Greatness in the lowly

Already, current surveys are predicting leads among presidential candidates; and already, presidential candidates are trying ways and means to be declared number one before the 2004 elections. Well and good if these pre-sidential aspirants make the public know what would be their platform should they become the president of the Philippines. But to try out a gimmick like smearing the name of someone who poses a threat to his ambition is off-tangent. Pointing a finger at anybody and publicly exposing what he thinks is a corruption in another is so base especially in someone who aspires to rule the country. Worst still, if that presidential aspirant is seeing mountains out of molehills and ignoring the dirt in his own eye.

If he succeeds being president of the Philippines that way, that would be an insult to the wisdom and intelligence of our electoral body. Do not underestimate the Filipino electoral body. In not too recent years, we have learned our lesson that if we vote for someone who has promised us power, money, house and lot, a ‘good’ life, we become disappointed waking up one day after elections finding our dreams have turned into vapor. That is because we have made wrong judgments about the person of aspiring presidential candidates. We have asked ourselves the question, who among them is greatest? The candidate who has billions of laundered money, who owns several mansions in Ayala Alabang, the controversial Senator who always wins against his enemies in Congress, the quibbling, bickering law-maker whose passionate ambitions makes him insensible to the welfare of our countrymen who should get his time instead of he wasting all the time that should be devoted to planning how best our people can be served.

Jesus, in one of the most incisive of Gospel teachings, has the only answer as to who is the greatest in the Kingdom which as he specified before is not of this world. "If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all" (Mk 9:35). But how? I, a senator or a congressman – a servant of all much less a ‘child’ at that? This is not readily understandable for the worldly-wise, the passionately ambitious. So Jesus takes a child as tangible explanation telling them to accept this child, meaning this child is symbol of all that is lowly, poor in spirit, humble, simple, guileless.

The holy apostle Paul echoes Jesus’ teaching saying: Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show his works by a good life in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth … for where (that) exist, there is disorder and every foul practice" (Jas 3:13-16). Can we still wonder why there is such a seething turbulence in almost every sector of government today – in the executive, legislative, judiciary and dangerously the military?

We are after leaders who are mature emotionally, morally, spiritually, not would-be leaders who are petty and childish. "The wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant; full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy and insincerity" (Jas 9:37). We seek for solutions everywhere and everyway; but we miss the one solution which comes clear but is not readily accepted: "Whoever receives one such child in My Name, receives me … receives the One who sent Me" (Mk 3:37). Receive the poor, the lowly whom every innocent child symbolizes, be the child at heart, for only the childlike is greatest in the Kingdom of Christ.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mark 9:30-37.