Charity
Homily: 4th Sunday, Year C
January 31, 2010
The liturgy this Sunday is about charity or love. What is love? Love is the reason why we exist. The first reading reminds us of this: “before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you.” And it is the same love that we have a wonderful world to live in. This is God’s love. This is the love that gives us the passion and energy to love one another.
There is another kind of love, the love that rejects God’s love. This is the love that is created by the self. This is also called self-love. This kind of love is appealing and attractive. It gives us pleasure. But this is the love that wanes away or wears off. It is like money that depreciates through the years.
Pope Benedict wrote an encyclical titled Caritas in Veritate. This encyclical reminds us that love and truth are inseparable. “I love you and you alone… but I also love Angelica” – this is not love. “Luv u, mis u” but only through text – this is not love. “You are the best Mayor I’ve ever met” in spite of the fact that you know about his corruption, that is not love. Love must reside in truth. If you want to correct somebody and you tell him the truth in the name of charity, that is genuine love.
“A noisy gong and a clanging cymbal,” write Paul to the Corinthians. It’s nice to hear the cymbal when played along with the orchestra. But it is a plain noise when it is played by itself. It’s like the children who play Christmas carols by whipping empty cans with a stick. Giving a flower or chocolate, a greeting card or a love letter – these are gestures of love. If you give them without love, they are like a noisy gong and a clinging cymbal. They are nothing but noise.
Have you heard of Michael Jackson syndrome? MJ was a popular singer, the king of pop. Popularity dwindles and easily fades away. MJ wanted to keep it. He wanted his popularity to be attached to his being. So he resorted to gimmickry: he had his face changed; he married; he had children; and he created the Nederland . Yet in spite of all these, his popularity continued to wane away. Little by little, he began to discover how empty his life was. There was no meaning, no love at all.
That is the danger when we don’t recognize the love of God. When we only have self-love, we can easily succumb to the temptation of popularity, of recognitions, of awards. We love others because we need to exploit them. This is not real love.
When we graduate and get and get medals and awards; when we teach with innovations like using pushcart and instantly become CNN heroes; when we become governors and get the recognition as visionary, we need to be cautious. To resort to showbiz, to gimmickry like revealing a crush on Angel Locsin, that is an early symptom of a Michael Jackson syndrome.
I remember an anecdote about the late John Paul II. He was on the plane on his way back to Rome on the first of January. He was just namedPerson of the Year by Time magazine. The media went up to him and asked: how does it feel to be named Person of the Year? The Holy Fatherreplied: “Oh, that was last year!”
Medals are simply pieces of metal. They are empty of content. If we believe in them, we will get confused and crazy. If we have projected a great image, we will be go mad using the media to maintain it, to keep it. And when our popularity continues to crumble, we will be tempted to do everything to restore that image of popularity. The moment this is happening, we are already afflicted by such disease. We have become a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. Our life has become but an empty show.
God loves us all. He has chosen us even before we were conceived. No one lived on earth by chance. There is no need for us to be afraid. We must trust His love.
The Ampatuans did not trust the love of God. They resorted to banditry and arms. They are cowards. Our local politicians do not trust the love of God. They resort to gimmickry. And they use local media to maintain their pogi images. They too are cowards.
We Christians must never doubt God’s love. We must trust his love, and his love alone.
