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September 28, 2000
Feast of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz and companion martyrs.
After telling their stories, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad and shocking, friends ask me a familiar question: “What do you think?” My friends know my standard answer, “Wala. Nothing. Okay lang.” “Nothing” seems to have become, for me, a standard word. Honestly, I like the word, nothing.
As I celebrate my 40th birthday, you ask me, “What is your wish?” You know my answer, don’t you? “Nothing.” Nothing is a beautiful word. It is the word for us. We are nothing separated from God. We are nothing without Him. I am nothing without you. I see God in you.
Nothing is a powerful word. When we are most nothing, it is then that we become strongest. We are strong with the strength of God, only then we become nothing. He has cast down the VIPs from their pedestals and raised the people whom society considers nothing to greatness.
Nothing is a very expressive word. When God wanted to show how much He loved us, He chose the tomb containing nothing. Not a dead body in it. The nothingness of the tomb is the greatest story ever told. The nothingness of Jesus, who did not cling to the dignity of His being God is the best proof of His love for us.
Nothing is openness, willingness, and readiness. The cup realizes itself only by being empty. Only in the nothingness of the space do we really show our openness, our willingness to let God be God for us. If it dies, it bears fruit.
What have I done for the past forty years that I can truly claim my own? Nothing, except what I tell my father confessor my sins. All is grace. I have nothing. I am nothing cut off from God.
Nothingness is purity. The nothingness of the virgin’s womb or the nothingness of the barren womb became vessels to contain the news that God loves the world so much that He gave His only son and the precursor of that gift will come from a womb that men also called good for nothing.
Let us not be afraid to be nothing. Let us not be afraid of nothingness. It is only through, and with, and in our nothingness that the grace of God can shine through us.
September 28, 2000
Feast of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz and companion martyrs.
NOTHING
Looking For Jesus
