Women!

When I was 12 years old, I had an old red sweatshirt that I really liked. Both sleeves were gone; the remnants of the sleeves were tattered; and it was faded. But it was lucky. In our sandlot football games I was doing very well as a receiver of long passes. I felt that this was due to that lucky old red sweatshirt.

But my mother did not like it. She bought me a new one, gray. She said: "Wear the new one!" I explained to her: "Mom! No! The old red is lucky!" Still she said, every time I put it on: "It looks awful! Wear the new one!" I did not want to disobey. But I could not give up that lucky sweatshirt. I wore it all the time.

Then, one Saturday, when I was getting ready to play, I could not find the old red one with the ragged sleeves. I said: "Mom! Where is it?" She was very vague. She said: "It was somewhere around. . . . .But, if you can’t find it, wear the new one!" I wore the new one, because I had no choice.

Much later, I discovered: my mother burned the old red shirt! She burned it! It was my first great lesson about women. From that time on, since I was 12, my principle has been: if a woman wants something. . . . .stand back! Let her have it. She is going to get it anyway. By hook or by crook. She can not be stopped! Women have fierce will power. Much stronger than men!

My second lesson came from my sister Dorothy, when I was 16 years old, in high school. She was 15. On Sunday, we would go to the early Mass together. On one Sunday morning, the altar boy was my good friend, Joe Ryan. He was an athlete at Saint Benedict’s Prep, the quarter mile champion of the State of New Jersey.

At communion time I stood up. To get out of the pew I had to climb over Dorothy. She remained kneeling, her head bowed in prayer. I whispered: "Dot! Communion!" She shook her head: "No". So I went down to Communion, alone. At that time we knelt at the alter rail, and received Communion on the tongue. Joe Ryan moved in front of the priest, holding the Communion plate under the chin of each of us who received.

When I came back to our pew, Dorothy was still kneeling there. I said: "Dot! Communion! It’s almost over". But she shook her head: "No". I thought: "Ah, well, maybe she’s worried about her sins." But that was strange, because both of us had gone to confession the day before, Saturday.

At the end of the Mass I rose to go out. But Dorothy remained, kneeling. I said: "Dot! The Mass is over!" She said: "I am going to attend the next Mass." I could not understand this. I said: "Why? You have already heard Mass." She said: "I want to go to Communion."

I went home, in wonder, and had breakfast. About an hour later, Dorothy appeared. I said: "What is going on here? I told you it was Communion time, and you didn’t go!" She looked at me, as if I were an idiot, and said: "Joe Ryan was the altar boy. . . . No boy that I like is ever going to see me with my mouth open!" . . . . .That is when I learned: girls. . . . .are. . . . sensitive! Much more sensitive than boys.

When I came to the Philippines, I felt that the Filipina girls were the eighth wonder of the world. They were so gentle! So appreciative! So eager to help! And so devout! They were quiet, but in many ways much wiser than men.

Working in my office for two years, before he made his first motion picture, was Lino Brocka. Once he said to me: "Whenever I have an idea for a movie, I try it out on my mother. If she likes it, I know it will be good!"

Father Horacio de la Costa at one time was the keynote speaker at the national convention of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines. He went to his own home to prepare his address. There he worked on it intensely. He would not stop to have lunch. His mother protested.

Horacio said to her: "Mama, this is so important! It is for all the Catholic Schools. On the objectives of Catholic Education." His mother looked at him for a long moment, in silence. And then she said: "Por Dios, hijo! The Catholic Church has been teaching children for 2000 years, and you still do not know what you are trying to do?"

During World War II, here in the Philippines, I learned another thing about the Filipina woman: the incredible power of her love. During liberation, in one of our Catholic Schools, we found a woman crouched on her knees, in front of the statue of Saint Joseph, her forehead touching the ground. We heard a baby crying. When we lifted the woman, and unfolded her arms, we found that she was holding her baby, protecting the baby with her body and arms.

The mother was dead. Killed by shrapnel. She had taken the shrapnel into her own body, sheltering her baby. The child was alive. No wounds. Not a scratch. . . . .Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friend. She lay down her life for her baby, whom she loved.

And, I would guess, all women are that way. A poor Korean girl was pregnant at Christmas time. She knew that she would give birth soon, but to her surprise her pains of delivery came on Christmas eve, close to midnight. She was alone. She started out for the clinic, which was three kilometers away, through the snow. But she could not make it. When she knew the baby was coming, out of sheer modesty, she left the road and went down under a bridge.

On Christmas morning, people were crossing that bridge. They heard a baby crying. They looked around and finally found the source of the cry, under the bridge. The mother had delivered the baby herself. Then she took off her own clothing, piece by piece, and wrapped it around her baby, so that the child would not suffer from the cold. The mother was dead, frozen. But she was still holding her baby, warm in her arms. The child was alive and well, a little girl, crying.

Did you ever notice that all of the criteria of the last judgment are stacked for the mother? STACKED!. . . . . "I was hungry, and you gave me to eat. . . . .I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink.. . . . . . I was naked, and you clothed me. . . . .I was sick and you took care of me. . . . .I was a stranger, and you took me in."

Who is the stranger that came to her? Her baby. She loved this child, sight unseen, before she knew whether it was a boy or a girl, from the first moment the baby came to her in her womb. "So long as you have done it to the least of these, my little ones, you have done it to Me!" God comes to every mother, thinly disguised as a little girl, or a little boy.

I have a friend who is a priest, and he believes that all mothers are doomed to sanctity, whether they like it or not.

The most revered word in all languages, in all nations, all over the earth, all through the centuries, is. . . . "Mother". You might think that it would be God, or life, love, beauty, goodness. It is not. It is "Mother". Because men think with their eyes and ears. In the mother they see God. Life, love, and everything that is beautiful and good.

That is what we have just celebrated, at Christmas time — Our Lord, born as a baby. Having a mother is such a beautiful thing that even God wanted it. He wanted to be held warm in the arms of the Virgin Mary.

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