From the Already Good to the Really Better

One of my batch­mates when I entered the Jesuits is a guy named Lito Ocon. Lito is one of my clos­est friends in the Soci­ety and next year, Lito will be ordained a Jesuit priest.

Before enter­ing the Jesuits, he was a civil engi­neer doing design for a Japan­ese ship com­pany called Tsuneishi. Before becom­ing a civil engi­neer, he was a col­lege stu­dent in Divine Word Col­lege (now Holy Name Uni­ver­sity) in Tag­bi­la­ran, Bohol. His story is stuff for Maalala Mo Kaya (a Fil­ipino sit­com known for its tear­k­erk­ers). He worked as a jan­i­tor for the Grade School depart­ment of the school he was study­ing in, then as an aide for priests of the Divine Word (SVD) in the SVD residence–cleaning their rooms, shin­ing their shoes, wash­ing their plates.

When he was work­ing in Tsuneishi, he went up to the pent­house of his condo in Japan one night, beheld the stars and started to think that there must be more to life than what he had at the moment. To make the long story short, he entered the Soci­ety of Jesus some years afterwards.

Years later, I went to Tag­bi­la­ran, Bohol, liv­ing in that same SVD res­i­dence where he used to clean rooms, shine shoes and wash plates. And some of his teach­ers remem­ber him. They remem­ber him as very respect­ful, cour­te­ous, kind, and very hardworking.

After hear­ing the sto­ries from his teach­ers, what struck me was that his is the story of a young man who has not made a rad­i­cal change in his life in the sense that he was not a bad per­son before he entered the Jesuits. We like the story of St. Augus­tine better—someone who turned from hor­ri­ble sin to sanc­tity. Or like Ignatius of Loy­ola who had his naughty days before becom­ing the holy saint we know him today.

Lito is not an evil per­son. He’s not immoral. Rather, he is a very good per­son: very respect­ful, cour­te­ous, kind and indus­tri­ous. But pre­cisely, he’s a good per­son who made a change in his life.

And I think we will be able to under­stand that more because many of us are part of that group. There are very few of us who are evil and immoral. We’re gen­er­ally good peo­ple. But because of being good peo­ple, we often kind of turn aside the voice that calls us fur­ther. I came across this prayer in the inter­net which goes like this:

“Lord, here I am, not feel­ing sin­ful. I don’t do dread­ful things like stab­bing peo­ple, steal­ing or mug­ging. I try to help peo­ple and love them. I sup­pose I don’t help the right peo­ple in the right way. Prob­a­bly I trust myself more than you. So help me to see what you would like changed in me. There must be some­thing. Help me to feel sin­ful, if this is what you want.”

The point of his prayer is that he’s a good man. He keeps the com­mand­ments. He loves his neigh­bors. He goes to church on Sun­day. He’s good. Kind. Respect­ful. Cour­te­ous. Hard­work­ing. But he also sus­pects that that good­ness is kind of a shield from deeper com­mit­ment to prayer and to love and to mis­sion. And he speaks, there­fore, on behalf of good peo­ple like Lito. What would God want changed in your life, if you’re already a good person?

What does repen­tance mean to us? Not repen­tance from a hor­ri­ble life to a good life, but rather the repen­tance from a good life to some­thing deeper. Some­thing bet­ter. You see, we carry within us a sub­tle defense against deeper holi­ness. We could all prob­a­bly say, “Well, I can tell my sins here in front of every­body, and I guess you would see that I’m basi­cally a good per­son. I really don’t go around beat­ing peo­ple up and stab­bing them.” But then, you see, we treat God in the neg­a­tive. “I don’t do the hor­ri­ble things, there­fore I’m exempted from doing the bet­ter things.”

And the Gospel con­fronts us and won’t let us get away with that. And peo­ple like Bro Lito, who are good peo­ple, say, “Do you want some­thing bet­ter, more pro­found, more deep?” His story is about a good per­son who changed, not an evil per­son who con­verted. And that is our mes­sage. As good peo­ple, what would God really like changed in our lives? Where could we be called to a deeper level?

But this is a very sub­tle mes­sage. It’s a sub­tle mes­sage because it’s about the way we keep God from get­ting into our lives too deeply. Good peo­ple have a way of mak­ing excuses for not being bet­ter by talk­ing in the neg­a­tive. “Well, I don’t go around steal­ing like our politi­cians,” and “that’s really bet­ter than drugs”. So there­fore I’m good.

The word of God says, “Yes, but there’s some­thing lack­ing yet. There’s some­thing that can be changed.” There’s a deeper com­mit­ment to jus­tice, love, and peace. There is a deeper prayer life. There is a more pro­found char­ity. There is lov­ing the unlov­able. There is real for­give­ness. There is giv­ing to the poor.

Our world and our coun­try will not be changed by the mass con­ver­sion of evil peo­ple, but rather the deeper Chris­tian­ity of the already good.

A final story:

Satan assem­bles his junior appren­tice dev­ils look­ing for fresh ideas of how to pop­u­late hell. One appren­tice raises his hand and sug­gests, “I have an idea. Tell them there is no God.” Satan isn’t happy with that. He says sar­cas­ti­cally, “We’ve tried that, much as we try to tell peo­ple there is no God–we tried it in com­mu­nist Rus­sia and in China–but peo­ple still under­stand in the deep recesses of their stu­pid hearts that there is. So for­get it.”

A sec­ond appren­tice devil raises his hand and says, “Well, tell them then that there is no hell.” Satan says, “We’ve tried that too, dimwit, and it won’t work. Sooner or later peo­ple real­ize that mass mur­der­ers can­not end up in the same place as Mother Teresa (may her tribe decrease, amen).”

Finally, a third appren­tice devil raises his hand and says slowly, “Then tell them–there is no hurry.”

And Satan smiled.

Here’s an invi­ta­tion to a Jesuit Voca­tion Sem­i­nar. In the spirit of my post, these are for peo­ple who are already good but want to be better.

Just remem­ber what Pedro Arrupe said to young men who are think­ing of becom­ing Jesuits:

Stay at home if this idea makes you unset­tled or ner­vous.
Do not come to us if you love the Church like a step­mother, rather than a mother.
Do not come if you think that in so doing you will be doing the Soci­ety of Jesus a favour.

Come if serv­ing Christ is at the very cen­tre of your life.
Come if you have broad and suf­fi­ciently strong shoul­ders.
Come if you have an open spirit, a rea­son­ably open mind and a heart larger than the world.

Come if you know how to tell a joke and can laugh with oth­ers and …
on occa­sions you can laugh at yourself.”