When we got to the place, friendly faces greeted us. We sat at the table where Kuya Danny and Ate Roxan del Rosario were seated. From another table, Ate Lolit Grospe came over to greet me and I happily introduced Ate Marivic to them and them to her. From Kuya Danny, I learned that the Seminary is where he gets guest priests to celebrate Mass at New Intramuros and North Susana Executive Villages, where most of the crowd came from. They were evidently long-standing friends of the clergy based in the Seminary.
Fellow Bicolano Brother James prepared a foreword for that night’s guest speaker. It was longish and, my judgment thankfully held at bay, proved to be deserved by the object of his glowing overture. For when he started to deliver his spiel, Fr. Reginaldo Mananzan, S.J., J.C.D., merited more than what his admirer enumerated.
Belatedly, I realized that I should have had my ipad poised during his reading of a text on the Holy Family. Because it should have been a solid base of his talk immediately after he put down his notes and proceeded to extemporize. His opening over, he began to say that the significance of the Holy Family, which used to solemnly start at Nativity before Christmas, has become romantic and romanticized over the modernizing, modernized years. Like, we seem to have forgotten that ang pagbuo ng pamilya ay iskandalo, like what happened to Mary. Making her a likely patroness of unwed mothers, na pinagtsitsismisan, laluna ng Legion o MBG. And this was when the snickers started.
Now that Simbang Gabi is upon us, he recalled the late Cardinal Sin cautioning parents to see to it that their children do go to church, hinting heavily that the Simbang Gabi need not turn out to be gabi ng lagim (because of impregnation). The aghast parent, finding out about the “sprout,” (my pun) would blurt, “Nabuntis ka ng Simbang Gabi, ano? In a desperate attempt to salvage her deflowered state, the poor girl sheepishly mouthed off, “By the Holy Spirit naman e”. Ate Marivic’s and my laughter drowned out the tentative mirth of the multitude.
Fr. Rex continued that it wasn’t true that there was no room at the inn when Joseph was looking for a place for Mary to deliver her child. The truth was, the Jesuit said, the innkeepers only had to look at the shabbily-dressed couple and donkey-borne Mary to appraise that their poverty was not worthy of their lodgings. Nevertheless, thanks to Vatican 2, the family regained its integrity because, as Jesus Christ said, “Where there is love, there is real family”.
Which is why, the priest posited, Pope Francis says, “Let’s go back to Jesus, leave small-minded rules, like not giving kumpisal (and communion, I hastened to add) to sinners (which is judgmental), and listen to the voice of consecration which is Jesus Himself inviting all, saints and sinners, to partake of His body, blood, soul and divinity, thereby erasing their sins in the liturgical cleansing. This sacrament, Fr. Rex, emphasized, is a remedy for sins, not a price for the righteous. It is not to remind us that they killed Him because He consorted with sinners but that He did not deem them so. Therefore, he concluded, to say “Ang simbahan ay para sa mga banal.” is an inaccuracy. Meaning Christ was never a racist (my take).
What then, he posed, is the best vocation to go to heaven? His radical, albeit jocular pronouncements seem to thwart old wives’ tales. As when he pronounced, “Huwag mag-asawa,” as a caution from old to young folks, because it is impyerno. And he segued into a story of a rich, homely woman who itched to get hitched but there were no takers. And, one day, he ran into her and she was with two beautiful Caucasian children in tow prompting him to comment, “You’re not a baby-sitter now, are you?“ And the woman snapped back that no, she’s not a baby-sitter but actually the mother of the two kids. She spent her money on a sperm bank which nearly bankrupted her but she’s happy with the lovely results. Laughter.
All vocations, Fr. Rex said, are legitimate, wherever one is called by God. But it is more blessed to get married because of the sacrament of matrimony. Jesus said to love one another as He has loved us. That love is best exemplified by the domestic love which is the family. Marriage is a beautiful vocation because love without sacrifice dies, so unlike the love that started in Bethlehem and ended on the cross.
How do we describe God’s love? A great theologian (I guessed he meant Christopher West) said that God’s love is best understood by marital love. Matthew 5:48 enjoined us to be perfect like the Father; the prodigal son was forgiven by the forgiving father; the song “Hindi Kita Malilimutan” is culled from Isaiah 49:15 about the Father’s undying love for Jerusalem; making us stand up and notice that, at the final judgment, God will only ask us what we did to the least of our brethren. Concluding, Fr. Fex drew our attention to rich man Dives and poor Lazarus when they both died. Lazarus was in the figurative lap of luxury (can anything surpass heaven?) as opposed to the rich man’s hellish state in Hades. Had he given Lazarus even a smidgen of charity (literally a crumb of Dives’ excess), things would have turned out differently. Because an act of love erases thousands of sins.
His final anecdote involved the Pope and a small boy who, leaving the congregation, approached the Holy See, crying, to ask if his late father is in heaven or in hell because he was not baptized. He was being bullied by his friends because of this. The Pope asked the boy what he thought. The boy said his father was a good man, that he loved his mother and his children. Then he asked the congregation what they thought of that. The crowd was speechless. Therefore, the Pope declared that the boy’s father is up there because no person who loves his family will go to hell. Amen.
