Gifted, Grateful, Go Forth

Beyond the demands of the Academics dwell our naked reality as students of philosophy
and theology grappling from the inevitable skirmishes in life. Sometimes we find ourselves totally
exhausted from the cyclic battle against our ultimate adversary, our self. As we lose in every fights,
we become hopeless slaves of our own angst. Our focus, then, shrinks toward our limitation,
egoism and fixity. Unless we recognize the greater reality that encompasses all these things, our
vision towards life expands.
It is not always a win-fight in this life. We experience defeats that shatters our convictions
into pieces. What remained are brokenness, incompetence and limitations. These gut-feelings are
evident on the faces of the poor and the exploited ecology. The displaced Lumads who were
forcefully snatched out of their homes including their rights and dignity, the victims of the bloodied
war on drugs and the priests who were bullied and threatened to death bear all these burdens on
their weakening shoulders. Although a goliath obstructs their way and impair them, their hearts
are all set ablaze to fight against all odds. Beneath their anxious faces lies the powerful core that
yearns for liberation, justice and equality. Even at moments when all human efforts seemed
hopeless, a force coming out from us would cheer us to keep on going. And, that is the divine gift
buried within us: the capacity to transcend oneself. It is not our own to boast, rather, a gift that we
should be grateful of.
As we become mindful of this gift, the gift itself will lead us toward the recognition of the
gracious Giver. And, our response cannot be anything else but thanksgiving. However, this may
be tougher than we can expect of. As individualism thrive within our generation today, especially
among young people, there is a strong need for commitment. Our narcissistic tendencies blind us
of the reality outside our self-made world. Unless one overcomes this, one may be led to express
one’s own gratefulness in various forms. Our jovial characters will, hence, seek for outward
expressions as gratitude towards the Supreme Giver. Indeed, thanksgiving will motivate us, then,
to meet face-to-face the God, from whom everything comes and returns. But, we have to
remember that we can find God in everything not just in our abstract understanding of heaven. We
can find Him within our family, the society especially the poor and needy, ecology and church—
a reality transcending even the walls of our student life.
Indeed, everything has borders that limit us, an end that hinders us on the paths to infinity.
Yet, at the end we find a new beginning waiting for us. As students, our end is our graduation. It
may be the last and the end of our being students. Yet, it brings us definitively to the portal of new
beginning where God excitingly waits for us. With a grateful heart, go forward to meet Him. It is
only then that our direction has come crystal clear: from the school towards God through the poor.
We are asked to express our gratitude to God through our sympathy with our suffering brothers
and sisters. The liberation we have experienced from the limiting walls of our academics; the
relationship we have built among our campus classmates, professors and friends; the philosophy
and theology framed according to the life of the margins; all the gifts we have received from God—
may all these be our guide to love the poor. For whatever we do to them we do it to God as
expressions of our utmost thanksgiving.
The recognition of being gifted reveals in-itself the existence of a Giver. Our response, in
return, is gratefulness. With gratitude burning in our hearts we go forth from our boundaries to
meet the Giver at the margins.