PANDESAL

Thursday in the Seventh Week of the Ordinary Time
Mark 9:41-50

The price of the Filipino bread, pandesal, is often the gauge of economic inflation. When I was a little boy, a pandesal cost only twenty-five centavos each. Today, I lost track of its price but I suppose you cannot buy a pandesal for a quarter of a peso. When we were minor seminarians, the quantity and size of pandesal served to us at the refectory was some sort of an economic forecast for us. In freshman high school, we received two medium size pandesal every morning. In sophomore, it became large but only one pandesal. In junior through senior year, the ration remained one pandesal is to one seminarian, but its size decreased steadily until it became extra small.

The word “pandesal“ is a combination of the Spanish words “pan”, “de”, and “sal”. “Pandesal” means “bread of salt” or “bread from salt” or “salted bread”. Is salt an ingredient of the bread that is why when served hot it really tastes heavenly?

Pandesal used to be a very affordable even to the poor man. Can it be compared with barley bread as against wheat bread? It is not a croissant, a doughnut, or a rye bread, and therefore it is a common feature in a poor man’s breakfast table. As the price of pandesal rose through the years, the poverty of the common man became even more evident. Even pandesal nowadays is expensive. The poor man has indeed become poorer. While the rich man has a choice among a number of pastries to feast, the poor man has to divide a small pandesal among his starving children.

Is it the price of salt that makes the pandesal expensive today? But a pandesal is not a pandesal if it were all flour and no salt. Without salt, it would only be “pan”, and you miss the heavenly taste it gives when served hot with butter. Thus, the “sal” in the “pan” is important, even indispensable.

Our poor lives may be compared with the pandesal. It is our “saltiness” that makes us pleasing to the divine palate. Our lives may be poor but we should not lose that which makes us treasures in the hands of the Lord. We may have nothing but if we keep our good flavor, the Lord makes something out of us. In the Lord’s hands, we are never worthless, unless we make our selves so by becoming “tasteless”.

While the First Reading today (Jas 5:1-6) warns the rich against oppressing and exploiting the poor, the Gospel today warns the poor against accumulating other ingredients in life that makes life distasteful for God. It is better to remain poor in the hands of the Lord rather than become rich in the ways of the world. It is better to be a handicapped made whole by the Lord rather than a capable struck down by the Lord.

The price of pandesal keeps on rising while its size continues to shrink. But salt remains; otherwise, it is not pandesal. We remain poor in the ways of the world while many become rich through worldly ways. But we take care not to lose our flavor for the divine favor; otherwise, we are truly poor.