Not For The Queasy!

(This homily was delivered by Fr. Nono Alfonso, SJ during the 10:30 am Mass on the First Sunday of September 2024, at the Church of the Gesù, Ateneo de Manila University.)

It was like a mirage. I was a new graduate from the Ateneo and was writing a piece for a Jesuit newsletter. My assignment was the Payatas dumpsite which was by then eclipsing the world-famous Smokey Mountain in Tondo. The parish priest agreed to bring me to the heap. Smoke was coming out from everywhere and with it the stench from tons of garbage collected from across the metropolis. You’re from Ateneo, the parish priest asked me. May Atenista dito, six months nang nakatira dito para raw sa kanyang Masteral Thesis. What?!! I asked, He is living at the dumpsite? The Priest clarified, Well, the houses of the mangangalahig or scavengers are at the foot of the mountain, just nearby so they can easily get on to the new deliveries.

And as we were conversing, lo and behold, then scholastic Robert Rivera who is of course now the President of Ateneo de Naga, emerged from one of the huts. He smiled and waved at us. Here was a blue-blooded Atenean, born to wealth and privilege, and yet as part of his strong commitment, yes, to his studies, but more so, as a Jesuit scholastic, he lived with the poor in Payatas. Amidst the dirt, the muck, the stench of their lives.

I recall this story, dear friends (please don’t tell Fox or Fr Rivera) because in the Gospel today, Jesus seems to be making a point about what is really clean or pure, or what is real dirt, what causes defilement. It starts with the Pharisees and scribes observing that his apostles ate without washing their hands first, something that Jewish customs forbade. In fact, we are told, the Jews have so many other rules about purity, including about cups and saucers. Indeed, scholars tell us from the five books of the Old Testament or the Torah, the Jews have formed 613 laws that everyone has to follow. These include dietary laws such as what to eat and how to cook, prepare and eat your food. There are also detailed rules about what to wear and of course how to worship Yahweh. From the original ten commandments given to Moses, every Jew now has to reckon with all these countless minutiae.

Rules are of course not bad per se. They create order in our lives. But to make these as the condition for salvation was missing the forest for the trees or simply missing the point of religion. There are only two important laws, Jesus would say, Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself. He would also tell his apostles: it is by loving one another that you are known as my followers. In short, love is the be-all and end-all of God’s commandments and our faith. That is the forest, the essence, the sum of our Christian life. And so to the rich young man who was already proudly obeying the Ten Commandments since childhood, Jesus would say, sell everything, then follow me. Or put in another way, Pope Benedict XVI would say, that faith is not about doctrines but is essentially about our relationship with a real person, God. Pope Francis would use this further and say, faith is all about “encounter,” an encounter with a loving God. We can quarrel over rules and doctrines, but that is the heart and soul of our faith. Love. Period.

Having settled that, there is yet, still an important point to make about how the Jewish leaders have used or enforced their burdensome rules and traditions. It is almost insidious or cruel to the struggling majority. We have a phrase for that: weaponizing the law! And this is why Jesus is so incense in the Gospel today. The Pharisees, whose name means “the separated ones,” have made the laws all about purity and cleanliness. And even today we carry that mindset. To be holy or religious is to be pure, innocent, and virginal.But if you are not able to follow the law, if you are a sinner, you are dirty, soiled, filthy, stained, unwashed, smeared. Jesus thus corrects this thinking in the Gospel today, telling them that the unwashed hands of his apostles were not as dirty as their sinful hearts. In one fell swoop, Jesus upends or turns upside down the Jewish rulebook as it were. He deepens it. He reframes our understanding of holiness and sin. Payatas then as Ryan Cayabyab sang of Smokey Mountain, can truly be called a paradise despite being a garbage site.
 For dirty, is not always sinful. And being holy does not mean being perfect as far as doctrine and dogma go, but being a loving person.

Yes, we often feel that our world is evil, corrupt, and defiled and we must protect ourselves from it. And perhaps like the Jews, we do that by erecting laws around us, to keep the clean in and the dirt outside of our lives. But that’s not how Jesus saw it today. The hands of most of the apostles and perhaps even Jesus were dirty because they just came from feeding five thousand people. Their hands were soiled and muddy perhaps because they carried out their mission.

Pope Francis would tell us, “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” Like Jesus then, we must not be afraid to be “dirtied up”. By becoming man, God, Jesus, embraced all of our world, including its grime, its muck, its mess. Paul tells us, “For our sake God made him to be sin he who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Let us not be afraid to soil our hand then dear friends. Let us go out to the world, to the payatas and Smokey mountains of the world, to the so-called dirty world of politics and business and there soil our hands in the pursuit of our Christian mission. Indeed, our faith is not for the queasy or the squeamish. AMEN.