Sacrifice & stability

JAKARTA, Indonesia –The Christian Holy Week this year opens in the Muslim world, oddly enough, with the celebration today of the 1,427th birth anniversary of the Prophet, Nabi Mohammad, Salallahu Alaihi Wassalam.

As always, I’ll be curious to see how this holy day is observed here in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

With any luck, though, I’ll be doing my observing from one of Jakarta’s many golf courses, lining up my drives amid the incessant calls to prayer from the muezzins in the area.

Just the other Thursday, Hindus celebrated their New Year’s Day, called Nyepi.

In Hindu enclaves like the island of Bali, all work came to a halt as silence and complete inactivity were observed all day to mark the passage from the old year to the new. Of course, on the fairway, you can still hear the pinging of golf balls together with the occasional cursing by players.

Then this Friday, Christians will be commemorating what is (at least in the Catholic tradition) their own holiest day, Good Friday. This is one religious observance that will see me in church and off the fairway.

After all, you don’t want to be offending the Lord sorely enough for Him to put a permanent crimp in your game.

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This conjunction of holy days from a variety of religions is not unusual in Indonesia, which prides itself on the official enshrinement, as well as the traditional practice, of tolerance for religious diversity. All of these holy days are official days off from work as well. Because of the sheer size of the population, the minorities here are simply too large – even if they are minorities – to be either dismissed or systematically persecuted.

It constitutes a transfer to the religious sphere from the political sphere of the theory of countervailing power, which holds that modern democracy originates from a multiplicity of interest groups of roughly equal sizes who are thus capable of enforcing stable rules of the game.

The Christians here give as good as they get – another rule of the game.

Whenever occasional religious strife flares up, they are just as likely as Muslims to be on the offending side.

In fact, three local Catholic leaders are now awaiting execution for their participation in a number of massacres some years back.

It still remains to be seen whether the Vatican’s appeals on their behalf will do them any good.

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Every time I attend a Mass held in the Bahasa language, I never fail to be awed – as well as humbled – by the sheer numbers who show up, as well as by the fervor of their participation.

The churches are always full, the singing is always full-throated, and the sonorous banging of gongs alternates with the ethereal chiming of bells by the altar servers to mark off each ritual step in the sacrifice of the Eucharist.

Compared to Indonesian Catholics, Filipino Masses are poor and pallid reflections of the faith. Now, it is dismaying for me to remember all those years in Manila when people would stumble into church late, sing or pray only perfunctorily, doze off or amuse themselves with their cellphones during the homily, begrudge a handful of coins for offertory, and then rush home right after taking the host.

Perhaps it is simply that the familiar is what breeds indifference. Perhaps it is the arrogance of the majority that gives rise to such complacency. Perhaps it is only when the fear of God is really and truly struck into one’s heart – by official censorship, by religious police knocking on your door, by suicide bombers threatening to blow you up – that one can find his way to the heart of his faith.

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Holy Week is a time when Christians are asked to remember another time, not so long ago, when their faith was constituted solely by a minority of One, subsequently joined by just 12 more men.

Human communities of any importance don’t get much smaller than that. And yet what a difference that tiny community turned out to make. As we look outward from the sacral to the secular, the same essential lessons resonate. As our country now undergoes another one of those seasons of political discontent and civic disgrace with which we are regularly afflicted, we would do well to heed those lessons: Sacrifice matters.

It is not an unreasonable sacrifice for a national leader to give up a high office that was improperly secured. But if she will not go quietly, then her opponents, who claim higher moral standards for themselves, may need to prove it by making the bigger sacrifice of laying down their swords, at least for the time being.

Stability is worthwhile at almost any cost because it reaps such outsized dividends. Faith matters – in ourselves, in each other, in the God by whatever image He presents Himself to each of us.

Perhaps the truest test of that faith is believing we are able to secure right against wrong through the merits of our actions, even though everything we may experience – till the very last breath we take – tells us otherwise.

Good Friday matters, because Easter Sunday does, too. Within the very short space of only three days, a world may be overturned, a breathtaking cycle completed. Against such impossibilities wrought by faith, how can our meannesses prevail?

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Readers can write Mr. Olivar in Jakarta at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com