Rampage
Homily delivered by Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ
18th (Anticipated) Sunday in Ordinary Time | Matthew 14:13-21
1 August 2026 Cenacle Retreat House
It’s heart-breaking to lose a beloved to an untimely death. But it must be maddening when the beloved died violently in the hands of bad people; like Evelio Javier under Marcos, Lenny Villa under Aquila Legis, Kian de los Santos under Duterte, and in today’s Gospel, John the Baptist under Herod Antipas. When Jesus heard that Herod had finally executed his cousin– and for the flimsiest reason–he had to go off alone to a deserted place. We can’t begin to imagine how Jesus must’ve been beside himself. And not just w/ grief, but a tempest of many gut-wrenching emotions. Like regret. He saved strangers almost every day but he couldn’t even save his own cousin. Loss. John was his firebrand kuya whose passion lit up his own. And of course, and why not: rage. Rage against Herod, rage against his drunken sycophants, rage against Israel’s politicized religion pretending to be Godly. Jesus had to get away where he could wail and maybe raise his fist to God & ask why, and just scream.
But the crowd eventually found him mid-grief, mid-mourning, his cheeks probably still damp, & his heart trying to punch a hole through his chest. Then, what did Jesus do, sisters & brothers? Did he jump back on the boat & paddle even farther away? No. He went on a rampage. Nagwala siya. Nagpakawala siya at nagsabog…ng kabutihan. All that grief, loss, rage, he unleashed in a mighty but quiet miracle that fed hungry thousands that day. In that rampage of goodness, Jesus’ loss became everybody’s gain.
Whenever a friend and I get to chat and we come upon the topic of our public “servants,” pareho kaming parang natutuyuan ng pag-asa para sa bansa natin. Parang ang sarap magwala, to go on a rampage against congressmen stealing our taxes, traitors who snuck China into our waters, senators lawyering for bad people. But how far would a rampage go, when they all still find support from the people they precisely rob? Taking it to the streets doesn’t seem to work anymore. I mean, how break a spell when the bewitched themselves kiss the very hands that curse their lives? My friend’s wife once said, “Siguro gawin na lang natin ang kaya nating gawin para tulungan ang mga tao. Kahit kulang pa rin. Laging kulang.”
I know that what she says, most of us are already doing, sisters and brothers. In corruption that’s bone deep, you & I can do & give only so much to the least of our brethren, to tide them over today, or next week, or if we’re more blessed, the next month or year. Pero kulang pa ‘yon. Kulang talaga kung sa kulang. People who are supposed to legislate and allocate for our uplift, they feast & fiddle while Rome burns. On our part, ang alay na lang natin, 5 loaves and 2 fish; limang Tasty at dalawang galunggong kumbaga. Then again, how far & for how long can that go? To feed thousands, we need more than a pittance, to speak nothing of housing them and schooling them, and healing and sustaining them. Kulang.
In 2013, a fisherman named Rolando lost his wife and his baby to Yolanda. For many months, he and his 4 other children, w/ hundreds of others, languished in tents. Yolanda blew away the already little they had in life. Namatayan na nga siya ng mag-ina, Rolando was forced to tearfully “distribute” his kids to relatives in Mindanao, to give them a fair shake at life. so, this man knew well what being empty/handed meant. A year later, Negrense Volunteers for Change (NVC), a humanitarian foundation, gifted Rolando and his fellow fisherman some capital for new boats. Whereupon they began painstakingly rebuilding their lives in earnest.
A year after that, the fishermen gathered around an NVC Foundation field officer who shared w/ the group that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal had just killed 9000 & displaced more than a million. For sure, the fishermen knew what that felt. They were just crawling out of the cruelest calamity themselves. But Rolando was so moved by the report, he shyly came forward & handed the field officer 20 pesos: his donation for the earthquake victims. Then, his fellow fishermen came forward one by one, parting w/ their “loaves and fish,” in coins & small bills. Word eventually got around the whole community such that after only 2 weeks, families surrendered dozens of plastic bottles rattling w/ coins, amounting to 75-thousand pesos. Their humble bottle brigade went on for a few more days & the alms grew to around 100-thousand pesos; all for their fellow suffering, over 4000 km away, whose names & faces, they knew & saw not. Pinaghirapang ipon ng mga dukha para sa kapwa dukha. Hindi ninakaw. Hindi ipinagyabang. Kulang kung sa kulang, susmaryosep. Pero meron.
Sisters and brothers, sa awa at biyaya na rin ng Diyos, you and I are no longer empty-handed. Some of us may still remember what empty hands felt like, back when we or our parents wanted to rage and scream in desperation. But now, we’re well beyond 5 loaves and 2 fish. Still, someone always within reach is still empty-handed, but soldiering on like Rolando and thousands like him, w/ all the right to rage against the world, against politicians, or even against us. In the face of evil, Jesus showed the kind of rampage his followers were to do: a rampage of goodness and kindness to the poor; with whatever kulang they could ever part with. Goodness, not despair, open hands, not fists, was Jesus’ response to the empty-handed. And this when he was utterly powerless over his beloved cousin’s bloody death.
Sisters and brothers, it’s okay to go on a quiet rampage…a rampage of goodness, of giving, of channeling God’s grace to the empty-handed. Bahala na si Hesus magparami ng ating kulang na laging kulang. But as I’ve known our brothers & sisters, I can already hear them say, “Ma’m, Ser, wala pong kulang basta meron. Walang kulang, basta biyaya.”