The WORD in other words (2010) by Fr Cornelio Alpuerto SVD – Saint Arnold Janssen Parish, Cebu City
Monday After Epiphany
He was a chain smoker, this SVD confrere. One cigarette after the other at short intervals, every day, for so many years already. There was no hope he would ever give up smoking. But, wonder of wonders, he did give it up when he was in his fifties! How? He volunteered to do mission in Cuba, and he was sent. Now, in Cuba cigarettes are extremely expensive. And so, what was not possible in the Philippines was made possible in Cuba: our poor missionary simply had to give up a long-standing addiction to cigarette.
“Repent!” Jesus’ exhortation in the Gospel today, was loud and clear and urgent. “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.“ What did he mean? What else if not that his hearers turn their backs on their sins, their wrongdoings, their vices, their addictions? They were to make a complete turn around, a conversion, a change of heart.
“Repent!” An order to remove whatever runs counter to God’s will, yes, sin in all its ugly forms, but more, the root of it all: self-seeking, self-centeredness, worship of the self. A challenge to cleanse the self of whatever is unworthy of the Divine Presence within; a call to self-emptying, if you wish.
“Repent!” And St. Paul’s own exhortation to the Philippians would be an apt commentary to insert here: “In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” (Phil 2:5-8)
Come to think of it: Before Jesus died on the cross, he had undergone already a series of dying to self, or of letting-go of whatever was dear to him. He had to let go of his mother’s womb to be born in the world that he was to redeem; many years later he had to let go of his Nazareth home and went to live in Capernaum by the sea; still later, he had to let go of his mother and his friends and the whole of our earth to win for himself and all humankind, through the most excruciating death on the cross, glorious life that knows no end.
Isn’t Jesus’ invitation to follow him also an invitation to follow him in our own series of dying to self, of letting go?
And so, one’s letting go of the Philippines to do mission work in Cuba becomes more meaningful, on hindsight. The cost of it, like any other dying to self, may indeed be very high, surely higher than the cost of cigarettes in Cuba. But the gain? Priceless! Growth into the Kingdom that is at hand, into the likeness of the Risen Savior!
