Familiarity

Familiarity is very important in creating and in dealing with relationships. When you are familiar with the one that you are relating with, ...

Familiarity is very important in creating and in dealing with relationships. When you are familiar with the one that you are relating with, lets take the example of lovers, it is easier to move around during dates, to find ways to please her or to cope up with courtship problems. I’m talking here based from experience. Jejejeje. When you are sent to the mission together with a partner or a team, familiarity of the team member’s personality and capacity is very important so that the team would work smoothly and achieve the goal and frictions could be avoided or evaded. Furthermore, when you are tasked to lead an organization, you have to be familiar with your members and constituents or else you’ll never turn out to be a good leader but rather a catastrophic one. Likewise, a religious, before she enters a congregation, she has to be familiar with what kind of congregation she is entering, its apostolate, its way of living, its ministry, its lifestyle or else she would get culture shocked if she is not familiar of the world she is entering. Moreover, you got to be familiar with the Lord, before we get to recognize his presence in others and in the world.

But on the other hand, familiarity could also lead to separation of partners. When one is too familiar of the negative traits of the partner, the other starts to be irritated and starts to look at the partner without that same “eyes of love”. It is the same when the team member of a mission team gets so familiar with the hard headedness or the pagiging gastador or the kaartehan of the other member so much so that whatever the other tries to do or say, it is not being accepted nor recognized anymore. Kasi you would say: “Ah ganyan talaga yan cia. Ganyan ka talaga. She don’t accept suggestions, she is hard headed etc, etc.” And the team starts to break and the goal is never achieved. Sometimes too, when one is so familiar of what a member of the congregation did in the past, that person is put in the box that whenever there are change of assignments or new projects that arises, the superior who is too familiar with the member, sets him or her aside and would not consider that that person anymore and never consider that she could still have another chance and may be able to do well this time. Or if you know where the person is coming from, you would say: “ah, nothing good will come from her if you put him here or there” Sometimes too, when one is too familiar with the congregation where she belongs, she tends to forget what is the real essence of the existence of her congregation and she starts to look for other things that congregations have or do. And sometimes it is also true that when you get too familiar with the Lord, when you know that He forgives and forgives every time you commit sin, then you would tend to repeat the same sin over and over again… anyway, as we usually hear or say: “papatawarin naman ako ng dios… I know that…”

When familiarity is not used well, it produces martyrs, it produces pain, it produces death. When familiarity in the negative sense reigns, new ventures, new innovations, new styles, new ideas that surges simply dies down. Miracles never happens when you don’t leave a space or give a new look to a person who is too familiar. Miracles can never happen if you do not believe that something good can happen out of a familiar situation or a familiar reality. That’s what our Gospel for today is telling us.

This is the reflection that I wish you to reflect upon today: Are you familiar of your community members? Does your familiarity, leaves room for the growth and change to that person or your familiarity of that person, persecutes the other and makes her a martyr forever?

(Mass at the SSJ Provincial House Community, 6 February 2013)