Embraced by God
Father Arsenio C. Jesena, S.J. has produced a fourth volume of “Yayee”, which he calls “Embraced by God”. The book is very positive, presenting the heroes who are all around us, whom we meet on the streets of the city, every day.
Bishop Claver says: “It is the little people of the land whose stories Father Juni narrates in eloquently and passionately told vignettes”.
Long ago, Juni Jesena went down to
“The Sacada’s work is cutting and loading. . . . he is supposed to cut a ton and a half of sugarcane, each day.
“Sometimes, when I could no longer raise my arm for another cutting stroke of the espading, I would from sheer exhaustion, just sit down on the ground. I would look up to see the Sacadas still at work ‑ some of them younger than my students, some of them older than my father, carrying twice the load I could carry.
“I would think of how the Sacadas slave for every centavo, and how easily the rich man and the rich man’s son squander the money they have not earned ‑ and I saw the injustice of it all, and I began to understand why the Communists are Communists.”
Juni Jesena tries to describe the characters about whom he writes by digging into their very souls. Joey Velasco painted “The Last Supper”— not Our Lord with the 12 apostles, but with 12 hungry street children, gathered around Him, at a table made of boxwood. Juni persuaded Velasco to reveal his thoughts about that painting.
Velasco wrote:
“I found these children in the streets, in the cemetery, under the bridge. I had never known them personally. I took pictures of them. Then I disappeared and painted in my studio alone.
“When I looked at my painting every morning, I would hear voices; I would hear that painting speaking to me.
“I was not looking at the ragged children. They were looking at me, and they would keep on haunting me.
“So I had no choice but to gather the Polaroid pictures of the children, and look for every one of them. I started to know them intimately and to consider them my friends. Then I really saw the treasure in each one of them.
“I learned a lot of things I had never learned from the university or from rich people, from powerful people.
I learned from these children.”
In “Embraced by God” Juni Jesena tries to portray the heart of the great John P. Delaney, S.J. by using Father Delaney’s own thoughts about “Dirty Hands”:
“I am proud of my dirty hands. Yes, they are dirty. And they’re rough and knobby and calloused. And I’m proud of the dirt and the knobs and the callouses.
“I didn’t get them that way by playing bridge or drinking afternoon tea from dainty cups.
“Men and women put reverent lips to the hands of him who held the hammer and the chisel and the saw.
“His were not pretty hands either when they chopped trees and dragged rough lumber and wielded the carpenter’s tools.
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