Posted by The WORD in other words (2016) by Fr. Dionisio Miranda SVD – University of San Carlos, Cebu City
5th Sunday of Easter – C
My friends had long awaited their immigration papers and when these finally arrived, the husband was ecstatic. The wife, on the other hand, was in distress. As an only daughter should she entrust her bed-ridden mother to the care of relatives and join her husband and children in the new country, or should she stay behind to take care of her mother personally?
Some of us have either been directly or vicariously involved in such conflicts between parental duties and obligations versus marital rights and responsibilities. Most of us can sort out and distinguish the different sets of values and priorities involved on either side.
Unfortunately the daughter’s practical choices are usually limited to only three courses of action. The first is to side with one group’s interests (e.g., her husband’s and children’s future) and sacrifice those of the other (the personal care of her mother). The second is to do nothing and hope that the others decide for her, i.e., wait for either the husband to volunteer postponing the migration or expect the mother to urge her daughter to join her husband while she looks for someone else to take care of her. The third is for everyone to sit down and together look for a creative and workable, if not always satisfactory, solution.
Being related to someone and being burdened with corresponding responsibilities for a loved one is not only a fact of life, but the necessary test of our becoming authentic human beings. Indeed for Christians it is the only way we can respond to Jesus’ commandment of love.
Ask counselors about this situation and most will advise you to prioritize your affections and then be prepared to sacrifice the least demanding of your responsibilities. That is how we often decide conflicts of values and interests in a society. In the family, however, there is an unspoken rule: no matter what the conflict is about, we should never give up on each other. We should constantly seek the good of the whole and protect the interests of everyone, cost what it may. Where the choices are not between good and bad, but higher and lower values, or stronger and weaker attachments, or more urgent and less urgent needs, some solution is available, provided we do not close our minds to possibilities but offer each other win-win solutions. “Pag ayaw, may dahilan, pag gusto may paraan.”
And this is where today’s gospel command applies, that we should love not just each other (where only two persons are involved), but one another (where community is engaged). The Gospel improves on the Filipino saying: where caring is modeled on Christ’s charity, love will always find a way.
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