Last Monday we held the yearend evaluation of our first school year partnership with the Quezon City Department of Education and local government unit. The collaboration helped open four senior high schools for public school students. We planned this for two years before opening in June 2016.

Our role is to tap private sector partners for each school, especially the leading industry practitioners. One of the main goals of the senior high school program is to provide jobs for the non-college-bound public school students, relevant education that leads to jobs for the poor.

The past two years were not without challenges. But after hearing stories of how the small things the partnership facilitates make a difference in the lives of the students, we saw hope—the promise of a better life through relevant education.

I realized that what kept our group together, total strangers when we first met, is a shared love—love for teaching and love for the students, a love that works to give them opportunities and a fighting chance in a playing field where poverty is their biggest handicap.

Give and do more

Love is what kept us going. It made us work together through good and bad times. And love inspires us to give and to do more.

Easter Sunday’s Gospel is a silent testimony to the power of love. The three characters in today’s narrative, Mary from Magdala, John the Beloved, and Peter, represent the different loves that witness the first moments of humanity’s experience of the Resurrection.

Mary is the first to know that Christ has Risen. Her love for the one who gives her hope brings her to the tomb in the last watch of the night, between 3 and 6 a.m. The moment the Sabbath is over, she proceeds to the tomb. Her love leads her to first discover the Resurrection.

Peter, to whom Mary reports the incident, rushes to the tomb with John. Peter enters the empty tomb. He clearly sees the evidence of the Resurrection, the neatly placed burial clothes and napkin.

Peter’s love, no matter how faltering in some instances, bestows on him the honor and responsibility of being the first leader of the early Christian community. His love that reflects his impetuous character leads to his being anointed by the Risen Lord as the one “presiding in love.”

“Simon (Peter), son of John, do you love me more than these?… Feed my sheep.” Peter’s leadership is an expression of his love for Christ, an imperfect love, but nonetheless a love that confesses, “Lord,  you know that I love you,” and later proclaims, “Silver or gold I have none, but what I have I give; in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”

John the Beloved, after Peter enters the empty tomb, follows Peter and he, too, sees the evidence. John is the first to understand and believe in the Resurrection. “…He saw, and believed. For as yet they did not realize the meaning of scripture…”

Three loves brought together by and in the empty tomb, this simple moment heralded the completion of the deepest and greatest mystery of our faith: Christ is Risen.

It completes the identity and mission of Christ, the Beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased. His loving obedience all the way to the Cross opens the empty tomb, the symbol of the Resurrection, the definitive expression of how well pleased the Father is in Christ.

A meaningful life

The Resurrection is the greatest “evidence” of the power of love. It overcomes sin and death, and gives us the freedom to dream of and hope for eternal life. This is the greatest love.

Of late, I have repeatedly shared what Fr. Hans Kung, S.J., said—that for a meaningful life, one must have something to live on, something to live for, and something to die for.

As we ended our evaluation meeting and started preparing for school year 2017-2018, there was renewed energy and inspiration in our community that is “rooted and grounded in love” for the students, those who are handicapped by poverty, and love for teaching.

I turned to one of the officers of the Division Office and told her, this is the dream that all this work aims to give to the students—“something to live on, something to live for and something to die for.”

Jobs, meaning and service—this is relevant education, education for the poor, giving those in the periphery something to live on.

Beyond this, it is for them to live a meaningful life, something to live for.

But I realized that all these come together in “something to die for,” a life of giving-back, a life of service, dedicating oneself to God and to others.

Christ’s love, the unifying principle of life and death, the singular flow of grace in the one mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, is all that matters. It is the love we can dedicate everything to.

In today’s Gospel, love brings Mary from Magdala to the tomb. Love leads Peter into the empty tomb. Love makes John see and believe. This simple moment makes our dreams and hopes possible. This is the gift of the Resurrection. “What we have done will not be lost to all eternity. Everything ripens and becomes fruit in its own hour.”

Alleluia, alleluia, the Lord is Risen! Love is the one thing that will last all eternity.—CONTRIBUTED