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23Rd Sunday In Ordinary Time Reflection

A couple of years ago, I remember it was my classmate’s birthday. Let me just call him Mr. Suave to preserve his unblemished reputation. It was Mr. Suave’s birthday. As usual, Dominic (our very own Dominic Derramas) made a fancy birthday card and placed it on the freedom board for seminarians to sign and write their greetings. I happened to pass by and so I grabbed a pen and wrote something on Mr. Suave’s birthday card. Do you wanna know what I wrote? Sorry can’t tell you, Mr. Suave might be throwing punches on me after this. I’ll give you a clue. It was something a birthday boy doesn’t wanna see or read in his birthday card.
Mr. Suave got embarrassed on what I did. He got mad. I never knew till someone informed me. He knew I was the culprit since we were fond of making fun of each other. I thought he was just overreacting. Maybe at that very moment it was just too much. It was really ridiculous.
The following day I realize that joke hit him below the belt. Indeed that joke was just too much. I feel like I was a complete idiot. However, I was struggling deep inside whether or not to approach him and ask for an apology. I was hesitant because he might reject me, humiliate me or worse case scenario-kill me. On one hand, my ego tells me not to reconcile with him since anyway he started all of these vicious cycle of jokes. Finally I made up my mind, I was man enough to admit my mistake, so I went to his room, brought a peace-offering and asked for an apology. At first he was kinda reluctant to accept both my peace-offering and apology. Later bumigay din pala… filler.
I realize keeping ill-feelings are like cancers that infect us and eat our organs and consume our energies. Clinging to them is like closing a wound and leaving all of the infection inside. The longer our bitterness bothers within us, the more energy is taken away from our journey toward a better life and a happier relationship. It’s somewhat like an unnecessary baggage...