Recently I started working with a partner in a major project for the Department of Education. He is a very low-key person, very accomplished in his profession and very passionate in the field of education. To say the least, he is a very admirable person. In one of our meetings, he shared with me a story from his childhood that made me understand his person.
His family was a regular middle-class family. He had only one sibling, a sister. His father was a ship captain and his mother was a teacher in the public school system, a guidance counselor, if I remember correctly.
When he was young, he caused a fire that burned down their house. After the incident, his parents did not scold or blame him; all that his father said was, “Mag-iingat ka. Baka sa susunod masaktan ka.”
This made a lasting impact on him that, to this day, he remembers the kindness and concern with which his father reacted to the situation. As he grew up, he appreciated all the more his father’s gesture. He realized how that incident displaced his family economically, yet through it all his parents never blamed him.
Bear fruit
“By their fruits you shall know them.” “Kung anong puno, siya ang bunga.” This Sunday’s Gospel reminds us that the Lord expects us to bear fruit. The image of the vineyard, well-provided for and developed by the landowner, is aptly called by one scripture commentator as a story of privilege and responsibility. But let me give our reflection a little bit of a twist and somehow link it to last Sunday’s Gospel (the two sons: one said “no,” but did the father’s will, and the other said “yes,” but did not do the father’s will).
Last Sunday, we reflected on the point of identity and integrity; how our integrity comes from our identity and how acting with integrity is determined by our clear sense of identity. It was later in the weekend, after I had submitted my article, when I realized that the core of our identity is the love we have received and experienced in our life. This is not to deny the negative experiences, but in the end what pulls our identity together is the love we were given and experienced. It is what lasts.
This Sunday’s Gospel reminds us that we must bear fruit. Let us not belabor this point. I think we all somehow search for a life of meaning and a fruitful life. But where does the meaning come from? What is the seed from which the fruit comes? What nurtures the seed into fruition?
I go back to the most fundamental grace and reality in our life—love. The seed is love. Love nurtures the seed. The fruit is love.
When I first stepped into Ateneo de Manila almost 17 years ago as an ordained priest, I told my faculty in the high school department that my primary duty as a principal was to love them, my faculty, into excellence. Because it was them, the teachers, who would love our students into excellence.
This, I believe, is the fundamental goal of education and formation—to love students into excellence. And excellence, in the end, is measured by their being loving persons.
Anxious
Ten years later, when I left Ateneo, I found myself bringing the same message to the community I felt and discerned I was being called to work with, the public school teachers. At first, I was very anxious. All my life I had lived and worked with and in Ateneo—40 years of my over 45 years, by the time I left. Would the same message resonate with and in another community?
For the first three to four years of my work with public schools, I worked with principals and then with teachers. This past year, I started to work with both, with teachers in greater numbers. It has been an affirmation of my basic view of education that talking about loving students into excellence and viewing education as a mission to care and to love is a universal truth that inspires teachers across classes, generations and cultures.
One important point in our formation process for teachers and principals is when we ask them to remember their stories of care and love—the moments they experienced care and love, and the moments they shared care and love. This is a turning point in their formation journey. It re-integrates them, and the mission to love and care becomes re-inspired. Love is the seed. Love is what nurtures. Love is the fruit. The mission is to love students and others into excellence.
This is one thing we must try to encourage in our families, in our communities, in our schools, in our organizations and even work places—to tell our stories of how we have experienced love and care, either on the receiving end or the giving end of it. We must make room for our stories of love and care in our conversations. We must speak from and listen with our hearts.
Moments of love
Perhaps we must first listen to our story, to our life. As Parker Palmer’s book puts it, “let your life speak.” We must listen first to our life and rediscover the moments of love we were given, the gems in our life.
As someone told me on her birthday recently, the whole day she spent being very grateful because her life was so blessed by family and friends who love her. This was someone who could count so many other blessings in her life which were in abundance, yet to her it was the people in her life, family and friends, who mattered most.
No wonder this person has so much capacity to give with much love—to the simplest person she meets, to her household, to the strangers in need who do not know her and she does not know, to family and friends. She is generous, but more than her generosity in giving, it is the care and love with which she gives that we can all learn from.
Privilege and responsibility, the stories I shared here, show us how these people who were so privileged took it upon themselves to share the blessings they were given. Yes, they shared material resources, their talents, but more than these, it was the gratitude and love with which they shared that is the greater fruit.
The seed is love. Love nurtures the seed. The fruit is love. This is what the owner of the vineyard who loved us with a perfect love will look for come harvest time.
