Beloved to lover

I am the beloved of God. And so are you. And so is everyone else. Beloved by God, and sent to be a lover of others. This is the one and only meaning of my life as a human person, beyond my human imperfections and sinfulness. God’s unconditional love conquers human sinfulness, as we see in today’s Gospel event (Lk. 4: 36 - 8: 3). Indeed, love begets love.

That sinful woman expressed her contrition by washing the feet of Jesus with her own tears. Through His compassionate and forgiving presence, she felt His love for her, and was moved to love Him in return. This was the beginning of her conversion, and the rest of her life was devoted to loving God and the neighbor.

The continuing, heartfelt awareness of God’s overwhelming love for each one of us is our path to a lifelong conversion from beloved to lover. And our constant inspiration and role-model for this is no other than the person of Christ Himself. The very fact that God became Man to be and to live among us is what opens our eyes to how great God’s love is for us. Christ literally gave Himself for love of us all the way to His passion, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. During that last supper with His apostles before His death, Christ embodied His life in the breaking of the bread, and in sharing this with His apostles.

“Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.’” (Lk. 22: 19).

In his little book entitled Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen precisely describes the divine call for each one of us to be chosen, blessed, broken, and given. That was the actual life of Christ. That is to be the life of each one of us who commits himself/herself as His disciple.

“Just as bread needs to be broken in order to be given, so, too, do our lives. But that clearly does not mean that we should inflict pain on each other or others to make us better givers. Even though a broken glass can shine brightly, only a fool will break glass to make it shine! As mortal people, brokenness is a reality of our existence, and as we befriend it and place it under the blessing, we will discover how much we have to give much more than we may ever have dreamt.” (Nouwen, p. 88).

Last weekend, we conducted a Discovery Weekend, a psycho-spiritual, assessment and growth seminar for 26 premarital couples preparing for their marriage. The team-couples of different age-groups who shared their life-experiences were all graduates of the Discovery Weekend before their marriage. Now, they are all living the continuing cycle of being God’s beloved: chosen, blessed, broken, given. Very inspiring indeed! Allow me to focus on one of them, who is also the president-couple of our Discovery Weekend foundation: Mike and Tin Asis. They have been married for eleven years and have one son.

Mike and Tin are both dedicated Christians, committed professionals, and faithful-loving spouses through their ups-and-downs, personality differences, joys-and-pains. And just four years after their wedding, they went through one tragedy after another. In the words of Tin herself:

“Just four years into the marriage, our relationship was challenged by a terrifying episode concerning Mike’s health….At age 38, he had to undergo a triple-heart-bypass surgery in February 2004….A little over a year later, (in June 2005), Mike was diagnosed to have Chronic Diabetic Nephrophaty or End-Stage Renal Disease. His kidney function was down to 10% and dialysis became inevitable. When we found out about it, we both cried and cried. Then we decided there was no time to brood. Our priority was to get the best treatment possible for Mike.” Soon after, no less than a kidney transplant was done, and a removal of his gall bladder as well.

As if all that were not enough, Mike and Tin were victims of the Ondoy floods just last year, in Provident Village, Marikina. In Mike’s own words: “We have lost everything in our house, save for my old laptop and my son’s school bag, which his yaya had enough presence of mind to save. We were devastated by the loss, but thankful to be alive. As Tintin and I begin to pick up the pieces, we remember the countless blessings that have always come our way, and continue to pray for those who have lost their lives and the grieving loved ones they have left behind….Napaka-biblical naman ng buhay namin  na bypass na ako, na kidney transplant pa, ngayon binaha pa. Nakakahalata na ako, Lord.”

They continue to work for God’s vineyard: Mike, as a fulltime religious educator; Tin works in the corporate world; and both of them together in the Discovery Weekend ministry.

What more can I say but to affirm you as a couple who are living fully the life of God’s Beloved. Chosen, blessed, broken, given. May your tribe increase, Amen!