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Krus at Lipunan: A Filipino Theology of Liberation

Justice as the Maximum of Love

Reflection on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

When we try to conjure an image of the Most Sacred of Heart of Jesus, most of us would probably think the image where Jesus stands with his heart burning with joy and love for us.   Every time we see such portraits and statues, we are reminded to open ourselves to the love of Christ who loves us first and give ourselves completely to him as he does. The image of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus reminds us also the First Principle and Foundation of St. Ignatius of Loyola that tells us of the wonders of creation and the giftedness of life, God’s magnanimity. It calls us to gratitude, to freedom, so that we can make love-and-life-filled decisions.

In love we find true freedom, freedom that comes from knowing that you’re loved and gifted. That’s what sets our heart free. It is the freedom to find God in our experience and in the world around us. It is the freedom that comes from experiencing at a very deep, personal level that we are loved by God. The river Cardoner experience of St. Ignatius depicted to us that there he saw the whole world as a gift from God and on its way back to God. Ignatius’s vision—an image of the giftedness of the world and the giftedness of our lives, a vision that invites us to respond freely in love and in today’s gospel by St. John that love was manifested clearly and greatly on the cross. An ultimate example of love, laying down one’s life for one another.

In today’s generation, especially the youth are being exposed only in the saturations and over blown romantic conceptions and definitions of love and had forgotten of its other dimension such as the element of justice, for justice is the maximum of love. To love is to be sensitive to the reality of our family, community, the structures of our society that is being mired by extreme poverty due to the volatile economic situation that had been brought by this global pandemic in which the majority of human beings live, “bent under the burden of life: survival is their greatest problem and a slow death their closest fate” as how Jon Sobrino, a liberation theologian puts it.

“Ang puso ni Hesus na tumitibok para sa lahat at lalo na sa mga mararalita na nakapako sa Krus ng Pandemiya, kahirapan at palpak na pamamahala ng mga pinuno at representante natin sa pamahalaan.”  As Christians, our central calling is to love yet that love was always been so ambiguous to be felt by the victims of such injustice ,cruelty and violence. Where is that love and care for others that those politicians flaunts through their religiosity in the public? These politicians and policy makers take prey on their impoverished constituents by manipulating and stealing from the coffers of the people.  May this Gospel passage from St. Mathew reminds us how hearts be molded in the very essence of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Mt 25:31-40)


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