Friday , 29 March 2024

After five vicarious haloed days

Alegria A.Imperial / Peregrine Notes

Another gray sky blankets Vancouver. Through the blinds, a slivered world of bare trees, bland walls of glass divided in parts by empty alleys as if evacuated, belie a fresh day, which I suppose has just risen a vast ocean away; I imagine another gold-ish day swaths Manila, sustaining the serene haloed air. The hosts of TV Patrol on TFC did express it as an honest wish—were that every day is Pope Francis Day.

Among a bevy of daily Filipino Mass-goers at the Holy Rosary Cathedral here in Vancouver, the “Pope Francis-effect” spillover could not be veiled. Wearing an invisible badge of borrowed privilege, they shared with me yesterday, a mother’s or a sister’s, or that of a cousin’s or friend’s called-in or texted message about their sacrifice-turned-blessing of just being there. The common thread unraveled experiences of trying to get at least eye-to-eye contact with the Pope—a hug would be a miracle—all sounding more than awesome.

But like most, in spite hours of snaking through what must have felt like a quicksand of bodies, straining for a whiff of the Pope’s smile, got as far as echoed distance only.

Still, everyone claimed a miracle like no fever and chills from hours of getting drenched in what had poured as hard rain or no muscle pains from trudging the length of Quirino Highway to find any ride back to say, Cavite, walking the kilometric stretch of what had seemed but a few corners away, unaware it would be to Baclaran. During the telling of all these, we had caught each other’s ecstatic throwing of hands in cheer as if the blessing were ours, too.

Indeed, from snatches of broadcasts my sister and I managed to catch on TFC, the palpable passion of the crowd seemed to seep off the television screen; I felt a lump in my throat not a few times, no matter the jubilant chants, “We love you! Pope Francis!” like there has been a love affair already going on. Nothing akin to it at first, but later, I recognized it as somewhat like that of orphans lifted up to the light where once they nibbled on hopelessness. His Holiness apparently ripped through that darkness—a kind of needless social imprisonment, thickened by walls of neglect and sheer incompetence.

A daily dose on TFC of crime, street chaos, raw poverty, unabashed sorrow, unemployment, hence, survival by any means, juxtaposed with escapist fairy-tale life in telenovelas or “peeping Tom” celebrity talk, and scandalous exposes of unimaginable politician’s wealth, cannot but be a landscape short of “a living hell” as Aling Agnes (not her real name) had described to me once, in a whisper slightly wetting my ears. For her, the country she has left as “Marta” in rarefied Forbes Park households, to immigrate as caregiver to whiny children of absentee moms, or the elderly left on their own in basement suites, “has since been headed for doom”

Now retired, she has taken on the equivalent of monastic vows. Garbed in long roomy skirts, long sleeves shirts, and a mantle, which she uncannily puts together in a fashionably arresting mix, she spends half of the day mincing her prayers after Holy Mass daily at the cathedral. She extends such hours, kneeling where the row of pews faces the tabernacle, and lit by the painterly glow from a stained glass window of the Holy Family right above her, especially when disaster like Yolanda strikes.

We had travelled back in our hearts to that calamity also yesterday, midway through the euphoria over the Pope’s visit. For her, little has healed and the pain still as searing as when aid and care thinned out for the victims. That the Pope felt he had to be there had brought bitter tears that filled her lower lids as she gripped my hand. “We need purification. All good has been stained (namantsahan) and the Lord has responded,” she breathed through every word.

As I gestured to leave, she had pulled me back, and with one hand, scooped what looked like Xeroxed estampitas—on closer read, yes indeed, prayers but more like a child’s paste-up work of anguished images, scriptural passages, encircled phrases, and a scrawled jumble of her own dark predictions if we fail to go back to God.

I’ve seen her handing out some of these quite secretively to whomever perhaps an angel picks; though once, I saw a bunch scattered on a vacant pew.

Between her and the earlier group winging on their second-hand blessings from the Pope, and skeptical observers waiting from hereon for the real “Francis-effect,” that Juliet, a Filipina neighbor, passed on to me in a brief call last night, I feel wedged in.

But I will not cease to pray that from his extemporaneous homilies, especially to the youth at the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas as its titular head—where he taught us all what’s lacking in our good deeds—hope has seeded and soon will flower, as surely as a new sunrise that I suppose has arched to its zenith by now.

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