a tribute to bishop angel

This is a tribute made in 2002 to Bishop Angel’s anniversary to the priesthood celebrated with the seminarians during their Christmas Party. The title/theme of the gathering was, Angel Comes to Town.

Angels do still come to town once in a while. When they do, they enlighten the young to dream dreams, they inspire men to hope for the better, they agitate men to rise in strength and ardor; they motivate them to move beyond themselves and most of the time they disturb the peace, they upset order, they disrupt routine.

Christmas is not just a time for peace. We have romanticized Christmas many, many times. With angels hovering about gracefully in the sky. With shepherds peacefully watching their flocks. With the sweet, sweet scene of a lovely belen and those lovely Christmas carols at the background. But Christmas is a time not just of peace or of angels serenely gliding, hovering in the sky. No, it is about a virgin disturbed by the announcement of an angel that she would give birth to a son. It is also about a soon to be husband confused, disturbed, terribly upset by a pregnant fiancée. I have once seen an ex-seminarian so disturbed when she got her girlfriend pregnant. My God how disturbed can you get when somebody else did it to the woman you are about to marry!

The first Christmas was far from being peaceful – the coming of angels was far from what we depict in our belens. It was about an edict that disturbed the usual daily routine of a humble town called Nazareth, and about the whole city of Jerusalem disturbed by the coming of the magi, and of the killing of innocent babes and a young couple, with a wife recently burdened by childbirth in a place not really suited for delivering a child, trudging the long and hard road to Egypt. Our Christmas now may be so unlike the first Christmas. The way we depict the coming of angels may not be the exact happening when the angel Gabriel, and the angels after him, first came.

For when angels come to town they don’t usually bring peace. They even sometimes disturb the peace. They disrupt routine, they muddle the usual mindset, they destroy paradigms and replace it with new ones, better ones.

Personally Msgr., I would like to thank you for coming to town, for coming to our archdiocese. Thank you for taking your name seriously. Thank you for what you did and for what you are about to do. It was about time. It is about time.

I know sometimes you feel lonely. Angels do feel lonely sometimes. For one my guardian angel sometimes does feel lonely. If you do, please come to town, come to our seminary. You will find here for company corny angels who would make you laugh, dancing angels who would dance with you, singing angels who would sing for you, cuddly angels, makulit angels, lovely angels, not so lovely angels, uncategorizable angels, but angels nonetheless. So come and celebrate once in a while with your fellow angels.

Again, thank you for what you did. Your priesthood had been and I hope will continue to be, should I say,” angelic.” And as you do, at those times when we may not understand, at those times when we cannot easily accept you angelic decisions and angelic verdicts, (especially in my continued stay here in the seminary), may we put, may I put my mind into my heart and thus walk praising and glorifying God.

Thank you so much Bishop Angel.