Professional heckler and headline-hunter Robert Reyes, allegedly a priest on the side, has chosen a most inappropriate time to pull another publicity stunt. Gathering two other priests, he had themselves publicly prayed over by a small number of ageing nuns for protection against those who supposedly want them dead.
It is an inappropriate time, especially for a priest, to cry death threats because the Lenten Season has just started. Lent is the time to remember how Jesus willingly surrendered Himself to death in order to save the world. It embarrasses the whole of Christendom to have any of its priest whine and whimper about their own puny and imagined deaths.
Of course, Reyes said he is not afraid of death threats, which impliedly come from supporters of President Duterte, who has become his favorite target of criticisms of late. Yet there he was, in front of the cameras, trying vainly to look very innocent and victimized. Why seek protection by prayer if you are not afraid?
But then again, there is of course no reason for Reyes to be afraid. Because the death threats are all in his head. It is just another publicity stunt designed to make Reyes look so good and Duterte so bad. Reyes clearly misappreciates Duterte. Does he really think that if Duterte wanted him dead he would still have the time to pirouette before an obliging media?
Reyes deserves no death threat. He is not worth killing. There is no higher interest in this world to be served by silencing somebody who does not have credibility and respect. Reyes does not get it that credibility and respect seek out and follow the person who deserves those great accolades of human character. He does not go chasing desperately after them.
The idea of death threats comes from a romanticized feeling of persecution. What Reyes fails to achieve as a man of the cloth he wants to recoup as a man of the streets. But oh, how Reyes forgets his Bible lessons; you simply cannot serve two masters at the same time.
If Reyes must serve Christ, then he must do so with a oneness in spirit and a clarity in purpose. He cannot be unChrist-like in demeanor and direction and still claim to serve the One True Master known to all Christians as a meek, humble, and forgiving divine example.
Everything of which Jesus was in His public ministry on earth, Reyes is not. He is the exact opposite of the Man in whose name he shamelessly claims to act. The newspaper pictures of Reyes and two other priests being prayed over by nuns have nothing Lentenly redeeming for Christians. Prayer is solemn, not a showcase. Do so, and you take the name of God in vain.