
His name was Fr. Art Arnaiz, a priest of CICM (for Can I Climb Mountains, he joked, or Can I Collect your Money, more tongue in cheek than convincingly). He said he is an itinerant preacher, reaching Good the Shepherd Parish Shrine often, and pag inaantok ka na, lalapitan kita, pero hindi kita gigisingin (hinting heavily that his voice (and the substance of his speech later) is enough to keep you awake). The preacher said that the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (in Latin Congregato Imaculati Cordis Mariae) has been in the Philippines for 100 years and ticked off the Paco Church, St. Louis Univiversity in Baguio and Tuguegarao, the Bamboo Organ in Las Piñas, as some of structures they have built in the country. He was also a missionary in Europe and happy to note that mission is the topic assigned to him that night. At the mention of mission, he asked his audience what they feel when they see laylayan-ng-lipunan people sprawled on the sidewalks. The unanimous answer was awa. He asked them, “May ginawa ka ba?” (emphasis on the last two syllables).
When he was sent on a mission in Guatemala, he was excited. Because he was told that the place was under the military and missionaries that are caught proselytizing there are fed to the crater of a volcano. There is no threat like that in the Philippines so those in the fringes of society need our pity, and the action required of us is to be real missionaries. PREX inculcated in us to be evangelizers, as in Mark 16:15 which asked of us to “Go and make disciples of all nations…”
Talking more to himself than to the audience, he mused that, “After experiencing everything, is renewal for myself? Should I ask my neighbor, ‘Halika, samahan mo ako roon, sa transformation, ibahagi ang natutuhan sa iba, sa mga kapitbahay na nag-aaway, kung hindi man sa kanila, sa mga anak nila.’
“Nineteen years na akong pari at misyonero. When I was in Brussels, I went to cafés every night to meet people. Our rooms there had windows in the middle and, like the chapels, were red lit, like the red light in legal whorehouses. Most of the prostitutes there are migrants with no choice. It was hard for me in the beginning, being asked if I went there to make money. And I’d say no, but thank you for your faith in believing in us.
“The whores there had no choice. Like the poor in the Philippines that, because they don’t have much choice, they resort to sinful vices and activities, like the scavenger who is exhausted dizzy by his daily grind and alleviates the exhaustion by rugby. If I’m convinced I’m a missionary, he said, I have to do something.
“During my assignment in Tala Leprosarium. (now Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital), DOH told the bedridden lepers that there will no longer be rationing of food for they have outgrown their stay. There was no need to announce the implicit fact that they have long been abandoned by relatives. We had to feed them, our only resources coming from God. Because we worship, yes, but what’s our mission if we, too, abandon them?” What he said next was imperative, “We ought to go and visit these wretched brethren Hansel patients, if only to help their children if not them directly. Are we doing it? Or do we wait for God to ask us at the second judgment?
“This is what Pope Francis wants to launch in October, Mission Month. I get my resources from consultancy, which no one does, to feed people everyday, because there is no end to people needing feeding.
“A beggar goes daily to his place, taking a chance, even if no one cares or notices that he is there. I ask the Lord, when will people wake up to that reality? Mission can happen inside our homes, without proclaiming ‘I gave to this charity or that,’ but by doing it ourselves, anonymously or, if we are ill-equipped, seeking for like-minded hearts to help out.
“A missionary bends his knees to hold on to prayer. I remember October 1, the Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, we no longer had a budget for the kids and the Hansel patients. While saying Mass, I prayed, ‘Lord, give me a way’. After Mass, a lady approached me, she had a plaster on her back. The nuns and I didn’t know her, but she gave me an envelope for the kids and the patients. Our collection for that day was not even a hundred, and it was the weekend, the envelope that she gave had the exact day’s budget. By budget, I mean we give our wards a full meal, not soup, and I asked her how we could acknowledge her generosity. She said there was no need, and then disappeared. The Commission on Audit asked me to say Mass and when I went there, I saw their image of St. Therese with a plaster on her back. When I asked why, they said it had a crack that needed covering up. Until now, I do not understand. All I know is that when God does His work, He never abandons it.
“When I was in Lisieux, France, to deliver a talk, l visited her tomb. There, a nun approached me and handed me a rose saying she had a dream that said the first man she sees she will give a rose to.
“The point of the story is totally giving up oneself, for people to see us walk our talk, for when you give God the way, He returns it manifold.”
He wanted to help a leper, whose fingers were consumed by the disease, who asked him if he does not see and smell him something awful. He told the man he smells of heaven. In gratitude, the leper sang to him “Hiram” but when he got to the end, he whispered the last words ‘Sino ako’.
The man died December of last year and a doctor in the hospital planned to donate his body to be used for lab study. Fr. Art said ‘No’. And he told the story of a time when their feeding budget was again in dire straits, in spite of the hat having been passed around. And this man took out of his pocket his last P5, and offered it to him. Could he have refused it? Evidently, it was a no-choice moment for the priest. Therefore, to emphatically register his ‘No’ to the doctor, he took out his St. Peter memorial policy and proceeded to change it to the man’s name. And buried him decently. It was, after all, by the leper’s P5, that his decent burial was paid in full.
The parting shot of Fr. Art was, “When the Lord calls you to walk the talk, tutugon ka ba?” Amen.
Postscript:
Ate Mila and I exchanged notes on the just-concluded talk. She said that she was grateful she was finally able to hear – and meet – the person whose reputation preceded him. We both agreed that his discourse – and presence – will enhance the 7 Ps even more.