THERE IS a film that hit the silver screen in the early ‘80s, entitled The Lost Horizon. It was a remake of an older film, but this time a musical, and the songs were composed by Burt Bacharach.
The film opens with a scene of chaos – a country that is at war, scenes of panic and terror while bombs are exploding, scenes of people in flight, a group of Caucasians running to catch a waiting plane in an airport tarmac. The scramble for a seat, the door is closed, the plane takes off, but they find themselves being hijacked by the pilot himself until they crash land in the Himalayas. They check on the pilot and discover that he is dead; they get off and find themselves in the middle of nowhere with nothing but snowcapped mountains. Eventually they are rescued by strange looking people in hooded robes, who lead them to a cave, deep into a dark tunnel that ends with a warm and welcoming bright light. They emerge from the tunnel and are suddenly overwhelmed by the sight of a place that looks like paradise and whose name is Shang-ri-la. Then the theme song of the movie plays and the lyrics are as follows:
Have you ever been of a place far away from it all?
Where the air you breathe is soft and clean and children play in fields of green
And the sound of guns doesn’t pound your ears.
Have you ever dreamed of a place far away from it all?
Where the winter winds will never blow and living things have room to grow
And the sound of guns doesn’t pound in your ears anymore.
That film is a modern rendition of a book written by St. Thomas More in 1516, entitled Utopia. Utopia is what St. Thomas More named that place which the film calls Shang-ri-la (not the mall, please), or a lost horizon.
Literally, the word comes from the Greek ou-topos, meaning “not a place”, for indeed, Utopia is not a place. It is rather a dream, a vision, or better yet, a prayer.
Dear journalists of Pampanga, it’s been two weeks now since that nightmare took place in Maguindanao. The roaring of backhoes has finally come to a halt; the stench of shallow graves has been blown in the wind; the shock and indignation has been eloquently expressed in print and broadcast media; the victims have been buried a second time, albeit more properly this time; the wailing of the bereaved, of the widows and orphans has ceased. And yet there seems to be no let up on the news. This is one piece of news that seems to have a longer shelf life than most other news because it hits the reporters really up close, because we know what can happen the moment you and the rest of your colleagues fall silent. You can fall into any of the three forms of journalistic silence: one, the silence of the lambs; two, the silence of the Judases; and three, the silence of a volcano preparing to erupt. (Yes, even rebels begin with silence that can blow up at any moment into an even greater carnage, that can be just as senseless as the carnage of Maguindanao.)
I am quite sure your own parents and loved-ones have asked, perhaps too many times already, what for heaven’s sake are you doing in that hazardous profession called journalism. It is a kind of job that knows no office hours, has merciless deadlines, requires long hours of research and work – out in the filed and at home on your laptop (if you have one, that is) or on an old office desktop that works only every now and then. It is a kind of profession that exposes you to the minefields and can get you caught both literally and figuratively between cross fires. It is a kind of work that forces you to burn the candle on both ends, and only after a close call with a stroke or an aneurysm are you forced to slow down and ask – what is it all for?
What’s it all about, Alfie? That old song seems to sum up the question which I believe you are now asking yourselves today, dear journalists, after you have buried you colleagues, after their pens and laptops have been silenced and passed on for the next users, and you now find your own hands trembling each time you have to write and are tempted to give up this madness you call work because you care for your family and see in the mothers, the sisters and brothers, the children and friends of your colleagues who have joined the silence of the lambs – your own mothers and sisters and brothers and children and friends.
Today, I understand, more than ever the burden of your vocation weighs heavily upon your shoulders like a cross. It is a sheer stroke of chance or of destiny (if you happen to be a person of faith) that today‘s Gospel describes quite well the nature of your life and calling as journalist so graphically – “Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome…”
When you go out to report a crime, a calamity, a corrupt deal, a scandal, most specially the kind of depressing news that sells like hotcake, how can you come home unaffected afterwards? Your kind of life exposes you all the time to the sham, the drudgery, the misery of day to day existence. And despite all efforts to remain objective, your heart and soul cannot but get in the way. Despite all efforts to debrief over many cups of cheap instant coffee with colleagues, somehow you just cannot afford to stay detached or indifferent about it all. There will always be fire in your belly, and you can only do so much in suppressing it.
Inevitably, if you are at core a basically or even regularly decent person raised by your parents with just the most basic human if not Christian values, all the news you write about can get into you, can block an artery in your heart or bloat a blood vessel in your brain somewhere, and can explode and silence you any moment.
Today I am glad you have decided to come to Church to seek an oasis in the midst of the arid desert of the hazardous life you share in common. Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you.”
He will refresh you – this is what the Gospel writer (himself a journalist) is assuring you his fellow journalists. He says to take his yoke upon your shoulders and learn from him who is gentle and humble of heart, for his yoke is easy and his burden light.
I know that most, if not all of you are Christians, if not Catholics. Even those among you who pose as agnostics or even as atheists are really closet believers in a state of rebellion perhaps to spite the hypocrites and the pharisaical religionists – even among us priests, bishops and other Church people. But at the end of the day, you all know that this business called faith is between you and God, who manages every now and then to corner you with the same age-old question, What’s it all about, Alfie?
Your fellow journalist – the guy who wrote the testimony we read a while ago, and which we call a Gospel – himself wrote in the midst of crisis and so much bad news, but called his report a Good News because he had learned his journalism from Jesus, the greatest news reporter the world has ever known. (His news resounds until today, almost two thousand years hence.) His advice is: to take his yoke upon your shoulders and learn from him who is gentle and humble of heart. To let your souls find rest in this man who hung upon the cross and stayed in the tomb but only for a short while, for he proved that evil cannot possible be more powerful than good, that death cannot possibly be stronger than life, that hatred cannot possibly be mightier than love, that Satan – with all his skills in the art of lies and deception – cannot possibly be wiser than God.
Utopia, that lost horizon, is not a fantasy but reality, dear journalists. It is a dream that God planted in our hearts before he expelled us from paradise and made us live in this valley of tears we call earth. He did so, precisely to give us a map that could lead us back to our lost paradise, after we’ve learned the lesson, after we’ve learned what it means to be truly like God.
Utopia is that which makes us pursue our quixotic quest, our impossible dreams, our unreachable stars, not with the Man from La Mancha, but with the Man form Nazareth who taught us how to write good news:
-how to bring love where hatred reigns,
-how to bring pardon where there is injury,
-how to bring faith where there is doubt,
-how to bring hope where there is despair,
-how to bring light where there is darkness,
-how to bring joy where there is sadness.
He also instructed us well that we can receive only when we give, that we are pardoned only when we pardon, and we rise to life only when we learn to die to self.
Today I thank God for journalists like yourselves; I pray that He protect you from temptation and evil. I commend you all to the Divine Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. To Him we pray:
Grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength. Amen.
(Homily delivered by the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, at the Mass for journalists he celebrated at the Holy Rosary Parish Church, Angeles City on Dec. 9, 2009 in observance of the International Day of Action Against Impunity)
The film opens with a scene of chaos – a country that is at war, scenes of panic and terror while bombs are exploding, scenes of people in flight, a group of Caucasians running to catch a waiting plane in an airport tarmac. The scramble for a seat, the door is closed, the plane takes off, but they find themselves being hijacked by the pilot himself until they crash land in the Himalayas. They check on the pilot and discover that he is dead; they get off and find themselves in the middle of nowhere with nothing but snowcapped mountains. Eventually they are rescued by strange looking people in hooded robes, who lead them to a cave, deep into a dark tunnel that ends with a warm and welcoming bright light. They emerge from the tunnel and are suddenly overwhelmed by the sight of a place that looks like paradise and whose name is Shang-ri-la. Then the theme song of the movie plays and the lyrics are as follows:
Have you ever been of a place far away from it all?
Where the air you breathe is soft and clean and children play in fields of green
And the sound of guns doesn’t pound your ears.
Have you ever dreamed of a place far away from it all?
Where the winter winds will never blow and living things have room to grow
And the sound of guns doesn’t pound in your ears anymore.
That film is a modern rendition of a book written by St. Thomas More in 1516, entitled Utopia. Utopia is what St. Thomas More named that place which the film calls Shang-ri-la (not the mall, please), or a lost horizon.
Literally, the word comes from the Greek ou-topos, meaning “not a place”, for indeed, Utopia is not a place. It is rather a dream, a vision, or better yet, a prayer.
Dear journalists of Pampanga, it’s been two weeks now since that nightmare took place in Maguindanao. The roaring of backhoes has finally come to a halt; the stench of shallow graves has been blown in the wind; the shock and indignation has been eloquently expressed in print and broadcast media; the victims have been buried a second time, albeit more properly this time; the wailing of the bereaved, of the widows and orphans has ceased. And yet there seems to be no let up on the news. This is one piece of news that seems to have a longer shelf life than most other news because it hits the reporters really up close, because we know what can happen the moment you and the rest of your colleagues fall silent. You can fall into any of the three forms of journalistic silence: one, the silence of the lambs; two, the silence of the Judases; and three, the silence of a volcano preparing to erupt. (Yes, even rebels begin with silence that can blow up at any moment into an even greater carnage, that can be just as senseless as the carnage of Maguindanao.)
I am quite sure your own parents and loved-ones have asked, perhaps too many times already, what for heaven’s sake are you doing in that hazardous profession called journalism. It is a kind of job that knows no office hours, has merciless deadlines, requires long hours of research and work – out in the filed and at home on your laptop (if you have one, that is) or on an old office desktop that works only every now and then. It is a kind of profession that exposes you to the minefields and can get you caught both literally and figuratively between cross fires. It is a kind of work that forces you to burn the candle on both ends, and only after a close call with a stroke or an aneurysm are you forced to slow down and ask – what is it all for?
What’s it all about, Alfie? That old song seems to sum up the question which I believe you are now asking yourselves today, dear journalists, after you have buried you colleagues, after their pens and laptops have been silenced and passed on for the next users, and you now find your own hands trembling each time you have to write and are tempted to give up this madness you call work because you care for your family and see in the mothers, the sisters and brothers, the children and friends of your colleagues who have joined the silence of the lambs – your own mothers and sisters and brothers and children and friends.
Today, I understand, more than ever the burden of your vocation weighs heavily upon your shoulders like a cross. It is a sheer stroke of chance or of destiny (if you happen to be a person of faith) that today‘s Gospel describes quite well the nature of your life and calling as journalist so graphically – “Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome…”
When you go out to report a crime, a calamity, a corrupt deal, a scandal, most specially the kind of depressing news that sells like hotcake, how can you come home unaffected afterwards? Your kind of life exposes you all the time to the sham, the drudgery, the misery of day to day existence. And despite all efforts to remain objective, your heart and soul cannot but get in the way. Despite all efforts to debrief over many cups of cheap instant coffee with colleagues, somehow you just cannot afford to stay detached or indifferent about it all. There will always be fire in your belly, and you can only do so much in suppressing it.
Inevitably, if you are at core a basically or even regularly decent person raised by your parents with just the most basic human if not Christian values, all the news you write about can get into you, can block an artery in your heart or bloat a blood vessel in your brain somewhere, and can explode and silence you any moment.
Today I am glad you have decided to come to Church to seek an oasis in the midst of the arid desert of the hazardous life you share in common. Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you.”
He will refresh you – this is what the Gospel writer (himself a journalist) is assuring you his fellow journalists. He says to take his yoke upon your shoulders and learn from him who is gentle and humble of heart, for his yoke is easy and his burden light.
I know that most, if not all of you are Christians, if not Catholics. Even those among you who pose as agnostics or even as atheists are really closet believers in a state of rebellion perhaps to spite the hypocrites and the pharisaical religionists – even among us priests, bishops and other Church people. But at the end of the day, you all know that this business called faith is between you and God, who manages every now and then to corner you with the same age-old question, What’s it all about, Alfie?
Your fellow journalist – the guy who wrote the testimony we read a while ago, and which we call a Gospel – himself wrote in the midst of crisis and so much bad news, but called his report a Good News because he had learned his journalism from Jesus, the greatest news reporter the world has ever known. (His news resounds until today, almost two thousand years hence.) His advice is: to take his yoke upon your shoulders and learn from him who is gentle and humble of heart. To let your souls find rest in this man who hung upon the cross and stayed in the tomb but only for a short while, for he proved that evil cannot possible be more powerful than good, that death cannot possibly be stronger than life, that hatred cannot possibly be mightier than love, that Satan – with all his skills in the art of lies and deception – cannot possibly be wiser than God.
Utopia, that lost horizon, is not a fantasy but reality, dear journalists. It is a dream that God planted in our hearts before he expelled us from paradise and made us live in this valley of tears we call earth. He did so, precisely to give us a map that could lead us back to our lost paradise, after we’ve learned the lesson, after we’ve learned what it means to be truly like God.
Utopia is that which makes us pursue our quixotic quest, our impossible dreams, our unreachable stars, not with the Man from La Mancha, but with the Man form Nazareth who taught us how to write good news:
-how to bring love where hatred reigns,
-how to bring pardon where there is injury,
-how to bring faith where there is doubt,
-how to bring hope where there is despair,
-how to bring light where there is darkness,
-how to bring joy where there is sadness.
He also instructed us well that we can receive only when we give, that we are pardoned only when we pardon, and we rise to life only when we learn to die to self.
Today I thank God for journalists like yourselves; I pray that He protect you from temptation and evil. I commend you all to the Divine Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. To Him we pray:
Grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength. Amen.
(Homily delivered by the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, at the Mass for journalists he celebrated at the Holy Rosary Parish Church, Angeles City on Dec. 9, 2009 in observance of the International Day of Action Against Impunity)
