Broadening Persistence, Deepening Resilience

by Fr Earl Allyson Valdez

Reflection  for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

It seems rather tiring to speak of resilience in a country that seems to have grown tired of having consecutive natural disasters and of a corrupt system that does not even ease the suffering of the people. As a Filipino people, we are proud of the fact that even when the worst has come in our lives, we can still manage to smile and tell ourselves that life goes on; but then, when we let life go on, it’s as if there were no faults that need to be corrected, and no lessons that needed to be learned. As a Belgian priest told me (in fact one of my former professors in theological school), we have lost decades of opportunities to progress because we have let a huge system of corruption pass and thrive from the beginning. 

This is why when I had reflected on the gospel, I found it hard to reconcile the value of persistence with what we experience as a people. In the first reading, Joshua’s hands were raised with the help of Aaron and Hur, which enabled them to win the battle against Amalek. And as we all know, it was a crucial stage in claiming for the Israelites the land that he bestowed to them. That struggle was mirrored by Our Lord’s parable in the Gospel, in which we see a persistent widow who had to move the hard heart of an unjust judge to render a just decision. 

What they had in common was the fact that they were able to get the results that they wanted. And inasmuch as one would wish for that to happen to us, we waited and waited for decades to change to come. Some have even promised change, but at the cost of human lives. Some delivered, but at the cost even of treating our fellow citizens as flesh-and-blood human beings. 

Like Israel, we cry repetitively: “When, Lord, will you come to answer your people?”

Yet in the middle of trying to come to terms with this, I was struck by the last lines of this Sunday’s gospel reading: “he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.” The first thing that would come to mind would be that people who were at fault would be accountable, and that those who have committed crimes must pay. 

But then, there is another aspect to it: would God’s justice also be given to those who have suffered, that they may continue to live and learn from the past, and that they could recover from the damages done by floods and earthquakes? Would God’s justice enable us as a nation to have a change of heart and think of those who suffer whenever we vote, seek reform, and perform our duties as citizens? 

Most of all, would God’s justice allow us also to see that we also need some form of conversion, and to see that He has given us everything we need to bind us together as a community of faith? 

It is easy to become disoriented by the fact that we were deep into this hole because of corruption, but what really has kept us afloat in the midst of disasters and problems are the means through which we help each other and go beyond the kanya-kanya (“each person for himself/herself”) mentality. We hold off our political allegiances, learn to listen and help each other toward common discernment. We reach out with what we have for those who do not have. We as a people search for the truth and learn our lessons from there, even if there were those who were still unwilling to learn. 

Perhaps it is in those moments that God’s justice, which he generously gives, becomes at work. It is the kind of justice that lets us see that we as a people play a great part in how we want our nation to be. It is the kind of justice that does not only preoccupy itself with processes of prosecution and accountability, but also lets us see the value of being responsible and accountable for each other. It is the kind of justice in which we see that we have been blessed,  but as such, we must also be the living signs of grace to our neighbor. And to see and realize this, we need a bit of patience, a lot of persistence, and a greater and wider idea of resilience. 

This is what our readings for this Sunday remind us, and perhaps it is the grace that we are called to seek in the following days, that we may be able to see more clearly the things that we need to live out, as well as the people to whom we should respond to. After all, as St. Paul says, our persistence would bear fruit because we walk on this earth with Our Lord Jesus Christ, and as we continue to strive and persist like He does, then we are assured that our hopes will not ultimately disappoint.