PARADOXICAL

Copy-pasted homily:

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God's Disruptive Guest List: Rewriting Our Table of Power

17 January 2026 (Saturday)

Today, God’s word presents us with a divine paradox. In Samuel, we see God choosing Saul, a handsome young man from a good family, seemingly the natural choice for a king. Yet, we know this choice will later be troubled, a reminder that even the seemingly "fit" are chosen for service, not status. The Gospel, however, shatters this entirely. Jesus doesn’t call the "fit" from a human standpoint. He calls Levi, a tax collector, a man complicit with the Roman occupiers, seen as a traitor and a sinner. And then, Jesus does the unthinkable: he goes and dines with all the wrong people.

In a Philippine society obsessed with pedigree, socio-political clout, and the "maganda ang lahi" mentality, this is disruptive grace. We have built tables of power, in literal and social senses, that exclude. The poor are kept at the margins, the "different" are labeled basagulero or salot, and public trust is betrayed by those seated at society’s head tables. We judge who is worthy, who is clean, who deserves a seat.

But Christ, the Divine Physician, walks directly to our Levi’s, meaning, to the corrupt, the compromised, the addicted, the ostracized. He walks to the urban poor crowded in danger, to the farmer robbed of his harvest, to the youth disillusioned by a system that seems rigged. He says, "I did not come to call the righteous but sinners." His mission is not to affirm the comfortable at their gated banquets, but to heal the broken at the messy table of humanity.

Today, we remember St. Anthony Abbot, who heard this call radically. He gave up immense wealth to seek God in the desert, rejecting the entire societal script of status and accumulation. He reminds us that to follow Christ is to disrupt the world’s ordering of value and to see that true wealth is holiness and true poverty is slavery to sin and status.

Our call, then, is threefold:

1. To See as Christ Sees: To look past the titles, the surnames, the social media facades, and see the human heart in need of dignity and grace.

2. To Sit at New Tables: To have the courage to step away from tables of exclusive privilege and to deliberately sit in solidarity with those society scorns. This is both spiritual and profoundly social.

3. To Be Disrupted Ourselves: To allow Christ to call us, like Levi, away from our own complicity, that is, perhaps in gossip, in prejudice, in silent consent to injustice and to follow him on the path of humble service.

The Kingdom of God does not have a guest list based on padrino or pedigree. It has a healing call, issued from the Cross, for all. Let us leave this Eucharist, this holy table where all are welcome, ready to rewrite the guest lists at every table we influence. For we are all, in truth, sinners whom the Physician desperately desires to heal.

posted by Resty Odon  # 12:25 AM