No easy way out

Christ’s one and only way of life was by loving. And love hurts. No easy way out. In other words, the very meaning of love is to give one’s self for the sake of the beloved, and the beloved is every human person. Anyone and everyone. We know all this in words. We agree. But to live it out is something else. We would rather pray for miracles, like stones being turned into bread. This is what the tempter keeps telling us. The triple temptation of Christ Himself is most meaningful to each one of us, as we read in today’s Gospel passage (Mt. 4: 1-11).

We are constantly being seduced to work for, and focus on worldly riches, comfort, and fame as the goal of life and the source of happiness here on earth. Let us start with family life. What does loving really mean for a family? Here is a family from the West, whose culture has had so much influence on our own. But even there, miracles do happen, in God’s own way and time. A recent auto-biographical book by a father and her daughter is most inspiring. The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin Salwen and his daughter Hannah.

Several years ago, Hannah was just 14 years old, and she and her dad were driving home when they were stopped at an intersection. She saw an expensive, black Mercedes car on her right, and a shabbily-dressed man asking for food on her left. This disturbed her to no end, until she was able to convince her family to do something about the terrible gap between the rich and the poor. Believe it or not, they soon sold their big, dream house, and moved to a small one half the size of their previous home. They then began to share the proceeds with The Hunger Project, an NGO that helps out the numerous poor families in Ghana, from poverty to self-reliance programs. Now, they are no less than living out the alternative Christian lifestyle of Stewardship, Simplicity, and Sharing.

Not only that. The clincher of it all was that it drew their family much closer to one another than ever before. What a paradoxical twist of events. Before, they identified love with giving one another more of this and more of that. “We love our car, we love our new TV. Love means having to say sorry you couldn’t buy your kid that thing . . . We bought our dream house in part as a subconscious expression of our love. That spacious home would be the place where our kids could bring their friends, maybe even show off a little.” As a result, they stopped com-municating with one another. “We’d scatter to different rooms, far from one another physically and spiritually. The house actually began to weaken our love, or at least our ability to express that love.” Until the God of love led them to a smaller and more simple home, where “we live with each other instead of near each other. We interact more, engage more, talk more, debate more, touch more, love more.”

Coming now to our very own, we recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of Simbahang Lingkod Ng Bayan (SLB), a ministry of the Jesuit scholastics at Loyola House of Studies, Q. C., headed by Bro. Jose Mari Manzano, S. J., and has been focusing on political affairs, disaster relief operations, and its primary advocacy of Citizenship by Good Example (CGE). In their anniversary program, three recipients were honored with the CGE Plaque: the Bukas Palad Music Ministry for spreading the Word of God through their music; Ms. Mel Tiangco, one of our top news anchors and multi-awarded journalists; and Mr. Amando Amisola of the Bureau of Immigration. For lack of space, let me just focus on Mr. Amisola, who has become a source of inspiration for many ordinary Filipinos, especially those in public service, for his commendable honesty and profound Christian values as a public servant.

Last November 27, 2010, a Canada-bound family, attempting to start a new life abroad, accidentally left an envelope containing travel documents and a sum of $10,000 dollars. Mr. Amisola could just have kept the money, especially because of the medical needs of his mother, who was suffering from stage-4 cancer. But instead, he ran after the family and returned everything to them. His mother passed away sometime later, but what a mother, to have raised a son like Amando. Quoting the introduction before his acceptance speech: “At present, as a supervisor in the Bureau of Immigration, Mr. Amando Amisola continues to be an inspiration to his colleagues and fellow Filipinos for his outstanding integrity and strength of character.”

Let me end with Amando’s last words from his acceptance speech: “How if I changed my mind and I did not return the money, what will happen to this family? Maaaring mawalan po ng magandang bukas sa Canada. I thank God for being good. Thank you so much, just be true to yourself, know yourself, know your purpose, know your principle and follow your heart. Thank you very much.”

What a man. “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Mt. 4: 4)