Road To Emmaus

You gave your body/

Pierced through for me/

You gave your blood/

Poured out for me/

Father, you gave your son/

A sacrifice for me/

I fall down on my knees/

Lord, have mercy on me/

Heal me, cleanse me, cleanse me.

CEBU, Philippines - It’s pretty amazing how others who are often offended could easily forgive people for the dastardly things done to them. I see such as a being of short memory that gives the offenders the chance to cultivate all the more the callousness in them.

Though I’ve been “killed” over and over and over again by De Haan’s poem which points out that when we withhold forgiveness we also forfeit the gifts of joy and peace; that fellowship with God is broken and the heart grows hard and cold. But I have always stood for forgiveness with justice. Okay, I can forgive but not without asking compensation for damages.

So when Colombian priest Ramiro Gallo of the Verbum Dei Missionary Community up there on the hills of Banawa in barangay Guadalupe instructed us “retreatants” to never give up on love even for our enemies—even to the ones who hated us the most, even to the ones who ridiculed us the most—something in my heart roared with the “that’s ridiculous, a very unrealistic goal for me, Father” complaint.

How could I love my neighbors in sitio Upper Bayanihan-1, barangay Quiot who from the day I had given birth have never been considerate? They turn on their ear-splitting amplifiers and sing in karaoke-nonsense fashion in their so-called Charismatic rehearsals wailing in unholy hours just when the baby is lying peacefully in slumber. The overload of stress is giving me the gray hairs already and killing me silently.

How could I love the very people who berated me, the people who took pride in hurting me? How could I love the colleague who “prophesied” I would never get a promotion or the reporter who demanded her story to never be dissected by me because I don’t have a degree in journalism? 

How could I love another editor who pulls his weight around the newsroom? Yes, the Mr. Know-It-All type, whose unsolicited ideas annoy me.

And how could I deeply love a father who never wanted to send us to college just because we’re girls and that we’re only bound to marry?

“If you refuse to love these persons, you will never realize the compassion God has for you, Eleanor. Know that he is very patient with you. You have constantly wounded His heart too and yet He is like the father to the prodigal son who met the returning child with open arms, and who ordered for a banquet because his son was long gone and now was found again,” Fr. Ramiro explained.

You can not continue to keep records of mistake as yours were long erased. Our sins are great, but God’s mercy is even greater, Fr. Ramiro gave me the most assuring hug that I can win my personal, spiritual battle.

With the blood of Jesus/

Washes white as snow/

On the cross, my Jesus/

You gave your life for me/

Pour the blood of Jesus over me/

- “Blood of Jesus” by Christafari

I’m sorry, I’m not perfect. I need prayers from you who take time to read me. I implore you to include me in your petitions that I may be able to endure the challenges on my way to Emmaus. I hate to be among those who profess to be Christians but who have remained unfaithful; those Catholics who come to church regularly but still with obviously dysfunctional lives.  

When I said I want you to pray that I may choose God, I mean commitment. I mean deeper personal relationship; a serious purpose with which I would approach this union with spiritual intimacy; with the humility to come on bended knees everyday to thank Him for the things “I did get that I did not deserve at all”.

I deserved punishment but got forgiveness. I deserved wrath but got love. I deserved debtor’s prison but got instead a clean credit history. I deserved stern lectures and crawl-on-knees repentance; instead, I got a banquet spread for me.