The Fire of Curiosity
We were having our practices inside the church in preparation for the Easter Vigil when the frantic shouts of people outside stopped us. “Sunog! Sunog!” was the shout. Apparently, a fire just erupted in one of the sitios in Pasil. This time it was near the convent of the Missionaries of Charity sisters. Just last January 14, 2018, a fire raged in another section of the parish, in Lawis, robbing 300 families of their homes. Fire can spread easily in this neighborhood since most of the homes are built very near each other and the houses are made of light and combustible materials.
Interestingly, the Knights of the Altar (or KOA) members dashed towards the church side door towards where the shout was coming from. Unlike the world of common sense, most people in Pasil where I grew up would rather see the spectacle of the fire than run for their lives. They say fire lit man’s imagination. It still does so with a Pasilanon’s curiosity. For your curiosity’s sake, the fire was immediately put out even before the first responders from the fire department came.
This short anecdote reminded me of Jose Rizal’s story about the moth and the candle flame. Too often we come close to the light that has bedazzled and enthralled us. Our curiosity gets the best of us. Young people who start with experimentation end up enslaved to addiction to drugs, alcohol, and smoking. It is however responsible of many more good things for humanity in the many discoveries and inventions that the curious have achieved.
As we celebrate the Easter Octave this week, there is one Light that we still need to appreciate and get close to. There is still one Flame that can engulf us with passion and power without consuming us, just like the fire that Moses saw on Sinai. May the fire and light of Easter also captivate our curiosity, so we could get closer to our Savior.
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