The Christian Family

MORNING PRAISE | November 28, 2019 | Thursday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time

The Christian Family | Colossians 3:12-21 

PERSONAL REFLECTION

Corned beef. Eggs. Rice. Peanut Butter. Cream Cheese. Bread. What a feast! Staring at the breakfast table last Saturday during our genogram recollection, my memories immediately took me back to when I was in first grade, as my classmates and teacher laughed in confusion when I tell them that my favorite breakfast is kanin-kape: that is, instant coffee (not the 3-in-1 variant, mind you) poured over the prior night’s leftover rice. I tell my parents this and they laugh it off, telling me not to mind it so much. It was the day I came to understand that I was a poor boy studying in a private school.

Three decades since, I imagine it must have hurt my parents to see their bunso (youngest child) suffering from that ordeal – to be ridiculed by semi-rich kids for the only breakfast they could provide. It must have hurt them too to see me break my left arm while playing, and not have the money for the hospital to have it fixed – and so we depend instead on the makeshift splint made by the neighborhood manghihilot (faith healer). It must have also hurt them whenever my teachers would not let me take my periodical exams because my parents haven’t raised enough money yet to pay for my tuition. In my mind, my parents didn’t want their children to suffer; but then we did. And so they must have suffered with us, in silence and behind closed doors.

Brothers I have come to realize that being too centered on my hurts and pains from childhood have detached me from the reality that the people around me, even those who have damaged me deeply were probably hurting too. Yes, my childhood might not have been far from perfect for so many reasons, and some of them have caused me irreparable damage and hurt; nothing can be done anymore to change that. But then there is an invitation to acknowledge that one needs to be wounded too for one to inflict wounds on others. And though people might have hurt me in the past, they were probably enduring scars and pains as well, inflicted on them by circumstance, by fate, and by people around them.

And so today I beg the Lord for healing and compassion. I beg the Lord for the courage to move on with my life, leaving behind those painful memories and all the other anguish and hurts that have sprung from them. I beg for the grace to acknowledge that I do not have sole burden of these pains and hurts – that those who have wronged me as a child have wronged me because they too have their fair share of wounds. And so I pray for healing for them as well and that the Lord, our God, overflowing with grace and compassion, may grant all of us the gift of forgiveness and peace.

Amen.