getting a free haircut
If compensation can be used as a measure for how beautiful a sermon is, then my most beautiful homily happened when I blessed a beauty parlor years back. Surrounded by beauticians, I said something like this: “After God created man and woman on the sixth day, and ‘God looked at everything that he had made and found it very good,’ but what you will be doing in this place is to make things better still. God made everything beautiful to look at, but you here will make them more beautiful still.”
They were so delighted with what they heard, they never realized until then how honorable work in the parlor was. A doctor can only restore health and life, but a parlorlista can improve and even remake your hair and face including the confidence brought about by a more beautiful you! For what they thought were such godly and enriching thoughts, aside from the usual offering, I was offered a free haircut and a facial spa to boot!
Work though menial and lowly is dignifying. It comes from the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God who worked for six days to create us and the world around us, and who commanded us to fill the earth and subdue it. By working diligently, we fulfil the command of prolonging the work of creation which God started – it is part of our nature as co-creators with God, and it is a way of honoring the Creator who has given us tremendous gifts and potentials. Thus, to work is a duty (If anyone will not work let him not eat . . .2Th. 3:10) and to provide work is more valuable and meritorious than almsgiving, for by doing so one does just give to the unemployed the means of making a living, but more so restores to the person the dignity of God’s image and a way of honoring the Creator.
This is one of the main projects of the Multi-Purpose Cooperative of our Parish which aims to provide employment and livelihood opportunities to our parishioners through candle-making. The cooperative started with a paid-up capital of PhP. 122,700.00 and has at of this time 32 members. It started last year selling around 280 sacks of NFA Rice to poor parishioners at a time when there was a crisis of supply, and then it ventured into Candle-Making in time for the feast of Our Lady of Candles.
The candles they produced did not come near or even compare with the perdon made by La Naval Candle Home Industry in Manila (the perdon we sell) with their consistent size and color, smooth finish and consistent burning. I would even say that if the cooperative did sell more or less 4,000 candles that day it was because we ran out of the La Naval perdon and only after assuring the devotees that they were buying authentic perdon candles from the Jaro Cathedral.
Little did they know that the candles they brought home and burned in prayer before God were made by ten unemployed people in the parish who had to learn the skill of candle-making, burning their hands and fingers just to get it right, with the crudest of instruments but with a most hopeful heart that they are finally going to bring home a more stable income to help feed their families and send their children to school. The two peso per candle they earn may not mean much to us – but it was a real and stable income and above all a restored dignity that can only be savored with pride by one who eats from the sweat of one’s brow. The candle may be crude, made by an amateur and a beginner in the trade, and one gets to wonder what light it rendered to you and your prayers, but surely it burnt brightly and full of hope for the ten families and their prayers.
No, I am not saying this so that you are going to buy the candles out of compassion for those who have less. It is not dignifying and much less gratifying when one gets paid because of one’s pitiable inadequacies. Quality control and perfection in craftsmanship are expressions in man’s work of the creativeness of God and these should be the criteria for selling and also of buying. In time the cooperative must compete – people buy because we sell perdon of quality.
Now the cooperative is building a bigger structure right in the middle of a farm at the back of Grand Plains Subdivision. With the involvement of the Department of Trade and Industry and with the members of the Cooperative whose infatigable spirit never wanes nor ebbs, it can be had, and the day will come when the perdon shall surely produce an indisputable and irrefutable miracle – the miracle not just of providing jobs but of restoring a dignity torn by the dejection of unemployment.
They were so delighted with what they heard, they never realized until then how honorable work in the parlor was. A doctor can only restore health and life, but a parlorlista can improve and even remake your hair and face including the confidence brought about by a more beautiful you! For what they thought were such godly and enriching thoughts, aside from the usual offering, I was offered a free haircut and a facial spa to boot!
Work though menial and lowly is dignifying. It comes from the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God who worked for six days to create us and the world around us, and who commanded us to fill the earth and subdue it. By working diligently, we fulfil the command of prolonging the work of creation which God started – it is part of our nature as co-creators with God, and it is a way of honoring the Creator who has given us tremendous gifts and potentials. Thus, to work is a duty (If anyone will not work let him not eat . . .2Th. 3:10) and to provide work is more valuable and meritorious than almsgiving, for by doing so one does just give to the unemployed the means of making a living, but more so restores to the person the dignity of God’s image and a way of honoring the Creator.
This is one of the main projects of the Multi-Purpose Cooperative of our Parish which aims to provide employment and livelihood opportunities to our parishioners through candle-making. The cooperative started with a paid-up capital of PhP. 122,700.00 and has at of this time 32 members. It started last year selling around 280 sacks of NFA Rice to poor parishioners at a time when there was a crisis of supply, and then it ventured into Candle-Making in time for the feast of Our Lady of Candles.
The candles they produced did not come near or even compare with the perdon made by La Naval Candle Home Industry in Manila (the perdon we sell) with their consistent size and color, smooth finish and consistent burning. I would even say that if the cooperative did sell more or less 4,000 candles that day it was because we ran out of the La Naval perdon and only after assuring the devotees that they were buying authentic perdon candles from the Jaro Cathedral.
Little did they know that the candles they brought home and burned in prayer before God were made by ten unemployed people in the parish who had to learn the skill of candle-making, burning their hands and fingers just to get it right, with the crudest of instruments but with a most hopeful heart that they are finally going to bring home a more stable income to help feed their families and send their children to school. The two peso per candle they earn may not mean much to us – but it was a real and stable income and above all a restored dignity that can only be savored with pride by one who eats from the sweat of one’s brow. The candle may be crude, made by an amateur and a beginner in the trade, and one gets to wonder what light it rendered to you and your prayers, but surely it burnt brightly and full of hope for the ten families and their prayers.
No, I am not saying this so that you are going to buy the candles out of compassion for those who have less. It is not dignifying and much less gratifying when one gets paid because of one’s pitiable inadequacies. Quality control and perfection in craftsmanship are expressions in man’s work of the creativeness of God and these should be the criteria for selling and also of buying. In time the cooperative must compete – people buy because we sell perdon of quality.
Now the cooperative is building a bigger structure right in the middle of a farm at the back of Grand Plains Subdivision. With the involvement of the Department of Trade and Industry and with the members of the Cooperative whose infatigable spirit never wanes nor ebbs, it can be had, and the day will come when the perdon shall surely produce an indisputable and irrefutable miracle – the miracle not just of providing jobs but of restoring a dignity torn by the dejection of unemployment.
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