the tribe of Reuben was forty-six thousand five hundred … for the tribe of Simeon was fifty-nine thousand three hundred …’ and so on. In general, Moses had contact only with the multitudes. He concludes, ‘Hence I believe we can state that Moses represents in a very strict sense the principle of efficiency on the social, structural and hierarchical levels, applied to the people of God … Since he has so many extraordinary things to do, Moses has no time for individual and personal situations.’ During much of the year, we may often be like Moses.

"Jesus, on the other hand, Cardinal Martini says, is ‘the man of small numbers. He takes one person or another at a time; He stops to chat; He waits until the other understands. Jesus gives Mary of Magdala time, He gives the disciples walking to Emmaus time.’

"Jesus is a person who has both time and friends. He gives time for the man born blind, the woman at the well of Samaria, the paralytic at the poolside of Bethsaida, the lepers, the widow of Naim — He gives them undivided attention and time.

"Cardinal Martini concludes: ‘The fact is that here we see the logic of the lost sheep. The ninety-nine are waiting, but He goes looking for the one straggler. It is the logic of the lost coin . . . the mysterious logic of God’s particularization. God seems to get lost in the individual, willingly concealing Himself in the most minute and most simple things, in the things for which we have neither the time nor the leisure that would enable us to attend to them.’

"And so we understand why Jesus, who comes to us at Christmas, invites us to see with new eyes and why He tugs at our hearts. As we attend to a street kid or to a beggar or prepare Christmas packages for a few families or visit a few children in an orphanage, we might be tempted to ask: ‘But what is this among so many?’ But this is Christmas and Christ came to a few shepherds and three wise men. In later years, He did not ask, what about all the other paralytics or all the other lepers or all the other blind men? He did not count worth in numbers. In each individual He saw His mission to a world in need.

"So let us let this God of small numbers, this God, who has time for the lost sheep, open our eyes and pull at our hearts this Christmas. In allowing our eyes and our hearts to see in one family member, one colleague, one street kid or one Gawad Kalinga family our community and our country in need, we may see revealed to us that, yes, in the Christ Child born to us on Christmas is God, the Almighty and the Eternal, who, in the words of Madeleine Delbrel, ‘weighs more than all the world put together.’

"May the Lord grant our community and all whose lives we touch a Christmas full of faith, love and hope."

With these thoughts, I wish Jun and Menchu and everyone, MERRY CHRISTMAS.

"Breaking Barriers" with Cong. D. E. Suarez

"Breaking Barriers" on IBC-TV13  (12 p.m. every Wednesday) will feature on Wednesday, 28th December 2005, Rep.Danilo E. Suarez, 3rd district of Quezon province and chairman of the Oversight Committee. Join us break barriers and gain better understanding of the various legislative programs and projects being reviewed by the oversight committee in pursuit of the current administration’s 10-point agenda. Watch it.

Should you wish to share any insights, write me at Link Edge, 4th Floor, 156 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, 1227 Makati City. Or e-mail me at [email protected] or at [email protected]. If you wish to view the previous columns, you may visit my website at http://bizlinks.linkedge.biz.