DEAR Holy Father,
I
wanted to begin with a formal greeting. But, remembering how simple and
spontaneous you are in many of your public appearances, I decided against it.
Instead,
I would like to begin with something light (please let me digress from the many
serious matters that these days must weigh heavily on your mind and heart, such
as the ongoing persecution of Christians not only by atheistic secularists and
materialists but also by religious terrorists etc.). Holy Father, it is really
very good you are coming to the Philippines. Now I’d be able to see for myself
if you really look like Jonathan Pryce or Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ. On the other
hand, once you get to reach Palo, Leyte and other calamity areas you will also
see for yourself there is no truth to the rumor that we ordered Super Typhoon
Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, from First World countries’ Climate Change
bodies to hasten your coming.
When
Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, told the story of how, after
your election to the Chair of Peter, you first addressed (in jest, of course)
the Cardinal-electors with “May God forgive you [for electing me]”, you must
have been an instant hit to Filipino believers. You were to me. It felt so
refreshing to know that the Holy Father not only has an un-self-conscious
humility and simplicity but also a sense of humor. For this is what we
Filipinos have aplenty, aside from poverty and natural as well as man-made
(mostly by us Filipinos ourselves) calamities. Speaking as a Super Typhoon
Yolanda victim, I realize how our Pinoy humor has helped us laugh through the
horrors of devastation and death with the ever-present reminders of how passing
this grotesque world can be compared to how everlasting God’s love is.
I
join many Filipinos who even now thank you for accepting our people’s
invitation through our religious and political leaders to come and visit us. I also
join the Catholic faithful in our diocese, the Diocese of Borongan, in
expressing a tinge of sadness and disappointment that your visit will not
include any of our own calamity-stricken areas, no matter how equally hard-hit
they were. Still, we prefer to understand and expand our minds and hearts to
our other brothers and sisters you will be spending time and space with. We
know you also visit us in them.
Please
allow me to be a bit personal. In the early morning hours of November 8, 2013
when Super Typhoon Yolanda winds, described by one of our priests here as
“howling like a beast in the wilderness”, seemed to me like a dozen crashing
trains whenever they lashed against our parish rectory, sending debris and
water through the window jalousies in my room, I was half-scared I could die.
But, continuing to pray both loudly and in whispers, I realized I was more
scared of finding our parish church and our then newly-built shrine for the
Black Nazarene razed to the ground in the aftermath. The reason why I am
writing about this, Holy Father, is that despite the many distressing things
about Yolanda and our country’s realities, there is also good news that tempers
the bad. Not only did our church and shrine survive Yolanda. So does the faith
of our people and our sense of community. There’s also good news in prayers
being answered and the miracle of God’s protection being felt as real as a
Super Typhoon’s devastation. I hope knowing this would lighten somehow the
burden of your seeing traces of Yolanda and our other calamities in the country
as well as hearing the voices of their suffering victims.
We
know your visit is the face of Holy Mother Church’s compassion as much as it is
yours. I also wish it teaches our people, especially our leaders who are
embroiled in seemingly perpetual mutually assured recriminations, to try
compassion with one another’s human frailties for once. It is not that we
should take wrongdoings lightly; it is rather that we should take charity more
strongly as the mark of the really “matuwid” or righteous.
Millions
are waiting for you, Holy Father. Even now I can see in mind’s eye a
record-breaking number of throngs longing to get a glimpse of you, for our
people not only see the significance of your own person in relation to whose
Vicar you are but also sense his sacred presence in you as we did in St. John
Paul II, the last successor to St. Peter to have walked our shores. Please help
us not to forget so easily the blessings and responsibilities that come with
being called into his company, especially long after you are gone.
For
we are a people known for having short memories. We easily forget the wrongs
committed in our history, except those of our enemies—personal, political etc.
Worse, we forget equally easily the right things as well. We so easily forget
Jesus Christ when we make decisions and act on them in our families, politics
(here in a particularly glaring fashion), culture (here sadly unacknowledged
mostly), entertainment (Jesus Christ—who he?), quest for inclusive economic
growth (pursued more out of international pressure than out of justice) that
even seconds after we leave behind our beautiful church liturgies there is
little trace of our Christian faith in what we say or do. Please help us,
especially our church leaders, find better ways to make our people bridge our
worship and our lives. For that is where the hope of our nation lies, not to
say our local church’s best chance to fulfill our share in the challenge of the
New Evangelization.
Please
forgive me, Holy Father, for writing a long letter.
Please
forgive me for even entertaining the thought of you having time to read it.
But
I will not apologize for taking this chance, believing like the woman with a
hemorrhage in Mt 9:20-21 that “if I could only touch the tassel” of the Vicar
of Christ’s cloak, healing from the Lord might overflow into our deeply wounded
islands.
With
profound love and respect,
Fr.
E. B. Belizar, Jr.
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