reclaiming the honor: assumption
By wearing today our assumption uniforms we are attempting to bring ourselves back to our former state as students and learners, as girls and boys, as daughters and sons of Assumption. This is an attempt at restoration. However, when our seminary driver brought me here four years ago, he was so confused he thought he got me to a wrong address. He saw you in uniforms but this time in wheelchairs and walkers, with gray hairs and wrinkled faces, this time using darker shades of lipsticks and eyeliners, now with wider waistlines than the usual, and with yayas smaller than their wards.
The best that we can do when it comes to recovering physical appearance or the external trappings of the years gone by is a reconstruction - we could only recreate to the best of our ability that which we could no longer fully restore.
Today however I would like to reflect on the importance of restoration and to propose it to you as the theme or something to be reflected on during this coming together. This proposal is not of my own making. It is something that we can glean from the gospel.
The gospel narrative speaks to us of the healing of Peter’s mother in law. She was sick with a fever, and I suppose, without the necessary tools for a proper diagnosis, fevers during the time of Jesus can be deadly. In narrating this event of healing Mark used two verbs one after the other. He said that Jesus raised her up and when she was up, she served them. Jesus raised her up because it can be safely presumed that when one is terribly ill, he or she is in bed. And when Peter’s mother in law was healed, she immediately went about to serve them. The word used by Mark for serve is diakoneo, the same word Jesus used to describe his own work and ministry, and the same word used to describe a disciple - as one who serves. The service rendered by Peter’s mother in law was not some kind of servitude that has bound women as servants of men. No, she served as a disciple would, she served as the Lord would.
We all know how it is to be sick. Not only do we become incapable of earning a living, not only are we unable to contribute to the well-being of our family, but most of all in sickness we lose our capacity to take up our proper role in the community, and to be honored as a valuable member. Sickness prevents us from serving, as it had prevented Peter’s mother in law from doing what she did best for others. Thus, this is not just a healing of the sick; this is not just one of those healing miracles of Jesus. This is a restoration, the restoration of Peter’s mother in law so that she could take up once more her vocation in the world, so that she can do that which makes her significant and valuable to others, so that she can serve the Lord, so that she can be a disciple again, as one who serves.
This is my point when I propose restoration rather than simply reconstruction. Let us go beyond pretending we are still girls and boys of assumption with uniforms meant for our granddaughters and great granddaughters even. We have to accept by now that attempting to appear cute at a certain age can actually make us look funny. After all, ascribed to the words girls and boys is the word old, and it is placed there for an obvious reason. I even proposed one time that it should be made older girls and older boys and not old girls and old boys, but it seems that they would like to hammer in on us that indeed we are really old and not just getting older.
More than reconstructing then let us therefore work to restore in ourselves the spirit that is uniquely Assumption. After all, that is the prayer of our song - may her spirit be engravened on our hearts till we reach heaven.
What is that spirit that we need to restore? These past days I reflected on my own and probably you have yours which you can reflect.
In Assumption I learned to work harder than the rest. I was a transferee in grade three and in the evaluation my English and Filipino were judged grade 2. And so I have to work harder than the rest, working alone on my SRA in the library, transferring classrooms during first periods, 3 times a week, working extra hours in the afternoon when all have gone home. I only caught up with my classmates when we were in grade V. I can’t remember feeling bad about it though, nor did I feel humiliated or ashamed because of this arrangement. I just did what I have to do then. And I learned to appreciate this when in my life especially as a priest I always have to work harder because of the people I have to replace. It is funny that even the things that we view in the past as a negative can prove very useful in the future. Let us restore this spirit, the spirit which makes our hearts and minds open to the great possibilities which lies yon there in the great unknown, trusting that things would turn out for the good, even the things we initially detests.
In Assumption I learned to appreciate even just in hindsight and sometimes even as an after thought the presence of the sisters whom in the past we have rightly called mothers. I have paid tribute to sisters Claire, Blanca, Carmela, --------. This time however I feel obliged to pay tribute to Sister Magdalena Pia. You all know Sister Magdalena Pia. We fondly called her Magpie. A magpie if you look at the dictionary is actually described as a noisy bird. She died last year. There is one thing Sr. Magpie did for us old boys for which she will not be easily forgotten. At that time the old boys were just an appendix in Assumption. An appendix by the way is some body part that does not affect anything whether it’s there or not. But then Magpie came into the picture, she encouraged us to go mainstream and join the old girls. I still have with me the homily I made when the old boys gathered for the first time in 1999 - exclusively as old boys, with Magpie at the helm. You have to understand that in Assumption the old boys are considered the weaker sex or at least that’s how we felt. That is why I cannot simply follow the convention of addressing the male before the female. In assumption it’s always the girls before the boys. But Magpie was there for us and because of her adventurous spirit, she grabbed the situation and responded to it in her own natural and sometimes naive way of approaching things. Now thanks to her, that exclusive old girls day acquired a conjunction, a simple but very important conjunction “and,” making it, old girls and old boys day. Thank you Sr. Magpie for doing your part in enriching this day.
We restore that spirit of respect for our mothers, not just as dioramas and vintages of our distant past, but as lessons from which we constantly learn and through which we are constantly taught.
And so I end. We need to ask the Lord to restore us, and not just reconstruct us; to bring back in our homecomings the spirit which made us and make us Assumption. In this restoration we claim back our dignity as disciples, as a people who serve the goals and vision of Assumption, we claim once again our proper role and be honored as a valuable member of the Assumption community.
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