BE CAREFUL HOW YOU SPELL IT

Monday in the 4th Week in the Ordinary Time
Mk 5:1-20

The English vocabulary provides us with words which when spelt backwards become new words with totally new meanings. Thus, ‘dear’ becomes ‘read’, ‘stop’ becomes ‘pots’, ‘lever’ becomes ‘revel’, ‘pan’ becomes ‘nap’, ‘now’ becomes ‘won’, ‘ten’ becomes ‘net’, and ‘line’ becomes the river Nile. The list is long, but nothing intrigues me like the word ‘live’. When ‘live’ is spelt backwards, it becomes ‘evil’. Interesting, yes. But very frightening.

Life when not L-I-V-E-D is snatched away by the D-E-V-I-L. Thus, ‘live’ become ‘evil’ when life is not lived.

Do we see the evil of our lives when we do not live our lives forward but instead backwards, not upward but downward? When our manner of living goes down to the level of the swine – that is evil. When we treat others without charity – that is evil. When our human integrity collapses but our moral depravation builds up – that is evil. When we choose to with from the nobility of self-sacrifice in order to surrender our selves to self-indulgence – that is evil. When we compromise our dignity as children of God – that is evil. Our language puts it bluntly: “Binababoy natin ang sarili natin.”

There are times when we are guilty of spelling ‘live’ backwards by the manner of our living. We may have a doctorate in English, but that is never a guarantee that we always spell ‘live’ correctly. Let us repent and be more vigilant.

By the way, G-O-D when spelt backwards is D-O-G. We do not want to misspell G-O-D, do we?