X Men

Saturday May 10, I was invited to speak at the first assembly of PAX - Philippine Association of Ex-Seminarians. We met under the shade of the trees at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Memorial Center.

It was a chance to get in touch with some friends I knew in the SVD seminary, including Fr. Mike Padua who was introduced as the chaplain of PAX; he has been also supportive of the XVDs - the association of former SVDs. I also met alumni of other seminaries.

Atty. Ribo from Leyte is one of the prime movers, and said in his welcome remarks that there is really no specific and clear purpose for PAX, as of now. Just a gathering and fellowship.

I said that the fellowship is reason enough, especially since PAX could be a “learning fellowhip.” After all, ex-seminarians and ex-priests need to learn many things that we didn’s in the seminary - how to be parents and partners, how to earn our living, how to serve the wider community not as full-time celibates but as people with families.

 Since we were at the Bantayog, I explained that the names on the Wall of Remembrance used to be restricted to those who fought and died as martyrs for democracy during martial law. But what about those who survived? Later, the Bantayog board recognized those who continued to work for democracy after EDSA 1986 and died of old age or sickness.

I drew some parallelism to the church’s ideas about whom to honor as saints. The first were the “martyrs” those who gave up their lives giving witness to their faith. But later, the church recognized “confessors” - those who lived out their witness day by day and eventually died of old age or sickness. I said that as a young priest-activist, I may have had a “martyr complex,” expecting to die young in the struggle. But now I prefer to be a confessor, and live to a ripe old age.

As an educator, I commented that martyrs are not the best resources for learning. Their main lesson is about courage in the face of death. We cannot learn much from their lives, since it is not acceptable to talk of their faults and failings; these have been washed away by their shedding of blood. In the pithy phrase of some commentators, martyr-saints are “to be admired, but not imitated.”

And yet we are only too conscious of our own limitations, our failings and weaknesses, even as we strive to overcome then and learn. That is why confessors are better teachers. They stumble and fall, but rise and learn, and more important, they persevered till the end. They are an early example of sustainability.

The other church tradition gave honor first to virgins who didn’t marry but dedicated their lives to the service of the church, and to widows who didn’t marry again after their husbands died. Only much later did the church come up with another category of saints, using a double negative “nec virgo nec vidua” - neither virgin nor widow.

Just as confessors are a model for the majority; martyrdom is not to be sought, but it comes, only for a minority, so also “neither virgin nor widow” is the life condition of the majority.

That is the life path that ex-seminarians and ex-priests have to explore, and we can benefit from exchanging notes in a fellowship like PAX.

But there is also an X factor in the identity that unites the members of PAX, our being ex-seminarians. Is this merely a historical reference, that once we spent time in the seminary studying to be priests? Or does it mean something more - a commitment to and a search for ways to contribute to the wider community?

We had a second guest speaker at the PAX assembly - Among Ed Panlilio, governor of Pampanga. it’s the third time we meet, all of them unplanned. “This may mean something,” we told each other. He spoke about his crusade against jueteng, and asked PAX for help in filing a case against Bong Pineda, and asking PNP General Razon to assign an anti-jueteng officer to Pampanga.

I recalled that of the 15 mayors in Oriental Mindoro, four are ex-seminarians, alumni of Saint Augustine Seminary in Calapan. I teased the rector that maybe the seminary curriculum should be revised to take this into account - have a common basic curriculum, then have two tracks, one for those who will be priests and another for those who will go into public service.

Is there really an X factor in the fact that at one time in our lives, we responded to a perceived call to service? And though we responded later to another call - to family, business, public service, development work etc., can we say that the spirit that made us respond to the first call is still there, looking for new contemporary ways of service?

PAX is a venue to pursue this question.

 

 

 

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