To be a priest
MANY ARE called, few are chosen. So the Good Book says.
I was called in, and five years later, chosen out of the seminary. Less for my own good as for the sake of Mother Church, my prefect told me – not jokingly – that sad April day in 1972 when he walked me out of the portals of the Sacred Heart Novitiate in then bucolic Novaliches.
It’s all water, murky at that, under the bridge now, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I acquiesced to the counsel of my then minor seminary rector and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Paciano B. Aniceto, for me to try San Carlos Seminary down EDSA in Guadalupe.
As quickly, the wonderment turns to certainty: I would have most surely been driven out there too, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist streak virtually running through my system then.
Still, I would have had the pleasure and privilege of being classmate to one of the called and chosen whom I hold in the highest esteem – the Rev. Fr. Ermelito Garcia Simbulan.
Today, October 9, Among Elmer celebrates his silver sacerdotal jubilee in his parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria in Porac.
It was in January 1991, as the first cura paroco of the newly-created Parish of St. Jude Thaddeus, that I came to know him, largely through my wife who was an active “ROTC” – that, to the uninitiated, is the English translation of the euphemistic “dagis pisamban” and has nothing to do with the discontinued military training in college.
Among Elmer instantly struck me as the priest for the times: his spiritual duties finding complement with his social advocacies.
Before Among Elmer – at least in St. Jude and in the nearby parish churches we attended – never had the meaning of the Gospel given as much relevance to day-to-day life.
And as expected, the conservatives among the parishioners were “scandalized” at his “politicization of the pulpit.” A now-common phrase that always brings to mind that great soul of India: “I can say without hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”
So Among Elmer did tell his congregation not to get as godfather for their children’s baptism, confirmation and wedding a political lord he believed to have raided the public coffers.
So he punctuated the final blessing after a Mass with an a la Flavier “Let’s DO it!” just a day before the barangay polls where one candidate was named “Do.”
So he presided too the building of a caring Christian community along with the rising of the church in St. Jude. And when the village faced the threat of Mt. Pinatubo’s lahar, he was there leading the parishioners in sandbagging operations, himself alternately shoveling, and carrying sandbags. I don’t know if there was any other priest who did that.
Then he was transferred to St. Ignatius of Loyola parish in Manibaug. Here, the challenge of redemption took on a critically physical dimension – the obliteration of the village from the map posed by the village’s inclusion within the proposed megadike structure, serving as a lahar catch basin.
He led his flock in protests and demonstrations and the government engineers subsequently re-aligned the megadike to spare Manibaug.
It was here too that his critical stand against the then emerging irregularities in sand quarrying germinated, taking full flowering and fruition with his transfer to his present parish in Porac, at the very pith of the quarry scam.
Yes, long before Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao took the quarry mess to the floor of the sangguniang panlalawigan, Among Elmer had used both pulpit and parish hall in denouncing not simple theft but complex plunder in the quarry collections, so manifest in the unexplained wealth abounding in chosen palaces, err, places well within sight of his church.
It did not need for Among Elmer to run and win the governorship to see that there is money – oodles of money – being plundered in the quarry industry. He knew it. He raised hell against it. To the point of refusing to bless some projects attributed to the perceived plunderers.
Among Elmer makes my image of the priest. One I wished I could have been but could never be. He makes me proud being his friend, and even prouder being a Catholic. Here’s to your golden jubilee, Among.
(Zona Libre, PUNTO! October 9, 2007)
I was called in, and five years later, chosen out of the seminary. Less for my own good as for the sake of Mother Church, my prefect told me – not jokingly – that sad April day in 1972 when he walked me out of the portals of the Sacred Heart Novitiate in then bucolic Novaliches.
It’s all water, murky at that, under the bridge now, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I acquiesced to the counsel of my then minor seminary rector and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Paciano B. Aniceto, for me to try San Carlos Seminary down EDSA in Guadalupe.
As quickly, the wonderment turns to certainty: I would have most surely been driven out there too, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist streak virtually running through my system then.
Still, I would have had the pleasure and privilege of being classmate to one of the called and chosen whom I hold in the highest esteem – the Rev. Fr. Ermelito Garcia Simbulan.
Today, October 9, Among Elmer celebrates his silver sacerdotal jubilee in his parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria in Porac.
It was in January 1991, as the first cura paroco of the newly-created Parish of St. Jude Thaddeus, that I came to know him, largely through my wife who was an active “ROTC” – that, to the uninitiated, is the English translation of the euphemistic “dagis pisamban” and has nothing to do with the discontinued military training in college.
Among Elmer instantly struck me as the priest for the times: his spiritual duties finding complement with his social advocacies.
Before Among Elmer – at least in St. Jude and in the nearby parish churches we attended – never had the meaning of the Gospel given as much relevance to day-to-day life.
And as expected, the conservatives among the parishioners were “scandalized” at his “politicization of the pulpit.” A now-common phrase that always brings to mind that great soul of India: “I can say without hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”
So Among Elmer did tell his congregation not to get as godfather for their children’s baptism, confirmation and wedding a political lord he believed to have raided the public coffers.
So he punctuated the final blessing after a Mass with an a la Flavier “Let’s DO it!” just a day before the barangay polls where one candidate was named “Do.”
So he presided too the building of a caring Christian community along with the rising of the church in St. Jude. And when the village faced the threat of Mt. Pinatubo’s lahar, he was there leading the parishioners in sandbagging operations, himself alternately shoveling, and carrying sandbags. I don’t know if there was any other priest who did that.
Then he was transferred to St. Ignatius of Loyola parish in Manibaug. Here, the challenge of redemption took on a critically physical dimension – the obliteration of the village from the map posed by the village’s inclusion within the proposed megadike structure, serving as a lahar catch basin.
He led his flock in protests and demonstrations and the government engineers subsequently re-aligned the megadike to spare Manibaug.
It was here too that his critical stand against the then emerging irregularities in sand quarrying germinated, taking full flowering and fruition with his transfer to his present parish in Porac, at the very pith of the quarry scam.
Yes, long before Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao took the quarry mess to the floor of the sangguniang panlalawigan, Among Elmer had used both pulpit and parish hall in denouncing not simple theft but complex plunder in the quarry collections, so manifest in the unexplained wealth abounding in chosen palaces, err, places well within sight of his church.
It did not need for Among Elmer to run and win the governorship to see that there is money – oodles of money – being plundered in the quarry industry. He knew it. He raised hell against it. To the point of refusing to bless some projects attributed to the perceived plunderers.
Among Elmer makes my image of the priest. One I wished I could have been but could never be. He makes me proud being his friend, and even prouder being a Catholic. Here’s to your golden jubilee, Among.
(Zona Libre, PUNTO! October 9, 2007)
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 12:30 PM
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