October 10: Stealing pan de sal

The Pope writes: “We cannot ignore the fact that in cities human trafficking, the narcotics trade, the abuse and exploitation of minors, the abandonment of the elderly and infirm, and various forms of corruption and criminal activity take place.” Some of us, reading that passage, may have thought immediately of the video that recently went viral on Facebook. It showed a young boy of 12, a “pan de sal” vendor in Caloocan City, overcome with emotion after falling victim to a thief. The thief had taken all of the boy’s earnings, and the boy was inconsolable.

This, some of us may have thought, was abuse and exploitation of minors, seen in a different light. The response on social media was overwhelmingly negative, reading the boy’s plight as an index of how low, how sick, how evil, human society has become.

And then, reading on, we find this: “The proclamation of the Gospel will be a basis for restoring the dignity of human life in these contexts, for Jesus desires to pour out an abundance of life upon our cities.”

Call it foolhardy or daring, but the Pope is offering the new evangelization as an answer precisely in those intersections, those contexts, where the challenge to it is greatest. A city where a young pan de sal vendor’s earnings can be stolen does not seem like hospitable ground for proclaiming the Gospel, but the Christian vision says it is.

The term “abundance of life” comes from John 10:10. That verse reads in full: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”