Our Father
DICKENSIAN – the best, the worst – were the times when I met him.
From the eve of the First Quarter Storms to the declaration of Martial Law – the span of my formative years at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary – recalled with chilling accuracy the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities: “…it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
Come to think of it, ain’t these the very times we are currently damned in? Aye, that Irish saying is right: “There is no present, there is no future, only the past happening over and over again.”
So indeed it was the best and the worst of times for an adolescent being nurtured in religious scholasticism but at the same time voraciously feeding on the dialectics of Marx and Engels. A pedagogic contradiction: the Bible, Augustine and Aquinas on one hand, The Communist Manifesto, Lenin and Mao on the other – how I kept my sanity in that period, I still don’t know. Maybe I did cross over to the dark side, having lost the Faith then.
His counsel as my spiritual director – later he became our rector – on the inherent danger in flirting with agnosticism I hardly noticed, immersed as I was in historical and dialectical materialism.
I remember – now with much remorse – one time, in an instance of supreme arrogance, I dared him on the non-existence of God, my atheistic premise grounded on Nietzsche and Hegel. The good father did not indulge my intellectual conceit but kept on believing in me, praying and hoping for my ultimate renewal. This, even at the height of my apostasy.
“There is no God!” I shouted, the day the iron gates of the seminary – San Jose, where I moved to after graduating from MGCS – closed behind me.
One year and one summer after I left his care to propagate my own faith founded on the trinity of Marx-Lenin-Mao, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos issued Proclamation 1081.
Hunted by the military, I joined underground cells doing re-organization work. When school resumed, my name was among those blacklisted at the then-Assumption College – to be re-enrolled only after securing the all-important clearance from the Philippine Constabulary.
Lost, whom did I seek?
There was no second of hesitation on the good father when I asked for help. There was no I-told-you-so recrimination. Not even a brief parental sermon.
At the Pampanga PC Command he vouched for me as a character witness before a panel of interrogators whose viciousness would have made boy scouts out of Tomas de Torquemada’s inquisitors.
Forced out of the interrogation room, so there won’t be a witness to the romanza militar (euphemism for the physical and mental torture inflicted on captured or surrendered activists) I was to undertake, the good father appealed my case before the provincial commander, the dreaded Col. Isidoro de Guzman.
He did not exactly melt the heart of the colonel – later to earn infamy in the Escalante massacre – but he managed to secure my release.
The good father, in what could only be deemed as a leap of faith – in his God unquestionably, in me too, maybe – signed a document that said in part, “…in the event that subject activist-provocateur renew his connection with the Communist Party of the Philippines and its various fronts in the pursuit of rebellion; or undertake acts inimical to peace and order, or in gross violation of the provisions of Proclamation 1081 and other pertinent decrees, the signatory-custodian shall be held responsible and as liable…” with a proviso that in my stead, he would be placed in the PC stockade.
Did he tell me to change my ways? Did he impale in my conscience the gravity of my case, his implication in any instance of carelessness or recidivism on my part thereon?
No. From the Constabulary command, his mere request was for me to please accompany him to church.
Before the Blessed Sacrament, he knelt and silently prayed. He did not even ask me to pray with him. He just motioned me to sit near him.
By the side of the good father, in that darkened corner of the Metropolitan Cathedral, I wept. Washed by a torrent of tears was my rebirth, the renewal of my faith.
No spectacular drama presaged my epiphany, no blinding light, so to speak, shone on my own Damascus Gate. There were but flickering votives. And Apu Ceto.
To him, my father, my lifelong gratitude. And prayers.
(Pampanga News, March 9-15, 2006)
From the eve of the First Quarter Storms to the declaration of Martial Law – the span of my formative years at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary – recalled with chilling accuracy the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities: “…it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
Come to think of it, ain’t these the very times we are currently damned in? Aye, that Irish saying is right: “There is no present, there is no future, only the past happening over and over again.”
So indeed it was the best and the worst of times for an adolescent being nurtured in religious scholasticism but at the same time voraciously feeding on the dialectics of Marx and Engels. A pedagogic contradiction: the Bible, Augustine and Aquinas on one hand, The Communist Manifesto, Lenin and Mao on the other – how I kept my sanity in that period, I still don’t know. Maybe I did cross over to the dark side, having lost the Faith then.
His counsel as my spiritual director – later he became our rector – on the inherent danger in flirting with agnosticism I hardly noticed, immersed as I was in historical and dialectical materialism.
I remember – now with much remorse – one time, in an instance of supreme arrogance, I dared him on the non-existence of God, my atheistic premise grounded on Nietzsche and Hegel. The good father did not indulge my intellectual conceit but kept on believing in me, praying and hoping for my ultimate renewal. This, even at the height of my apostasy.
“There is no God!” I shouted, the day the iron gates of the seminary – San Jose, where I moved to after graduating from MGCS – closed behind me.
One year and one summer after I left his care to propagate my own faith founded on the trinity of Marx-Lenin-Mao, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos issued Proclamation 1081.
Hunted by the military, I joined underground cells doing re-organization work. When school resumed, my name was among those blacklisted at the then-Assumption College – to be re-enrolled only after securing the all-important clearance from the Philippine Constabulary.
Lost, whom did I seek?
There was no second of hesitation on the good father when I asked for help. There was no I-told-you-so recrimination. Not even a brief parental sermon.
At the Pampanga PC Command he vouched for me as a character witness before a panel of interrogators whose viciousness would have made boy scouts out of Tomas de Torquemada’s inquisitors.
Forced out of the interrogation room, so there won’t be a witness to the romanza militar (euphemism for the physical and mental torture inflicted on captured or surrendered activists) I was to undertake, the good father appealed my case before the provincial commander, the dreaded Col. Isidoro de Guzman.
He did not exactly melt the heart of the colonel – later to earn infamy in the Escalante massacre – but he managed to secure my release.
The good father, in what could only be deemed as a leap of faith – in his God unquestionably, in me too, maybe – signed a document that said in part, “…in the event that subject activist-provocateur renew his connection with the Communist Party of the Philippines and its various fronts in the pursuit of rebellion; or undertake acts inimical to peace and order, or in gross violation of the provisions of Proclamation 1081 and other pertinent decrees, the signatory-custodian shall be held responsible and as liable…” with a proviso that in my stead, he would be placed in the PC stockade.
Did he tell me to change my ways? Did he impale in my conscience the gravity of my case, his implication in any instance of carelessness or recidivism on my part thereon?
No. From the Constabulary command, his mere request was for me to please accompany him to church.
Before the Blessed Sacrament, he knelt and silently prayed. He did not even ask me to pray with him. He just motioned me to sit near him.
By the side of the good father, in that darkened corner of the Metropolitan Cathedral, I wept. Washed by a torrent of tears was my rebirth, the renewal of my faith.
No spectacular drama presaged my epiphany, no blinding light, so to speak, shone on my own Damascus Gate. There were but flickering votives. And Apu Ceto.
To him, my father, my lifelong gratitude. And prayers.
(Pampanga News, March 9-15, 2006)
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 9:17 AM
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