When I Say "I Love You", I Pledge

My promise of love:

Ginakueang ako it bisaea

Agud ika paabot kimo

Pero bisan pa, akong hinyo

Nga sa akong pag-ako

Nga ikaw hay hinigugma

Kunta hay mahangpan mo

Ako hay tawo man lang

May kinahang-ean, may kahinaan

Indi ko kimo ika-promisa

Pareho ko iba

Rong mga bituon ag ro buean

Una sa kaeangitan

Haead ko kimo

Akong taguipusoon

Puno it nina

Padayon nga nagabaga

Bisan pa nga kon amat

Hay maeuya.

I wrote it because I am loved. I am loved and called to love in the process. I respond to it in my own pace. In my day-to-day approximations, I am becoming certain that Euclid's postulate that straight line is the shortest way from one point to another is wrong when it comes to human intersubjectivity.  In loving, I have to mean every word of it and approximate its meaning every day of my life. Aware of my strengths and flaws, I hasten to live its truth in my day-to-day struggles. Even if at times, love seems to stab the wounded and scarred heart. Even if love remains unrequited, and the embers of love are fainting in the core of this restless heart, I shall be for I cannot compromise what I am.

A  Theology of Love

I cannot compromise my humanity. I cannot imitate or agree with the examples of paid shepherd who always barrage my people's sensitivity with whining: “Alcanse man ako nga ighando ko it libre ro ang manggad, tiempo, ihibaeo para kinyo.” 

I am called to love, no matter what and however it may be. I am dignified by being capacitated to love. “Love consists in this, not that we have loved God, but that He has first loved us” (1 Jh 4:10). My God. My neighbor. Myself. My community. All made me to understand that it is my nature to love. I am called to care; to share however big or small the gifts that I have. I do justice to Love by living it out everyday in the here and now; by embracing the Cross of Christian Brotherhood not only on restful and holy Sundays but more so every moment of the busy MWF and the demanding TThS. I stand witness to its truth by my affirming my existence in awareness of the significant-other and valuing meaning even if it may seem meaningless.

(My nature, I owe it to my God. He is the font of everything that is—of both the existential tree-haters and the ethereal elfin ladies. Without him nothing ever is. He is Love. Such Love makes it possible for three persons to be One God. Such Love calls and unites the community to be of one mind and one heart. Love emanates unto and ennobles lesser loves and transforms human family into an experiential situation of divinity. Love is everything and without it nothing ever is.)

A Small Christian Community is My Church.

   It is so for by Love that we all become brothers and sisters in Christ. By Love, God becomes our maternal Father for which Christ is the firstborn. By Love, we made up the Body of Christ. By Love, the Holy Spirit awakens in us our unique and distinct gifts that we may wield our God-ness to become stewards of God's creation. By Love, it becomes possible for each of us to lovingly carry the Cross of our Brotherhood in Christ. Bearing each other as St. Paul says as we journey back home to the house of the Father. In our responsible service of one another we approximate our love for the Father whom we have not seen. We experience the incredible love of God in a loving community, concretely in a small community that affirms our uniqueness and forgives our imperfections. We express our love for God as we care for and share with one another in that community, more preferentially the least among us (cf. Mat. 25:40ff).

My Church is a Church of the Poor

           The demand of Love in a Christian community is that “there should be no poor among you” (Deut. 15:4). The reality as brought about by sin however is that the poor will always be with us (cf. Mat. 26:11). In Balete, NSCB reports that poverty incidence is at 60.9% making it the 4th municipality in Aklan with high incidence (cf. 2003 Small Area Estimates of Poverty). Corollary to that is the fact that the health problem of utmost importance that besets the community is malnutrition among less than six-year old children, Balete having a prevalence of 12-14% malnutrition in this age group for three (3) consecutive years and being the municipality with the 2nd highest rate of malnutrition in this age group in the province of Aklan in 2009 to 2011 (cf. PHO, 2011 Annual Program Implementation Review). 

            The local church is not blind to this reality. She knows her sons and daughters in Balete. Precisely that since the pastorship of then Rev. Fr. Jo Parohinog, she had opted to give due preference to the poor. She became the Church of the Poor. Not because she encouraged poverty but because she realized that Jesus sees also the poor as the least and the marginalized in a sinful structure and that they are in urgent needs of her love. One concrete manifestations of this preferential option is that from Arancel system, she led them to espouse and get involve in the maintenance of her temporal goods and even encourage their availment of the sacraments through the Offering approach. Later on, in Fr. Tito's time, she invited them to step up higher to Pledge System which enabled the establishment of parish-based credit union. This pastoral program based on the Theology of Christian Life and Love was sustained by Msgr. Frac. The local church was vibrant and optimistic. The Pledge System was positively accepted and the outpourings of love and generosity spilled even to other needy parishes. Then came the storm. 

A Dark Cloud of Unknowing

         The reshuffling of shepherds in the Diocese of Kalibo in the middle of 2004 was the beginning of the diaspora in the journey of the Christian community in Balete. The resurgence of contrary orientation alienated the little ones from the Church they have identified with and learned to love for more than three decades. It ceased to be the Church of the Poor which they are part of. It ceased to champion the building up of "New Heaven and New Earth" in the here and now. 

       The trying times affected the fruits of the struggles of the Christian community. The monthly collections had sagged from 60 grand seven years ago to only 5 grand at the present moment. Why is that, someone asked?

         People ceased to care. They fall out of love. They bothered to put strings on things that they give. To give is to expect for something in return. It is an investment, so it seems. Alcanse man kon medyo mahina do balik. Such is the expression we often heard these days. Such is the dark cloud looming that obscured the virtue of Love once aflame in the hearts of men. 

         A friend referred to such as Realist—a lover who does not believe in unrequited loves. That’s how they put it these days. Gone were the days of Jesus of Nazareth. Gone were those examples of his of protecting his sheep from greedy wolves to the point of laying down his life for them that they might pasture in verdant meadow. Today, it is in sync to state, “No greater love there is than to lay other’s life for oneself. Mas mayad t’a nga ikaw do galimos, kay sa ikaw do ginalimsan. Pero hay ayos eon do limos nga singquenta (50 pesos) kon pobre ag sanggatos (100 pesos) kon may una-una.” 

The Marginalized Church is a People Wandering in the Wilderness

    There are those who surrendered not to pragmatism and accommodation and keep up the faith. They are however marginalized from the mainstream and wandered in the wilderness like their forebears of old. The Church of the Poor undergoes purgation in the region of dissimilarity. 

The Sun Shines out of the Dark Cloud

Hope is not lost. Love conquers all evil. A new shepherd is sent. The tree of love regrows. And the scattered and the lost are sought after and gathered again. Soon, the celebration will begin. For once we were shepherdless but now is being led home. The poor is invited to the banquet again. 
Will you heed the invitation then?