POPULAR DEVOTIONS AND THE NEW EVANGELIZATION (Talk delivered by Fr. Catalino G. Arevalo, SJ at the second day of the Philippine Conference on New Evangelization on October 17, 2013, at the Arena of the University of Santo Tomas Quadricentennial Pavilion.) (Part 2 of 2) Pero what is really the meaning of popular religiosity or popular religion? In 1972 we translated a book by the Latin American theologian, Segundo Galilea and the appendix was written by Fr. Chito Tagle who was just recently ordained at that time. And he said that in Latin America about 85 percent belong to popular Catholicism. But popular Catholicism or catolisismo popular is not limited to the poor, to the less formally educated, the marginalized sectors but are also found in the large sectors of the middle classes and the economically well off. But it primarily refers to the poor sectors, to el pueblo, mga tao ng bayan. Cardinal Sin in 1987 said, “I am guessing that 90 percent of Filipino Catholics live and practice their faith along the lines of popular Catholicism.” And it’s true. Even the more educated people, sabi ni Fr. Galilea, the more educated, the more elite people are ashamed to practice popular Catholicism but it is the Catholicism that means something to them. Cory Aquino had a degree in French and Mathematics in the States and almost finished her legal studies here in the Philippines but all her life was the Rosary, all her life was Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart. And when she was dying she was holding the Rosary from Fatima, all those days and weeks that she was dying. Recently I published a homily I gave on the 30th anniversary of the killing of Ninoy Aquino where I looked for all the writings of Cory that I could find and she said in the seven years, seven months and seven days that Ninoy was kept in prison, he kept asking Jesus, give me the secret of what I must do in order to save my people from the dictatorship and everything that the dictatorship was bringing to the country. Sabi ni Cory it took many years but finally Jesus made it clear to him: He had to give up his life. He had to sacrifice his life. So sabi niya, the two of us consecrated ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Ninoy offered his life for his people, he wanted to die for his people, and he left his death to the hands of the Immaculare Heart of Mary, so did she. That’s popular Catholicism. It’s a devotion to the Immaculate Heart. It is not something that is just kept in the secrecy of our hearts, in the secrecy of our lives. It goes up to the public square. It is not something low or unimportant. Si Pope Benedict, sa kanyang libro, the Light of the World, page 161, tanong niya, “is the folk church on the way out?” The answer he would give at the end, “It would seem that we are heading increasingly toward the form of Christianity based on personal decision.” I think that is correct but it does not cancel out folk Catholicism or popular Catholicism. In that same book, page 161, Pope Benedict says in answer to the question, “Is the folk Church on its way out?” In the Philippines there is a folk Church, and even today a Filipino is simply a Catholic with joy and exuberance.” Pakita nga natin iyon! Every Filipino is a Catholic with joy and exuberance! Para sa atin, we are not retreating, we are not ashamed to profess that we are Catholics, that we love Jesus, we love Mary and that the whole meaning of our lives is to bring Jesus and Mary into the world. That is the whole meaning of this seminar on new evangelization. Pag labas ninyo rito, new ardor, our hearts burning, to bring Jesus into a world that needs Him now as it has never needed Him before. So ang katapusan, ang summary ni Galilea, which I think is still true because it is more or less a summary of the document of Aparecida which I will go to some extent later. Sabi ni Galilea, in sum, the paramount reason of pastoral concern for popular Catholicism is the Church’s preferential love for the poor. So those two things go together: catolisismo popular and the preferential love for the poor. One is important because of the other and one is served because of the other. So we solve, as it were, two problems by paying close attention to this, this option calls for integration of a nearness to people especially the poor. Di ba sabi ni Pope Francis, the priests and bishops should have the smell of the sheep. Nangangamoy tupa! Because they have to be close to them. Don’t hide in your rooms, don’t hide in your churches, don’t hide in your sacristies. Go out into the streets and bring Jesus to those who need him so badly but they do not get Him because you do not bring Him to them. Sabi ni Jesus, nung tinanong sa kaniya, what are the signs of the disciples of John the Baptist. One of the signs is He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor (Lk 4:18). The poor have the Gospel preached to them (Mt 11:6). This option realizes that a “church of the poor that is not taken up with the piety/religiosity of the poor is senseless,” Sabi ni Fr. Pedro Arrupe. In the year 2000 the Philippine bishops declared a Year of the Two Hearts. Nagkaroon kami ng meeting, kasama sila Archbishop Valles yata, and a couple of other bishops, I don’t remember now. And we had about 25 or 30 lay people, men and women, na galing sa mga parokya at sa iba’t ibang lugar. Sabi ko, nung tinawag ako, the devotion to the heart of Jesus is dying. The bishops want us to bring it back because it is so important for our lives. One of the men raised his hand and he said, the devotion to the Sacred Heart is not dying in the ordinary people, it has only died with the religious and the priests. Bakit ganoon? Huwag kayong magagalit ha. Just a couple of weeks ago a layman came to me. He said, I am told that the educated young are losing the faith in larger numbers. I said, I don’t know if it is true but maybe it is. And they are losing it primarily in the Ateneo and in La Salle. Ewan ko kung totoo. But I think it is because in so many academic places, kukuha ng mga professors, pupunta sa Europe and America, and they pick up all these ideas. This is one of the ideas about popular religion: kung galing sa US, kung galing sa Europa, the most progressive dalhin dito. Sabi sa akin ng isang German professor, in the last 60 or 70 years we have had four great theological systems developed in Europe. Just give the names: the Dominicans Schillebeeckx, the Jesuits, Rahner; Hans Ur von Baltasar, Joseph Ratzinger, great theologians. While they were writing these magnificent works which nobody would deny were really magnificent, the people lost the faith. Totoo! It’s true! And the question being asked is, “What is the connection between the theology being taught in seminaries and universities, all imported, all irrelevant and the loss of the faith?” We are importing all these which could do nothing on the loss of the faith. We are not developing a theology, a kind of a language, a kind of expression which would mean something to our people, to our youth. I rely now mainly for a positive evaluation of this popular religiosity from this document that the Latin American bishops that was issued and approved in Aparecida. Aparecida is a city in Brazil, which, I am told, has the largest catholic cathedral in the whole world. There are four huge church buildings and every one of the church buildings can hold 12,000 people, so all in all there are 48,000 people who are hearing Mass together in the basilica of Aparecida, and it is supposed to be the largest Catholic church in the whole world, the largest catholic cathedral in the whole world. Pero talo tayo ngayon ni Manalo! They are building the largest Christian church in Bulacan. 90,000 people daw ang makakapasok. Kaya sabi ng iba gusto daw ng Papa pumarito dito next year kung pwede walang occasion daw. Sabi ko may occasion! The centenary of the Iglesia ni Kristo. Bagong simbahan, doon pupunta ang Papa, 90,000 people. Now let me say about popular religiosity, a little bit of the negative evaluation which comes largely from westernized culture elites. What percentage is that of Filipino Catholics? Siguro mga three per cent. Ang sabi nila, “Popular Religiosity is practised by a ‘low and base kind’ of people, uncultured, ‘proletarian’, ignorant and uneducated, superstitious and fatalistic” and thus looked down on and even despised…Popular religiosity is at best tolerated, until in due time it dies away. Certainly it is not accepted nor respected, is not to be encouraged or fostered; eventually you must rid churches of many images, retablos from Spanish times. Nakakaiyak ang mga simbahan sa Bohol na nasira, the church of Baclayon is pulverized. Remove the devotional frills, the rosaries, novenas, angels, Santo Entierros. Immediately after the second Vatican Council, pwede akong magsalita mangyari buhay na ako noon, a priest coming from Europe, a missionary, stood in a pulpit in Mindanao, pari ang nagsabi nito, pinasunog lahat ng estatwa, yung hindi sinunog they broke it with axes. And in one church again a priest from outside, a missionary, took the rosary and crushed it and threw it on the floor. After Vatican II here in the Philippines. Superstitions! Sabi. So all this is looked down by the people who believe that only what comes from abroad and only what comes from Europe is the correct Catholicism and the right thing that we must try to do. What is true religion according to them? It is a Western-style, middle-class way of practising religion that is intrinsically better than that of the poor classes. Father John McDade who was then the principal of Heathrow School of Theology in London, said, pseudo intellectual middle class tried to destroy all the devotions in the United Kingdom after the council. Right after the council there were many, many conversions in Japan, and then it suddenly stopped. Some 20 years ago I saw a Japanese priest who had a doctorate in sociology. Sabi ko, what happened? There were so many conversions in Japan right after the war and then it stopped. Sabi niya, Father this is not a scientific conclusion but it is something I really believe. He says when the European priests came they destroyed all our devotions. And so the people stopped coming to the church so the true religion is only that which is imported, which is given to us as an example from the cultured and academic elites and what is coming from the poor is only the spirituality of the uneducated and the base. Now it was the Latin Americans who in the Synod of 1974, I happened to be there because Cardinal Julio Rosales brought me there and there in that Synod of 1974 in Rome on Evangelization and the Contemporary World, the Latin Americans fought very strongly for popular religion, for popular religiosity. In Evangelii nuntiandi for the first time Pope Paul VI wrote that this is an instrument of faith, of great value and should be fostered and developed and not sent away. We should not wait for it to end but we should foster it and we should develop it more fully. It is also in PCP 2, the bishops and people of PCP 2 came out with popular religiosity and they had a whole section on it, and they tell you what is good in it, and they tell you what needs to be changed and improved and they tell you to keep it moving forward. Let me say it very briefly now because I will not have time to develop it: What were the conclusions of the Synod of 1974 and the work of the Latin American Church after that? 1. Popular Catholicism was a deeply characteristic, “identity dimension” of the poorer Catholic people (pueblo, the poor sectors), this popular religion is a true, perfectly legitimate way of living the Faith and the Gospel. 2. Popular religiosity was not something shallow. It was not naïve, ignorant, base but something of profound faith, hope and love, the genuine work of grace. This is what the documents even the papal document of De Culto Divino and the letter Marianis Cultus of Pope Paul VI and the documents especially from the Latin American Church say. What popular religion is, is not the creation of the priest but a creation of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit working directly in the hearts of the poor because it is the priest who so often tried to kill popular religiosity. In the history of Guadalupe the priest did not want to spread the devotion, it was the people who wanted it. And finally who won? It was the Holy Spirit because it was the Holy Spirit keeping it alive in their hearts. Popular Devotions and the New Evangelization. So popular religion is not something shallow or naïve, ignorant or base, but something of profound faith, hope and love, and the work of grace and Spirit among the poor at the peripheries. It has never been pushed much by the official Church. 3. That it was a good, noble way of Catholic living; but it needed serious appreciation and work of fostering. It is a Catholicism from the ground up. Bishop Claver is always saying that. You are asking for inculturation, popular religion is the purest from of inculturation because it does not come from above down, it comes from below up. So it is its own ground, in its orientations and approaches which need now to be deeply understood. Sabi nila, especially from Latin America, the problem is by the time our seminarians are finished in the seminary, they have lost the taste for popular religion so instead they try to impose what they learn in the seminary on their people. So this is from the ground up. Cardinal Tagle said in a talk in San Carlos, tinanong daw niya, mga madre, mga seminarista, before, how many of you used to touch the statues and kiss the statues, before? Lahat. Ngayon, not one! Why? Mas mataas po ang religion namin ngayon. It is higher not to practise popular faith. Secretly baka sa kuwarto hinahalikan natin ang image ng Birhen, nagdarasal tayo ng rosaryo pero ayaw natin ipakita iyon, mangyari hindi tayo westernized, up to date. This is the basic problem I think. Sabi nga ni Fr. Galilea, those in the upper middle highly economic classes are ashamed to practise popular religion. So ang kanilang religion nanggagaling sa libro na nanggagaling sa abroad hindi nanggagaling sa kanilang puso. Nung ako ay nasa seminary sa John Vianney in Cagayan de Oro, the seminarians, when they were singing, they kept mispronouncing alleluia or something like that.. . they were being corrected by the choir master. Tapos lumapit yung isang pari. Iwan na ninyo, sabihin the way they say it because when they say it the way they say it, it comes from the heart, but when they sing it the way you want it sung, it comes from your head. 4. That it was already a rich spiritual resource for the faith and religious living. Cardinal Bergoglio just a few months before he was elected pope gave an interview for EWTN regarding the new evangelization, and he says we have discovered in Latin America that popular Catholicism, the piety of the poor is the richest and most valuable resource that we have, cultural and spiritual that we have in the Latin American Church. And that is written in the document in Aparecida because I am told that the document on popular religion in the Aparecida document was written by Cardinal Bergoglio. He is very strong on popular religiosity. Let me go then to Aparecida. This was a meeting of all the Latin American bishops in 2007 in Aparecida. They produced a big documento conclusivo and the section on popular religiosity is written it seems by Cardinal Bergoglio. Let me just take some points from it. 1. The commentary says that the section on popular piety and religion manifests profound experience of the pastors with the people. That is what they keep insisting in Latin America, if the pastors are close to their people, if in the words of the pope they smell like the sheep they will have an experience of what this popular faith is. Msgr. Clem nung pumunta siya sa Quiapo about four years ago, galing iyan sa Ateneo, eh, he despised this low kind of faith experience. Pero ngayon mamaya pag nagsalita siya sa inyo, iiyak na siya. He has seen so much depth and beauty, he has seen miracles taking place in Quiapo. So once you get in touch with what is going on in the hearts. Aparecida says you have to get in touch with what is going on in the hearts of the poor, when they go there. Di ba ang Quiapo hindi nila sinasaraan hanggang alas tres ng umaga, mangyari maraming families save up enough money for three or four years so they can come to Manila to pray to the Nazareno. They don’t have money to sleep anywhere so pinababayaan nilang matulog sa simbahan hanggang alas tres ng umaga. This is the faith that makes all these sacrifices. One of the things they say in Aparecida. Sustained prayer and reflection is needed to go with experience. Our priests and our ministers had to experience something of this themselves, that is the point they are making. Prayerful discernment of the grace given content popular faith has. This document is not a feedback from the elite mind but an articulation of what the experiences of the poor read by a prayerful heart. Number 256. Popular religiosity is called the soul of the Latin American peoples, the precious treasure of the Catholic Church in Latin America present in living and in a multitude of ways it merits our respect and affection. It manifests, Fr. Tagle’s appendix in Galilea’s book it says the same thing… It manifests a thirst for God which only the simple and the poor people know (444). It is a thirst for God, a desire for the experience of God which only the simple and the poor people have. People’s Catholicism is deeply inculturated which contains the most valuable dimension of Latin American culture (que contiene la dimension mas valiosa de la cultura latino Americana). The deepest, most valuable dimension of all Latin American culture is popular religiosity. How do you react here? We have so much colonial mentality. Pag galing sa atin mababa, mabaho. We don’t look at and respect what is ours. Even our artists have to be recognized in the States before we recognize them here. A movie has to have big audiences in the States and Europe before they will come here. Bakit tayo ganoon? I am 88 years old and I am still wondering why. Everything foreign is better than us. Number 259. It enumerates the expressions of the spirituality of the people in some details but it brings experience of mystery to the poor, faith experience that makes them transcend their ordinary lives. Kung ang Diyos ay minamahal ang mahihirap papaano ipapakita ng Diyos ang kanyang pagmamahal? His presence in their lives, a presence not mediated by priests, and books and ceremonies in the church. He acts directly in their lives, that is what they are saying. I’m saying this, I am not saying it, it is the bishops, bringing out decisions that mark their lives. There are many stories of profound conversion, stories of deep forgiveness of graces received. It is not espiritualidad de masas, the bishops say but rather a personal faith experience, sometime extraordinary. No. 262. We value positively what the Holy Spirit has already manifested. The Holy See’s document De cultu divino, no. 64, “Popular religion is an indispensable starting point in deepening the faith of the people and in bringing it to maturity.” But the pastors must be sensitive towards it. They must perceive the inner dimensions and the undeniable values that are present in the hearts of the people. Devotion to Mary and the saints should thus lead to imitation of their prayer life. So ano ang kailangan? PCP 2 already mentioned this. Aparecida says the same thing. We should move, lead the people, let the people grow to a beginning of some deeper understanding of scriptures, of scriptures as a spirituality, that the scriptures are prayer. That is the first use of the scriptures to be read and reflected on in prayer. It must lead to the sacramental life especially through the Sundays. Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Timothy Dolan said perhaps the most important thing in the new evangelization is the Sunday Eucharist; that we make of Sunday itself a great day the way the Bible makes of it. It is a day with God. One of the most terrible things that the so-called modern world has done is to destroy Sunday. This is what Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict have said in their encyclicals. So a revitalization of the Sunday. How will it be done? By imagination, to awaken the imagination in the service of Sunday. So, 265, 263, 264. Popular religion is not to be considered as a secondary mode of Christian living or that will forget the primacy of the action of the Spirit and God’s free, independent initiative of love. Popular religiosity holds a powerful sense of transcendence, a spontaneous ability to find support in God, a true experience of supernatural love. Popular religion, Aparecida says is an expressin of that sabiduria supernatural, a spiritual, supernatural wisdom. It does not depend directly on the enlightenment of the mind but on the internal action of the Spirit in the heart. So popular religiosity involves faith encounter with the Lord, involves much of the bodily, the perceptible, the symbolic. The last thing that I will quote on Aparecida is this: In the environment of secularization experienced by our peoples it is this, personal, popular religiosity is a powerful confession of the living God who acts in history and a channel of handing out grace. That is the big question. The secularization that has invaded the minds, Benedict used to say it has invaded the Church very heavily, how many of us really believe that God acts today in history, that God acts in our lives. Cardinal Ratzinger, when I was a member of the Theological Commission, says we have come to a point, this was in Europe, that we are only allowed to believe in the Bible what the candidates for doctorate in the German universities allow us to believe. We have been caught, Francis Maloney in the San Carlos, we have been caught in the imprisonment of Scripture scholars of the old methods, the old historico-critical method. It is important he said but that is just one step and there are three or four steps after that. He said himself, in seminaries today it is the last step. The historico-critical method has become the last step, it is an indispensable step but there are five steps before that because we must bring in the faith. A few weeks ago, Bishop Ambo David gave a tremendous talk at the Loyola School of Theology on bringing the imagination back in the reading of the scriptures. Nobody can say he does not know the scriptures, he has a doctorate from Louvain and studied in Jerusalem. A few years ago he said tama na. This is too much, I cannot believe in miracles anymore, I cannot believe in intervention of God. I have to go back to the Fathers of the Church. The three books of Benedict on Jesus are going back to the Fathers of the Church as the supernaturally guided way also of reading the scriptures. Before I end, let me go back to the two special forms of popular religiosity which are of primary importance. We have to reawaken these. Again, Father Timothy Radcliff, it is the bringing of imagination back to the service of the faith. As in Latin America so in our country, our people so readily identify with Jesus especially in his passion and death because there is so much unspoken hardship and suffering in their lives, the daily struggle to survive. Their and their loved ones’ suffering they back with the strength and courage which itself is the shape of true holiness in the lives of the poor. A few years ago we gave a special award to an American ex-priest who has been working for the urban poor in this country. And when he spoke he said, you do not understand how much holiness there is in the ordinary lives of the poor where it is a struggle and a heroism just to earn enough to have food on the table for themselves and their children, to carry on day by day not discouraged by lack of money or lack of opportunity but to keep going. He says how much holiness there is in that and how little we understand it. The poor go to Jesus to get this strength. This strength and courage do not pass through the hands of the priests and the sisters, even, it comes from God. Not a single image dominates in our devotion to Jesus. There is Jesus on the cross especially in past times, his stripes, and wounds, and blood are so vividly portrayed in such harrowing details. There is a crucifix I saw in our retreat house in Angono you can see all the wounds and the blood embodied in the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. It is because, the Aparecida document beautifully says, when the people look at it they say, I am loved. He is the one who loves me and this is the way he has loved me. Jesus on the Cross by his wounds we are healed. There is Jesus carrying the cross, the Nazareno, around that image so much identifying with Jesus among the poor, so many panatas are made by men especially, so many personal sorrows are joined. On most Good Friday processions at least in the past years, the final image is the Pieta, the mother holding the lifeless, broken body of her son on her lap with all its deep and silent pain so powerfully felt by the heart of a mother. Once I was in Blumentritt on a Good Friday, and the ceremonies had been over and the Santo Entierro was put there on the side and I saw an old woman, I put this in my book, with a little boy walking slowly towards the Santo Entierro. And when she got there she knelt and kissed every wound on the hands, feet and sides, with so much devotion that the priest standing beside me was brought to tears. Then she took the little boy and made him do the same thing. Next year she would be dead, but in the midst of all her sufferings, she cannot pay for doctors, it is the presence of the suffering Christ who suffered this for her that gives her the strength. There is strangely so much thought on the veneration of the Santo Entierro, Jesus lying dead ready for burial. The Aparecida document says death plays a very important role in the lives of the poor and the Santo Entierro gives so much meaning to that death. More than anything else, in the life of Dostoyevsky, it is the dead Christ which underlines the fact that God became man for us, thoroughly man even to death, even to burial. It is the meaning of the incarnation of being like us and in nowhere else we see it there. Dostoyevsky spent several hours looking at the painting of Holbeing of the dead Christ and was reduced to tears and sobbing, several hours. This is what happens to the people. I think in Angeles City there is now the great devotion to the Santo Entierro, if Bishop Ambo is here he can tell us. Now you can’t keep the people away who go there by droves, why? Will you go to the Santo Entierro? But the poor go because it has a meaning for them. Bishop Soc when he was at the shrine, people asked him to have a Santo Entierro. It doesn’t mean something to us who get our devotions from the book, they get it from the dead Christ. Aparecida says it quite simply: Our people identify themselves especially with the suffering of Jesus. They look at him, they touch his broken feet and side, as though saying in their hearts this is he who has loved me, so greatly loved me, who has given himself up for me. I remember Pope Benedict used to say, the greatest miracle of God is that he made it possible for himself to suffer like us, to suffer with us, to die like us, to die with us. That is the greatest miracle, Pope Benedict said, that God ever made. Many of them, Aparecida says, beaten, ignored, dispossessed go to the image of the suffering Christ and hold their arms aloft. With their characteristic religiosity they firmly adhere to the immense love which God has for them. That love which constantly reminds them of their own dignity. They are people of dignity. They are people who can stand up because they know they have been loved and because they know they have loved like this. At Blumentritt once I saw a man bringing flowers to the Santo Entierro. And he told me he had one son coming to maturity who had died a few days ago. It is here that he finds comfort on the death of the son. At a New York public hospital when I was working there as a young priest, there was a young Italian American whose feet were completely burned. He was working in the electric towers and he was electrocuted and two legs were rendered completely hopeless. He had the crucifix in front of him and whenever I would approach the bed, he would point to the crucifix and he would say, he loved me. This is the source of the dignity of the poor. The God who has loved them like this. The devotion to the Sacred Heart. Pope Benedict had the devotion to the Sacred Heart and he wanted to bring it back to the scriptures and his image of the Sacred Heart was not so much that of Margaret Mary but of Jesus on the Cross with the blood dripping down. And the text from the scripture taken from the Old Testament, “they should look upon Him whom they have pierced.” And Benedict says all of Christian spirituality is there. All you have to do is look at Jesus and repeat to yourself, “They shall look upon Him whom they have pierced. He says that in a very true sense that scene in John 19:24-27 is the summary of all the spirituality of the New Testament. They look upon Him whom they have pierced. The devotion to the Divine Mercy which is another form of the Sacred Heart is that. I turn now to the Blessed Mother. Aparecida says they also find God’s affection and love in the face of Mary, and in it they see the Ascension meaning of the Gospel. From the shrine of Guadalupe our Blessed Mother makes her littlest children feel the fold of their mantle now from Aparecida she asks them to cast their nets into the world to bring out of anonymity those who are sunk in oblivion and bring them to the light of faith, gathering her children around her Mary brings to them Jesus Christ. Summing up the Philippine devotion to Mary and for this I borrow heavily from a writing Cardinal Sin made for the Marian Year. I have paraphrased what was written in Aparecida. We regard as an admirable gift of divine providence to us, admirable gift, the singular love which the Filipino people have and truly experience toward Mary the mother of the Lord. When Cory Aquino went to the Vatican when she was president for a state visit, Pope John Paul II looked up from his prepared speech and said, “Your people have a special love for the Blessed Mother. Now that you are president, keep that alive. It is a special gift, it is a special grace, not everybody has it. Make sure you do everything that you can to keep it burning in the hearts of your people.” Then he went back to his speech. Devotion to Our Lady, the Immaculate, the Lady of the Rosary, she of the Perpetual Help, of Peace and Good Journeying, whatever the title, wherever we venerate her she embodies in her person as no one else can, our faith in her son, our adherence to his person, our belonging to the Church, our hope for the Kingdom of the Father. Chesterton says that if you want one image that embodies everything that Catholicism tells us, it is the image of Mary, and when after many years of search he finally made the decision to become a Catholic it was kneeling in front of a broken down image in the town of Prince where he pledged his life to Jesus in the hands of Mary. Pope Benedict says in his commentary on Redemptoris Mater, that whenever in the Church when people’s morale has gone down, when there is discouragement and hopelessness, the Church raises up the banner of Mary. When the Church raises up the banner of Mary, the Church raises up hope. That’s why we say at the end of the Salve Regina, O clemens: O pia: O dulcis, “life, sweetness and hope.” That is what Mary is for us. At the Paschal hour from the cross of his love’s ultimate giving Jesus made her our mother as the final heritage of his life on earth. From the beginning by some true connaturality we have taken her into our own, into our hearts, into our homes, our families, into the fabric of all our living and dying. We call ourselves, Pueblo Amante de Maria, fiercely believing our land and our people are uniquely hers and she uniquely ours, her heart and her spirit bound with our very own heart and spirit, part of the deepest identity of our people and our race. Bayang sumisinta kay Maria. When the faith and the church first came to our land 500 years ago, their bearers brought Mary’s banner with them. We know now. A book has been written by a Columban father that we know for certain when Legaspi and Urdaneta came from Mexico they carried the image of the Guadalupe. The First image of Mary to come was the banner of the Guadalupe. When the faith and the church first came to our land their bearers brought the banner of Mary with them. In the galleons from Mexico and with them Mary came never to leave us again. She was never so much by the design of the missionaries but more by the doing of Divine Providence she became the woman historically we cannot doubt that who helped make our people one. This was Cardinal Sin’s whole point in that speech that he gave in Vienna. It was in a very real sense, it was Mary who made our people one. The document of Aparecida says the same thing, it was Mary who made Latin America one. From many tribes and many tongues in a span of time so unmatched so historians tell us in the history of Christian mission our people turned to the one faith and the one baptism, and almost always, almost always, it was she who brought our people to her son. The missionaries more and more brought her by sea, to her altars our people journeyed, to her shrines resplendent with lights, flowers and song, in the great fiestas or lit by one candle flickering before a faded image the poor and the little people came, children singing, sinners seeking mercy, the sick and the suffering often softly and weakly on their knees broken perhaps in body but hoping still, hearts burning still before the welcome of their mother’s gaze of unwearying compassion before her all embracing eyes of love. Two days ago Pope Francis said to all the children of the church, Go to Mary. Seek la Mirada de Maria, the eyes of Mary looking down upon you, for them and for us she is always there. Whenever they seek her Mary ever with them and beside them now and at the hour of their death. To Juan Diego at Guadalupe she said words meant for him and his lowliness but for all of us too, in all ages and in all times. The words that we will hear again today as we gather with all generations to call her blessed. These are Mary’s words to Juan Diego: My son, my son, do not fear any anxiety or trouble or sickness, any pang of weariness or exhaustion, or even bitter hurt.. My son, am I not here for you as your mother? Are you not under the shade of my protection and my care? Do I not hold you within the hollow of my mantle? There were I can join my arms around you. What else, whom else do you need? My son, my son, am I not ever here with you? Your mother.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:22:06 +0000
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