After the visit

Thanks to the print and broadcast media, and the new media of the Internet and social media sites, the nation was swept up by the papal visit so that it was possible for people to be almost totally enveloped, almost continuously, by religious activities.

I was out of Manila for a conference and didn’t get back until Saturday morning but I was still able to “attend” two Masses (a replay of the one in Tacloban, and a live attendance at Sunday’s Quirino Grandstand celebration), as well as the Liturgy of the Word at the University of Santo Tomas.

I feel like someone who has just come out of a religious retreat, still inspired and determined to be “good” but well aware of the many scientific studies that show all these feelings come about from the intensity of religious rituals, times when we shut out the world and become rapt in religious fervor. It is impossible not to be moved, even if the participation is via television, when you are with multitudes of people.

These “be good” feelings fade rapidly as we go back into the world. I was in fact feeling a bit of despair the afternoon after Pope Francis visited, while waiting for a traffic light to change. There was the bad traffic, the smoke-belching jeeps, the vendors, and the beggars… I don’t know if it was just my imagination but I thought there were more of them, and I wondered if they were capitalizing on the Pope’s call to be concerned about the poor.

The big question now: How do we retain, how do we nurture, the insights and lessons picked up from the papal visit? The Pope himself referred to an information overload marking our times, and I would include a kind of papal overload—people moved not just by his homilies and formal speeches but also by his many ad-lib and spontaneous remarks, jokes included, made during his many encounters with the people.

Sorrow, joy, glory

I’m going to share mainly my reflections coming out of the three religious celebrations. Each had its own character and I can’t help but use metaphors from the Roman Catholic mysteries of the rosary: sorrowful, joyful, glorious.

I will go backward, starting with the Mass at Rizal Park, with television providing varying panoramic views of the crowd, and Manila Bay serving as a spectacular backdrop. That, I thought, was “glorious,” with all its pomp and pageantry, a Pontifical High Mass with a symphony orchestra and a choir that must have had at least 100 people. The estimate is that some six million attended.

The UST Liturgy of the Word was meant to be an encounter with young people. I thought of the joyful mysteries here, young people full of hope, although the high point, a poignant one, was when 12-year-old Glyzelle Palomar, a former street child, broke down in tears and asked how God could allow so much misery. It was a question philosophers and theologians have asked, repeatedly, through the centuries, and it took the Pope to take up the question and urge people to be courageous enough to weep. “Certain realities,” he said, “we see only with eyes cleansed by tears.”

The Tacloban Mass was marked by sorrow, people still in grief from the destruction left by “Yolanda” in 2013. Tropical Storm “Amang,” appropriately named, had made it a point to trail the Holy Father with wind and rain. We take storms for granted, given that we have so many each year, but it must have been a different experience for the Pope, who has not lived in a monsoon area.

But that Mass was, as far as I was concerned, the most beautiful, people braving the wind and rain, and the Pope showing his solidarity by insisting on saying Mass outdoors, wearing a yellow light raincoat like everyone else. Solidarity with Filipinos was what this papal visit was all about.

Inclusiveness

Never have I seen such efforts at inclusiveness from the Roman Catholic Church, starting with the use of languages. The Pope himself would shift from English to Latin to Italian to Argentine Spanish. At UST and Luneta, there was one part of the celebration where the readings were made in Ilokano, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bikol, Cebuano, Waray and Hiligaynon.

There was more to inclusiveness than languages. The organizers made sure there would be special places for people with disabilities, the ill, the infirm, and the elderly. I was touched when, during the Luneta Mass, a blind woman read Isaiah 9:1-6 from a Braille document. All the telecast celebrations had a sign interpreter for the deaf.

The inclusiveness goes beyond political correctness. We talk here of a church whose very name, Catholic, speaks of universality. We talk, too, of a pope who never tires of reminding people about mercy and compassion. In the Philippine context, his strongest messages were about solidarity with the poor, and especially with poor children.

At the UST encounter, the Pope drew applause as well when he noted the underrepresentation of women among the speakers. A new take he had on “woman power” was how women, and girls (he was referring specifically to Glyzelle), often had perspectives, ways of looking, that men did not have.

Toward the end of the Luneta Mass, Cardinal Chito Tagle promised the Pope that Filipinos would go out to the peripheries to engage the marginalized. He mentioned many groups, among them the poor, the sick, the elderly, all the way up to non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians.

He mentioned, too, victims of discrimination and exploitation, but did not name particular groups. I think of the phrase “elephants in the room,” used to describe tremendous problems within organizations, but which people might still prefer to deny or pretend as nonexistent. The elephants are the issues that hound the Church, from clerical sexual abuse to the “gay issue.”

There was much dialogue during the papal visit, some scripted, others spontaneous and moving, some publicized, and others held quietly. If the papal visit is to leave a lasting legacy, the issues the Pope brought up need to be repeated, reiterated, and processed, not so much as sermons as through other activities.

Several times during the Luneta Mass cameras showed Jose Rizal’s monument, and I thought about his struggles as a “lapsed Catholic” who tried to dialogue with his Jesuit mentor, Fr. Pablo Pastells, in letters filled with questions but never lacking in a love for the Church of his youth. Pastells was stern and harsh, but also trying desperately to reach out to Rizal.

I think Rizal would have been pleased to see a more open Church today, one that will heed the Pope’s call to use three languages: that of the mind, the heart and the hand. Feel what you think, he told the crowds, and feel what you do. Simple advice from a caring pastor calling on Filipinos to go out into the world.

E-mail: [email protected]