The First Quarterly General Meeting—held two days before the Ides of March (Philippine Time Zone) and three days before the landing of Magellan on our shores—was meant to encourage the participation of the general membership. But several factors conspired to foil this objective, as the superstitious would expect on the days leading up to the Ides. Brownouts occurred in several towns; a member was presiding a general meeting of diocesan priests and couldn't join; some technical hiccups caused Soc’s MacBook camera to refuse to display his face on Zoom and caused McAbs’ Internet connection to intermittently freeze up his face on the screen.
But everything else went as planned with Fr. Harold’s introduction of Sem. Christian. Fr. Harold highly-recommended Christian to be our first bursary beneficiary. But we had to see him and hear from him ourselves and get to know him better. So, we invited him to the meeting.
It was a good introduction, a way for him to tell us his vocation story, for we can glean a lot about the person from the stories he tells.
Storytelling is a powerful tool of revealing what otherwise can’t be expounded by mere words, given the limitations of language. It can elucidate and disclose the unspoken. This is probably the reason why Jesus Christ used stories to impart life lessons to the people and show them what His kingdom was like.
There were three major points in Christian’s vocation story.
The first was the life-long calling that never waned through all these years and, in fact, only grew stronger as he worked as a nurse and even when he entered a novitiate. Challenges in his personal and family life had earlier prompted him to postpone answering the call. But they eventually led him to the Jesuits where the calling to become a diocesan priest became even clearer.
The second was about the transformation happening in his own family, now that they have accepted and are supportive of his calling to the priesthood. This would remind us of one of our batchmates who once said—during those dreamy summer days while walking to our apostolate area—that “if I become a priest, the first thing I would strive for is the ‘conversion’ of my family to the path of righteousness.” This particular life experience of Christian seems to confirm his reason for leaving the novitiate so he could return to his family and serve in his own diocese. The unspoken design gradually taking form in the stories, we might say.
The third was about his sense of unworthiness and gratefulness. Some things cannot be fully expressed in words and can only be explained in terms of stories. This is one of those. Christian’s stories about being unworthy when “things just happen to fall into place” and would lead him to where he ought to be is something that we are very familiar with. For that is how our Lord would deal with us in our lives most of the time. And out of that unworthiness stems gratefulness. Perhaps we knew that moment that he was the right beneficiary of our bursary, when he expressed that the generosity to answer His call is the least he could do to show this gratefulness.
Likewise, for us, things just fell into place when Fr. Harold told Juntabs weeks ago that they had already chosen our beneficiary even without us meeting him first and making a decision. Well, God works in mysterious ways, indeed.
This third point brings us to the theme that McAbs chose for the sharing: "Pagtuo ug Pagpasalamat Maoy Tinubdan sa Atong Pagkamanggihatagon"
The Gospel reading was about The Widow’s Mite.
Juntabs shared about “generosity” when he was still in the seminary. During those years, he found himself at the receiving end of generosity. And true enough, in the seminary, we became experts in asking from generous donors. This arrangement, however, engendered a sense of entitlement, not gratefulness.
Ringkoy shared an experience that continues to touch him even now. It was the generosity of his wife during a period when they themselves were in want. He continues to look back to this incident and still gains inspiration and insight into the art of giving. For they were giving what they had even if it was the last they had, relying only on their faith that God would provide for tomorrow like the way He provided for “the birds of the air … yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”
And that is what Liklik experiences every time he decides to make a contribution to the fund, giving even though he's got nothing more to give, and giving even without not seeing any quick tangible return.
In Juntabs’ story, it was only later in his life, when difficulties left him empty, to the point of relying solely on the goodness of other people, that he learned generosity that comes from the heart. The feeling of being unworthiness of their generosity, didn't bring a sense of entitlement this time but rather gratefulness.
When we are not in need and we happen to be at the receiving even of generosity, we would feel entitled and may even demand for more. We can become accustomed to receiving and would give from our excess.
However, when we have nothing and we happen to be at the receiving even of generosity, that's when we feel unworthy and grateful. Generosity becomes an outpouring of the heart, even if we have nothing else to give, because we feel unworthy of what we received and the least we could do is be grateful and give back what we have. And this was the common experience of Christian and our sharers that night.
This is probably why we see viral videos of homeless people who do not splurge on themselves when they are gifted with money. Instead, they give everything back to their fellow homeless.
It seems that it is only in our emptiness that we can deeply appreciate generosity and act generously from our unworthiness and from the gratefulness of our hearts.
What a wonderful lesson to learn in the stories we exchanged near the Ides of March and before our celebration of the 500th anniversary of Catholicism, the very reason of our first meeting decades ago and our continuing online gathering. (nox arcamo)
