we_invited

We Invited Jesus to Eat with Us

by NOEL BAVA, S.J.

For anyone who has not yet seen Joey Velasco’s video documentary Kambas ng Lipunan (Canvas of Society), I encourage you to grab a copy of it (before it runs out. The video doc features twelve kids—street-plyers, scavengers, slum dwellers, a tomb cleaner and a thief-in-training—whose portraits and lives have been stunningly captured by the writer/director/painter Velasco in his painting reminiscent of the Last Supper called Hapag ng Pag-asa. In the painting we could see not the usual bearded and cloak-clad men with flowing wavy hair we normally associate as the apostles or friends of Jesus Christ. Instead of the regular Peter and John and Judas character, we see ordinary kids, starving and wide-eyed, seated around a dilapidated banquet table with Christ presiding over a bread meal for them.

In the video, Velasco, who is also the narrator, tells how he searches for these children and investigates how and where and what they are living for. He was so moved and astounded by what he had seen that he decided to immortalize them in his canvas. Yet the more he looked at his work of art, the more he felt disturbed. The more he contemplated on them, the more involved he got into their messy little lives. He said the kids have eyes that penetrate into his soul—searching, observing, asking—making him go out and ask himself questions about how he is living his life.

Velasco relates the stories of Nene, Joyce, Tinay, Itok, Emong, Onse, Buknoy, Michael, Dodoy, Jun, Roselle and “ Sudan .” Beautifully narrated with a heart-rending background of the Schindler’s List musical score, the twelve lives of these kids are summarized in less than twenty minutes. But the effect of watching this film is so haunting that it will leave the audience feeling bothered for days. (And hopefully spur them into action. This video should be made a required viewing for political leaders and those who are seeking government posts.) Interspersed with provocative questions, the viewers are led into a deep reflection on what they have done, what they are doing and what will they do for these least, last and littlest persons of the society.

Without pandering into a paawa effect, the director is able to drive his point: unless we take a fresh look at poverty, its reality and its most vulnerable victims, we will not be able to appreciate Jesus’ love for the poor, especially the children. Unless we begin to see them as persons and not simply statistical figures, we will not be able to understand what it means when Jesus asks us, “Do you love me? Feed my lambs…” And unless we change our paradigm of seeing them as leeches and pests and perpetual beneficiaries of our “goodness and benevolence” we cannot learn how to love them and do life-changing things for them.

I was so touched by what Emong said when the artist showed him a replica of his obra maestra. He said, “Si Jesus, nakita namin siya sa kalsada kaya niyaya namin kumain...minasahe at pinatulog.” Of all things that this kid can say (like how handsome he is in the painting, among others), he uttered a most profound statement—We saw Jesus in the street. He is tired so we invited him to sleep and [we even] massaged him.

Perhaps the reason why Holy Week has lost its significance for many people is that we often attribute it as a week that we have to make amends for our many sins and failings. While this is true, we are forgetting that this holiest of weeks is also about active remembering of the great love of the Son for all of us—a love that surpasses all loves, a love that is willing to enter into our personal chaos, a love that is willing to get hurt, experience pain and the dying the accompanies all sacrifices. This is a very exhausting kind of loving. No wonder why it is the merest babes who, without prejudices and preconceived notions of the adult kind of “give and take” and sometimes “take and take” loving, see that Christ, though he is Son of God, can get tired, wounded, hungry and lonely too. It takes an Emong to wake us up into a realization that we have to do our part, our share in the burden that Christ is carrying.

This Holy Week, we are invited not just to see Jesus’ crucifixion, death and resurrection but we are asked to invite him to dine with us notwithstanding what is laid on our table, and play the good host of letting him eat, sleep and of giving a good massage to soothe the aches of his tired body.