sapok, sampal, hampas

as a lenten activity, the sisters of lingkod planned to watch the film "the passion of Christ". since kuya and april had plans to visit the IT fair today, i offered that we could watch the film here in our house.

this is the second time that i watched the film. the first one was during the movie screening in manila. i watched it with mami. a couple of years passed but when i watched it today, it had the same effect on me - shock. besides the fact that the portrayal was close to perfect, something that happened during college kept on flashing in my mind while watching the film.

it was RELS class (i'm thinking it's RELSONE). we had this professor (i forgot his name) who asked for a volunteer. one of the girls (i won't tell who she is) raised her hand and she was prompted to go to the front.

teacher asked her, "come, hit me hard on the face." we were all shocked. i found it hard to fathom what his point was. she didn't hit him. teacher made his point. we find it really hard to hit somebody on the face but every time we sin, we become one of the people who gave Jesus the deathly blows prior to His death.

i have so many moments in my life that i am not proud of, in fact i am really ashamed to even talk about these. how many blows have i given Him? in the movie, i cringed every time He was hit. i even cried at certain points. the realization here is... i am one of the killers. when i watched the movie for the first time, what i felt was just pure awa for Him. this time, my realization is different. i was able to associate myself with the soldiers who beat Him to His death, with the people who threw stones at Him, who rebuked Him and showed no mercy. i am one of them. it was so easy for me to show my disgust and cry when He was hit in the film, but it's amazing how easy and shameless it is for me to continuously sin day after day.

i appreciate the activity today. so many realizations. perfect way to end sunday.

PS: my girl classmate hit the teacher really hard after a good convincing. i didn't tell in my story above because i was trying to help teacher make his point :p hehehe. he was hoping she wouldn't hit him so he could get his message across. he was still successful, i think, because i still can't forget it after all these years.

so what do i do now? i know i'll still hit Him a million times or more during my entire lifetime, but i could always try and aim not to.