Fr. Primitivo E. Viray, Jr., SJ
*Originally preached during the Philippine Province celebration of the Solemnity of St. Ignatius of Loyola last July 29, 2018, Ateneo High School Covered Courts. (Gospel Text from Luke 10:25-37)
July 31, 2018
Last May I visited the Jesuits working in the Bukidnon Mission District. For those of you who do not know, we have been accompanying our brothers and sisters in Bukidnon—Christians and Indigenous Peoples—for a long time. In fact, the mission of the Society of Jesus in the 17th century was Mindanao. Until now, the Philippine Province remains committed to this mission as shown by our pushing forward the Philippine Province Roadmap which gives particular focus on Mindanao.
Si Fr. Bros Flores ang binisita ko sa Pangantucan Community High School, halos 73 kilometers mula sa Malaybalay city. Si Fr. Bros ang Heswitang pari na presidente ng eskuwelahan at katuwang niya ang mga Carmelite Sisters of our Lady sa administration ng eskuwelahan. Noong kinumusta ko naman ang mga madre’t guro ng Pangantucan high school sa kanilang kalagayan, sabi nila masaya naman daw. Sinabi nila na kamakailan nga lamang, mas sumaya pa sila dahil nadagdagan ni Fr. Bros ang kanilang sweldo. Tinanong ko kung magkano naman ang nadagdag. Sagot nila, “Pasalamat gyud mi kay Fr. Bros, kay nadugangan ang among suweldo kaniadto 8,500 karon 8,800 pesos na!” At dahil alam ko na di-hamak mas mataas ang sweldo ng mga guro sa public school, tinanong ko kung bakit hindi sila nahihikayat na lumipat sa public school na may teacher’s license naman sila. Sagot nila sa akin na gusto man nilang lumipat, ang Pangantucan community high school sa simula’t simula pa noong bata sila, ito ang nagpa-aral sa kanila. Kung kaya mahal na mahal nila ang eskuwelahan ng mga Heswita at handang magturo kahit mababa ang suweldo.
Moreover, Fr. Bros told me that the teachers not only earn less from their teachers’ salaries but they also spend their own money and provide food for the lumad children when they come to school without any money or food. These are our partners in mission. We, Jesuits, wish to express our heartfelt gratitude to them for their commitment to the children. We are grateful too to our lay partners wfrom the parishes of Mary Mary the Queen, Sacred Heart, Santa Maria and the other Jesuit schools and universities who have committed themselves to continue helping the Bukidnon Mission District.
The Philippine Province of the Society is celebrating 60 years since it became an independent province, after having been a mission of the New York Province. For all these years of service, we are truly grateful to the Lord. We are also grateful for you our partners and fellow workers in this vineyard of the Lord—teachers, staff, friends, family, benefactors, parishioners, and alumni—for without you we would not be able to carry on the wonderful mission that the Lord has entrusted to this Province.
In the spirit of gratitude, may I request my brother Jesuits to please rise and turn towards our audience and to give our lay partners a round of applause? Maraming, maraming salamat po sa inyong patuloy na pagsabay at pagsuporta sa ating misyon! Humihingi din po kami ng pagpatawad sa mga panahon na kami’y nagkukulang sa pagpapahalaga sa inyo at hindi pagturing bilang tunay na mga partners sa misyon. Maaari nang umupo ang aking mga kapatid.
In today’s gospel, the scholar of the law stood up to test Jesus and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Ano nga ba, Panginoon, ang dapat kong gawin para makamit ang forever? Mayroon nga bang forever? Jesus replies by asking him, “What is written in the law and how do you understand it?” The scholar replies saying, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” Tama! Korek ka diyan sabi ni Jesus, gawin mo ito at may forever ka! Parang inspiring at madali lang pero alam natin na hindi!
But the scholar of the law would not be satisfied and wanted to justify himself saying to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Noong nakaraang taon, sa New Bilibid Prison sa Muntinlupa, 34 na student-inmates ang grumadweyt sa University of Perpetual Help Bilibid Extension School. Nagtapos ang 17 ng Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship at ang 17 naman sa Computer Hardware Servicing course. Sa loob ng Medium Term security prison ginaganap ang pag-aaral nila sa tulong ng mga guro ng Bureau of Corrections at kasama na rin sila Frs. Eli Lumbo at Ro Atilano, mga Jesuit chaplain ng Bilibid nagtuturo din dito maliban sa kanilang pagmimisa at paghahanap ng iba’t-ibang paraan matulungan hindi lamang ang mga bilanggo pati na rin ang mga pamilya ng mga nabilanggo. Maliban dito may magandang balita rin akong napag-alaman na si Fr. Ro ay nagturo ng pag-gitara sa mga bilanggo na nais matuto. Ito iyong isaang ulat mula sa pahayagan:
In the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa, Jesuit Fr. Ro Atilano offers free guitar lessons. In his last class of students, the best player was Alex, a 23-year-old serving time for attempted homicide. According to Alex, learning the guitar helped him to rediscover his goodness, after years of feeling ashamed of his crime: “I thank God not only because I now know how to play the guitar, but also I see now that there are still a lot of good things that I can do.”
At the end of the lessons, Fr. Ro held a class recital. After performing, Alex was so moved, he cried. Fr. Ro said that at that moment, “I could almost see in his faith how his dignity was restored.” Before Alex went home on parole, he asked to be baptized.
Hindi po ba napaganda ang nangyari sa ating mga kapwa tao na nakulong at nabigyan ng panibagong pag-asa at kinabukasan? Hindi ba napaganda ng buhay kung nagtutulungan ang mga Bureau of Corrections personnel, tauhan ng Philippine Jesuit Prison Service at ang maraming lay volunteers na naglilingkod sa mga nakulong? Muli tayo mapapatanong: “And who is my neighbor?”
And who is my neighbor asked the scholar of the law. Jesus responds to him by narrating the parable of the Good Samaritan. We heard the parable again today. “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.” The priest and Levite—religious representatives of Judaism—and supposedly “models” of being neighbor saw the victim but did not stop and in fact even passed by the other side of the road to avoid the victim! Why did they not stop? Where they afraid that touching a possibly dead man would render them unclean and, therefore unable to offer religious sacrifices at the temple? Were those religious rules and practices more important than this victim? Were they in such a hurry about their business and stopping to help would inconvenience them? Or were they afraid that possibly the robbers (or if you like in more contemporary times—those riding in tandems) are still hanging around looking for other victims? Whatever. Ika nga nila kung ayaw, maraming dahilan, kung gusto maraming paraan.
Enter the Samaritan, a declared enemy of the Jews, upon seeing the victim, he was moved with compassion to stop and help him. Because of his compassion, he acted.
Take note of all the action words that follow in the next gospel verses:
He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him.
The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’
Talagang Good Samaritan diba? Iniligtas niya ang biktima at siya mismo ang nag-alaga at gumastos! O kaya ninyo iyan? Kaya ba natin iyan? Kung ayaw, maraming dahilan, kung gusto maraming paraan ang maaaring gawin!
There is a wonderful twist in the end of the parable when Jesus asks of the scholar of the law: “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” Fr. Bill Abbott pointed out this twist when we were discussing this parable. If you remember in the beginning, the scholar of the law asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers with a parable. But in the end, Jesus draws the scholar’s attention not so much to who is my neighbor but who was neighbor to the victim?” In other words, it is not so much the victim as neighbor and really needing help but the person who acts out of his compassion that is neighbor! This is important because we can engage in helping our neighbor as objects of our assistance, merely out of a sense of duty or obligation or patronage. But they are in fact subjects, persons to whom we are called to have a relationship, to accompany and to journey with them in their sufferings. Pope Francis constantly reminds us that mercy and compassion is what the world needs more than ever today—compatire, “to suffer with” our poor brothers and sisters.
Fr. Bill also shared with me the beautiful insight of the late Fr. Howard Gray, Spiritual Exercises guru, who points out that the Good Samaritan not only helps the victim by himself but also brought other people like the innkeeper to assist in this work of compassion. In contemporary language, Fr. Gray says this is networking! Rightly so, is this not what we are always attempting to do given the magnitude of the mission that we are faced with, that is, to call upon our Jesuit and lay partnerships and networking to collectively respond to the mission entrusted to us?
The gospel passage ends with: He (the scholar of the law) answered (to Jesus’s question of who was neighbor to the victim), “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Dear friends and companions in our common mission we are told to go and do likewise. Yes we can ask the question, as did the scholar: who is my neighbor? That is needed. But what really Jesus desires is that we be neighbor to our fellowmen and women, especially those who are marginalized and most vulnerable in society.
Last January, we invited Bishop Ambo David of the Diocese of Kalookan to speak to the Superiors and Directors of Work of our Jesuit institutions on how he was handling the grave and challenging problem of drugs, violence, and the extra-judicial killings in his diocese. You may know or not know that these killings continue unabated up to now. Only last July 19, Bishop Ambo reported as follows:
As of this writing, Jennifer Taburada’s lifeless body is still sprawled on a concrete pavement in Bagong Barrio, Caloocan city. She was killed by masked killers just about an hour ago. She was one of the widows who sought from us a scholarship for her daughter last March. I remember her clutching in her armpit the death certificate of her husband Ryan, who had also been killed by masked killers a year ago now. At that time she narrated how her husband’s body was mutilated by the killers. They gouged his eyes and cut off his private parts. I remember how I squirmed and whispered to her to remind her that her daughter was listening. Now her two children, in grade five and grade seven (aged 11 & 13), are complete orphans.
The death squads that killed Jennifer earlier were not even rushing. If the police in the nearby station wanted to pursue them they had all the time to do so. The death squads even had time for another operation just a few hours later. They killed Jennifer at Bgy 152 in Bagong Barrio at 8pm; then they killed another one at 11:30 pm: Alvin Teng, 36 along Katarungan St. Brgy. 149 Bagong Barrio, Caloocan City—just a few blocks away from where they killed Jennifer.
Bishop Ambo had invited the Jesuits to come to the diocese and establish a “mission-station”, a place right at the heart of the poorest areas where poverty, violence, and killings have become a norm. He requested that we partner with the diocese to establish Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) and to coordinate with the diocese on its various programs of community drug rehabilitation, poverty alleviation, scholarships for victims of EJK and formation programs, and the like. He invited us to join the many other religious congregations and network of groups who have already established mission-stations. Bishop Ambo requested of us to have a presence among the “laylayan ng lipunan, lalo na sa mga nasa laylayan ng simbahan, mga taong hindi naaabot ng simbahan.”
After several months of discernment in common, the Province leadership has heeded the invitation of Bishop Ambo and is committing itself to going to Kaloocan in the coming months. Fr. Junjun Borres, Rector of Loyola House of Studies, had carefully accompanied the Jesuit scholastics through several months of discernment and arrived at their decision to say yes to this invitation. I am heartened and inspired by the decision of our young Jesuits to respond to the call of the times. For now, I am missioning one Jesuit priest who will stay full-time in an apartment where the residents of the area in Kalookan have already reserved for us. Fr Jerome Cruz, point person for the Kalookan mission-stations, told me that the people are already excited to welcome us. The current plan is for our scholastics to live there on weekends while having Jesuit priests taking turns to celebrate Sunday masses and provide a pastoral presence there.
In the light of our reflection on the Good Samaritan, we have discerned the call to “go and do likewise” and to be neighbor to the victims of the relentless war on drugs even as we continue our other missions in Mindanao and around the country. The most recent CBCP statement questions us: “Are we to remain as bystanders when we hear of people being killed in cold blood by ruthless murderers who dispose of human lives like trash? Do we not realize that for every drug suspect killed, there is a widowed wife and there are orphaned children left behind — who could hardly even afford a decent burial for their loved ones?”
Dear friends we cannot be indifferent to the pain and suffering of our least brothers and sisters. In that same spirit of the Good Samaritan who asked the innkeeper to take care of the victim, we are asking you our friends and partners in mission to carefully discern together, to journey together, to do something concrete together in our own little ways through our Ateneo and Jesuit networks, “to be with the sheep and smell like the sheep” as Pope Francis exhorts us. Last Sunday, the Bukas Palad Choir went to Kalookan and staged a concert for the benefit of the scholarship program for children whose parents had been victims of EJK. Here are the words of Bishop Ambo himself a day after the concert: “The families of the EJK victims were one in saying that the concert was a consoling, empowering and truly healing experience. They felt daw that it was God who sang to them during the concert. I cannot thank you all enough, so I thank God instead.”
Pope Francis challenged the Jesuits in the last General Congregation 36 saying that more than ever we need to “have the courage and prophetic audacity” to engage in these difficult times. The Philippine Province would like to heed his call here and now in the same indomitable spirit that our Father Ignatius wanted to “save souls” for the greater glory of God.
May the Good Shepherd who always watches over his flock guide all of us in truly being neighbor in the spirit of mercy and compassion to our poor Filipino sisters and brothers. St. Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.
+AMDG+