thank you pat gumban

Pat Gumban came to our office after several Sundays of announcements in the cathedral asking for volunteer writers for the weekly paper Candlelight.  I was the editor then, and out of the many writers and staff only three remained - Tay Pons, Nang Eve and Tata Joy.  And so we invited people who may want to contribute to Candlelight.  Many of those who responded were from outside the parish of Jaro.  One was Irene Abaygar from Alta Tierra and a teacher at the West Visayas State University, and the other was Pat Gumban from Pavia and a public school principal.  And since they were working with Nang Eve, naturally and eventually, they also became members of the Jaro Evangelization Team or the JET, which for sometime was very active in the Parish especially in the evangelization program and most conspicuously in the Oras sang Parokya every Wednesday then.  It was from there that Nang Pat came to enter the Ministry of Readers until she went almost blind, and surviving that, until she died.

I was assigned first in the cathedral in 1993.  She must have entered in 1994 and so she had served the cathedral parish for more or less 18 years.

What struck me then was her humility and her openness to be guided and to be taught.  She was a principal but she had no qualms submitting her work to be edited.  She learned to submit and to stand corrected.  She learned to humbly accept her mistakes and to correct them.  This I believe is the source of perseverance.

This mass then is not just a prayer to God to commend the soul of this servant of his.  This is also a thanksgiving to God for his goodness and generosity which he coursed through and channelled in the life and service of Pat Gumban. 

Death reminds us that everything in this world has an end.  Even our service to the Lord has an end, at least here on earth in our mortal bodies.  Our true home is in heaven and we are just passing by in this world.  Because of this, reading and more so, proclaiming the word of God has an advantage.  In reading the scriptures Jesus becomes familiar.  When we read and listen to scriptures heaven, our true home, becomes familiar.  The end becomes familiar.  And so when we die, we are merely recognizing and identifying what we have already encountered and what is already familiar to us.

It is always a dream to die serving the Lord, committed to him till our last breath.  We pray then for perseverance in his service.