By JOY CALANG
Iglesia Filipina Independiente

Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10
Psalms 19: 8, 9, 10, 15.
1 Corinthians 12:12-30 |
Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

I was walking with a colleague to the Surigao house we share and came to talk about her first foray into the city. A development worker, she had come from Iligan and had just been onboarded into a response team here in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Odette in 2021. Her work then must have been challenging, made even more difficult by the prevailing Covid. Being new here myself and getting a lot of help settling in, I was immediately reminded that I arrived at a better time.

Surigao was among the most impacted by Odette, which left hundreds of people dead and hundreds of thousands of families affected in the Caraga region and neighboring Visayan provinces alone. Today, vulnerable communities are still grappling with their losses. They are made to subsist on the crumbs of the supposed economic gains from the region’s mining and quarrying revenues, for example. It leaves one to wonder where these gains actually go and who benefits from them. So, while the region is ravaged more frequently now by the effects of climate change, it is also a literal treasure trove to those who exploit it and contribute the most to climate change, which in turn impacts vulnerable communities such as the region itself. And the evil cycle persists.

Our times are beset with great events of destruction. Most of these events are presumably unnatural and man-made catastrophes. From my current Surigao base, I also look at Palestine. How for 15 months (and 76 years), the willful ethnic cleansing by the Zionist Israel has caused tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths by conservative estimate; the flattening of communities; the decimation and displacement of families; the killings of children; the famine and spread of diseases; the complete dehumanization of an entire people. Barely a week into the ceasefire’s effectivity, the Gazans have taken a precarious respite so they can dig through the rubbles and count their dead. Hope is fleeting, and they are holding on to it so they can return to their lives and communities, however much the devastation they have gone through.

The message today must be that of rebuilding. Reading Nehemiah 8[1], I could not help but see the parallels between the rebuilding efforts of a people returning from exile and those rebuilding efforts that are currently underway. Ezra was tasked to lead his people to rebuild their community and was asked to teach them about the laws of God. So, he read the Book of Laws to them, whoever was able to understand. He read it every day until the people understood, and the laws of God were made known to them. Rebuilding a community must therefore be a process of renewal—both social and spiritual. Our current times also need this kind of rebuilding.

My Instagram and Twitter feeds throughout the months of onslaught over fellow human beings have shown me many things. For example, I will never look at these the same way ever again: plastic bags, watermelons, kites, tents, cooking accounts, school backpacks, bloody body parts, children’s limbs…children and babies. I am witness to the horrors brought down upon an oppressed but resisting people. But I could not do more than the acknowledgement of this fact. There must be more to feeling a small fraction of their suffering. To boycotting complicit brands and compromising my livelihood. To taking to the streets to stand in solidarity with them. What is consoling, however, is the standing belief that individual acts count, even more so when done as a collective. 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 reminds us that each one of us is part of the one body of Christ and given one Spirit to drink. We may be diverse, but we are united in the rebuilding of communities, of faith, and connection to God and God’s people. We are also assured this as Christ has declared in Luke, that He was sent to proclaim the good news to the poor and set the oppressed free. And this has been fulfilled upon our hearing.

When we help rebuild communities into peace, let it be based on justice. Let it be for liberation.

[1] With special thanks to Fr. Charvine Dimailig for providing contexts and guiding me through these readings.

Balik-Tanaw is a group blog of Promotion of Church People’s Response. The Lectionary Gospel reflection is an invitation for meditation, contemplation, and action. As we nurture our faith by committing ourselves to journey with the people, we also wish to nourish the perspective coming from the point of view of hope and struggle of the people. It is our constant longing that even as crisis intensifies, the faithful will continue to strengthen their commitment to love God and our neighbor by being one with the people in their dreams and aspirations. The Title of the Lectionary Reflection would be Balik –Tanaw , isang PAGNINILAY . It is about looking back (balik) or revisiting the narratives and stories from the Biblical text and seeing, reading, and reflecting on these with the current context (tanaw).