Walk With Me

Against Our Storms

Are you ready to die? Are you ready if your health fails? Are you ready if your loved one departs? What if you are sent out from the religious formation? How about if you get fired on your job or your business sinks, will you be ready?

Evidently, we are bombarded with these kinds of questions that in one way or another hard for us to accept. Why do these questions exist? I guess it is because all of us are looking for stability, that is, certainty in all that we do.

In this certainty that we are all looking for, oftentimes it's hard for us to trust others anymore. A significant example for us post modern Filipinos is the establishment of gates and barricades to secure our homes. Although, we're not contented on this security that we cling on CCTV's (closed-circuit television or known as video surveillance) to monitor what's happening inside and outside our households. Perhaps, most of us would trust objects more rather than persons because objects never do things that would go against us. Further, they would not hurt us.

However, come to think of this, if we continue this kind of thinking then probably- though our population is many- we will find ourselves alone. It is because our walls have been broadened, heightened and thickened already that we become numb, deaf, blind, and afraid of the great things that await outside our comfort zones.  

Humans we are, we always have this tendency to become too contented with our present stage that we overlook things which are better or even best for us. We do not risk anymore, that in one way I would dare say, we do not become happy and holy. Well, if we become too contented with our lives, then we lose sight of the deepest desire of our hearts which is the love of God and the love of neighbor. Moreover, the latter is concretized by risking our own welfare to serve others.

Unlike the rest of us, Mama Mary set the highest standard of all when she risked her life to subject herself to the annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel. Seemingly, there's no assurance of the message because the angel might be a dark apparition. However things changed because Mama Mary made an effort to ask the messenger, "How will this be since I am a virgin?" Then the angel said, "...For no word from God will ever fail."

Indeed, no word of God will ever fail but the prime aspect of the annunciation is the message that God is also willing to empty Himself through sharing the same flesh with His creature. Mama Mary did her part already, she loved God that she became the new arc of the covenant and she loved the rest of us that she willed to be empty for us to receive the salvation through the death of Jesus Christ.