seeing the contrariness - sto. nino 2014

Once, I was made by my mother into a Sto. Nino at the instigation of our parish priest.  I was dressed in white, they placed a glittering red cape at my back, placed a crown on my head, made me hold a globe on my left and a scepter on my right, and they had me processed in the streets of Oton with a band playing at the back, angels escorting me up front and adulating crowds all around me.  That was the only time I heard people calling me cute.  And that was more or less 40 years ago. 

We love the Sto. Nino, we adore the Sto. Nino, but have you ever paused for a while and have you ever looked at the image intently and saw the irony of it, the contrariness?  A child yet dressed as an adult, a poor baby born in a manger yet dressed as a prince, vulnerable yet dressed as powerful, needy but clothed with grandeur and riches.  It is an image full of contradictions.

Sometimes psychologists cannot help but ask, is the Sto. Nino really an image of God or is it an image of ourselves, the image of Filipinos, an image of who we are and what we want to be – the poor who want to be rich, the weak who want to be powerful, the needy who want to be privileged, the destitute who want to be the greatest?  Probably.

But the gospel is also insistent that the child, the image of humility, the image of vulnerability, the image of dependence and trust, personified by children is also the image of greatness.  For Jesus, to be humble like a child is greatness, to be vulnerable like a child is power, to be trusting like a child is strength, to surrender like a child is victory.  Many times it is difficult to understand.  I asked my students once where was Jesus most powerful, where or what event in his life did he show the very depth and width and height of his power.  Many answered in his miracles, when he was healing the sick, when he was driving out demons, and most especially when he rose Lazarus from the dead, or the little girl of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain. 

Some said that Jesus was powerful in his transfiguration, when he showed his divinity to his amazed disciples, when the greatest prophets of Israel, Moses and Elijah, appeared with Jesus before the disciples in dazzling clothes.  Some said that Jesus was most powerful when he spoke those words which until now continue to touch hearts, words that until now continue to convert, to attract, and to move people, as it has done to Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola and countless others..

But where is Jesus really most powerful, and I said, and this is not my own, Jesus was most powerful when he was doing nothing on the cross, doing nothing hanging on the cross, doing nothing but accepting his suffering on the cross, accepting his death on the cross.  Many times we equate power with what we do.  Today the invitation is to look for it in our vulnerabilities, in what we allow ourselves to undergo, in what we allow God to do to us and for us, in the seeming weaknesses, in the mortality of our flesh – in sickness, in oldage, in calamities, in the difficulties our family might be undergoing.  Many times it is when we feel useless that we become really useful.

I am a gardener at heart.  I do gardening in my spare time.  One time some old ladies made me carry their bags because they thought I was a gardener.  The garden has taught me a lot of things.  In the garden I have learned to relinquish control.  I cannot control everything – the sun the weather, the wind and even the plant – they just die when they want to die, they bloom when they want to bloom, they won’t bloom when they don’t want to bloom.  I just can’t control everything.  I have to learn to like the weather whatever the weather is.  I stopped praying for good weather many years ago.  I simply gave up – it just didn’t happen.  Instead I have to be open, to stay open to the endless possibilities of life in the garden.  And I think this is also the invitation for me, for all of us – even though it’s hard to accept realities as they come, especially the reality of sickness, the reality of a crisis, the reality of human frailty and feebleness, the reality of brokenness and things beyond our control.  We can only do as much.  We have to realize that boundary, the line that marks and separates what we can do and what God alone can do for us, the line that marks where our efforts end and where God’s grace begins.

There are too many depressions now because we have lost that childlikeness in recognizing our powerlessness over many things. There is so much stress in our lives because we fail to recognize and distinguish what we can do and what God alone can do for us.   There are things we can solve, there are things we can do but there are also things we can only accept, things we can only rely on God.  When we have recognized this we become childlike and the contradictions in the image of the Sto. Nino becomes understandable.