« on: August 14, 2007, 07:07:31 AM »
A unique poster hangs just outside my office. Composed a couple of years ago by the students of RE 201 (Christian Morality), the collage is uniquely dark and macabre in that it admits only images of death and death-dealing realities. Images of the irrational war in Iraq stare the passerby. Cutouts of summary killings in our country, pictures of the dehumanizing poverty that has many, too many, of our countrymen in its strangehold, impinge on the mind of student, mentor, janitor, and guest alike. Breakdown of peace and order in many parts of the globe is chronicled in that dark collage outside my office. Gory details of a gorier and more inhuman crime – abortion – cry to heaven for restitution as well as to the earth for a response from the hearts of the young men and women who grapple with the true meaning of being human and being a Catholic Christian student.
At first, one may react: why glorify death? Why not glorify life instead? Why play the game of that section – unfortunately legion – of media that bombards us with pictures of death and negativity? Why not heed Saint Paul instead and paste images of “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious”? ( Phil 4:8 )
I ask the organizers and they confirm the answer that I had been suspecting. We need to be shocked to wakefulness from our lethargy, hence the strong images of what results from violation of the moral code. Our people have to develop that sense of indignation so needed to fight injustice, to join the “conspiracy of good”, and thus thwart the saying that “the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing”.
Indignation and wakefulness are necessary, but we also need to recognize the signs of life around us. As an Easter people we must have eyes that see, ears that hear and hearts that feel.
I see signs of life in the school everyday. I see it in the school community that embraces with renewed energy and expectant enthusiasm the opening of a new academic year. I hear it in the talk and laughter, yes, even the boisterous kind, of students as they rush along the corridors to and from their classes. I smile at the élan vital with which faculty members dash to their classroom to beat the newly imposed shorter transit time. I am amused by life in the sophomore who quickly checks with the bathroom mirror to see if his “out-of-bed” hairdo remains firmly tousled. I celebrate life in the graced moment of two teachers reconciling with each other during the annual retreat, thus liberating each other from the protracted burden of self-consuming unforgiveness.
Life resonates in those professors and employees who choose to lay aside their hurt pride and to work instead for the betterment of the whole academic community. Life throbs in the dancers and choristers who practice long hours beyond their classes, in the ARMACOMM officers who spend sleepless nights to edit what turns out to be a remarkable audio-visual presentation of the school. Life is sure to triumph in the poor but determined student who, running out of fare money, walks long kilometers to school to realize her dream of education as a way to better life for herself and her family.
And last, but not least, life pulsates in the little grade school girl who, arriving in school while still dark, takes to the center of the quadrangle as if to the most elegant stage, and, with face lifted up to heaven, performs a magnificent pirouette, her pristine matinal praise to the Lord of Life.
Watching her from my window fills me with immense joy and gratitude for being a witness to the daily miracle of unfolding life.
Fr. Rene F. Paglinawan, OAR
Dean, IREP
18 June 2007
