Let’s be born again this Christmas
Christmas doesn’t seem to be complete without a Christmas party in school. And so we planned one which took place recently but which was threatened after weeks of preparation by a strong, driving rain in the morning.
It was held in our gym, and many of the decorations got blown away by the wind. The place was wet. The organist for the Mass texted he could not make it, and so we had to contend with a Mass without music. With how we are, that means a lot.
Many students with their families, for it was also a Family Day, came late. But arrive they did just the same! That was the more amazing part of it all – to see the human spirit grapple with the last minute test that attempted to deliver a sudden-death blow to the whole affair, and won. The victory could hardly be more meaningful.
On my way to school with the Picanto, I had to practically wade through the road turned a river of angry water, trying to control my temper and exerting heroic efforts just to pray and leave things in the hands of God.
I saw many of the students with their families walking or simply stuck in a certain place. In a while, I discovered my little car could fit in eight passengers. And my conscience demanded I had to make several trips back and forth to ferry the stranded to school.
And so we started the Mass 15 minutes late, with few people in attendance. Soon enough, thank God, the rain stopped, the sun reappeared and with it, more families. The place began to assume the festive mood.
After the Mass, we had a consecration of the families to the Holy Family of Nazareth. And then the program, long prepared by the students, began. The main feature was a dance showdown among the freshmen,
This is one of the luxuries I allow myself to get – watch students dance and spend time chatting with their mothers and fathers and siblings and friends. This is also a time for me to be updated with what is now the craze of the young, since I don’t have time for TV shows anymore and I automatically avoid entertainment pages in the papers or in the web.
This is where I realized more deeply that times have really changed. Though I’m quite abreast with news worldwide, I seem to have missed a lot of developments in the nearer, more local scene.
The young boys danced vigorously, jumping and tumbling and twirling and climbing. The choreography was fast-paced, the music a blur of 20 songs, it must have been, mixed into one routine.
It made me thinking how different today’s generation is from mine. Obviously, during my time, we hardly had TV, we contented ourselves mostly with radio. Now, the boys are into Facebook, Twitter and jejemon lingo. They are the hehehe crowd who don’t seem to take things seriously.
They seem to be invincibly confident of themselves, knowing how to pose before a camera and come out somehow photogenic, and quite skillful with the use of modern gadgets. If you do not know about DOTA and MMORPG and emos, then you are not in that generation. It’s time to update.
This is the challenge we have now – how to humanize, spiritualize and Christianize this growing sector of the youth. This, plus many other challenges we have, especially in the area of culture and faith war, new socio-economic and political phenomena that need to be understood and mastered.
Christmas is, of course, the birth of Christ our Savior. To save us, God goes all the way in adapting himself to us so we can go back to Him, to whom we truly belong. Our Lord continues to adapt himself to us in every age, culture and circumstance.
Since we are co-redeemers with Him because of who and what we are, we too need to continually adapt ourselves to new developments in our world today.
This, to me, is the meaning of Christmas. It is asking us to be born again in Christ and take on the challenges of today’s world, knowing how to infuse the Christian spirit into our earthly affairs.
We have to shake off as soon as possible the rust of complacency that can easily attack us. While there are eternal, unchanging things in our life, because of our freedom there are also many and, in fact, endlessly changing things in our life. Only in Christ can we cope with the challenges.*
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
