Tay Badal: Atty. Badal Trompeta

This is the second time this year that I am celebrating mass for an octogenarian who is celebrating his birthday.  First it was my mother’s 80^th birthday, now it’s Tay Badal’s 81^st birthday.  I am fascinated by this age for two reasons. 

First, the book of psalms says that “our lifespan is 70 years old,” and it hurriedly adds “or 80 for those who are strong.”  To have reached 80 therefore is to reach the fullness of age, and since it is a fullness, it is an age where one can say, I have nothing more to ask.  Here, age and the things closely associated with age, like time, the succession of day and night, health, sight, great grandchildren, can truly be called and appreciated as gifts - something freely given, something extra even, something we can even call underserved.  Not all of us will be given this grace, not all of us are and will be given these extras in life.  It must be very beautiful and I am one with Tay Badal in saying thank you to the children who thought of this event, and for you his guests to respond to this invitation and to celebrate this 81^st birthday with him, and to start it even with a thanksgiving to God in this holy mass.

The second fascination with this age comes, this time, not from the strength that marks this age, but from the opposite of strength - the powerlessness that comes with age: a fascination with the things we could no longer do, a fascination to the reactions toward things we could no longer correct, of things we could only accept. 

Imagine the memory of Tay Badal or those among us who are 80 up.  Of course it will no longer be that accurate.  But surely it can still remember the joys and the triumphs; it can still have glimpses of the happy moments and the successes in life.  And surely it can remember still the pains and the hurts, and perhaps even the regrets of those past years.  I used to tell my regrets to an old priest and he will always say to me with just a hint of a smile, “yes, yes, but what can we do.”  Indeed, what can you do?  Too weak and also too late.  80 is the time to let God finish things for you.  80 is the time to let God perhaps even correct and even fix things for you.  80 is the time to let go, perhaps to look forward to the time when God will make it all good for us.  Too weak now and also too late.  Perhaps for some that would be a source of regret, but for others, for those who love God, it is the time to let God - the time to let God make it all good, the time to let God fix things for us.

But it is not just that.  More than these Paul offers us a valuable insight in the First Reading, in the second letter to Timothy.  Paul recalls the abandonment by his friends.  Demas has abandoned him, Crescens went to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia, his work of preaching was opposed, he was deserted and abandoned.  But in all these, he said, he knew that the Lord has stood by him and gave him strength to proclaim fully the message.  “I was rescued from the lion’s mouth,” Paul said. 

This is the challenge of 80 and even of old age - to ask the Lord for the grace of clarity, the grace to see things more clearly, to see the event in our lives more clearly, that God was truly there in my successes, in my triumphs, in my sorrows and regrets and even in my mistakes.  To ask for the grace of clarity, that God will help us to understand how our experiences in life, your experience of 80 years, have brought you, have brought us, closer to God.

In our gospel today Jesus says, “carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.”  At 80, at this long age, this has probably ceased to become a challenge.  Instead this gospel passage may have become an affirmation by now - an affirmation that truly what really mattered most in life were not the purses nor the bags nor the sandals.

PS.  As much as I can I never change the gospel of the day even if they seem at first glance irrelevant to the occasion.  This way, by sticking to our readings we can be sure that it is not just the message I want to convey, or the message selected and attuned to what we want to hear, but it is really God’s word interpreted to us, God’s word reflected by all of us.

In a happy coincidence however we read the gospel of Luke where Jesus ask us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into to his harvest.  I would like to take this occasion to thank Tay Badal for his concern for the seminary and the seminarians.  Mind you this concern is not just during this birthday but ever since even during the time of when Msgr. Joemarie Delgado was the Rector.  Tay Badal together with Nay Gama would always be there coming to the rescue every time our need is great. Now even in this celebration of his birthday he thinks of us, he remembers us.

Perhaps it is also a happy coincidence that he celebrates his birthday in the feast day of St. Luke.  St.  Luke was a physician who shared what he had, even the earnings of his profession, for the growth of the gospel especially as a dutiful partner and companion of St. Paul, when the church was still at its beginnings.  May God bless all those who assist the church in many countless ways even while remaining active in their professions, even with the earnings of their profession.  May God keep them in his heart forever.  Amen.