On the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Fr Marlito Ocon SJ professed his Final Vows to the Society of Jesus before Fr Peter Pojol SJ, Socius to the Philippine Provincial, in the chapel of Xavier Jesuit School in San Juan city, Philippines.
Looking at the faces of the small group of Jesuits who gathered to witness his full incorporation into the Society of Jesus, Fr Ocon evoked the instances in the early years of his Jesuit formation when he first met these men. “When we met 21 years ago, it was a period of abounding grace,” he said. “As we are reunited today, grace abounds all the more to help me continue and sustain this journey to reach the finish line,” he said.
Fr Ocon entered the Society of Jesus in 1999, after four years of working as a ship design engineer for a Japanese shipbuilding company. Perhaps his background in engineering influenced how he describes life’s journey as “like following a line – at times a straight line, at times crooked… but these lines are not asymptotic lines. We are tangent lines; we touch and intersect each other at one point. The moment and point of intersection is the moment and point of grace.”
His journey in the Society of Jesus has taken him to various “frontlines” as Fr Jose Quilongquilong SJ pointed out in his homily. Fr Quilongquilong was the province’s vocation director when Fr Ocon joined the Jesuits. He recalled Fr Ocon’s past missions: on Culion island, once a leper colony cut off from the outside world, and in Zamboanga city at a time when the place was besieged by rebels, and now as chaplain of the Philippine General Hospital amid a pandemic.
“Fr Lito’s courage and availability for mission call to mind the experience of the Blessed Virgin Mary who allowed the free hand of God to design the plan of her life,” said Fr Quilongquilong. “His vows reflect the Fiat of Mary who shows us that humility and tenderness in the face of many challenges especially in this time of pandemic are not virtues of the weak but of the strong. … His Final Vows make him ever more courageous and available as a Jesuit frontliner to manage any mission or to face any pandemic.”
Fr Ocon’s readiness to go even to difficult missions exemplifies how a Jesuit is always a “frontliner”, said Fr Quilongquilong. “With Fr Lito’s Final Vows today, we are reminded of our vocation to go out as frontliners of the church as Jesuits, as servants under the banner of the cross, always ready to say ‘yes’, to say with the Blessed Virgin Mary before God, ‘Fiat voluntas tua (Thy will be done).’”
