ofelia jalandoni - 18th week friday 2013

I came tonight and people did not have a hard time convincing me to celebrate this mass because I can claim that I was once a heir, I was once an heredero.  I say it in the past tense because it happened 3 years ago when she sold her house in Comision Civil and she realized she could not bring everything with her to her new but much smaller residence.  For the record in the more than 30 boxes I received for the seminary and the countless cabinets, and the hundreds of figurines and objects nothing is really of value if value is measured monetarily.  If I decided to accept these from her, especially the bound literary works of Magdalena Jalandoni, it is because of the heritage and cultural value these things have for future generations.  

But this is not my point this evening in our reflection on the word of God.  This is just a necessary background to set the stage.  I was in her house 2 or 3 years ago in time for the packing and I was insisting on certain things that for me were worth preserving.  And so while all these commotions were taking place around us with the sound of crumpled newspapers everywhere, and the rolling out of the packing tape to seal the boxes, and while she was for the last time, looking at the things that surrounded her for almost all her life, I heard her talking to herself saying, “all these things are passing, we just have to let go, to learn to let go and surrender.”  Then as if it was some kind of distraction she faced me again and talked as if she did not say anything.  In the past I would take it as part of my work to collect the things of priests when they die – mostly I get the books for the seminary library, then I get the vestments to save them if they are worth saving and to get their chalices and ciboriums for the archdiocese, things other people may not find any use for.  But that was the first time I collected from someone still alive.

What does it feel nga buhi ka pa, conscious ka pa and your things are slowly taken away from you right before your eyes?  It’s more than just dividing land on a piece of paper, but to be there when people are packing your things not for yourself but for themselves. Now how does that feel?

I have written about this incident somewhere and I think I have talked about this to seminarians and I remember calling it an extraordinary grace before you die.  Why? because it is dying before you die.  Because it is dying to self before you die physically.  It is losing life.

I don’t know what it was that she was wrestling with God.  I do not know what it was that God was asking from her before she dies, what God was destroying in her before she can face him in judgment.  I am not privy to her inner struggle in her relationship with God.  But to go through it, painful as it was, was a prize more than her pontifical award - to be given the privilege of losing life literally, just before you meet God. 

It is something that we know is right, in fact we pray it, in fact some of us sing it, and probably thought that God would not take us seriously anyway - Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess You have given me. I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more - to be given this grace, such horrible grace, but in this world and at this time this may be the only way when we can find life, real life.  Now Ofelia has found life, we pray that we will found ours by God’s grace.