Five years ago in Cebu, at the concluding Mass of the 51st International Eucharistic Congress where close to 1 million faithful were gathered for the Eucharistic celebration, Charles Maung Cardinal Bo, the Papal Legate representing Pope Francis for the historic event, challenged the largely Cebuano crowd, “Filipinos and Filipinas, the eldest daughter of the Church in Asia,” to bring the exciting dawn of Christianity, where Christianity is living in the twilight zone. And to the youth, where in the Philippines 52 per cent are below the age of 25, he asked, “Are you ready to be the Paul of Tarsus of Asia?”
For many of us, Cebuano priests and religious especially, the message of the beloved Cardinal set a compelling tone for our preparation for the 500th anniversary of Christianity in the Philippines. Even as early as 2012, the Philippine Church had officially begun its preparation for the quincentennial event in 2021. Cebu will be at the centre of the celebration where the first missionaries set foot on the island in 1521. The Philippine Church, despite her poverty—millions living below the poverty line and the Church losing many of her members to tepidity in the practice of their faith—still has in her possession two great treasures—the Filipino family and the youth, as cited by Cardinal Bo. Christian hope is in the family, by and large still intact compared to many countries in the West, and the many youth who are not just the hope of the future but the treasures of the present. With these treasures, these gifts, the Philippine Church has a special mission to give, to share with her younger siblings in Asia and in the world, to be light of the world and salt of the earth.
It is by no accident then that the theme that the Philippine Church has chosen for the celebration is “Gifted to Give”. The Philippines, by far still the largest Catholic country in Asia, holds a gift, a treasure—its Catholic faith. It is that faith that moves people to be grateful of the daily bread they receive, and to be bread broken for others, an active living out of the Eucharist that is celebrated daily.
In my parish where I was chief pastor for five years, this treasure shines through strikingly. We have, for example, a feeding programme we fondly named Mary’s Meal, where about 200 poor students in a local public high school are given free lunch five days a week for the whole school year. The programme began modestly with free meals for 50 students every Saturday, thus Mary’s Meal on Mary’s Saturday. Eventually, it grew to serve 200 undernourished students with lunch daily—for the majority, probably their best meal of the day. Beneficiaries of the programme registered a near-zero dropout rate. During the first two months of the government-imposed lockdown due to COVID-19, our parish was able to distribute an average of 800 food packs on a weekly basis to poor residents in our parish territory. We were just contented at first to make two rounds of help for 250 families each round, but we were treated, to our great surprise, to a modern miracle of the multiplication of bread and fish when donations poured in steadily, many coming from non-parishioners. It was an astonishing show of solidarity for the many who lost their jobs during the pandemic. I would like to believe that this can only be the natural impulse of the Filipino faith.
We need not all be missionaries, sent to faraway countries, which Cardinal Bo had described as twilight zones of Christianity. But some of us certainly will: priests and religious sent or volunteering for foreign mission, but even ordinary domestic helpers teaching their foreign wards the sign of the cross and Catholic prayers; nurses and medical practitioners treating their patients not as medical cases but as fellow human persons needing care in their sickness; migrants striving to be faithful to the faith they were born in, exuding joy and laughter loud enough to make others “envious” enough to wonder: What is it that brings them such joy? And move them to desire: How do I possess that unspeakable joy?
For most of us who stay, we share our gift by faithfully living out day to day our faith, and being true light of the world and salt of the earth.
Fr Vidal Gornez Jr SJ served as parish priest of the Archdiocesan Shrine of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Cebu City, Philippines from 2015 to 2020. He is currently the treasurer and development officer of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific.