The Amorites are losing. If you cannot tell someone that he or she has body odor and thus in need of urgent deodorizing, you can say, “the Amorites are losing.” This can be convenient code, a diplomatic way to tell someone smelly. Let me explain. In the first reading today, Moses tells Joshua to engage Amalek and the Amorites in battle. Moses assures Joshua that he will be “standing on top of the hill” with Aaron and Hur, and he will have his arms raised. In the heat of battle, the Israelites discover that “as long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight.”
Goodbyes
I’ve never liked goodbyes. Or well, to be more accurate, I don’t like about 90% of the goodbyes I’ve said in my life. The 10% accounts for people I never got close to or I never got along with. But that 90%... that 90% was mighty painful. That 90% included family members, close friends and students that have gone in and out of my life. We live in a generation of mass migrations and impermanent situations. Some are destined to leave. And some are destined to be left behind. More often than not, I find myself in the latter group.
Transformed Forever
Is it possible to meet someone without encountering that person?
The answer, of course, is yes.
You see, a meeting becomes an encounter only when you emerge from it transformed.
Greater Than Death and Absurdity
For the reality of God persists; its notion knocks hard on the doors of minds and imagination. People seem to not stop in talking about it. Blame it on the culture or the institutional Church, perhaps. However, if one chooses to be open and to simply listen, may be one can stumble upon some truth of this reality we call God. Not only an abstract concept or a reality proven by logic. Not only a reality that exists and in which all other beings participate in their existence. Not only a trace of a completely Other. Not only something or someone that can be dismissed in silence. Not only an idea to be talked about.
A Country in Desperate Search for the Heroic
The Filipino word for hero: "bayani" comes from the word bayan (country). Bayani gives us the sense that in this country, heroism is not a thing only one person does. Heroism is the unified act of a community. The Katipunan is testament of that. While personalities like Bonifacio and Aguinaldo were there, the Katipunan is really the revolt of the "anak ng bayan" (the Children of the Motherland); and everyone who was part of it was rightly considered BAYANI: the fighting men who manned the trenches of General Trias, the women who brought medicine and food to the hidden camps, the children who secretly smuggled messages from one town to another. It is history--written with some Western slant that always focuses on the individual hero--that has not been too kind to the bayani and focused on personalities.
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