for a long time, i was a catholic. now i know not what my religion is, but as far back as i can tell, i enjoyed calling myself Christian. it made me proud. perchance, it must have been my formation. i was brought up a roman catholic and knew no other faith besides.
still and all, one remains God fearing and at the same time, adoring, loving, constantly inspired by a Supreme Being who is the Maker of all things, God.
long ago, i wanted to write a monograph entitled: intimacy with God.
i know that i have had severely serious battles with unpleasant and undesirable, short of alien, people in this world. these are the people who take drugs and do not wish to better their life. the merchants of drugs, weapons of destruction, and those that enjoy the life of other sorts of crime instead of that of gainful employment. these people are excluded from the subject of the missives i wrote below and they shall be the subject of another blog. in the same league as these people -- if it is right to call them that, are the high hats and hyfalutins of society that condescend upon all of us day in and day out.
what i wanted to write about, is our image of Christ, Jesus, God, etc. vis-a-vis the very person seated next to us in the bus, FX, train or standing beside us on the street, walking past us in the mall, along sidewalks, or wherever at whatever time.
it was about, short of being an obssession, one's desire to portray Jesus as someone different from those that paint him, sculpt him, editorialize him, etcetera, etcetera in a manner that is not truly what he is.
we all know that picasso had sought out an italian model for his Jesus. and since catholicism sprouted out of rome's belly, the image we have of Jesus is italian. roman.
far from the truth therefore are the real features of Jesus. so are the real features of the God who is his father. even the anti-thesis of God, is still inspired by the same images romans have taught us all.
Jesus is jewish, his features that of an israelite. surely, he cannot look like a roman as his images show, paintings of him depict him to be and all that. Jesus, as far as we all know, was the son of a carpenter. therefore he was poor. and since as a poor man, he travelled a lot, mud caked upon his feet. sandals, in those days, were poor cousins of the italian closed shoes of today. and even then, if he wore the italian closed shoe pairs in his sojourns, they would not last him that long because he never stopped walking, or so i am made to understand by the bible.
Jesus would be closer to woody allen who looks like the stereotypical jew. or his arab cousins.
sunog ang balat, matigas ang balat, buhok, ilalim ng mga kuko, kagitna ng mga daliri, sa nagputik nang buhangin, and his appearance would be closer to our hobos, or taong grasa.
what will it take then, for us to have intimacy with God?
when we are beside our less fortunate brothers who look like shit, we squirm everytime? when someone stinks and smells real foul, we make hideous faces? when we are beside someone with
ketong, all the hairs on our body go berserk?
that kind of instant reaction shows our real level of intimacy with God.
it is not the mere tolerance of our less fortunate brethren that we are able to literally hold them in our hands, brush our bodies against theirs, inhale their stink.
imagine, when we say, we love Jesus. what have we been loving him for, all those years? or in which and in whose image did we love him for, anyway? in that italian, fair skinned, handsome, very gentle-looking face, etcetera, etcetera?
let me call that mestiso intimacy. it's half and half. a portion of this and a portion of that. but never whole, never pure, never ever reliable, credible.
at the end of it, it will never be intimacy.
mas mabuti pa ang hindi nakakita, o ang nananampalataya nang walang nakikita (tulad ng bulag sa pagkabata) at mas payak at dalisay ang kanyang pag ibig sa Diyos.perhaps, if i were born blind, and that up to now i cannot see, i wouldn't care if i sit beside a thousand people all looking like hobos. or if i were swept into the middle of the land of the most wretched looking people in the universe. there is where i will find Jesus.
that, is true intimacy.
with Jesus Christ, with God.
(To be continued)
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