Once, someone very dear to me had a dog whom she so loved. When the day came that her dog passed away, she told me that, among the many feelings that arose alongside her grief, there was also this sense of anger toward the world. It wasn’t that the world was responsible in any way for her dog’s death; it was more of a perceived apathy – “How dare the world keep on spinning when my dog has died?” And since this woman was very dear to me, I wished I could somehow put the world on pause, that I could enforce some kind of planetary ordinance that would halt all activities and enjoin the whole world into mourning the loss of this one dog. I suppose you could say I wanted to damay the world in her grief. What is damay, you ask?
Allow me to share a little something about Tagalog, my native tongue. In the Philippines, at funerals, you may hear people saying, “nakikiramay ako.” I suppose you could say it’s how we offer condolences, but the etymology is much deeper. The root word of nakikiramay is damay, which roughly means “to be unwillingly affected or involved an unfortunate situation.” Say, when two people are having an argument and they try to pull in a third party who’d rather not be involved, the third party might say, “Huwag mo akong idamay,” which means “Don’t involve me in that” or “Don’t pull me into that.” Or, to use a more pointed example, when innocent bystanders are injured as collateral damage in a battle that should otherwise not involve them, we’d say “Nadamay sila, which means, “They were unwillingly affected.” The beautiful thing about saying “nakikiramay ako” is that it reverses the unwillingness of the original root word and turns it into voluntary willingness. When we say “nakikiramay ako,” we are essentially saying “I am involving myself in your sorrow,” or “I volunteer to be affected by your grief,” that is, “I willingly damay myself in your suffering.”
I propose this as a helpful way to think about fasting and abstinence. In addition to cultivating spiritual discipline, it is also a way to damay oneself in the suffering of Christ. And of course, the music we sing at Mass on Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion will be markedly more somber (with the exception of the opening hymn). Even at the 5:00 PM Mass, where I’ve heard people describe the music as “joyful” and “uplifting,” we will deliberately employ a more mournful tone, and we hope that you take this as an opportunity to enjoin yourself in the sorrow of the man of sorrows. And if I may gently suggest… no applause, please and thank you!
I wonder if the disciples, before Christ’s resurrection, ever felt as my dear friend did. Did they perhaps see everyone else going about their daily lives and think, “How dare the world keep on spinning when our Lord has died?” Well, here’s another bit of linguistic trivia. There’s a rabbinic argumentative principle called qal vahomer in Hebrew, which literally translates to “light and heavy,” and it takes the form: If principle X applies in lesser situation Y, then how much more should it apply in greater situation Z. (In logic, this is called argumentum a fortiori) One of Jesus’ most famous uses of qal vahomer is when he says, “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” (Matthew 7:11) So, allow me to borrow this mode of argument and propose: If a man can put his world on pause to mourn the loss of his dear friend’s dog, how much more should Christians put their world on pause to mourn the death of Love incarnate? Can we sit with the grieving Mary, the Mater dolorosa, and say “nakikiramay ako?”
With my peace,
Carlo Serrano, Music Director
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