Dr. Salonga Tackles 11th Commandment in Sermon
February 3, 2008
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Dr. Jovito R. Salonga is welcomed by students and volunteers of the Salonga Center

      Former Senator Dr. Jovito Salonga spoke about the 11th commandment in his sermon at the launching of the University Christian Life Emphasis Week on February 3 at the Silliman University Church.

      Dr. Salonga introduced his message on the 11th commandment with a story about a boy who justified to a pastor that there is an additional commandment to what most people know as the 10 Commandments of God.

      “What is so new about this commandment?” Dr. Salonga asked, sharing that “Jesus had already compressed the commandments into two – Love for God and Love for our fellowmen.”

      He said the 11th commandment was given at the time when Jesus and his disciples were gathering to observe the Passover. At this celebration, Jesus washed the feet of his disciplines, and had the Last Supper. This was when Judas left the room afterwards to betray Jesus.

      “It was in this atmosphere of tenderness, affection, mixed with sadness, that Jesus gave them a new commandment – which we now call the 11th commandment,” Dr. Salonga said.

      Answering his question, he said: “But we have to remember that the 11th commandment is a different kind of love, it is a choice and an act or will different from the love we have for our close relatives and friends.”

      He explained further by likening it to the kind of love manifested by the Good Samaritan to the Jew who was robbed and left bleeding on the road. Despite the Jew’s being a stranger to him, the Good Samaritan cared for him and left enough money to compensate services that the owner of the inn would afford the Jew.

      “But the original disciples of Jesus are gone. What does loving one another, as Jesus commanded in the Upper Room, mean to this Church, to my Church, and to the various Christian churches in the world?” he asked.

      Dr. Salonga provided four answers.

      First, he said, regardless of economic standing and cultural differences, the 11th commandment requires us to love one another.

      “Christ binds us into a new unity, first within this congregation and within this same fellowship. When we stand at the foot of the Cross, we are all brothers and sisters,” he stressed.

      Second, “Christians in this Church need the love of Christians in other churches, whether here or abroad, especially when we are alone, or in need, or are being persecuted,” Dr. Salonga said.

      He shared how, through the united efforts of members of different church congregations to help clear his name as one of those behind the bombings in Metro Manila in August to October 1980, he was released from detention by then President Ferdinand Marcos.

      Third, he spoke about the true standard measurement of love, reflecting on “the number of walls and barriers built to exclude others” – one of the great tragedies today in American churches, according to Pastor William Tuck.

      “Jesus said: Love one another as I have loved you. In short, Jesus gives us the measure and the example whether we have loved one another properly and without counting the cost. For consider the breadth, depth, length and height of Jesus’ love,” Dr, Salonga said.

      And fourth, complying with the 11th commandment, he said: “The result of this kind of love, Jesus tells us is that ‘other people will recognize that you are my disciples.’”

      When enemies of the first Christian church in the past declared, “Behold, how these Christians love one another!” he said, one can now only witness “the saddest displays of fragmentation, jealousy, bigotry, self-interest, gossip and even slander.”

      Toward the end of his sermon, he asked the people in the Church who among them are recognized by others as disciples of Jesus, and if they can consider themselves as “the salt of the earth and the light of our little world” by making a difference in the life of the community in Dumaguete and Negros Oriental.

      Dr. Salonga ended his sermon with a quote from Winston Churchill: “Moral courage is the one virtue that makes all the other virtues possible. Indeed, of what use is our honesty if we do not have the courage to uphold it? Of what use is justice if we do not have the courage to defend it? And of what use is freedom if we do not have the courage to fight for it?”

      After the morning service, Dr. Salonga launched his book Not by Power or Wealth Alone through the auspices of Dr. Jovito R. Salonga Center for Law and Development. (SU NetNews )

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