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Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Lacson: Blessed poverty
By Bong Z. Lacson
AT NO REASON of the year is unchristian charity more practiced than at Christmastime.
Hordes of do-gooders--notably politicians--make perfunctory swoops through resettlement sites, squatter areas and shantytowns bearing an assortment of stomach fillers packaged in Christmas tinsel stamped with their names in big, bold fonts. As though it came from their pockets and not from the public coffers they plundered or from some contractor they bled dry.
And what gift-giving would be complete, nay, would even be without the media pressed to cover the event?
So we've been dogmatised from our pre-first communion catechism class that gift-giving took off from the first Christmas example of the three magi whose anonymity--the Good Book did not identify them, remember?--spoke a lot about true charity, and a lot more about humility.
Though tradition named them, it did not tell of a gift of gold from Gaspar, myrrh from Melchior, or frankincense from Balthasar. Tradition travestied now in every gift gilded or etched with titled names, as in smoked ham from the honorable governor, pungent edam from the honorable congressman, crispy Ninoy from the honorable mayor. Honorific oxymorons, given the conduct of Philippine elections.
Rob the country blind the whole year. Give something for the noche buena table of the poor. And all is well with the Lord. Christian living, indeed!
At no season of the year is poverty most pronounced than at Christmastime. You just can't escape it. Not in this so-called season of giving when, most naturally, beggars--in all shapes and sizes--go forth and multiply.
There's the outstretched palm shoved at your face, nearly knocking your coffee mug as you watch the girls pass by Old Manila at SM. There's the unshod kid with baby brother in tow tugging at your shirt as you line up for Dragon Gogo at KFC.
There's the tap at your car window stalled at Dolores junction from a tabo-tapping tyke.
There's the unending stream of carolers of all ages in two's or three's, singly or in gangs singing thanks for your five-peso kindness.
There too are the indigenous Aetas descended from Porac's hills and the Badjaos way off their native Sulu Sea finding their way to your very doorstep, demanding food, clothes, money as though you were the very cause of their deprivation.
Ah, a new racket I noted this Christmas: "SEC-registered" religious and civic organizations from Kamuning, Quezon City and Tanay, Rizal going house-to-house at the St. Jude Village with letters of solicitations for their "projects for the poor." They could have simply saved on their bus fare and gave them to their poor.
The poor do indeed make an object lesson for Christmas. But not from the perspective of patronage politics where the poor are shamelessly dehumanized, reduced to utilitarian tools. Nor from the pharisaic (dis)compassion of wannabe Samaritans where mendicancy, instead of liberation--from poverty, that is--is instituted.
The poor make the very leitmotif of the season. Or have we forgotten how the Christ was born? Engrossed as we are in the commercialization of Christmas, we define its meaning in the malls rather than in church, and much, much less in our hearts.
Only yesterday, a beggar knocked at my gate and asked in a guttural--read: non-Pampango--voice for a little share of the blessings God gave me this year. His jaw dropped when I told him that in his poverty he was more blessed than me. No, I did not mean that he did not have a house and cars to maintain, mortgages to pay, kids to send to college, job pressure, societal demands, etc. I meant a different kind of blessedness that is inherent in poverty. That is the spiritual kind.
Is it just me, or is it still a verity in Christian teaching that poverty liberates? That the poor, unfettered by material possession, have so much spiritual wealth that in the end, theirs is the kingdom of heaven?
(December 28, 2005 issue)
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