RVM Sisters go caroling

The tradition of caroling at Christmas started in Europe during the Middle Ages. It had a double purpose: on the one hand to express the joy that Christians feel in celebrating the Savior’s birth; and on the other hand to retell the story of how He was born in a manger and how the shepherds and the Magi came to visit Him. Here in the Philippines, even as late as the 1950s, there were still people from the rural villages who sang Christmas carols like ballads that retold the Christmas story.

Unfortunately here in the Philippines, that double purpose of singing Christmas carols has been replaced by an entirely different purpose. Here, people sing Christmas carols to ask for money. It has become not only a form of begging, but a form of extortion. A once beautiful Christian custom has been debased in the Philippines into an ugly practice.

But there are exceptions, and among the outstanding exceptions are the RVM Sisters. They go caroling at Christmas time, and instead of asking for money as many other groups do, they bring gifts.

Here in this southern city where I live, this past Christmas, the entire RVM community came caroling and then, after singing their songs, they presented us with a box of fruit for our community and a little gift for every member.

Founded in 1684 the RVM Sisters are not only the oldest religious group for native women founded in the Philippines, but they are also the oldest religious group of women to work in Mindanao. They have been in Mindanao for a century and a half, and for a long time, they were the only ones who dared to come here.

The RVM Sisters started as a pious society, a nunnery, named Beaterio de la Compañia de Jesus. They first came to Mindanao under interesting circumstances. In the 1860s the Jesuits opened a mission at Tamontaca, situated at the delta of the Rio Grande de Mindanao (now part of Cotabato City). A famine broke out among the Muslims and they began to sell the children of their slaves. With money from donors in Manila the Jesuits ransomed a total of one hundred children. The boys were housed in a dormitory run by Jesuit laybrothers and taught useful skills (farming, carpentry, stonemasonry, blacksmithing, etc.). The girls were housed in a separate dormitory and school ran at first by Christian converts from the Tiruray tribe. The Jesuits asked for volunteers in Manila to run this girls’ dormitory and school. Three members of the Beaterio volunteered. After that, many other Beaterio Sisters came to Mindanao to administer the parochial schools in the other Jesuit mission stations.

Shortly after World War II, through the efforts of Archbishop Luis del Rosario S.J. of Zamboanga, the Holy See recognized the Beaterio as a religious congregation under the name Religious of the Virgin Mary (RVM). Today the RVM Sisters have schools and retreat houses in many parts of the Philippines, and they have members in pastoral ministries in other countries. Many of their forms of the apostolate deserve commendation, not least their style of caroling. It is caroling as it was originally intended to be – an imitation of the Magi who, after paying homage to the Child, "opening their treasures, they brought gifts."