One of my young friends from Olandes (a resettlement area named after the lowlands of Holland) along the Marikina River, where I used to work weekends, wrote me: “lahat ng ating mga piktyur, ... lahat ng mga antigo mong sulat sa akin mula noong 1989, tinangay at tinunaw ng baha. iniyakan namin yun. pero siguro papel lang naman ang mga iyon. ang tunay na alaala nasa puso at isip pa din. di matatangay ng kahit anong bagyo. ang pagkakaibigan di mailulunod ng baha.
“At siguro ang isa pa talaga naming iniyakan ay ang pagdanas ng hirap ng marami sa mga kakilala natin doon. pero kasama sa pag-iyak ang paghanga sa tatag at tapang ng mga tao sa kabila ng mga ganitong pangyayari.
“Yung tatay ko kakatawa, nung isang araw sabi sa akin: anak, wala na tayong tv. di na ako makanood ng telenobela...”
I remember that area being hit by a great flood in 1988. One of us even got to ride an amphibious truck to distribute relief to the weary settlers of Olandes. The trauma and the suffering eventually settled like sludge to the floor of the people’s memory. Three weeks ago, and more than two decades later, the sludge was agitated once more. The floods came back with greater ferocity and this time, it wasn’t just Olandes anymore.
“The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.” What was the prophet Isaiah thinking? To be crushed in infirmity, I can take. But to be pleased? If the Lord was delighted recently to send two typhoons our way, one tsunami over Samoa, and a devastating earthquake to Indonesia, what then is the point of turning our gaze heavenward? What are we to hope for or believe in? I cannot make sense of the suffering just as I cannot believe in a sadistic and malevolent God who derives pleasure from seeing us helplessly drawn into a vortex of sorrow and death.
Suffering steals the words and wind out of us. We try pathetically to make easy sense of the sorrow by invoking a vague notion of justice: negative things happen for the sake of parity, a state of affairs in which karma conveniently restores things to proper balance. Justice, fairness, parity. The ancient lex talionis: an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth. Balance, deterrence, equilibrium. Someone in facebook interpreted the plight of Luzon as penance and punishment for Luzon’s sinfulness. Gikastigo, as the Visayans would say, even if everyone knows that the rains of heaven fall on the just and the unjust.
Be wary of such easy answers that rationalize suffering, even if randomness is repelling. When you see images of whole villages buried in a landslide, if you are honest, you know that the karmic equation or equilibrium does not hold.
Of course, there are technical answers. The physical world we live in is as imperfect and unfinished as we are. What we are seeing is a worked up Pacific Ring of Fire shaking those tectonic shelves underwater, and warm, unstable air over the Western Pacific stirring up storms. These non-linear, chaotic processes describe a world that can be as sensitive and unpredictable as we are. Complicated and incomplete, these technical answers do not even satisfy.
Admittedly, the adjectives “imperfect”, “unfinished”, “sensitive” are personified images of an evolving world. I use them because I do not think it possible to envisage a perfect and finished world devoid of us and disconnected from the action of heaven. Even Eden had us in the beginning. The divine and human longing is still to have us return to Paradise.
But how are we to return to Eden given the imperfection, the sensitivities and unpredictabilities not only of the natural world but of the human heart as well?
It is to this possibility of redemption that the prophet directs his prophecy: “If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.” Then we realize from his words who the prophet was thinking of: an anointed One, a servant who will suffer at our hands, and whose suffering will be transfigured as on offering for the forgiveness of our sins, which sins have already wounded us more deeply in this imperfect world.
As we scramble to recover from the ruins, may our desolation turn to contrition, and from contrition to greater resolve. Let our people’s suffering be not in vain as we marshal the little resources that we have away from the white elephants and political payloads that are the usual fare in and out of election season. Let this tragedy lead us to the things that have always demanded urgent action: jobs, food, health, education, housing, and the wise use of our land and waterways.
May we become who we truly are: icons and images of the suffering One, who “did not come to be served but to serve and give his life in ransom for many.” Thus becoming servants of the One suffering servant, we can then watch telenovelas at the end of a servant’s day, to our heart’s delight, with less fear of the dangers that stalk our broken yet beautiful world.
Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin SJ is President of Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan. For feedback on this column, email tinigloyola@yahoo.com