The eve of true peace
In my first year of graduate school, I took classes in curriculum and instruction as part of my coursework toward a Ph.D. One instructor asked a question that has been asked so often, the answer might come too speedily, as a product of so-called common sense, but without pondering or evidence.
“Who are the best teachers? The smart, straight arrows who achieved a lot in school, or the painfully average ones who scraped by with barely passing grades?”
Put another way: “Do academic achievers always make the best teachers?”
Our instructor then discussed a journal article that tackled the question using a review of years of research. The verdict: it was not the honors that made a good teacher.
Those who got high grades with little effort, who had never failed, who had never spent time outside the academe—they could not make lessons easy to understand because they could not relate to the students who struggle with concepts and wrestle with questions.
That’s not to say that honors graduates are bad teachers, or that failing students should be put on the faculty roster later. Rather, this says that good teachers don’t always have a sharp academic background. They are simply those who know how to show up for those who cannot comprehend concepts because they, too, were once in a position of difficulty and complications.
I remembered the research as I witnessed the online flaying of Fr. Flaviano “Flavie” Villanueva, SVD, a priest awarded multiple times for his work in helping to rehabilitate drug addicts.
Father Flavie has always been an outspoken critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte and the war on drugs—a drastic, cruel solution to what Father Flavie sees as a problem intricately interlaced with poverty and a failure of social safety nets.
While those who still subscribe wholesale to the mantra of Duterte that defines addicts as less than human, Father Flavie sees them as symptoms of greater social ills—as humans who have lost hope, who are slaves to their own desperation, who must be helped out of their darkness.
Father Flavie should know: he, too, was once a drug addict. But he changed, went into rehab, found his mission, and walked the path of a mentor and guide.
He now cares for those who have yet to find their way. And yet it was his past as a drug addict that the trolls and loyalists dragged out, as though it were a great shame that he had long kept hidden.
As though they who had once struggled and overcome could not guide those who were still lost.
As though they who had never fallen into the darkness of sin were worthy of carrying the light.
As though only the perfect intellectual could teach.
But isn’t experience, too, a potent teacher? Isn’t someone overcoming adversity a far more powerful example to the weary and the lost than one who began with privilege, who never lost their way, who never stumbled?
Last week’s Simbang Gabi homilies at Our Lady of Pentecost Parish—celebrated by eight Jesuits and Fr. Herbie Santos, our parish priest—alluded in one way or another to the birth of the Christ Child, fully human.
Jesus came from a long line of characters, both good and questionable. He was born poor, in a time of war and conquest, to a craftsman father, who could rely only on contractual work, and a mother who, in the eyes of the people, had conceived a child out of wedlock.
His father and mother both had to say yes to a lifetime of suffering, even while they were already among the poorest of society.
And yet he was born, as Fr. Manoling Francisco put it, into a world of war. He was born into our own pains, our own troubles. He was a man so ordinary that no one would see him as a prophet, let alone a king.
He would speak in parables, using the lives of fishermen, farmers, vineyard owners, lepers, outcasts, the hated, and the despised. He dined with prostitutes and tax collectors. He broke the strict Sabbath laws to heal and make the broken whole. He died among thieves.
It was righteousness he showed, in breaking through the expectations of a Savior King. Because righteousness, as Fr. Francis Alvarez said, is not adherence to the letter of the law. It is compassion.
And a deeply rooted person, who has seen the worst of humanity and fought through the tears, failure, opposition—it is that kind of person who makes the best teacher because they have the frame of the real world to tell a story—to teach a lesson.
Their triumphs over weakness, illness, and sin tell a stronger story of hope. Their evolution is far more inspiring than the prattling of the hatred—drugged many who equate obedience with peace—who believe the empty words of their make-believe prophets stuck in a past of murder and pain.
Because that, too, is Christmas. A willingness to see the light in a world of darkness. A willingness to bear the light even when the past haunts and hurts, even as the darkness shouts back. A willingness to recognize light in those who broke through their sins.
A willingness to choose life and hope over death and condemnation.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
