Of grace and gratitude

Days leading to Thanksgiving and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, I was exploring Portugal and paid homage to Our Lady of Fatima. To be Catholic is to be Marian. But I don’t think reverence to Our Lady is exclusive to our faith.

My multi-cultural friends once out of curiosity asked about our devotion to the Virgin Mary. We enlightened them of her very human qualities and so they learned to admire her courage and humility. Years back, a non-believer former colleague and her husband attested to have experienced “very positive energy” (despite the haunting image of a sorrowing woman and her dying son) as we stood in front of Michelangelo’s “Pieta” at St. Peter’s Basilica inside the Vatican. While veneration to the mother of God remains touchy among Christians, for us Catholics, she is our Mother. We Filipinos revere her specially, we call her “Mama Mary.” Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, has since been declared a national holiday.

In “Witness to Hope,” one of my most favorite books and biography of St. John Paul II penned by Catholic theologian and scholar George Weigel, the teenage Karol Wojtyla was said to have regarded Mother Mary as his own mother after his mother Emilia died when he was only eight years old. In my religious and secular circles, the Virgin Mary is either a reality or an enigma, yet she undeniably stays an inspiration.

So influential is Our Lady’s staying power in our lives, a group of friends of mine have sustained a tradition of honoring her through the rosary. What started as a small group of expatriate ladies in Beijing 19 years ago has expanded and evolved. Now we rely on technology, to pray virtually every Tuesday from Europe, Asia, America or anywhere in the world we are stationed. Together we pray, hence our friendship stays with our best friend named Mary.

I started writing this piece in Lisbon in the stillness of dawn while the blessing of our visit to Our Lady of Fatima still tenderly moves my soul. Amidst the quietude, I know the world around me is far from peaceful. War still rages, a different kind of strife is happening in our home country (the world is watching us again, I thought; international media is frequently reporting stories from the Philippines). The New York Times’ breaking news on bombings, deaths, post US elections expectations, climate change, scandals, debates on IVF and assisted dying and mind blowing breakthroughs in technology are jolting.

Dining out is part of every travel experience, yet a plate of unfinished food on a restaurant table or a lavish buffet spread in hotels becomes a painful sight knowing that somewhere in the Middle East or Africa, a family is hungry; worst, children are dying of famine.

We live in a “messy world,” our versatile guide, a polyglot, historian-storyteller named Andre told us in the middle of an intimate tour of the medieval town of Sintra and the idyllic coastal municipalities of Estoril and Cascais in Portugal. But he optimistically countered that “yes, there’s the UN, we have our leaders” and we can also help fix the world’s problems as individuals. How? “By not being greedy and selfish and by first looking at the people around us.”

While in Fatima, I looked at the world around me through a pilgrim with an amiable smile or an anxious look; a couple arguing or comforting each other; a limping fellow, an amputee on a wheelchair and devotees on bended knees, rosary beads in their hands negotiating what I reckon to be a 100-meter stretch in between two basilicas. At the Basilica of the Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, church bells pealed to invite pilgrims to mass while at the Little Chapel of the Apparitions, the rosary was being prayed in Portuguese. In my heart I knew the faithful were responding in their own cherished language.

Henry J.M. Nouwen is a Dutch-born priest described as “one of the best-known and most-honored spiritual writers of our time.” I brought his book, “The Road to Peace,” to Portugal. I thought his writings could be an inspiring source of meditation on a journey where there’s plenty of time to read, to breath, to walk unhurriedly and to pause and pray. I was not wrong.

In a chapter titled “Peace, A Gift We Receive in Prayer,” Nouwen wrote: “Only by opening ourselves to the language and way of prayer can we cope with interruptions, demands and ordinary tasks of life without becoming fragmented and resentful. Prayer – living in the presence of God – is the most radical peace action we can imagine.”

I now ponder on the pilgrims I encountered in Fatima. Aside from their personal petitions, did they, like me, also earnestly pray for their country and leaders? Did they pray for world leaders and the healing of our sick and wounded world? For a moment maybe decision makers could pause and look into themselves as individuals and take inspiration from what Nouwen calls “the most radical peace action.”

I began reading “Inside the Light, Understanding the Message of Fatima” by Sister Angela de Fatima Coelho. That the apparition of Our Lady to the three young shepherds Franciso, Jacinta and Lucia and her message to the world fascinated believers and non-believers alike, led to numerous conversions. It couldn’t be more resonant now than over a century ago. As excerpts from the book optimistically affirms, “the words of Our Lady at Fatima are also a message for our time and our world…about the role each individual can play in changing history…since the message communicated there is both personal and universal.”

On that chilly day in Fatima day when the sun smiled brightly while towering elm trees swayed and a frosty breeze kissed my cheek, I felt nothing but inexplicable peace. A kind of peace that reduces one to tears: of grace and gratitude. I also call the buoyantly mystifying feeling, hope.