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Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Cervantes: Being Mr. Scrooge
By Ding Cervantes
SINCE a few days ago, children, supposedly from the neighborhood, have been hollering Merry Christmas in varying falsetto at my home's gate.
But I've always doubted they meant it. They persist with the grating sound of a calcified chalk on an unreceptive blackboard, their repertoire reminding me of the chuckles of a gang of Gremlins ready to self-reproduce upon any shower of coins. This time of December, still some two weeks from C day, neighborhood children who haunt homes with carols are, confess it, likely those with streaks of mendicancy, for no decent parents would allow their tots, fresh from being toddlers, to roam unlighted streets by themselves and ululate at households past bed time.
While I do have compassion for children, I have only a modicum of it for parents who let loose their kids to society whose composition these days are mutating to the oddest sorts. Haven't such parents heard of children just vanishing and later on being found in sacks in vacant lots?
In my neighborhood in Barangay Lakandula, not a few children are the type I can readily adapt to. They live in a squatter colony (which is not their fault but only their misfortune) that has thrived in the recent years along a creek less than a block away, and finding no space in their shanties for juvenile games, they turn almost daily to the streets for games Gremlins play. With the improbability that most of their homes are linked up to cable television, or that they have access to other modern communications technologies that have long become surrogate parents in many middle and upper class families, I will not blame their imperfections on modern media. So where did they learn how to curse like adults I see in the most vulgar sections of the city? While their Christmas carol selections are quite limited, their folio of curse words is humongous, although almost always within the maternal and copulative genera.
The danger with yielding to yodels of We Wish You a Merry Christmas is that more hollering children are to follow, charity being fodder for gossip among the kids. Thus, should I decide to share my bounty of coins, it is imperative that I give up normal life not just for one night, but also through the nights of the coming holidays, dropping coins into palms halfway through dinner, through the climax of a television movie, through bathing, through the elusive line between being awake and slumbering off in the comfort of bed.
As you must have now concluded, I ignore nightly Gremlins apparently wishing me good on Christmas. The kids now skip my yellow gate, as they have always skirted homes of neighbors who must have adopted the same don't-mind-them policy I dutifully adopted.
There are some risks, however. Having ignored two groups of Gremlims one recent night and feeling success over having done so without any tinge of guilt, I went out of the house to savor the cool night to find out the front of the gate littered all over with unlikely Christmas snow flakes. The ignored Gremlims had struck, meticulously pinching off into pieces a large piece of styrofoam box and spreading them with malevolent design, vendetta against Mr. Scrooge.
I have already identified parents who are somewhere in the top section of the blaming pyramid whose apex, however, is shared by a government that has to get more serious in its mass housing and livelihood programs. Those pitiful but vindictive Gremlims are a consequence of lack of adequate housing and living in a cramped and deprived neighborhood where bad habits huddle like their shanties.
But I am not giving up on being Mr. Scrooge yet. The Gremlins are likely to run out of snow flakes. And by the time Christmas is really around and I finally decide to practice some charity with abandon, they would already be in the habit of skipping the familiar yellow gate in
Lakandula.
*****
To continue with our heavenly messages conveyed through living mystics, here's one reportedly from the Mother of God, as conveyed through Chris
Courtis of Maryland, USA last Nov. 24.
My dear little children, I call you today to be attentive to my words.
This is the time of grace and I am with you, even in your hardships.
However, little ones, your hardships are also blessings and graces and crosses given to you by the Creator for your spiritual growth and also for your purification. Little ones, God loves you so very much and so do I!
Your prayers please me and my Son very much. However, it is necessary that all of you in your life undergo a time of spiritual darkness and a time of purification. It is the dark night of the soul as St. Theresa of Avila talked about. God is calling you to love and to give purely from yourself without requesting and receiving anything. Can you still love the Creator and my Son Jesus with all your heart even when no graces are given to you? Can you still love with all your heart even when you feel there is no one there to love you? Remember St. Francis and his prayer.
"Let me love instead of be loved." Can you love God that much, my little ones, that despite everything you can continue to persevere and pray with all your heart?
It is in the darkness that there is great purification and light. I am not talking about the darkness, little ones, that comes from Satan but the darkness of the soul that comes when you feel abandoned by God.
Although God never leaves you, it is necessary, little ones, to enter in this dark abandonment in order to be purified and in order to receive the graces of purity of heart and true love which can only come from God.
Remember also, little children, the agony of Jesus in the Garden of
Gethsemane and also remember His last agony on the Cross and His bitter passion. Almost toward the last breath of my Son, he felt abandoned by
God for did He not cry out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"
God did not abandon Jesus my Son, and He will not abandon you although
He sometimes allows you to feel abandoned in order to purify you, refine you, give you more graces and draw you closer to Himself.
This darkness, little ones, is not a punishment for sins, but it is rather a natural outcome in order to see whether you will still remain faithful to God. Will you love Him, my little ones, with all your heart regardless of whether you feel He loves you or not? That is the question, and only you, my little ones, can answer that. If you can love God with all your heart and soul even in the midst of being in the dark night, then God's love that He gives to you and that you have for Him will permeate your being, and you will be purified and be saintly and made holy and perfect in His eyes.
Enter the dark night, my little ones, and be not afraid for He is with you. If you seek help and protection and go to the Eucharist, for He is there, receive Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and you will know that He loves you, but you must continue to brave the storm and be willing to sacrifice yourself, even as He has, for love of you. My dear little children, although you do not want to face this, this is a fact. If you truly love Jesus, you will all meet with the same fate, and that is the crucifixion and death. But there is glory in the resurrection and hope for a new tomorrow. Continue to pray and work for this alone.
My little ones, I know that I have given to you many words today and that many of them are mystical and you may have trouble understanding them, but please know that God is with you. Read this message and live this message. Be not afraid of God's darkness because in His darkness of purification is great light. Be afraid of Satan and his darkness where no light penetrates.
Copying and distribution of this message is permitted and encouraged as long as nothing is changed, added, or deleted. |
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