Sunday, August 17, 2008 Lagura: Sister, daughter, singer and beggar for God By Fr. Flor Lagura, SVD in the service of the word
“TO the manor born,” could easily be said of Mother Cecilia, a gentle Caviteña who one day decided to give her life, her talent for music, and her all to God. To her and her family’s surprise, she learned that besides the humble tasks of washing dishes, cleaning floors and cooking in the convent, she—during her early years as a nun—had to regularly go out to beg for food. Her religious order was mendicant (from the Latin mendicare, “to beg”). Going around begging from house to house was not only humbling. She found it shameful, but she braved it all for her love of the Lord and for her fellow sisters in the convent.
The Canaanite woman also had to beg, not for herself but for her ailing daughter. She begged from the miracle worker from Nazareth whose wonderful deeds and powerful words she heard of. In spite of the social disapproval for one like her—a woman and a Gentile at that--she braved the crowd’s mean looks of disapproval at her presence. After all she belonged to a race despised by the Jews as a descendant of hated foreigners who had occupied the lands from which Jewish occupants had been banished and sent to exile years earlier. The foreign occupants took as wives Jewish women who, in the eyes of the purist Jews, had turned their backs to their race and religion Even though she enjoyed no favor in the eyes of the Jews, the Canaanite woman swallowed what little pride she had and took unusual courage to face the Lord. Her faith, sorely tested by the Lord himself in a surprising exchange of bitterly insulting words, won for her daughter the special favor asked from Jesus.
With us, any encounter with beggars and the poor in general stokes the embers of fear; for such encounters can stir awaken unpleasant and often conflicting feelings of pity, unease, resentment and guilt.
Any encounter with the poor can also be humbling, for it mirrors our own poverty, not necessarily material but spiritual or social. Such encounters can reveal how poor we can be as regards compassion, our readiness to help and our openness to love those whose appearance is abhorrent.
On the positive side meeting with the poor will show our own woundedness and weakness, hidden though they are. Being with the poor opens up the possibility of dropping the masks we wear to hide our real selves.
The sight of the poor can also show what our hearts are really made of especially the nobler sentiments of compassion, kindness and generosity to share in the humanity to which we all belong. Finally, as St. Francis gratefully realized and joyfully preached to others, before God we are truly poor—each one of us without exception.
For years Mother Cecilia had to beg for herself and her community as she prayed in all humility, “Jesus, before you I am as poor as any beggar.” One day, however, she hopes to sing like her patron saint, St. Cecilia, and enjoy the glory of heaven where she, like Lazarus, will be poor no longer.
