Me Save
My friend JM is the only person I know whose full name is “JM.” His dad named him Joseph Marlow. But when he abandoned the family, JM’s maternal lolo had his name legally changed to just “JM.” JM works as a janitor in a McDonald’s. He hits the road at 5am every day, rain or shine, baha or more baha. He moves frozen stuff from the freezer, first thing, & sets them down near the stoves. Then, all day long, he mops the floor, clears tables, & washes & washes & washes dishes. The other janitor is slack, he says. He leaves a heap of dirty dishes by the sink before break-time, but never helps JM wash them after the break. But my friend takes it all in silence every day. All in silence.
JM has 2 dreams, his “tower,” let’s say. First, he wants to buy a small house where his wife & his 12-year-old son can live. But because that’s not going to happen anytime soon, his 2nd dream is to buy a small, portable keyboard for his son. The kid sings in church & has shown increasing interest in the piano. Every Saturday night, JM walks him to choir rehearsals at the nearby chapel. JM is proudest, though, when the kid sings solo at the responsorial psalm on some Sundays. He always takes a picture & sends it to me. JM has told me many times: “Me save. Me buy piano for son.” Yes, he says it like that. “Me save. Me buy piano for son.” He says it w/ his hands. JM was born deaf. He doesn’t know what a song or a piano sounds like. But one day, “me buy piano for son.” JM’s tower, sisters & brothers: a small house & a portable keyboard.
Our Gospel today continues the story where a Pharisee invited Jesus for a meal. Jesus saw how guests picked places of honor at the table, the upper crusters. So, he finally said, “Which of you wishing to construct a tower doesn’t first calculate how much it’ll cost to complete it? Otherwise, after laying the foundation, but running out of money to finish the work, onlookers should laugh at you & say, ‘This one began to build but didn’t have the resources to finish.’” Maybe, the shorthand in Tagalog could be: “’Yan. Ang tayog kasi ng lipad.”
Whenever I think of JM, of course I compare his life to that of the contractors & so-called public “servants” who infuriate us these days. All these years, imagine how they’ve been living off of the tired & sweaty backs of honest, hard-working people like JM; their all-expense-paid life. “How much higher do you want those towers to go?” I really want to ask them. “Kulang pa ba? How many more cars, mansions, ‘Jet-2 getaways’ will you steal for? How many more bags, shoes, clothes, jewelry do your children need to show off before they begin to feel important? Kulang pa ba?!”
And where & how do these people think all this will end? Saan ang katapusan? If there are some of you here, sisters & brothers, who are friends or relatives w/ the people I’m talking about, can you ask? Tell them you’re asking for a friend. How do they think all this will end? Because there is an end. From what Jesus taught us, we either spend this life giving back, or spend the next life paying back, until we’ve “paid the last penny.”
For 300 years from the first Pentecost, Christianity was forbidden under pain of death by crucifixion, burning, or feeding to wild animals. Following Jesus was virtually a death wish; suicidal, if you want. So, imagine how someone deciding to follow Jesus would run afoul even of his own family. That line: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, & even his own life, cannot be my disciple”? That line reminds me of an unico hijo friend. When he finally broke it to his rich parents that he wanted to be a priest, his father said, “You might as well kill me if you’re just going to be a priest.” How families must’ve pleaded w/ their children back in the day, dissuading them from joining this underground movement that Jesus started. I could hear the parents say, “Why are you doing this to us? Do you hate us? You love this Jesus more?”
Today, though, we hear scheming contractors & “public servants” even utter Jesus’ name & lovingly. But discipleship doesn’t have anything to do with it at all. Haven’t they noticed, even from history alone: not all the money in the world will ever finish monuments of avarice & deception. Like termites through the toughest wood, fate & retribution will eat away, slowly & patiently, at every foundation laid in greed & fraud. Just when they think they’ve topped the tower, the flawed foundation will have begun to fissure.
JM’s “tower” is modest enough. I hope he sees it through, sa awa ng Diyos. The little dream house might not come anytime soon, not on a McDonald’s salary. That portable keyboard, though, that one’s doable. “Me save,” he says. “Buy keyboard for son.” Imagine the day when JM sees his son play the keyboard he brings home w/ great love, & sees him play a psalm & sing it. Sweet, sweet music only a deaf father’s heart can hear. Loud & clear.
Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cenacle Retreat House
6 September 2025