Nov 12, 2011

Be Happy, Be BudŐy (33rd Sunday A)


My mother’s puppy needed a name.  Instead of the old-fashioned “Brownie” with which my mom started calling him, I came to the rescue and baptized him with the coolest name ever (next to Joey of course) — BudŐy.

BudŐy is the lead character of a primetime telenovela that revolves around the story of an autistic child born out of the morally contested in vitro fertilization procedure.  BudŐy ends up with a foster mother after he has been rejected by his image-conscious influential family who apparently wants to get rid of the humiliation that his autism might bring.  Despite all these,  BudŐy grows up as a wonderful person who brings with him his contagious joy advising people to “Be happy, be BudŐy!”  He shows his capability for a truly sincere and enriching friendship.  He endears his foster mother with his sensitive love for her.  He inspires his fellow with his dream and drive to become better and little brighter.  He has been deprived of a lot of things in life but he has got what it takes to warm people’s hearts.

This is inspiring. It’s so easy to wallow in the mud of self-pity when life seems to be unfair.  BudŐy stands for a person who has been given less in life but does not succumb to the temptation of defeat.  Instead, he rises above the seeming unfairness of life by capitalizing whatever little he has got.

Today’s gospel is the Parable of the Talents (Mt. 25:14-30). Three servants are entrusted with five, two, and one talent respectively to be invested in the master’s absence.  Talent was the largest unit of currency known at that time.  Other translations render a talent as a thousand silver pieces.  Hence, the first servant is entrusted with five thousand silver pieces, the second with two thousand, the third with one thousand silver pieces.  Today we understand talents as some skills and personal qualities we are gifted with.  While the parable does not intend to legitimize, much less glorify, the inequalities in life, it instructs us about our sense of responsibility especially in view of the final accounting at the end of time.  We are accountable to our Master.  Our accountability is in direct proportion to the abilities with which we have been entrusted. 

Much is expected from whom much is given.  Hence, the master in the parable is happy with the first two servants who manage to double the amount they have entrusted with. But while the master does not expect much from him who has been given very little, he still expects at least whatever enterprising spirit that could be harnessed with whatever little resources made available.  Hence, the third servant who just buried his talent out of his negative notion of his master is rightly met with his master’s anger and punishment.

Despite a long history of struggle for social revolution, the world remains the same.  The divide between the haves and have-nots are gaping still like a wide sarcastic smile taunting the sacrifices made by agents of change in the name of egalitarian ideals.  The more the disparity becomes glaring today when the name of the game is global competition.  Only the haves can possibly compete.  The have-nots are marginalized.  Will we ever live to see the ideals of equality actually put in place? Certainly not in this generation.  But we continue to hope.

The hope for change begins in our hearts.  We can better speak of a revolution from the heart.  To the haves, those given with a lot more “talents” than the others, in the spirit of the parable’s message of accountability, the revolution begins by dismantling all inner value systems that support an insatiable individualistic greed.  From its rubble, the haves are morally obligated to put up the value systems of social responsibility, equitable justice, and even charity.  Without this interior change, any attempt for structural change in this world will most likely end up with new external forms but with the same old vicious intentions.

To the have-nots, the inner change will have to begin with dismantling the defeatist outlook that subscribes to the helpless consignment of the poor and the less fortunate to their pitiful plight forever and ever.  The have-nots have to believe in their dignity, have to strengthen self-respect, and harness their innate capacity to rise above this seeming unfairness of life.  God is not happy with “worthless, lazy lout.”

But God must be very proud of BudŐy.