To be a priest

FERVENT HOPE and ardent wish to see a son as a priest.
That, every Kapampangan mother – Catholic naturally – held so dearly, up to my generation, at the least.
It took all reasons to send a boy to the seminary: the most prayerful in the brood, the most well-behaved among siblings. And unreason too: the least good-looking, warranting unattractiveness to women, and therefore deliverance, nay, preclusion from temptation.
The Cursillo Movement in the ‘60s stirred nascent vocation in most men through the three-day rigorous rollos-prayers-mananitas-meditation spiritual package, including that called dos-por-dos : one-on-one encounter with the image of the crucified Christ in a darkened room where the hardest of hearts melted in repentant tears, absolved in penitential wails.
Invariably, new men aborning from the De Colores experience exhibited the evangelical zeal of Paul, post-Damascus Gate. Disqualified automatically by celibacy, these fathers turned to their sons to pursue their sudden epiphanies. Hence in 1967, a total of 68 young boys entered Infima Class at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary in San Fernando, the biggest batch ever, none coming anywhere near it since.
Inured – not simply exercised – in the Greek ideal of mens sana in corpore
sano, boys morphed to men: the intellect honed in rhetorics and mathematics, in the sciences and the classics with the liturgical lingua of Latin taking all of four years through Ars Latina, De Bello Gallico, Cicero, onto Aeneid and Ars Poetica; and the body made fit in daily ball games, in regular long hikes called ambulatios and periodic Mount Arayat climbs.
The nobility of menial work celebrated in and inculcated through manualia and laborandum – regular clean-up of the chapel, dormitory, lavatories, classrooms and the seminary grounds.
And, but of course, the spiritual formation: the cries of “Benedicamus Domino” answered with “Deo gracias” upon waking, lauds in early morning followed by the Holy Mass, recitation of the rosary at noon, the Angelus at dusk, vespers and reflection after dinner, capped by Salve Regina which came to be regarded as the seminarian’s lullaby. All these in a day. Everyday, throughout the five years of minor seminary...
Torrents of memories there, mainly pleasant, as snatches of my life flashed on stage Friday night at the Bren Z. Guiao Convention Center via Perry, The Musical. Where my whole seminary experience so abruptly ended – so regretfully, on hindsight now – Perry proceeded onto full completion – a young man’s elevation into the order of Melchizedek.
Perry is one magnificent tableaux of Kapampangan Catholicism: the clash between the wisdom of age and the foibles of youth, the conflict between unshakeable devotion and recurring doubt, all woven in the rich tapestry of the Faith as we practice, nay, as we live it. With priesthood at its very core.
Perry opens with a mother’s vocation: Perla, devoted mother and devoutly Catholic, played with convincing pathos by Agnes Macam-Romero, silently prays for and openly wishes that her son Perry – played to perfection by Reynon Tolentino, a real seminarian, I suppose – entered the seminary.
(An aside: Nothing special in the title of the musical, the playbill says it took after the common practice of rural folk combining the first syllables of the wife and husband’s names, in this case Perla and Ricardo, for a child.)
Ensconced in the hierarchy of values of the young – barkada first, babae second, pamilya dead last, with God not figuring in at all, the priesthood is a veritable anathema to college-bound Perry.
But God calls in mysterious ways – the “signs” thrown at Perry’s every step, from a group of nuns to a prayerful manang all visioning the priestly persona through the veneer of his all-too-secular, utterly irreverent character.
God’s voice grows louder in Perry’s inner being with the touching homily of the brilliant Among Billy – essayed with the proper charisma by the Rev. Fr. Ted Valencia – and the profession of devotion to the Virgen de los Remedios and Sto. Cristo del Perdon at the fiesta procession.
Not so much yet bewitched but really bothered and bewildered by some stirrings of passion for the seminary, Perry sought the counsel of Among Billy.
With vice as his very comfort zone, Perry felt he should have been last in God’s call list for prospective pastors to his flock.
It is not only the seemingly “holiest,” not only the proven best and brightest, but even the definitive least among men that God calls to his vineyard, the good Among Billy advises Perry, with the example of Fr. Larry Sarmiento, the only “finisher” in my batch of ’67, thrown in as an affirmation of that truism.
So entered Perry the seminary. Immersing himself in the priestly conscientization process of prayers, studies, works, but never removed from the greater community of believers.
Here, not so much a divergence from the play’s central theme of the making of a priest but rather integrating and reinforcing elements, are scenes too of our religious rites and rituals and the quaintness of their praxis.
A featured festival is the kuraldal of Sasmuan, Pampanga’s version of the fertility dance on the feast of Sta. Clara and San Pascual Baylon in Obando, Bulacan.
Then, there are the dagis pisamban – literally “rats of the church” – usually ageing maidens and aged widows whose “Hail Marys” in their recitation of the rosary are interspersed with “social commentaries,” read: chismis, on just about anything, from misers asking for change from peso bills during collection at Mass, to the fashion (non)sense of other churchgoers.
Also the members of the CWL, the si-da-bel-bel, helping themselves to the flowers offered to the Virgin, believing in their healing powers; ruing the blandness of their blue-and-white uniforms, breaking into song-and-dance ending in the ripping of their togs to reveal shiny metallic dresses in all colors.
A sort of a “Sister Act” too with Perla’s spinster siblings, Lydia, Sylvia and Rosa doing their frustrated nun routine.
Ah, how these myriad characters, at once charming, funny and endearing are vivified by that talent pool that is Teatru Ima at Arti. Ah, how the audience lapped it all up, in effect laughing at their own follies.
The last laugh is yet to subside when high drama comes: days from Perry’s ordination, flies home the Saudi-working Ricardo (Fr. Aries Maniago in the role) enraged at Perla’s “lie” of his son’s education, his desire for Perry to be an engineer totally betrayed.(Times have indeed changed since those cursillo days.) Damning. Unforgiving. Ricardo did not want anything to do with his family anymore. Leaving Perry sundered, between the priesthood and his love for his father, facing demons hell-bent in taking him off the priestly path.
Comes to Perry again the good Among Billy, opening up doubts of his own prior to his ordination, how by God’s grace he overwhelmed them, how with God’s grace he lives through the joys and challenges of the priesthood – ”manyaman…masakit ing maging pari…e ka makalapit karing babai pota mi-chismis ka…e mu rin karing lalaki pota misip lang bading ka…,” of the loneliness of the rectory, of the far-flung parish assignments, of the fulfillment of doing the will of God.
“Kawlan me, kilikan me, taryan me…king masanting a parasan.” So Among Billy implored God for the troubled son and the conflicted father.
“Kawlan me, kilikan me, taryan me…king masanting a parasan.” So the son and the father prayed for each other.
“Guinu ika ng bala” – the final surrender to God’s will, deliverance, conversion attained.
Ordination, the Final Act. Heaven’s Gate itself as though opened. With Apu Ceto as himself presiding over Perry’s alter Christus sanctification. Transcendence, radiant, real. To the devout, a re-affirmation. To the doubting, a reassurance. Of faith in the priesthood.
With its message that touches the heart, its music that lifts the very soul, no sermon in the grandest cathedrals of the world could have made a greater pitch for vocations than Perry.
Director-Composer Andy Alviz, Scriptwriter Randy del Rosario, and Teatru Ima at Arti, God bless all of you.