Nobly Destroyed

“Nobly Destroyed”
Lent 2009 – Third Sunday Year B (Mar 15)

By Deshi Ramadhani, SJ

I’ve just come home from a wedding party of an old friend. Everybody was happy. Finally at the age of forty-three this dear friend of ours decided to settle down, get married, and start a new life. Some of us came with their wives and children. Looking again at old faces always thrills. Those faces represent different sets of choices they have made along the way, willingly or not. During those precious minutes together we were brought back to a distant past when we used to sleep in the same dormitory, eat the same food, drink the same water, and yet at the same time we were also silently marveled by the differences life has created on each one of us.

Life appears to be continuous alterations of “building” – “destroying” – “rebuilding.” It is painful to start building from ground zero up. It is more painful to accept the fact that what we have built has to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt anew. Each stage demands a decision. Though at times the forces out there feel so overwhelming, we have to make a decision on how to go through. God builds a relationship, a covenant, gives a set of norms to be obeyed. We destroy the relationship by doing precisely what is forbidden. God rebuilds. And the story goes on. The magnificent temple has been built over the years, but it turns out that it will be destroyed only to be rebuilt into a completely new and unimaginable one. Along these alterations, we learn how to make better choices.

That blood-stained wooden cross speaks loudly to the world about the high price to be paid so that our building of sins can be destroyed and a new building of virtues can be rebuilt. If I think that to be destroyed is painful, for God it is more painful to see my resistance to be destroyed. God sees a lot more the better building. I simply do not want to see it at all right now. This destruction can be very painful precisely because it is a noble destruction.