Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 7 June 2013
Xavier University Chapel, Cagayan de Oro City
There are two celebrations this afternoon. The first is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of our Lord. The second is Archbishop Tony’s golden jubilee as a Jesuit. So first let us consider the Sacred Heart.
Our readings for today point to what is at the heart of the heart of our Lord. The dominant image in both the first reading from the prophet Ezekiel and the Gospel from Luke is that of the good shepherd. The good shepherd tends his flock, rescues those that are scattered in the dark, gathers them back home, and pastures them. The good shepherdcares for his sheep, binds up those that are injured, healsthose that are sick. The good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine behind to seek out one that is lost. It is the same good shepherd, that welcomes the weary and the burdened and gives them rest, that forgives seventy times seven, that weeps at the death of a friend like Lazarus, that looks with love on the rich young man even if his invitation was rejected.
At the heart of the heart of this good shepherd is nothing less than solid Christian charity, in a kind of giving that is unconditional and overflowing – “dar hasta queduela”, in the words of Jesuit Saint Alberto Hurtado – to give until it hurts. It is a complete surrender of self, a sacrifice so perfect, a giving that counts no costs. And the second reading from the letter to the Romans emphasizes that the Lord gives to us, even while we are sinners and offenders, because for the Lord, it matters little, because he cannot help who he is at heart.
In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI says that Christian charity, Christian love,is first of all manifested as a “simple response to immediate needs”: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for and healing the sick, visiting those in prison.He says that in this response, we must becommitted. But Benedict also says that commitment is not enough. He says that: “We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern.” They need to experience over and over again the richness of who they are as images and likenesses of God, which poverty and pain can sometimes make them forget. They recover their humanity when they are made to feel once more the love of the giver. And for those who do give, Benedict says, love of neighbor istransformed. It is no longer a commandment imposed, but a pleasure which flows from faith and a human response to a loving God. (Deus Caritas Est, n30)
The good shepherd also invites us to see that when he offers himself as victim on the cross, he gives of himself, not out of strength and might, but more heroically, out of powerlessness and humility.
In this modern world, so much premium is placed on success, measured according to the capacity to deliver the goods, and point to achievements gained and targets reached, through hard work and determination, using our gifts and talents and personal grace. But for the follower of the good shepherd, the true strength of giving from the heart is tested best during moments of powerlessness, in the face of fear and failure and frustration. Because of this experience of powerlessness, we learn to relate more profoundly to others who live the same human condition, experiencing human struggle and darkness and anguish, and enabling them to cry out for salvation. Because of this experience of powerlessness, we are able to turn completely to God, because in powerlessness, we enter into the arena of grace, where God can truly be God.
Today, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, we beg for the grace of transformation, that our hearts can be more like His, caring for those we love, with heartfelt concern as Pope Benedict says,while gradually shedding all selfishness, learning to do so little by little, step by step, year after year, as we live through our own pains, as we bungle through our own sinfulness, and giving especially when we are powerless.
The second celebration today is the golden jubilee of Archbishop Tony Ledesma as a Jesuit. We recall that on May 30, 1963, a shy, soft-spoken young man of twenty, who had just finished college at the Ateneo de Manila, an FBI (full-blooded Ilonggo), walked into the doors of Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches to join the Society of Jesus. That was fifty years ago. Much has happened since then, and today we are gathered to join Archbishop Tony in expressing profound gratitude.
What happened through fifty years can be mapped out very simply. Ten years of basic Jesuit formation (and brainwashing), at the end of which came ordination and the gift of priesthood. Last April 16 was Bishop Tony’s 40th anniversary as a priest. Graduate studies followed, and the Ph.D. from the Univ of Wisconsin Madison. There was a year of pastoral work in Ipil Prelature, followed by tertianship. Then came the long stretch, from 1982 to 1996, that’s fourteen years, here in Xavier University, teaching, doing administration work, networking with many NGOs, even as he continued in his priestly duties of preaching and administering the sacraments. Then in 1996, he was called to the episcopacy, returning to the Prelature of Ipil, and staying there for 10 years. In 2006, he came back to Cagayan de Oro for a third time, this time as its archbishop. Bishop Tony has been serving in Mindanao for some thirty years of his priestly life – dedicating himself to work for development and poverty alleviation, peace and Muslim-Christian-Lumaddialogue, and significant advocacies for agrarian reform, the environment, and of course, natural family planning.
I remember clearly the first time I met Tony Ledesma. It was in 1981 in Siay, Zamboangadel Sur. He was a young priest, just finished with his doctoral studies, and I was a first year novice on mission trial. One of the graces I received was to witness firsthand the work of the great missionaries of Ipilof those days – BenignoDagani and Domingo Macalam, Bob Walsh and Art Shea, RaimundoArgarate and Adrian Mestdag, and many others. Tony Ledesma was among them – still the same shy Jesuit, calm, simple, mild-mannered, unassuming, far from flashy. Yet somehow, in the quiet of those days in rural Zamboangadel Sur, in those martial law years before cell phones and laptops, when the roads were so bad, and water and electricity were more scarce, I felt the fire of mission, the quiet dedication to the people of God, the same selfless and caring spirit of the good shepherd.
It was there that I realized that the flip side of gratitude is generosity; that both stem from the same realization that all we have is gift from God, completely undeserved. Therefore, we are grateful. And therefore also, we can more generously give of who we are.
Bishop Tony has been doing well, as indeed many other bishops have done in the past, for the building of the Church in Mindanao. I am proud to add, though, that Bishop Tony has carried out his mission in classic Jesuit style, with three basic characteristics. First, it is a mission indelibly marked by the Spiritual Exercises, founded on an ever-renewing love of the Lord. Second, it is a mission that is fortified by Ignatianavailability, where the imperative is to simply go where one is sent and take on a mission given, no matter what or where, even to the farthest places, where the word of God needs to be heard. And third, to discover and discern God’s dream in that mission, and dedicate one’s self to it, not minding whatever adversity might come, paying attention more to substance than to form, and injecting into it all one’s gifts and talents and energies. These, I believe, were the gifts Archbishop Tony received when he entered the novitiate in 1963, and today, fifty years after, we can only say to the Lord, a simple but profound “salamat kaayo”.