By Dr. Dencio Severo Acop (Ret. Col.)
Holy Week gives us time to reflect. I’ve been a lector since 2010. I’ve participated in the long gospel readings during Palm Sundays and Good Fridays almost every year. Those readings highlight the human dramas that impacted Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. I remember back when I was still serving in the parishes of Manila how it had always been difficult to do the readings as film clips from The Passion of the Christ played out on the white screen of the church. The presider of the mass always played the part of Jesus while us lectors divided ourselves among Pilate, Herod, Peter, the Disciples, the maid, two other individuals who separately identified Peter, the Guards, the Chief Priests and Scribes of the Sanhedrin, the Crowds, the Crucified Criminals to Jesus’ left and right, and the Centurion. Bishop Robert Barron points out that Jesus’ passion, crucifixion, and death on the cross lay out in the open the ugliness of all our sins — our pride, unkindness, arrogance, self-righteousness, lack of pity, stupidities, selfishness, anger, hypocrisy, barbarity, scapegoating from our sins, jealousies, lies, theft, falsehoods, abuses, robbery, assault, murder, and our directly offending God himself. While God saved us from our sins, we continue to sin to this very day. Which are we in this human drama? Which are we in the world?
We can probably say that the first group includes those of us who choose evil over good. True to life examples are clear illustrations. Adolf Hitler and his evil cohorts, the Nazi Party, are accountable for six million Jewish deaths during World War II in Germany. Josef Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are responsible for the murder and abuse of some eight million of their own countrymen between 1921 and 1953. But even these horrific sins committed in Europe and Eurasia seem to pale in comparison with their counterpart sins perpetrated in the East. China’s Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party account for the deaths of some 32 million Chinese in the Great Leap Famine (1959-1961), 1.1 to 1.6 million for the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and another million for “other” campaigns. “The Great Leap Famine was by far the largest famine in history. It was also man-made — and not because of war or disease, but by government policies that were flawed and recognized as such at the time by reasonable people in the Chinese government”. Even the Nationalists (before the Communists) in China led by Chiang Kai-shek (1928-1946) killed 10.5 million Chinese. King Leopold II and his enablers account for the deaths of some 10.5 million in the Congolese Holocaust (1885-1908). Emperor Hirohito, Hideki Tojo, and other Japanese autocrats are responsible for an estimated 9.3 million deaths across Asia perpetrated by the Japanese Imperial Army (1895-1945). The list goes on. Whatever men’s reasons are for doing evil over good, their actions and justifying reasons determine their character and who they are. To differentiate, the application of moral theory favors those who fight a “just war” to defend against willful aggressors. Whether leader or follower, the individual choice for evil over good ultimately defines us as belonging to this group. Do we belong in this group?
The second group would probably include those of us whose sense of right and wrong depends upon the practical consequence of choice to our survivability or advantage (the gray area). Taken of itself, there is nothing absolutely wrong with self-preservation as it is rooted in a philosophical principle that is based on the natural law. The principle of self-preservation says that individuals have the natural right to preserve their own lives and well-being, which could often take precedence over moral considerations. But while practical survivability has its merits for the individual, those motivations could also be challenged by a concern for higher values which can negate self-preservation. Ultimately, it really all depends upon the individual will of the decision-maker. Perhaps, real-life examples would illustrate the point better. One clear example is the decision of an individual to volunteer becoming a soldier to fight for his country despite the high risk of losing one’s life in the process. The flipside to this is equally true. Another individual chooses to become a draft-dodger escaping the possibility of losing one’s life in the process. One other example is the decision of a person to rescue a drowning child to save her life even at the risk of losing his own. Other people witnessing the same would probably just hesitate or conveniently ignore the incident. Some people are alright with corruption but others are not. Hypocrisy doesn’t bother some people but it bothers others. Some people would kill or support killing. Others won’t. Whether follower or leader, we are all exposed to the scenarios just described, and more. Are we in this group?
Finally, a third group would comprise those among us whose adherence to truth, moral duty, inherent rightness or wrongness of actions (rather than their consequences), and the treatment of individuals as ends in themselves (not as mere means to an end) is uncompromising. Again, real-life examples would present the best evidentiary support. Martin Luther King is undoubtedly a prominent member of this third group. Then fighting an uphill battle against racism, King said: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. Mahatma Gandhi was a great advocate of peaceful resistance to oppression who led India to its independence from Great Britain through the path of nonviolence. Voltaire fought fiercely against religious persecution in 18th century France. Thomas Jefferson, inspiration and principal author of the American Declaration of Independence, declared that “the care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government”. Perhaps the most inspiring of all are the renowned saints of the Catholic Church who lived their converted lives in “imitation of Christ”. There are many of them but we’ll cite three here for brevity. One of them is Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, known as Francis of Assisi, who founded the religious order of the Franciscans. He was the son of a wealthy Italian merchant who gave up everything material in order to live a holy life of poverty fulfilling the will of God on earth. Another is Ignacio de Loyola (Saint Ignatius of Loyola) who, like Francis, left a life of wealth and worldliness to establish the religious order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) living a vow of poverty. He was a heroic Spanish soldier who converted after being wounded from battle. And, of course, there are the disciples of Jesus who endured horrific deaths and were martyred for witnessing to the truth about Jesus Christ. Peter was crucified upside down and Paul was beheaded, both in Rome under Emperor Nero. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Greece. James the Greater was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I. Matthew was killed by the sword in Ethiopia. Thomas was stabbed with a spear in India. Bartholomew was flayed alive in Armenia. Philip was crucified or stoned in Asia Minor. Simon the Zealot was sawn in half while Judas Thaddaeus was killed with axes and clubs, both in Persia. And Matthias was stoned and beheaded. Them who knew they were following Jesus into heaven feared not death as consequence for witnessing to the truth. Whether follower or leader, we are all exposed to the challenges and scenarios of this earthly life. But where are we in this human drama? Are we in this group?
