A BANQUET CALLED PAGPAG

Wedding feasts, whether in Jesus’ time or our own, attract people. Food and drinks come in abundance. In hunger-afflicted Palestine, weddings were a chance to eat well and drink much. An invitation to a wedding feast would give joy to the heart.

Today’s Gospel speaks of an actual wedding. The invitees had come, eager to sit at the most important places because this meant honor and more special food and drink. Jesus noticed people who were taking the first seats and were later asked by the hosts to move to less distinguished places because somebody more important had arrived. These people might not have been so pretentious to believe themselves as important, but the thought of receiving the best servings on food and drink gave them that illusion.

The groom, the bride, and their families prepared for months to celebrate the wedding (and often ended up bankrupt). Food should be abundant. No one should leave these feasts hungry, or unsatisfied with the wine. Jesus himself, at the wedding in Cana, intervened so that wine might not run out: he turned six stone jars of water into wine (Jn 2:1-11). In so doing, he spared the relatives of the bride and groom from shame (the fact that Mary, his mother, was invited and asked her Son to do something to spare the families from embarrassment suggests that they were related to either bride or groom). An experience like that might have inspired Jesus to say that the best feast is not just about abundance of food and wine. A more meaningful celebration is where this abundance is shared by all, including the hungry and the needy. And so he teaches, “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”

Those who are accustomed to parties may not at all enjoy the food. Those who are used to abundance may end up leaving behind so much leftovers. The rich and those with full bellies tend to chew on a sliver of the steak and leave behind the bigger portion as waste. In any festivity, organized by the rich and the powerful, the leftovers could in fact feed more than one empty stomach. In Tondo, there is a menu called “pagpag” that has attracted world attention. Pagpag is recycled leftovers from fast food restaurants. These are gathered from chicken, pork, and rice left behind on customers’ plates. Once thrown in the garbage cans, scavengers take them away early in the morning and sell them to the stall owners of Tondo. These leftovers are washed and cooked again, to the delight of poor families who cannot afford fresh food. For the desperately hungry, pagpag is a banquet. Jesus, viewing the hunger that afflicts the majority in our planet, encourages the rich to trim down the abundance of their parties, and reach out to the needs of those who barely have enough for the day. Too much food and drink bloats the stomach, causes headache and other diseases. Only by sharing can abundance create healthy and contented hearts.