Missionary journey amid germophobia

Long after, immediately after, or even during this COVID-19 pandemic year 2020, we would have a huge pile of pandemic-related reflections, ruminations, conjectures, homilies, journal entries, poems, stories, scripts, and songs posted online by countless citizens of this planet who have the gift for words. Even those who cannot express themselves through words would have others express for them their experiences through various media such as photographs, art, music, and dance. As I wrote midway during the pandemic, we are like marooned voyagers becoming poets, sages, etc.

But before many of the written pandemic stuff could become ink on paper, Father Percy Juan G. Bacani of the Missionaries of Jesus has done what for many would still be postponed stuff. Bacani’s “A Missionary Journey in a Germophobic World: Rest, Re-imagine and Reset Humanity” (Claretian Communications Foundation, 2020) came out two months ago.

Bacani’s book begins on March 19, 2020, which was around the time the total lockdown was imposed in many places in the Philippines and when many countries all over the world shut their doors and borders. Everything was at an unprecedented standstill. This would go on for eight or so months even while virus infections and deaths reached tragic peaks and scientists raced to create a vaccine.

During that time, Bacani drew out nourishment from the rich spiritual wilderness where he is at home, where many of us also dwell and do not know it. His first Rx is REST. “Recreate your life by seeing the bigger picture of your life. You are more than your fears. You recreate your life by being mindful of what you are now doing. Nothing is accidental. Enjoy these times when you have a heightened sensitivity of everything. Simplify your life. Focus on the essentials. Tenderness be around you, with yourself and others and learn to be kind with yourself by avoiding negative thoughts and reactions.” Not easy for those in the pits.

The book then changes gears to find ways to “re-imagine and reset humanity.”

It is not all locusts and wild honey in the wilderness. Bacani plunges headlong into the “exceptional” Holy Week retreat (April 2020) while the “virtual global retreat” is playing out. He provides daily reflections which would still be timely when, in 2021, we look back at Lent 2020 and, hopefully by then, relish “the resurrection event (when) humanity is reborn, what Leonardo Boff calls la Pascua en un prolongado Viernes Santo (Easter on a long Good Friday).”

My favorite chapter is Chapter 7 (“Glimpses of compassion emerging in the midst of suffering”), where Bacani enriches his own reflections with the reflections of others—fellow priests, junk pickers, frontliners, the bereaved—what it is like to be commanded to stay at home, when home is under the bridge. He frequently quotes Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si” and, toward the end, reflects on the Pope’s post-synodal exhortation, “Querida Amazonia,” which Bacani describes as a call to radical ecological conversion.

Bacani writes that during lockdown “when human activities stopped, the earth responded with positive energies to allow us to have a glimpse of what is possible if we dare to be more caring and kinder in dealing with God’ creation.” A great “reset,” indeed.

Bacani’s book somewhat reminds me of famous Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton’s “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.” It came out early enough for it resonate in our germophobic lives. My only regret is that it cannot serve up gems derived from Christmas experiences of the pandemic kind. In a sequel perhaps?

Bacani is a noted Filipino moral theologian hereabouts and elsewhere. He is currently pastor of the twin parishes of Precious Blood Catholic Church and St. Kevin Catholic Church in the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He is described as one who “engages in searching for the human and divine energy interplay in any given context. What is deeply human reveals the veiled presence of the Divine.”

Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of the Diocese of Caloocan describes the book as “socially relevant especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges that it is posing on ecclesial mission and ministry.” (Another book by the bishop, “Yeshua Son of Man,” is out, with QR codes and all!)

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