Where death is life

AS priest, I get to see many people already on the verge of death. Their families invite me to give them the last sacraments of the anointing, communion or viaticum. If the patients are still able, I would hear their confessions.

But it’s the effort to convey the Christian meaning of suffering and death that I find most challenging. I’m aware of the different levels of faith that people have, and it’s in how to adapt the doctrine to their level, such that they get to appreciate it, that would leave me gasping for divine inspiration.

I just can’t dish out the teaching in the raw. I need to dress it up, using the appropriate words, tone, arguments and examples. I also need a good sense of timing, feeling the pulse of those around to see if my words are entering or not. A tricky affair, but all worth it. I learn something every time I do this.

But we actually don’t need someone to be dying to savor the tremendous truth about Christian suffering and death. Each day offers us many occasions to touch base with this crucial truth.

The other day, I was invited to the celebration of the 45th wedding anniversary of my husband-and-wife teachers in first-year high school back in Tagbilaran also 45 years ago. The woman was my English teacher, the man my vocational (electrical) subject electrical.

It was an intimate gathering of friends and relatives, and the occasion turned out to me as a good reminder precisely of the Christian meaning of suffering and death.

As different people were called to give some testimonials, I relished at the sincere expressions of what they saw and learned from the couple. I myself know them as a simple and sincere pair, to the point of being self-effacing, but truly hard working and cheerful. It’s a combination of traits that’s getting rare these days.

I was the first one to be called. I didn’t prepare anything for this occasion, but I found myself saying many things, since there were just so much to say and to thank for. To Ma’am, I said: “With your beautiful smile, I learned fast from you. That I could now speak and write in what may be called as passable English was because of you.”

To Sir, I said: “Thanks a lot for the electrical skills I learned from you. I’m not known for manual skills, but I must say that with my knowledge in electrical circuitry, my mother came to depend on me whenever we had electrical problems at home. I always became an instant hero whenever there was a brownout, since I could fix it.”

It was what the 5 children said that moved me a lot. They are now all professionals, married with children, looking happy and yet looking simple and unaffected. They talked about how they grew up under the close supervision of the parents who combined affection and discipline very well.

They were talking about how they had to study and work hard, and be quite demanding on their daily schedules, and go through hard times to be able to finish their studies and find work. In the end they all finished and found good jobs.

Their father was a working student himself, who finished his studies by being a handy man to the priests who ran the school. Part of his work was to teach some electrical skills to high schoolers like me. I remember spending a lot of time understanding and doing hands-on experiments in electrical matters.

A friend of his, also a working student, narrated that though he was not part of my teachers’ wedding entourage, just the same he helped a lot on that wedding day, because he was the cook and everything else for the couple. He said he and my teacher worked hard to finish their schooling.

I found the testimonials simple and springing fresh from the heart. The thought came to my mind that if we still have families and friendships like this, then our country has a lot of hope, in spite of the hard and complicating times. These are fountains of pure goodness that simply would produce wonderful effects on all of us.

I saw in them what one saint used to say—that we need to die a little everyday to ourselves, so we also live a little more in God everyday, like a grain that has to die on the ground to germinate and become a plant.