Caring for Souls

The Official Homepage of Unit WONDERLAND

Caring for Our Communal Souls

In my father's house, there are many rooms.

As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.

And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.

Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning (within us) while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?" So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!" Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

When Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, a key figure in liberation theology, visited the Ateneo a few years ago, I was surprised to find that he was a happy person. Liberation theology seems to be such a grim and determined subject. A student who takes the course usually ends up dealing with a massive guilt trip or an utterly confused mind that doesn't know what can be done to change the "oppressive structures of society" (unless of course you have already been thoroughly desensitized). When I went to the talk, I expected to end up feeling the same thing all over again.

Instead I found a gentle man who talked about a very poor little boy whose father gave him ice cream for his birthday. Fr. Gutierrez said that the ice cream had very little practical value in the life of the little boy. It was not the most nutritious meal a little boy could have nor could it by a long shot save the little boy from poverty. But it made the little boy happy. That little boy, it turns out was Fr. Gutierrez.

Fr. Gutierrez said that the danger of taking liberation theology to a certain extreme is that we start to forget that the poor are persons too. And persons are much more than just mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, but they are also persons who want to be happy and who want to be loved, who want to enjoy the company of friends and who need their privacy every once in a while. In this sense, we who are relatively well-off are no different from those who are poor.

This of course, has implications in terms of what we do for our apostolates but it also has implications in terms of how we take care and treat ourselves and others.

There’s a (really old J) song by Bette Midler entitled “Hello, in there” that seems to capture the essence of this thought. We usually say hello to people we meet and ask how they are and they usually give some generic answer which we readily accept because that is the social convention. But the song asks us to acknowledge a person’s interiority, what we Catholics would call their souls.

I remember wondering in the past what my role was vis-à-vis people who were already committed to service or their personal apostolates who did not need saving or conversion then I figured that we were there to support each other, to nurture each other and keep up each other’s strength; to take care of each other’s souls.

I guess that’s what the Eucharist is all about and maybe that’s why the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized Christ in the breaking of the bread. The circular wafer may mean nothing in the material life of a person but the Body of Christ we receive is a symbol of Christ nurturing our souls.