Spiritual satisfaction in living with the poor

I always like Asuncion David-Maramba’s columns but the one titled “Where is Jesus’ seamless garment?” (Inquirer, 3/5/12) could not be more “on.” For many years I taught in the seminary, but the problem Maramba discussed goes back to a time when young men and women were recruited from the provinces.

Understandably, the religious life is attractive for a number of reasons—such as security and prestige. (Why do the religious groups of nuns in habit get far more vocations than those in ordinary dress?) The young man from a poor family in a remote area learns “class” in the seminary—eats better, dresses better and is looked up to in sotana. After ordination, assigned to an area not totally dissimilar from that of his origin, he feels most comfortable with the mayor, the doctor and the landowner by reason of both education and lifestyle. I am not attributing “bad will” but simply bad structures.

One of my former students left before ordination and has started a group of his own (they call themselves “orthodox”), but its members are willing to live in urban poor areas, compose liturgies based on the lives of the people, and are trying to make a “people’s church.” For the past 22 years, we have been supporting the formation of “community-based organizations of poor older people” (there are presently more than 100 in the Greater Manila Area alone) but whenever I suggest to bishops and religious superiors (both men and women) that basic Christian communities (BCCs) will not evolve from the sermons and we can show them how to organize—or better, how people can organize themselves—generally, they don’t see this as a “religious area of concern.” So, sad to say, most BCCs are extensions of the parish.

I don’t say all this because I am depressed. On the contrary, I see not only the orthodox religious as well as many other experiments as the hope of the future. No one has an exclusive franchise on the Gospel and the Spirit blows where it will, and if we could only document all these “signs of spring,” others would be encouraged to join.

—ED. GERLOCK,

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