Photo courtesy of Sine Panayon (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net)
Romeo R. Capalla, A Living Water for the Poor: A Reflection on the Liturgy of the Third Sunday of Lent,
23 March 2014
by Davao Arcbishop Emeritus Fernando R. Capalla
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Water is a basic, daily human need. Without water we thirst. When we are thirsty for too long, our body gets dehydrated, And the moment extreme dehydration sets in we die.
The First Reading from the book of Genesis pictures the Jews complaining against God through Moses
for they were dying of thirst in the desert with aridity aggravating dehydration. Through God’s power Moses struck a rock with with his rod, and water flowed in abundance.
Centuries later even in the Promised Land water was still scarce. Water wells were the common sources of water. Today’s Gospel of John pictures a Samaritan woman fetching water from a well to quench her own thirst and Jesus offering her living water.
Here God in human form, Jesus Christ, the new Moses, offers Himself as the Living Water that coulld quench all kinds of human thirst. And as the four gospels tell us His Living Waters were His words of wisdom, His healings of the sick in mind, body and spirit, His raising of the dead to life, and, most precious of all, His gracious love hidden in suffering and bloody death on the cross.
Because we are followers of Christ and must be Christ-like, we can and we have to be living waters for the poorest of the poor who thirst forr justice, that is, social, economic, political and cultural justice which are different forms of loving our materially and morally poor neighbor. Otherwise, injustice will continue to keep them dehydrated in social relations, economics, politics and culture in the arid desert of modern day Philippines. In other words, food, money, governance and education, which can be compared to the seventy percent water in a healthy human body, would remain miserably lacking and disastrously fatal to life.
My brother Romy and I, way back in the early days of the Martial Law government, would often talk about the three most important questions then and today: Who are the poor? Where are the poor? Why are they poor? Smart guy that he was, Romy was able to find his own answers to these questions and their possible solutions.
When he retired from political activism and became a successful business entrepreneur and head of a trade coop, the Panay Fair Trade Center, which exports banana chips to Germany and muscovado sugar to Balzano, Ital,y and other
parts of Asia and Europe, he has found Where and How to help the materially poor and touch the conscience of the rich and the powerful who are morally poor. And he did all these in a quiet, simple, humble, unpretentious, and unobtrusive ways. Which has deeply created a big impact on people. Hence, the expression, “silent waters run deep”. On this point, I would like to ask the friends and admirers of Romy and all the Capallas as well, here and abroad, to continue his humble approach without public fanfare and showy demonstration. Let this be his most important and enduring legacy to us all.
As to why the people are poor, Romy believed, as many of us already do, that injustice in all its forms is basically caused by the interlocking of social-economic-political-
In the present wide spectrum of political organizations open and subtle violence has been, and still is, employed by groups to acieve goals and objectives, and even to eliminate each other. On this point I beg to disagree with those who use violence but I respect ideological or religious reason for it. On the part of Romy, while seemingly aware that malicious suspicions and fabricated rumors made his life unsafe, he never had a security guard as he moved around easily and peacefully, often alone, for his business concerns. This was something strange to me. Did he already give up any means to protect himself? What, and Who was his security, his source of confidence? Was he an enigma? A Paradox? A mystery? I am not sure and I don’t know. I use all these words in a positive sense. We will know the truth in the next life, I am sure. As of now we can only guess. And I have a guess.
We know there have been persons in the past, and Romy seemed to like them, persons with great ideas and visions which they exemplified in their personal lives. Somehow they believed there was an energy and power in these ideas and visions in favor of the poor, for, good ideas and good examples never die. Which might explain why they were not afraid of violent death. They are people who are great in life but are greater in death.
On this very important issue of violence, I have to say the following as bishop of the Catholic Church and as the elder brother of Romy: Our Faith teaches us that God’s Commandments prohibit most forms of violence. Therefore it must be condemned. Romy is the victim of that brutal violence perpetrated in the presence of his 92-year-old mother-in-law, Purificacion Gemarino, whom he was helping to get seated in his car when the assailants shot him from behind hitting him on the upper part of the nape. This criminal act. In the sight of an elderly person aggravates its heinousness.
Therefore we strongly condemn this heinous and unconscionable crime. We demand justice for the unarmed brother Romy and for many other victims like him. We condemn this barbarous act before his disabled mother-in-law. We ask everyone to pray for the eternal repose of his soul and for strength and composure to his wife Makoy and his three daughters Paula June, Romina and Katrina Ann.
We condemn all extra judicial killings and also judicial killings like capital punishment. Why? Because we are born with inherent goodness, we were created in the image and likeness of God. This inborn goodness can never be erased by sin and crime. So if our education and formation is effective it can reach that inner goodness and make it flower into good thoughts, good words, good actions and good realtionships. The sinner then reform and change.
And so, while the demands of justice are being pursued – if still they can be pursued within our flawed justice system — we as Christians must forgive the criminal assailants and the people behind them, and pray for their conversion because they too like us are children of God. For, without forgiveness there is no future for our country. I repeat, without forgiveness there is no future for our country. To Blessed John Paul 11 who will be canonized onApril 27 “there is no peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness”. The spiral of violence will only increase in intensity and will eventually destroy us all. Active nom-violence and a forgiving heart motivated by love is the only Christian way of cutting off the spiral curve of hatred and revenge.
Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ, God in human form, took our sins with Him on the cross, allowed His body to be tortured; He who had no sin paid with His bloody death the punishment our sins and crimes deserve. In the dark and ugly horror of thatFriday, amidst jeers and insults. Christ’s gracious love, which was beauty supreme, radiated in unsurpassable splendor on the cross to heal the physical and social wounds created by sin and crime, thus glorifing suffering human flesh and giving meaning to human death. All deaths like the death of people like my brother Romy who had showed humble and compassionate love for the poor acquire a special meaning because of the Cross of Jesus.
Because Jesus resurrected to new life, the crucifixion and death of the humble and the compassionate are like His passage from darkness to light, from the death of winter to the springtime of life. Yes, the deaths of the humble like Romy’s are new springs in the arid desert of our spcially dehydrated society. The power of their good example flows as a strong surge of living water that gives hope and new life, a life of love and compassion, of selfless non-violence, justice and freedom, and of total human development and peace.
This is what we celebrate here through the sacramental symbols of Christian liturgy. Here we proclaim the death of Jesus and profess His resurrection, and make Him present in order for us to receive Him and coomune with Him heart- to-heart. And thus avoid being spiritually dehydreated.
In the name of Makoy, Corazon Gemarino Capalla, PJ, Mimgming and Katkat, and also in the name of my sisters Gloria, Blanca and Elisea and of my two brothers as well, Paquit and Ramon, I thank everyone here for being with us in prayer and worship. To those who are not here but who condoled with us through the media, the emails and mobile phones, sent flowers and Mass cards, and prayed for Romy and visited his remains during the wake in Oton and here in Leon, our heartfelt thanks. Let us pray for one another and support one another quietly and humbly as Romy used to do. Amen.