The Bible and me
MANILA, Philippines - I came to know about the Bible from the stories related to us kids in the old church in Cabangan, a poor far-flung town in Zambales, in the 1950s. The spinster catechist would arrange us in obedient rows in the front pews and tell the stories of men in the past who became so wicked and turned like savage beasts in the jungle and devoured one another, that God became so angry he caused the rain to pour days and nights until a powerful deluge washed away all the evil men, except Noah and his family, whom God saved in the ark they had made. They were called the Bible stories.
Those stories became part of growing up, like the river and the sea.
I still remember the stories of childhood revealing a God who, in his love for a chosen race, grew furious as he did at the stubborn rulers of Egypt, sending plagues, famine, disease and death all over the land and humiliating their pagan gods. Those frighteningly fantastic stories shaped the picture of a God who became real, preventing me from lying to my mother, or stealing the pencil of a schoolmate, or saying bad words to the plump boy who did not share with me a bite of his coconut candy. I have not quite recovered from those stories.
I eventually took hold of the holy book by chance. I was a young helper in the convent occupied by an American Columban priest, and some nights I would sleep in the parish school building near the church, as if I could stop the burglar from breaking in. I lit a petroleum lamp to light the library room, and, before I slept, I would stretch down on the rectangular table, my head resting on a pillow, and I would read a book taken from the shelves. It must have been the old copy of the English Bible, hardbound, crumbly black cover, pages thin as onion skin, a worn strip of red ribbon marking a page.
I must have ruffled through its musty pages, because I had no idea what to read first, until I focused on the gospels. When I read the classic narrative on the life of Jesus Christ, I was at once impressed by the manner in which Jesus Christ related himself to his disciples, how he identified himself personally with them.
“He who receives you receives me, he who rejects you rejects me.”
The passage, a striking parallelism, has never left my memory. It is not said in the same way now.
I continued reading until the chapter on the last year in the life of Jesus Christ on earth. I remember the last supper Jesus Christ held with his apostles in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem. While the apostles gathered around the table, they must have seen the face of Jesus Christ (or did I imagine them seeing it?) looking sad, as if afraid, because he was speaking solemnly to them of those things that mattered most to him. He told them that they had not chosen him but that he had chosen them.
“How will the world know that you are my disciples?” I remember Jesus Christ asking them.
They must have not spoken a word. Why was Jesus Christ saying those things as if he was about to leave them?
It was Jesus Christ who broke the infinite stillness in the room.
“The world will know that you are my disciples,” I recall Jesus Christ telling them, “if you love one another as I have loved you.”
I cannot forget the quote.
When I continued reading in the gospel of Matthew that Jesus Christ took the bread and then broke it and then gave it instead to his apostles, saying that it was his Body to be given up for them, I suddenly felt as if my face had been swept by a wind coming from another world. I found myself crying. Tears flowed from my eyes, yet I did not feel sad. The brittle light of the gas lamp quavered nervously in the room.
This week’s winner
Mariano F. Carpio, 68, has retired from teaching at UST. His short stories and essays have been published in national magazines. He says he enjoys his retirement reading, doing domestic work and playing billiards.
