Our Gethsemane Way

Apart from the crowd but perfectly in communion with all.

"What a waste of time and talent", a French economist once remarked after his brief stay in Anao years back. He was reacting to the way things were going on where he perceived that a lot of brilliant minds were available most especially in civil society and church-based organizations but in the government. The reaction was raised after somebody "local" handed him a copy of E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful. Apparently, he has not heard of it. Reading it in two setting while reclining on a hammock hanging under the shades of coconut palms, he stood up and paced back and forth like a Peripatetic and suddenly blurted out loud,"You Filipinos have great minds but you are not in the government! You are indifferent to your government. You waste your time on your religiosity and outlandish preoccupation.There is too much heaven than earth on your mind."

The Filipinos he was referring to were lowly workers, mostly volunteers who elected, opted to work with the poor. There may be heavens in their minds but they remain grounded on earth working side by side with the marginalized and the least in society. For sure, their solitary lives may be perceived as a waste of time and talent, but theirs is not necessarily a separate ones meant as protest and silent critical remarks to the going on in society at large. By their lives, they just strive to give witness to the passion and death of Jesus, who in Spirit and Truth, eventually blessed, raised and broken as an oblation for the world's unfaithfulness. Theirs may be detached from the local community, but theirs is always integrated to it in Spirit and in Truth, perfectly in communion and broken as well, as a bread is broken that all might partake.