Nicolle Lim 10831118
1 February 2012 TREDFOR C33 Reflection: Maging Akin Muli
The film Maging Akin Muli is basically a story about Junjun (Marvin Agustin), a young deacon, and his often puzzling, but ultimately meaningful journey towards spiritual enlightenment. He struggles to confront and find the relevance of his chosen vocation in this day and age. On another note, the movie tackles a jumble of issues that every Christian faces on a daily basis: morality, sexuality, capital punishment, abortion, parochial intrigues/scandals, and the culture of gossip and violence.
Upon watching the movie, I realized how challenging it must be for priests and other members of the clergy to fulfill their duties and responsibilities without diverting from their chosen vocation. Not only are they faced with issues and life dilemmas - they are also burdened by the extremely high expectations of the society. What most people don’t realize is that priests, deacons, brothers, nuns, and the like are, when it all comes down to it, human beings just like the rest of us. They are susceptible to the effects of changes in the society and the way we live. What I also realized is the contrast between the traditional, and (let’s face it), shallow-minded Church, and the modern, or, if not liberal, then at least tolerant Church of today. The way I see it, Junjun, being a young man that he was, represents the “transition” that occurred between the traditional and modern Church.
While watching the movie, I literally saw Junjun’s eyes - a mixture of hope, awe and confusion that also seeps through our own consciousness every now and then. This is primarily
the reason why I understand if deacons like him tend to deviate from their vocation – because they feel like they are not worth or ready to fully accept God in their lives. I think that there’s nothing wrong about that. In fact, I believe that it would be so much better if deacons like him stride away for a while, take their time to reflect on their decisions, and just when they are 100% certain, that’s the time they could show the genuineness of their decision to pursue the celibate life. That’s when the quality of their service both to God and to their neighbors increase. That’s the time they could show how devoted they are to their vocation. After all, the best lessons in life are learned from the mistakes that we commit and the experiences we share with other people. What’s important is that we learn to “go back” or magbalik-loob to our passion – our vocation, whether that is to be a priest, to live a married life, or to stay single for whatever reasons we may have.
Inevitably, in our daily struggle to stay on the right track, we get lost in rhetoric, but “Maging Akin Muli” shows us that, indeed, the search for true vocation begins with contemplation. We may assume that we know ourselves intimately; after all we live through ourselves every waking moment of our lives – but that is not always the case. In fact, I think that much of what we do is done subconsciously. If we stop to analyze our drives, strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, we may be surprised to know that there’s so much more that we don’t know about ourselves. Junjun took the time to really understand and contemplate on his mission. He did not rush into things. I think that it’s only right that we must not settle for something we are not sure of. We may experience hardships along the way, but we must also acknowledge that maybe there really is no such thing as a perfect vocation, just perfect intentions. And, sometimes, they’re enough.
