At Age 75

CEBU, Philippines - God willing, I turn 75 years old on Tuesday, October 14. On the celebration of the diamond jubilee of my earthly existence, my gratitude goes like this:

Yahweh God, thank you very much for:

• breathing life into the union of my father’s microscopic sperm and my mother’s microscopic    ovum.

• for keeping me alive in her womb for more or less nine months until she delivered me into this world on October 14, 1939. (According to my mama, it was a Saturday, at 6:48 p.m.)

• for assigning St. Barachiel as my Guardian Angel to watch over me and to guide me during the following stages of my life on earth: babyhood, childhood, boyhood, adolescence, adulthood until now that I am septuagenarian.

• for guiding and guarding me while I was a pupil in Borbon Elementary School for six years, a student for two years in USC Boys High (its location at that time was the exact spot where a fastfood store now stands, beside Sto. Rosario Church); a seminarian for nine years in the Christ the King Mission Seminary, Q.C.; an SVD scholar at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy for 2 years; finishing his theological studies for 2 years at the Seminario Mayor de San Carlos, Mabolo; two years as a scholar of the Archdiocese of Cebu at the Biblicum, Rome.

• for not giving up on me in spite of the many twists and turns on my way to priesthood and even after ordination. To use the English poet Francis Thompson’s phrase, You have been veritably the “Hound of Heaven” in my life!

You know me very much better than I know myself. In spite of my imperfections and sins during my travels around the world as an SVD seminarian (1962-1964) and as a diocesan priest (1975-1977), You still love me and pursue Your beautiful plan for my life, O Eternal Weaver!

• for weaning me from attachments to material possessions that when fire razed down our house (On January 13, 2000), including appliances, jewelry and precious souvenirs collected through the years, You replaced our material loss with material gain – wisdom, valuable insights and the like.

• for keeping me alive through the many dangers in my life. None of the boats I took in my travels sank; none of the planes crashed; none of the trains derailed; none of the other means of transportation I took met an accident. I survived typhoid fever at age five, appendectomy at age 12, hemmorhoidectomy at age 29, cholecestectomy, cholelithotomy (removal of my gallbladder due to stones in it) at age 48. The two scars on my forehead are evidences of Your loving care, O Almighty God and Father.

• for keeping me alive in spite of what the “Filipino mafia” did to me in Eternal City of Rome way back in 1977. I forgive them, Lord, because I daily pray: “And forgive us or sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Indeed, You can write straight with the crooked lines in my life.

• for helping me get a teaching job at three Cebu universities so that I could support my family. My three children (Gusen, Dolly, Liebe) can now stand on their own.

• for enabling me, after retirement, to start a school, the Ocaña Learning Center, Inc. (OLCI) where I can share with the “fair hope of the Fatherland” whatever I learned here and abroad. That acronym can also stand for “Only Love Can Inspire.” My daily lectures start with the reading of God’s love letter to us, the Holy Bible. In so doing, the day at OLCI starts with love which alone can truly make us happy and the Roman Catholic Bishops’ camplaint that “The Filipino Roman Catholics are sacramentalized, but not evangelized!”will not hold true with my pupils.

• for providing me with a faithful life’s partner, Rosenda Nacua dela Calzada, who has stuck it out with me for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health till death will part us.

Most of all, Yahweh God, I cannot thank you enough for being ordained a priest forever by Julio R. Cardinal Rosales, for being dispensed from the promise of celibacy by Pope St. John Paul II, for being married with Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal officiating at our Church wedding, for having received the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick from the former Auxiliary Bishop of Cebu, Most Rev. Nicolas Mondejar. I really cannot thank you enough, Almighty God and Father, for all these graces and blessings that You have showered on me, including those that have escaped my limited memory. Grant that I may be faithful to You in the remaining time of my earthly life. Mother Mary, please help me that they may be a continuous “Magnificat anima mea Dominum” – My soul magnifies the Lord.

A fitting conclusion to this article of thanksgiving at age 75 is a 2/6 couplet (2 lines with 6 syllables in every line):

Yahweh really loves me

So, why should I worry?