on that day: seminary Christmas party vespers 2011

I chose our reading today to mark the end of our year together as family in the intimacy of this chapel. It is a reading that is echoed and re-echoed all throughout advent. It is a reading which begins and ends with a very important phrase which we should take to heart, a phrase which encapsulates the message of advent. The phrase is - on that day.
This is a Christmas party and I would have wanted to speak about Christmas with its message of joy but I would like to resist the temptation and stick instead to the message of advent and recover its meaning for us in our Christian lives and most especially in our vocation as formators and teachers and in a special way in your life as seminarians, young as you are.
On that day. What would life be for us without this perspective? What would life be without this manner of looking at our day to day life? What would life be for a formator who would only think of this year for example, or a teacher who would only consider this week in his or her perspective? Most often we do not give up because we know that behind this dismal failure, behind this struggling kid, behind this bundle of nuisance is a future one could not predict. What would life be for us when we could not see beyond mischief, what would life be for us teachers when we could not see beyond a mistake? The formators or a teachers work is never instantly rewarded. The gratification is always delayed, and long overdue. Granting all these, my point is, from the perspective of on that day it is never easy to give up. It is never easy to turn one’s back and say good luck and goodbye, keep warm and well-fed, in other words good riddance. Never give up for on that day, even our commitment and dedication to them can become a lesson that is more important than all the sciences and mathematics combined.


In the reading, I included in the selection certain things that would make this passage sound like fiction. On that day imagine the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. Imagine a little child, lets say, Manuel Sindol guiding a young cow and a young lion browsing together in the field. It sounds impossible. Or imagine the day when the cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. And the baby shall play by the cobra's den. One that day will always seem impossible. Our brains are equipped in calculating and as much as it can it will calculate leaving nothing to chance. But that’s the point of on that day, it can never be foreseen and what seemed impossible became possible.
From that perspective of on that day I am possibly hoping against hope that Denmark would become a good priest with his jolly demeanour and infectious joy and vivacity. From the perspective of on that day I will not give up on Kherwin convincing myself that he can be a great priest who can command a good deal of respect. From the perspective of on that day, I will not yet give up on Rhett becoming later a good canon lawyer priest, a Judicial vicar perhaps because he can raise questions even when we thought that everything is settled. From the perspective of on that day, and I am crossing my fingers, Mark Soriano because he was a good secretary to the rector, will become in a few years time the secretary of the good bishop Jay Michael Cordero. On that day. Isaiah’s prophecy of a lion eating hay with an ox is not about the genetic mutation of the future. It is to tell us that certain impossible things from our point of view now, will become a reality on that day. What are these impossibilities now? There are many. My point is, I am facing before me a bundle of possibilities I can never fully comprehend and predict. On that day may leave us guessing.
Hope is important - it is the virtue aroused by the looking at things with a view of on that day. It is no coincidence that esperanza is the spanish word for hope and its root comes from esperar which means to wait. Our persistence, our perseverance is the expression of our waiting, and we wait because we hope. Appreciate advent, we shall wait for Christmas. And I believe we will appreciate better the season of Christmas, the coming of the Lord, the fulfillment of all the promises of old when we have trained our eyes to look from the point of view of on that day.