My dad just turned 73. The number
shows he is already a senior citizen. But he is not that senior looking. Yes,
he is retired. But he is not tired from life. His newest venture is farming. He
has so much passion for it. Though he is not an agriculturist by training, his
heart is one. He has spent so much time in personal research to discover and learn
the latest techniques in farm development. He is self-taught and continues to
learn from others, from observation and from experience. For him, this is not
just a personal passion. This is his contribution in order to change the
paradigm of our community in Bantayan Island. He wants to show the importance
of the land and how to maximize it.
Dad
is one of the one hundred million Filipinos in this country. But he is more
than a statistic indicator. He is more than just a number for us who know him
and love him. We celebrated with joy the day of his birth to thank God for the
gift of life. As always, he is never alone when he celebrates his natal day
because he was born as one of the twins! For whatever reasons, his mother
called him Teopistes and his twin brother, Teofisto; he is Titing, the other is
Totong. If we were to look at their throwback photos, they were really
identical. Even now. Same height, same build, same good-looking faces. Yet so vastly
different because when God creates, He does so with quality. He fashions each
of us in style. God makes it sure we have our own personal identity.
The
twins were born three months before the war of 1941. Two other siblings
preceded them. One could imagine the difficulty of giving birth in a small
island town. No hospitals or doctors were available. They just had “hilots” (quasi-midwife)
to aid the women in their pangs of birth. When the war broke out, my dad’s
family had to hide in a cave in a forested area to survive. Life was difficult.
Yet they survived. They had to work hard. And never did they doubt that God was
there all along. Through war and peace, God was not that distant. If things
went wrong with my dad then, I wonder if I would still be his child. The
thought might seem hypothetical. To me, it’s a mystery.
In
those days, the survival of the child hangs on the family. Parents had to do great sacrifices to feed,
protect and nurture their children. It was a great burden but it was done with
great love for every child is considered a gift from God. Every gift is a
treasure with a built-in responsibility. Parents saw it that way. They still do
so today believing it is God’s way of raising a family.
The other
Sunday, Pope Francis married 20 couples at the St. Peter’s Basilica, part of
the Church’s effort to bring people especially couples to Jesus. In his homily,
he reminded them: “It is impossible to quantify the strength and depth of
humanity contained in a family: mutual help, educational support, relationships
developing as family members mature, the sharing of joys and difficulties.
Families are the first place in which we are formed as persons and, at the same
time, the "bricks" for the building up of society.
The Pope
gave the couples sound advice telling them that their wedding bliss will be
tested but reassured them that Christ would be able to help them resist the
"dangerous temptation of discouragement, infidelity, weakness, abandonment."
He also added: “the love of Christ, which has blessed and sanctified the union
of husband and wife, is able to sustain their love and to renew it when,
humanly speaking, it becomes lost, wounded or worn out. The love of Christ can
restore to spouses the joy of journeying together.”
The ceremony
was the first time since Pope John Paul II presided over a wedding in 2000. That
event highlighted Pope Francis’ desire to focus on the care of the Christian family.
Next month he has called for an extraordinary synod (meeting) of bishops on
October 5-19, 2014 to discuss on the “pastoral challenges of the family in the
context of evangelization.” Despite humanity’s progress, the human family
continues to be the basic channel for God’s blessings to flow in the world. It
is God’s way of showing He continues to care. It is God’s way of renewing the
world from within. Thus the hope of humanity is still through the family.
At 73, my
dad has so much to thank for. As his family, we are blest for the life he
shared with us!
(This article appeared in Cebu Daily News, September 21, 2014)
