At the vigil mass of the Solemnity of Christmas, a bishop, the presider, was amazed at how the people had decorated the cathedral with so much lights that glow with festivity and joy. But as he was about to intone the Gloria, he approached the Belen to get the image of the baby Jesus to be raised for veneration. Only then he discovered that the baby Jesus had a broken arm. In his homily, he mentioned something like this: “We have exerted so much effort to make the cathedral look like a five-star hotel on Christmas day that we’ve lost our grip of the very reason we celebrate.”
Amidst the hurly-burly of Christmas festivity, it was not really difficult to lose our focus on Jesus. Great was the possibility of us being consumed by the external preparations it demanded, the fund-raising schemes that went with it, the collection and distribution of gifts here, there and everywhere, etc.
Today’s celebration is another chance to fix our eyes on Jesus and open our hearts to the message and the challenges the child Jesus has to offer us. The feast of the Santo Niño is particularly significant to us Filipinos because it was the image of the child Jesus that was first instrumental to the introduction of Christian faith to us. When we dance the sinulog step, we recall the joy of Hara Amihan, wife of Rajah Humabon, the ruler of Cebu in 1521, as she danced upon receiving the image of the Santo Niño as baptismal gift from Magellan.
The disarming charm of a child could have made the introduction of faith a lot easier perhaps. But the child Jesus that we Filipinos have venerated and loved for centuries now is the same Jesus who emptied himself on the cross and who demanded that his disciples carry their crosses too. Hence, the devotion to the child Jesus has to move beyond and deeper than merely recognizing the Santo Niño’s charm.
Popular piety has tended to flock to the image of the Santo Niño for its supposed ‘lucky charm,’ or ‘miraculous powers.’ While it’s a function of faith to trust in God’s providence to answer our human needs, it is bordering onto fanaticism to assign the divine power to the image of a divinity. This aspect of the popular piety surely needs purification. This is also true, so I think, to the unchecked popular devotion to the Black Nazarene. Authentic devotion draws people closer to God. Fanaticism misleads people and brings them to falsely trust in images—whether black, green, red, or what have you! Misled people flocked to an image oblivious of the fact that they have been trampling one another to death.
Today’s gospel reading (Lk 2:41-52) can guide us to an authentic and meaningful devotion to the child Jesus. The incident portrayed in the reading is the losing and finding of the child Jesus in the temple. This is the only story about Jesus’ childhood that shows the beginning of his consciousness about who he is in relation to God, the Father, and to his human family. Here, the child Jesus begins to recognize his calling. “I have to be in my Father’s house” (v. 49). Or “I have to be about my Father’s business.” The child Jesus does not mean to demean the value of his relationship to Joseph and Mary. He is just beginning to understand and assert that his relationship to God, the Father, is of utmost importance to his life and mission. To show perhaps that he does not mean to disrespect or disregard his human family, he obediently follows Joseph and Mary back to Nazareth, grows in wisdom and age with them waiting for his adulthood before beginning his ministry.
The Santo Niño then shows us the way to faithfulness: Faithfulness to God and faithfulness to the family. This, I submit, can bring real substance to our devotion to the child Jesus. A true devotee is asked to be faithful to God and to be faithful to the family.
Faithfulness to God. This means prayer, obedience, and commitment. A true devotee, like the child Jesus, gives time to be in the house of God. To be immersed in the presence of God. To be silent so that God can speak and let his will be known and be heard. A true devotee who prays accepts and obeys the will of God. He/she is therefore obedient. Many a times, this calls for real sacrifice--to let go of one’s own will and desires and embrace God’s. A true devotee, like the child Jesus, is committed to carry out what God has sent him to do and accomplish. He/she has to be about the Father’s business. A true devotee who is faithful to God is a person of prayer, of obedience, and of commitment to his/her vocation and mission.
Faithfulness to the Family. The child Jesus submitted himself to the formation offered by the family. He “advanced in wisdom and age” with Joseph and Mary. Pope John Paul II once said that the family is the fundamental structure for human ecology where “a person receives his first formative ideas about truth and goodness, and learns what it means to love and be loved, and thus what it actually means to be a person” (Centesimus Annus, 39). Our devotion to the child Jesus then ought to promote our faithfulness to the family. A true devotee of Santo Niño will always commit to the strengthening of our families and will untiringly work to defend our families from forces that undermine their unity and formative function.
Filipinos lavishly love the Santo Niño. May this devotion lead us and our country closer to God and translate itself into an active commitment to arrest the disintegrating trend so much felt today by Filipino families.
Señor Santo Niño, as you have introduced faith into our land, may you abide with us and help us grow in that faithfulness to the Father and build a strong society faithful to the values of Filipino families. Amen.
daghan salamat, dre!
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