IN my hometown of Borongan May is a
festive month for as long as I remember. No other thing makes it so than the
many neighborhood, clan, barangay, farmers’ and workers’ associations around
San Isidro Labrador, prompting people to request Masses in honor of the farmer
saint for their association or community and organize dance parties in the
aftermath. (Our team ministry was once inundated with such requests that I
almost collapsed out of sheer exhaustion on top of the summer heat after my
last San Isidro Mass).
You could say we
are exceedingly religious to be requesting Masses to introduce street or
neighborhood parties. I would grant a point there. But, as I have often
publicly decried, the presence of mostly a handful of women and children in
these liturgical celebrations while the men folk and the rest of the people
troop to the evening dance parties in droves is very telling. And it is very
telling, for one, of how much we could keep a tradition without remembering
why, of how we could be deep into an event without knowing its story.
To say that San
Isidro Labrador celebrations should never be used as an excuse for semi-pagan
revelry may sound like a non-Catholic commentary. But nothing is more Catholic,
Christian and sane than purifying our celebrations around the feasts of our
favorite saints in order to make them serve better the true teachings of the
faith and Christ-centered living.
Even the saints would
desire that. And miss we should and must not what our forebears were teaching
us in the original story of our traditions around San Isidro Labrador. Things
that San Isidro Labrador himself continues to teach us from his deeds rather
than his words.
One: Worship of
God is the highest priority. San Isidro’s example of going to Mass first thing
in the morning is essentially the spirit behind our forebears’ instructing us
to request a Mass in honor of the farmer saint before even considering other
activities to mark his feast day. It should not escape our attention that San
Isidro himself even ignored his fellow farmers’ complaints and taunts when he
spent plenty of time in worship and prayer at Mass before he would even handle
a plough. Nowadays we easily go where the crowds are headed, which tells us how
much courage it took San Isidro to follow his highest priority.
Two: What works
in life is not you and I insisting, “Show me, Lord, and I’ll believe” but the
Lord urging us, “Believe first and I’ll show you”. Again we gather this from
San Isidro’s example. When asked by his landlord, Juan de Vargas, at the
prompting of other complaining farmers, if someone was helping him till his
parcel of land to explain its greater yield, San Isidro insisted he only had
himself and God. The truth of the matter was, he had so much faith in God it
bore fruit in miracles, including those tales of angels helping him plow the
field and his reaping big harvests.
Three: Charity
may begin at home but it doesn’t end there; it is also extended to others,
especially to those most in need. Accounts tell of how San Isidro would divide
his harvests and earnings into three: a portion was reserved for the church,
another for the needy and the third, for his family. At the risk of being accused
of bias, I see in this act San Isidro Labrador’s expression of his love for God
above everything and love of neighbor as extension of his love of self which
includes love of family. San Isidro’s practice of charity is a proclamation
that God’s love is not, as it were, a self-enclosed lake but a river that
overflows. And it overflows into his creatures, us human beings especially who,
he expects, must share the flow with the most deserving. Of the stories
regarding San Isidro’s charity I like best the one in which he brought beggars
with him to a luncheon invitation. On being told only he was invited, he
nevertheless asked for his share and
divided it with the beggars. What a catechism in action. (I might add, partly
in jest, how San Isidro’s courage went with his charity because it took a lot
of courage to ask for his share after the rebuff by his host.)
Four: Love of
God and love of neighbor includes practical love for the rest of God’s
creation. For instance, who would miss the account of San Isidro’s kindness to
hungry birds? We are told of the farmer saint bringing a sack of corn to the
mill one morning and, seeing hungry birds scavenging vainly for food on a
frosty field, poured half of the sack’s contents for the birds to eat. Again he
ignored the taunts of people around him when he did this. But, on arriving at
the mill, his sack was full again and the resulting ground corn produced twice
as much flour. The farmer saint ignored and, it is safe to say, even forgave
his enemies. I guess I could say that the Lord blessed him for that and got
even on his behalf. But that is not the
point I wish to make. What we must gather from the farmer saint’s example is
his love for God’s creatures, which is very much of a piece with today’s
Church’s emphasis on the integrity of God’s creation and our obligation in
charity to protect the environment. Love not usefulness should be our
motivation.
Finally, his
daily union with Jesus in the Eucharist and through personal prayer bore fruit
in the Lord working in him and through him. Should we be surprised about the
miracle stories through the farmer saint’s intercession before and after his
death? Of how he simply pricked the earth one day and a spring gushed forth, of
how he helped the triumph of Christian troops over the Moors through a secret
path he revealed to Alfonse VIII to spring a surprise attack on them; of how he
obtained cures for peasants and royalty alike; of how even his dead body, which
was discovered to be incorrupt, occasioned spectacular healings? In awe, yes;
but surprised, we need not be. Why? Because Jesus who worked miracles while on
earth is still present and continually working in his Church; and this is clear
especially in his saints.
Yet I humbly
submit that the greatest miracle of San Isidro Labrador is his staying power
even in our modern consciousness. This is something that comes, I believe, from
the timelessness of his life’s message: Faith that is expressed in charity is
the key not only to the consolations of God but especially to the God of
consolations.
