St. Ezekiel Moreno, the honorary Filipino saint

It was a Thursday and there was to be a mass said in honor of St. Rita of Cascia, as has become customary each Thursday afternoon in what has since been called the Chapel of the Relics. That was over a year ago, and I thank my friend Orly for bringing me to that place run by the OAD (Order of Discalced Augustinians) in Pit-os, a stone’s throw from North Gen Hospital. I was going through a crossroads at that point and so it felt like a great opportunity to ask for St. Rita’s intercession, being the patron saint of the impossible; and also to meet Fr. Dennis Ruiz of the OAD, another dear friend of the ever-congenial Orly Cajegas.

Trying to catch my breath after ascending a flight of stairs towards their old chapel for the Holy Mass (now the Chapel of the Relics is located at the ground floor, thankfully), for some reason, I was drawn to my right side where a door to one of the rooms marked “St. Ezekiel Moreno” instantly caught my gaze, like it called to me. During the time, I was engrossed with a book by Joel Rosenberg about end-time biblical prophecies called ‘The Ezekiel Option,’ and although Ezekiel Moreno is an entirely different person from the prophet Ezekiel of the Bible’s Old Testament, being an ardent believer of signs, I knew in my gut it meant something.

As soon as the mass ended, I asked Fr. Dennis about St. Ezekiel Moreno. I was surprised to learn that St. Ezekiel spent a big part of his life in the Philippines, serving Iloilo, Mindoro, Palawan, Las Piñas, Batangas, Manila, and other parts of the country throughout a span of fifteen years; that he was ordained as a priest in Manila; that he spoke Tagalog fluently; and that he, along with the more well known St. Peregrine, is the Catholic Church’s patron saint for cancer patients (the Augustinian Recollect missionary died of cancer in Monteagudo, Spain after serving as bishop in Colombia).

Over breakfast the day after, I shared to my mom what I had just learned and she reminded me that, three years prior, I had brought home an icon of St. Ezekiel Moreno from the San Sebastian Church in Manila (the breathtaking 19th century Baroque-Neo-Gothic church made entirely of steel, said to be designed by Gustave Eiffel, the French engineer behind the Eiffel Tower and the steel structure inside the Statue of Liberty). She tasked me to get one for my aunt who was suffering from both ovarian and uterine cancer four years ago. I was stunned and embarrassed that I didn’t even take the time to get to know the saint whose icon I hand-carried all the way to Cebu.

He was just in our altar, along with the many sacred representations of Jesus, Mary, and other saints and martyrs of Western Christianity our family holds dear. But why the need for some sort of re-introduction like this? My answer came a week later when my mom was diagnosed with cancer.

Throughout that ordeal, we clung to St. Ezekiel’s faithful intercession to the Almighty; his relic generously lent to us by the OAD and Fr. Dennis was enshrined in our home’s main altar and was at my mother’s bedside during her operation and stay at the hospital. Through the biopsy, it was found out that the cancer was in its first stage, and that it was fully arrested after performing radical hysterectomy. The early detection was a miracle in itself; the expertise and kindness of my mom’s doctor, yet another. Praise the Lord!

Yesterday, I paid my good friend St. Ezekiel a visit while accompanying my friend Ryan whose family is going through a pain and fear that is not alien to us. The relic of Ezekiel lent to our family a year ago was already enshrined in the Chapel of Relics, mounted beautifully on a golden monstrance, together with the relics (fragments of flesh, bone, hair, or blood) of some of the holiest men and women who have walked this earth. In that room, the Chapel of Relics, is a constant celebration of 2,000 years of Christendom!

I earnestly hope more Filipinos, not just those afflicted with cancer, get to know St. Ezekiel and implore his aid and intercession; the Philippine Church should also propagate devotion to him and spread all the good he has done in our isles. He is a saint in heaven who spoke our language, who knew our culture, and who indubitably understood what is and how it is to be Pinoy.

He is, after all, an honorary Filipino saint! And we should take pride in the fact that, aside from St. Lorenzo Ruiz, our very own blessed-soon-to-be-saint Pedro Calungsod, we also have St. Ezekiel we can call our own.

St. Ezekiel, thank you so much for your mighty intercession.

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Tonight on The Bottomline with Boy Abunda: For the show’s 2nd anniversary special, international bestselling author Nicholas Sparks (known for his tearjerker-turned-movies ‘A Walk to Remember,’ ‘The Notebook,’ ‘Messege In A Bottle,’ ‘Dear John,’ ‘The Last Song,’ etc.) animatedly reveals his joys and frustrations as a writer, his early struggles with rejection, his unswerving faith as a Catholic, and how he draws much from personal experiences in developing his stories and characters.

Watch it after Banana Split on ABS-CBN. Encore telecast on the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC), Sunday, 1:00 pm.

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