So, then, my friend ... before God: Where do YOU stand ...

OF ADMI KIDS & JVPs & YOU & ME

I stop by the Admi and there are some kids there, the Admi kids, and their faces are so bright and pampered, and their clothes are so expensive and attractive and their cars are so luxurious and flashy and showy, and the topics of their conversation are so elegant and shallow and selfish, and their laughter so impressively sophisticated and so infinitely empty.

And I do not feel comfortable there, and I do not belong there, among the exclusive Admi Kids. And I ask the question, “Are these the products of the Ateneo de Manila University? Are these the “MEN FOR OTHERS” and “WOMEN FOR OTHERS” so desperately needed by a people, a country and a world wounded and suffering and dying of poverty and injustice and neglect? Where is their heart? Yes, where is their heart? . . . .

And I walk on, down the corridors of the Ateneo, and I turn to the right and then, at the end of the Kostka building, I walk in and I meet another breed of Atenean, the JVPs (Jesuit Volunteers: Philippines).

And their faces are sweaty and rouged with the heat and the dust of service for the malnourished children and the suffering wives and the exploited farmers and the ignored, forgotten poor.

And their clothes are cheap and old and embarrassingly out of style -- yet there is a divine splendor, a transcendent glow in those old shirts and patched jeans and those young bodies offered and sacrificed on the altar of the people of God.

And the topics of their conversation are not classy and sophisticated and not sosyal. But these people, these people are genuine!!! And their lives are not wasted and their every moment has meaning, for they have heard the silent weeping and screaming of a people in misery; and they have responded not with their money, not with their nice words but with their very own lives!!!

For love, if it is genuine love, must be total love.

And so their laughter is beautiful, and it rings clear with the eternal peace and simplicity and transcendence of a Calvary and a Resurrection of a Son of God.

So, then, my friend --

YOU, before God: Where do YOU stand -- Where is your heart? Sprawled, elegantly, luxuriously slouching on the benches of the Administration building?… Or struggling in the impoverished barrios of Pampanga and Bukidnon, sharing in the hardship and the tears and the love of a JVP -- a sister, a brother of the poor; a sister, a brother of Jesus Christ!?