As Cebuanos happily wait for the big day when one of them will be elevated to sainthood, preparations are underway for the more than 3,000 pilgrims who will witness that Vatican ritual on the 21st of this month. Underway too are the thousand and one things to be attended to in connection with the big religious assembly to honor the new saint come November. What’s the significance of all these? That a saint who hails from among us will soon be in our altar of faith – this is the significance.
But there are already hundreds of saints in the roster of the Church, one might say. Yes, there are, but not one of them is a Cebuano. All these years we have raised our prayers through these haloed beings, and although some showed signs of intercession, some seemed to have turned deaf ears. With the new Cebuano saint, who knows he might be more receptive to our pleas? And so the hassle and the rush to scrounge some money for the great pilgrimage.
As we watch these happenings, we who cannot afford the pilgrimage and who are not directly involved in anyway in the November event, feel left out. Yet if we think about it a big role is expected of us, the seeming bystanders. They also serve who only stand and wait, remember the poet Milton?
Yes, many of us Cebuanos may just be standing by and waiting – but we need not be idling. We can pray. And praying is far from idling. That’s why another poet says that more things are wrought by prayers than this world dreams of. With prayer – and through the saint’s help – God becomes our ally in making things happen. With the flick of his fingers thousands of his angels can come and do the job we hope to do but never managed to. Such as: Greening our mountains so that flood will not come; enriching our farmlands so that harvest will be aplenty; driving the corrupt to madness prior to destruction, and inspiring the rich to share what they have with the poor. Sounds unbelievable. But if we have faith, even (as tiny) as a mustard seed . . . Faith – how simple does it sound, yet how difficult to gather in the heart! How many of us, for example, can have the faith of Pedro Calungsod?
As a young man he must have dreamed of a good life, of perhaps marrying a good looking Cebuana and settle down as a family man. But faith drew him to forget about this and tag along with a missionary priest, Fr. Luis San Vitores. He must have known for sure the perils of working among uncivilized natives, but fear was of no moment for him when it came to spreading the word of God. It was possible that on many occasions he and the priest must have had close encounters with the unbelievers they were trying to convert, but these did not deter them from pursuing their sacred task. Like the disciples of Jesus, they went to hostile places in search of souls, and like them too they suffered and died a martyr’s death.
What were they thinking as they lay dying, their blood oozing right where the spears pierced their fresh? What faint awareness crossed the mind of that young man as pain surged sharply through his body? Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they have done, must have been that fleeting thought. For love was surely in his heart (and in the heart of his companion priest) even as they lay dying.
And so as we stand by and wait for the moment of glory for our brother Cebuano we would be doing a great service to his cause by praying hard that we too would be infused with a genuine love for God and our fellowmen, and that a dynamic reawakening of our Christian faith would occur in this hapless land to heal our broken nationhood.