Marginal Notes on Lolo's Manuscript

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

I was still a seminarian when my late grandfather first told me about the autobiography he was writing. He said it like it was a big secret he was letting me in on, because he knew that I shared his passion for reading and writing. Whether or not I was indeed the only one who had been told about his secret project (besides my Lola, of course), I am not too sure now. But, at that time, that was how he made me feel. “Someday, I am going to let you read it,” he assured me under his breath.

Lolo did show me the first pages of his manuscript sometime after his revelation. I remember how impressed I was not only by the eloquence of his writing style, but also by the elegance of his handwriting. In fact, I was so awed by his classical longhand that I soon found myself trying to imitate it--but to no avail. (My handwriting even got worse as a result!)

For one reason or another, Lolo did not show me the succeeding pages of his manuscript. Once or twice I asked him how it was going and he replied that he was still working on it. Meantime, the years passed and I soon got lost in the adventure of living my own life.

Lolo died in 1996 at the age of 88. Among the things he left behind was a three-volume autobiography consisting of more than 400 typewritten pages. At the time of his death, I had other concerns on my mind – matters that I felt were more urgent than reading an old man’s life story. But when my Lola died around nine years later, bringing with her to the grave the memories of her life and Lolo’s, I felt that I owed it to them as their grandson to read Lolo’s autobiography and perhaps even prepare it for possible publication. Fortunately, my father and aunt didn’t think twice about bequeathing Lolo’s old manuscript to me when I asked for it.

Lolo entitled his autobiography “A Destiny.” The quotation that he used as a prologue to his book summed up the philosophical framework from which he viewed his life:

"You cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, any more than you can see the North Star in the magnetic needle. God has loaded the needle of that young life so it will point to the star of its own destiny; and though you may pull it around by artificial advice and unnatural education, and compel it to point to the star which provides over poetry, art, law, medicine, or whatever your own pet calling is until you have wasted years of a precious life, yet, when once free, the needle flies back to its own star." [1]

Lolo was a Mason and a Methodist, if his religious affiliation has to be given a name. But, at heart, he was actually a “religious liberal.” His ideas about God and human life were quite progressive for his age; and I remember that that was one of the things I admired most about him.

Yet, when one reads his autobiography, one realizes that as he grew older, he became more and more fascinated by the idea that God has destined each of us for a certain role in this life, and that no matter how we try to stray from that predetermined path, we will eventually end up where God has meant us to be in the first place. Somehow, this idea gave Lolo a lynchpin with which he could hold together the seemingly unrelated fragments of his life. Who knows, it probably even gave him a way to come to terms with his inability to fulfill some of his original dreams.

As a young man, Lolo dreamt of becoming what he called a “professional” someday--a lawyer perhaps, or a certified public accountant. He excelled in academics, graduating salutatorian of his high school class. (He should have been valedictorian, were it not for a technicality which disqualified him from receiving the top honors.) So he had high hopes for himself when the time to proceed to college came. But, poverty, sickness, and his life’s other twists and turns somehow led him away from his intended path until he found himself in a field that he least wanted (originally, that is): education. He became an educator, as we say, “by force of circumstances.” To his credit, however, it did not take long before he developed a genuine passion for this field. In time, he excelled so well as an educator that he became, at various points, dean of several colleges in Dagupan City (quite a feat, if I may say so, once one takes into account the many obstacles he had to surmount in order to get there).

To serve God and His people as an educator was his destiny--this is the theme that runs through the 400 pages or so of Lolo’s manuscript. For a time, he tried to point his life’s needle in other directions. But it soon found its way to its “north star.” Lolo’s ultimate triumph lay in his recognition, acceptance and celebration of the destiny that God had given him.

I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool existentialist at heart. I used to believe that the direction our life depends entirely on how we steer the wheel of our existence. We are what we make of ourselves and not just the passive products of our circumstances. We can be whatever we want to be--this is both our privilege and duty as human beings. Of course, circumstances and external events can have a bearing on the kind and number of options we can choose from. But their impact cannot and must not be exaggerated. Human freedom is far stronger than the strongest of our life’s circumstances. I lived by this doctrine for many years, like a blue-blooded existentialist must.

Surprisingly though, the older I get, the more I realize--like Lolo--that a vast sphere of our life actually lies beyond our ability to control and manipulate. Contrary to what the leading existentialists proclaim, “fate” (or however else you wish to call it) somehow plays a huge role in our existence. More often than we are willing to admit, our life is shaped not so much by our conscious choices but by the steps our circumstances somehow constrain us to take. There is, in short, a limit to what our free will can do by way of “constructing” our life. Lolo called the synthesis that results from this dialectic between our choices and our circumstances our “destiny.” Although I am strongly reluctant to accept such an idea, the lessons I have so far learned about life have made me realize that it may not be such a strange thought after all.

I remember an entry which Dag Hammarskjold wrote in his diary: “We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.” [2] Lolo must have arrived at the same realization sometime in his life. And I feel proud of what he was able to build within the limits of his destiny’s frame.

NOTES

*A tribute to my paternal grandfather, Dean Napoleon R. Fernandez, Sr.
1. Lolo excerpted the quotation from a book entitled Human Fate. Unfortunately, he failed to name the author and give the other details of the book.
2. Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, trans. Leif Sjoberg and W.H. Auden (New York: Ballantine Books, 1983), 45.

Copyright © 2015 Emmanuel R. Fernandez

Journey to an Ever-Present Past

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

 

My wife and I wanted to include a trip to Vigan in our itinerary for our two-week vacation in the Philippines.  But there were so many tasks we wanted to accomplish during that short period, and the July weather was quite unpredictable, that up to the last minute we weren’t really sure if we could make that trip.

Fortunately, on the day after celebrating with my mom her 83rd birthday in Pangasinan (which was the primary reason for our trip to the Philippines), the sky was clear and there was time in our hands to make an overnight journey to Vigan.

Although we were in the same car en route to the same place, my wife and I were actually going to two different places, to two different Vigans (so to speak).  She wanted to see the Vigan of the present – the old town that has become a city which attracts thousands upon thousands of tourists every year.  I wanted to revisit the Vigan of the past – the Vigan that had shaped my life as a young man, and that continues to shape my life in ways I can only barely be aware of.

On the way to Vigan, we couldn’t resist dropping by the Basilica of our Lady of Charity in Agoo, La Union and complementing our Ilocos trip with a taste of genuine Ilocano food at Makkan’s Restaurant.  So, by the time we left Agoo for Vigan, it was getting dark and, to my dismay, a heavy rain had begun to fall.  I would have lost my way were it not for the help of Google Maps.  There were two “bypasses” I had to take (one in Candon, and another in Vigan) which never existed before.  The heavy rain made visibility even lower. 

We finally arrived in Vigan shortly before 9 PM.  And as soon as we checked in at the Ciudad Fernandina Hotel, my wife and I took an excited walk along Calle Crisologo which has become an alley of al fresco restaurants and souvenir stores slightly reminiscent of the ones we frequented in Rome while we were assigned there. 

The following day, we woke up early despite sleeping late the night before, in order to see as much of Vigan as we could.  We toured the old streets of Vigan aboard a calesa driven by a middle-aged Ilocana who gave us the names of the streets and buildings we saw and even added a brief history of each.  We drove to nearby Bantay to visit the St. Augustine Parish Church and its famed belfry.  All throughout our trip, our eyes were looking at the same things from two rather different perspectives.  Mine were always in search of sights that would remind me of the past:  the Vigan Plaza where my best friends at that time (the late Father Bong Lamprea, Father Hurley Solfelix, Reymil Roa, Dr. Perpy Macaranas) and I spent many Thursday and Sunday afternoons enjoying a bite of freshly-fried "empanaditas"; a restaurant named “Cool Spot” where we spent time endlessly talking about all kinds of things over bottles of beer, and at whose old upright piano Perpy and I took turns playing the songs we loved then….  My heart beat faster as our calesa approached the place where the restaurant used to stand.  It felt heavy on my chest when I saw that the restaurant was no longer there.

My best friends and I used to enjoy having a bowl of “sinanglaw” after our drinks and conversations at Cool Spot.  I asked around for a place where I could have that local soup all over again.  Everyone referred me to a place called “First Sinanglaw.”  We went there and I dedicated my first spoonful of the soup to the late Father Bong Lamprea, who introduced that Ilocano delicacy to us many July afternoons ago.

We passed by the streets where the houses of our family friends while we were students at ICST were located (the Bautistas, Herreras and Montemayors of Vigan; the Paz family of Bantay), and I remembered their many kindnesses. 

But the highlight of our trip was, for me, our visit to my old alma mater, the Immaculate Conception School of Theology.  I messaged the Rector (Father Nick Vaquilar, who was a graduate student in Rome when I served as Consul there from 2003 to 2009) that I wanted to visit him.  Unfortunately, he replied that he was then in Manila.  But he was kind enough to ask the Procurator, Father Willie Jones Ducusin, to meet and tour us around instead.  (Incidentally, I also had the privilege of previously meeting Father Jones when he and his colleagues visited our embassy in Madrid sometime in July 2017 while I was the Consul General there.)

Father Jones showed us the seminary chapel where my seminary batchmates and I spent many mornings and evenings attending Mass, praying and meditating.  He showed us the classrooms, and as we passed by them, I couldn’t help remembering the priests who used to serve as our professors and formators at that time:  Father Bernard Raas, SVD, and his always well-organized and logically presented lectures in Liturgy;  Father Friedrich Scharpf, SVD, and his meticulously detailed lectures in Church History and Scriptures; Father Joseph Taschner, SVD, and his apparently bland but substantively rich lectures in Moral Theology; Father Ludwig Feldkaemper, SVD, and his very scholarly lectures in Scriptures; Father Dominador Flores, SVD, and his laidback but very effective approach as Prefect of Discipline; and Father Mike Padua, SVD, our Rector and Homiletics Professor, who effortlessly gained everyone’s respect with his firm but gentle style as the Seminary’s top administrator.

I also remembered Father (now Archbishop) Ernie Salgado’s highly erudite but unpretentiously delivered lectures in Moral Theology, and his efforts to liven up his classes with his occasional magic tricks.  He would, for instance, arrange his fingers in a way that would make his thumb suddenly appear as though it were cut in half.  An outstanding but ever self-effacing professor and formator, Father Ernie became a Bishop, and later an Archbishop, as we always knew he would one day be, even then.

I remembered Father (now Bishop) Jack Jose’s lectures in Canon Law, which were always delivered with the ordered structure and clarity that one finds only among the best of civil and canon lawyers.  He also did an excellent job as ICST’s first-ever diocesan Rector.

I remembered Father Butch Maynigo, our deeply admired and widely respected erstwhile Rector at San Pablo Seminary, who spent a year or two teaching Theology at ICST. A brilliant theologian whose feet were nevertheless firmly rooted in the real world, he always made the effort to present highfalutin ideas in easily comprehensible terms. And he unfailingly made sure that there was a part of his lecture where its pastoral consequences and applications could be discussed.  He was also fond of complementing his lectures with the ideas of popular spiritual writers such as Henri Nouwen, and of existentialist philosophers like Martin Heidegger.

Slightly at the other end of the spectrum opposite Father Butch was his good friend, Father Victor Sison.  The most titled Professor on ICST’s faculty at that time (and certainly one of the most brilliant), Father Vic made no effort to bring down his ideas from their abode in the stratosphere to the surface of Mother Earth. I suppose he assumed (and rightly so, I now realize) that if you had reached far enough to be a student at ICST, you should be able to keep up with the level of his lectures, including the altitude of his theological vocabulary.  He discussed the ideas of Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, Hans Urs Von Balthasar et al. as casually as though he were discussing the latest news in the daily paper. He was already a legend even then, because aside from learning excellent theology from his lectures, your vocabulary also expanded without your knowing it.

And how could I forget Father Tom Akkara, SVD, and his insightful and engaging lectures?  Father Tom was a vey likeable fellow,  but he had this naughty habit of teasingly warning us about the dangers of smoking just when we were enjoying our cigarettes during the hour or so between the end of supper and the start of night prayers, when we were allowed to openly smoke within the seminary premises.  Being the descendants of Adam and Eve that we all were, his warnings made the taste and smell of cigarette smoke even more pleasurable to some of us.

I also remembered the seminary's administrative staff led by ICST's long-time Registrar, Ms. Estela Oliva, and her husband, Mr. Santos Ben de Peralta.  They made the unusual move of inviting our entire class of more than twenty future priests to be their child's baptismal godfathers.  Up to now, I have yet to meet someone with as many priest-godfathers as Kumadre Estela's and Kumpadre Ben's child.

From the classrooms, Father Jones brought us to the front of the Wehrle Memorial Hall (which we then simply referred to as “the aula”).  I recalled that in that hall,  Bishop William Antonio, Father Gerry Perez and I were once tasked (as students) to deliver our respective lectures during the annual ICST academic symposium which, that year, focused on Liberation Theology.  I also remembered the presentation I was invited to give there many years later when the Ateneo de Manila University Press published my doctoral dissertation in sociology as a book under the title “Leaving the Priesthood:  A Close Reading of Priestly Departures.” 

Finally, from the seminary grounds, I had the chance to look up and see my old bedroom as a senior theology student at ICST.  I remembered the many afternoons and nights I spent on my desk writing editorials, essays and poems for “Know” (the seminary’s official newsletter that I used to edit and which, I recently learned with elation, is still in circulation up to now); and for “Word Alive” (the official newsletter of the John Paul I Biblical Center which Father Ludwig Feldkaemper asked me to serve as editor of in those days).  At night, from my bedroom, before going to bed, I could cast a glance at the huge white statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception that stood (and still stands) in front of ICST’s Main Building. 

As I looked at her statue anew during our visit, I wondered if our Lady still remembered the prayers I said then, the secrets I shared with her, the hidden dreams I asked her to bless…. Our Lady’s statue did not move.  (And I was not expecting a miracle.)  But something in my heart answered me that, indeed, She had been -- and She continues to be -- a quiet but real part of the journeys I’ve been making since I graduated from ICST thirty-six long years ago.

My wife and I ended our trip equally grateful for the opportunity to visit our two Vigans.  She had taken hundreds of pictures of the place with her mobile phone, enough for her to reminisce on for many years.  I left Vigan, thankful for the knowledge that, although its landscape has changed enormously, much of the Vigan that I knew is still there, hidden quietly behind the new structures that now clothe and adorn it.

Copyright © 2023 Emmanuel R. Fernandez

In Praise of Mothers

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ*


An old woman once sent a rather strange letter of invitation to her children. It said, “Please know that, through this letter, I am giving you the permission to skip my wake, be absent from my funeral, and forget all about me after I’m buried. But I’m organizing a party with my old friends two weeks from now, and it’s one party I don’t want you to miss. Please be there… by all means.”

Two weeks later, all her children went to the venue she indicated in her letter of invitation. It was an old chapel that had seen better days. Seated together inside the chapel were their mother and six of her old friends. There was an open coffin in front of the altar and a microphone stand a few steps away. Upon seeing them, their mother stood up, walked to the microphone stand and said: “I have no idea when I’m going to be lying there inside that coffin. It could be tonight, a month later, maybe a year or two from now…. So, instead of waiting for the time when I’m already dead and I will not able to hear a word you say, please allow me NOW the privilege of hearing what you would be saying about me when I’m gone.” After she finished speaking, all her friends stood up, carried her in their arms, and placed her gently inside the coffin. There, with her old eyes closed, she began to wait for her children to speak.

One of the saddest practices that most people around the world blindly follow is to reserve the good words they want to say about the people they love until the day of their funeral. Eulogies are usually said when the person who would most appreciate hearing them is already dead. Wouldn’t our eulogies perhaps be more worthwhile if we delivered them while their subjects were still alive and able to hear what we would be saying about them?

Mother’s Day would be a good occasion to do precisely that. We could think of many ways of delivering a “eulogy” for our living mothers without unintentionally giving them the morbid feeling that there’s probably something we know about the state of their health which they don’t know, or that we’re expecting them to be gone anytime soon.

The word “eulogy,” after all, comes from the Greek word “eulogia” which simply means “praise,” “good or fine language,” period – not “praise for the dead,” not “good or fine language for someone lying six feet underground.” So, a eulogy can be delivered anytime – on Mother’s Day, on our mother’s birthday, and on any day for that matter. And it does not have to come in the form of a painstakingly crafted speech. A handwritten note accompanying a token, a brief call from overseas, a good word about her while you’re having lunch or dinner together would suffice. Most mothers are so easy to please. They don’t need expensive gifts and words laced with poetic similes and metaphors.

But, of course, nothing equals a eulogy that is delivered, not with words but with one’s actions. In fact, one’s spoken eulogy will sound painfully dishonest if it is not supported by the way one treats one’s mother in real life.

This Mother’s Day, I am reminded of the way my Mamang treated her own mother, my Lola Irene, while she was still alive. My Mamang’s life was, so to speak, a “living eulogy” for her mother. My grandmother (who worked as a schoolteacher all her life) was widowed at the very young age of thirty-seven. My Mamang was only ten years old at that time, and she had five siblings that included a boy (their youngest, my Uncle Eddie) who was only a year and three months old. Early on, my Mamang and her only sister, my Auntie Silda, did their best to assist my Lola in every way they could. In fact, after they finished their studies and started working, they gave their full salaries straight to my Lola so she could use the funds for their younger siblings’ education. They did this even while they themselves were already starting their own families. What was even more touching was that their husbands willingly allowed them to do so and even threw in their own support. The only time my Mamang and Auntie Silda were finally able to keep their salaries for themselves and their families was when their younger siblings finished their own education. But even afterwards, they continued to support their younger siblings whenever they could, and vice versa, for that was the way my Lola Irene taught her children to love one another.

My Lola Irene lived with us from the time we were born to the time she passed on. She helped my Mamang in bringing us up; and she was the person my Mamang always turned to for advise, for strength, for comfort. My Mamang always treated my Lola with unconditional love, with great respect and with filial obedience. They had occasional disagreements, of course; but at the end of the day, my Mamang’s love for her own mother always had the final word.

My Lola died at the ripe old age of eighty-nine. She quietly passed away one morning, after going through her twilight years, warmed by the assurance of her children’s love.

This Mother’s Day, as I think of my Mamang and all the mothers I know, I see their faces reflected on the face of the mother in the story we began with. And I realize how important it is indeed to seize every opportunity to eulogize our mothers, with our words and with our deeds, while they are still around and can still hear what we are going to say.
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*Copyright © 2023 Emmanuel R. Fernandez

Writing and Diplomacy

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

There is something about diplomacy that strongly attracts writers and people who, although they do not consider themselves writers, nevertheless love the act of putting down their ideas on paper.

In the first place, diplomacy is a career that involves a lot of writing.  A career diplomat’s working day typically consists of writing notes verbales, aides memoires, briefing papers, talking points, reports, demarches and a host of other forms of diplomatic correspondence.  Even if he rises to a position where his staff will be doing the actual writing of the drafts for him, he will still have to vet, edit and sometimes rewrite the drafts altogether before signing them or endorsing them to his senior officers. For this reason, a career diplomat who does not somehow enjoy writing will find it hard to derive satisfaction from his job.

Secondly, the annual FSO (Foreign Service Officer) Examinations, which any aspiring career diplomat must pass before he can be qualified for appointment by the President as a Foreign Service Officer, require a solid writing skill.  The centrepiece of the rigorous, five-part FSO Exams is the Written Test where aspirants are asked to answer (in essay form) some of the most abstruse questions one can imagine.  Some aspirants make the mistake of thinking that they must rack their brains for the “correct” answers to the questions if they want to pass the exams.  Yet, the truth is:  there is really no single “correct” answer to most of the questions.  What the examiners ultimately want to test is an examinee’s ability to present his answer or position in a clear, organized and persuasive manner.  The ability to write well is, without a doubt, one of the keys to passing the FSO Examinations.

Diplomacy, therefore, not only attracts those who somehow love the act of writing.  In general, it also admits (through its main screening mechanism, the FSO Exams) only those who can, in fact, write well.

The third reason that makes writers gravitate towards diplomacy is the priceless opportunity it offers in terms of “materials” one can later write about.  The challenges and joys that come with living in a new country, learning a new language, adapting to a new culture, making new friends in various parts of the world; representing our country before kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers; advancing our national interests and assisting our countrymen in need of help in a foreign land, constitute a vast treasure trove of materials for eventual essays, poems, short stories and even novels.  No wonder, some of the most interesting men/women of letters in history also worked, at one time or another, as diplomats (Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Niccolo Machiavelli, Baldassare Castiglione, Paul Claudel, Alexis Leger, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Carlos Fuentes, Czeslaw Milosz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, George F. Kennan; and our very own Carlos P. Romulo, Salvador P. Lopez and Armando D. Manalo, to name a few).

But that’s not to say that being a writer and a diplomat at the same time is easy.  Diplomacy is a very demanding job.  It consumes enormous amounts of one’s time and attention.  Writer-diplomats have to be determined and disciplined enough to “make time” (instead of just “finding time”) for their writing if they want to produce anything during their diplomatic career.  This often entails literally sacrificing their weekends and holidays, and the hours they could have spent watching a movie on Netflix or strolling in the park with their spouses at the end of a tiring day.  Writer-diplomats have to doggedly create time for their writing within the sparse interstices of their diplomatic life.

Even then, because of the demands of their diplomatic career, they can only write a little of the many things on their heads which they wish to put down on paper.  While still in the service, they have to patiently carry around with them an invisible suitcase filled with “songs unsung” (to borrow the title of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore).

Many of those “songs” will have to wait until they finally retire.

 

Queries for the Man on the Cross

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

We often think of “God’s will” as something which He wants us to do, something which He wants us to accomplish. But, sometimes, “God’s will” comes in the form of something we can’t do anything about, something we simply have to endure – in patience, and in faith.

In some sense, the “will of God” which comes in the form of having to do or to accomplish something is “easier” on our shoulders because it still gives us a room for choice. Somehow, we still have the freedom to decide whether to say yes or to say no, to accomplish “God’s will” or to reject it. A young woman who feels that God is calling her to the religious life can still say no. And God will respect her choice. He will not suddenly send a thunderbolt from the sky in order to strike her dead on account of her rejection. The same could be said of a man who feels that God wants him to resign from his toxic but high-paying job and find work that will allow him to have more time for his family. That man still has the latitude to say yes or to say no. In both examples, their choices will eventually have consequences. But these are consequences, NOT punishments from God. The things God wants us to do or to accomplish always redound, in the end, to our own good. If we choose not to do them, then we deprive ourselves of the good that would have been ours if we only said yes. That’s a consequence we must be ready for as a result of our own choices.

But the “will of God” that comes in the form of something to be endured is different. We can’t say no to it. We just have to carry it like a cross thrust upon our helpless shoulders.

All of us have had to endure that kind of “God’s will” at one point or another in our lives: a freak motorcycle accident that kills a young son who held so much promise; a serious sickness that has paralysed us or left us with only a few months more to live; a child who continues to rebel against us even if we cannot think of a reason why there should be so much hatred in his or her heart for us; a huge earthquake that claims the lives of thousands of people, including one or two who had been a part of our personal journey; a war that continues to destroy the lives of helpless civilians, including those of innocent children; a pandemic that has turned our world upside down…

Of course, we ought to desist from ascribing all things such as these to “God’s will” every time. If you’ve never really taken good care of your health and you have been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for the last twenty years, the doctor’s pronouncement that you have lung cancer and that you only have a few months to live is not “God’s will.” If you’ve been warned against taking a boat ride on a particular day because there’s a huge storm coming, but you still insist on taking that ride, then you can’t ascribe to “God’s will” the accident that may befall you as a result.

But there are tragedies that strike us for which we never had any responsibility; there are trials that violently shake the ground of our lives towards the occurrence of which we never really contributed anything. And, in the face of such trials and tragedies, we cannot help repeating the same old question that has been asked by countless others over the centuries: How can an all-good, all-loving and all-powerful God allow evil things to happen in our lives? How can such an all-good and all-powerful God afford to see us undergo so much pain and endure so much suffering yet still claim that He loves us?

There is a field of philosophy called “theodicy” that has been trying to answer that question for a long, long time. But the philosophical explanations that theodicy has so far come up with can satisfy our hunger for answers only up to a certain point. At the end of the day, after all of theodicy’s stratospheric attempts to pacify our minds, we will all find ourselves asking the same question we began with.

And it’s the same question that must have been on the minds of everyone who witnessed our Lord’s crucifixion: if this man hanging on the cross is indeed “God’s Son” as he claims to be, why doesn’t God do anything to save him? If he is indeed “God’s Son,” why does God His Father allow him to suffer and die in such a brutal, humiliating way? And if he is “God’s Son,” why can’t he himself do something about his own suffering? Matthew’s gospel narrates that those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” (Mt 27: 39)

Well, Jesus did not come down from the cross. And neither did His Father do anything to save him from his human suffering. From one point of view, it may look as though God did not answer the queries they asked – the queries that WE, all of us, continue to ask to this day.

But, maybe it only looks that way because we have mistaken His “silence” for a lack of an answer. Maybe the answer was right there, in the very silence of God, in the very “powerlessness” of both the Father and His dying Son. Jesus Christ did not come to take away our suffering and our pain. He came to endure them himself. And by enduring them, he demonstrated that pain and suffering (which will always be a fixture of our human condition) are part of a Mystery we cannot fully understand but which we can all choose to embrace, to be fully a part of – in faith: a Mystery the ultimate unravelling of which commences with the joy and glory of Easter.

*Copyright © 2023 Emmanuel R. Fernandez

On Happiness

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

The best thing about happiness is that you can give it to yourself anytime.  You don’t need somebody else to give it to you. You don’t even need to have anything in order to be happy.  That’s because happiness is ultimately a choice.  You can choose to be happy anytime, anywhere -- whatever your circumstances may be.  You may be in the middle of the most miserable circumstances, but you can still choose to be happy.  No one and nothing can stop you from choosing to be happy if you really want to.

In fact, we can go beyond saying that you don’t need someone else to make you happy.  We can go so far as to say that it would be a big mistake to ask or expect anyone to make you happy.  You may have a very beautiful, talented and intelligent wife who loves and cares for you as though you were the most important person in the world.  But if you still choose to be unhappy in spite of all that, you will be unhappy.

In the same manner, no matter how much you shower your young children or your old parents with all the gifts that are within your power to give, if they still opt to be unhappy in the end, you can do nothing about that.

No one has the power (nor the obligation) to make you happy except yourself; just as you do not have the power (nor the obligation) to make anyone else happy, no matter how much you love him or her.  That power (and that obligation) belongs to the person who wants to be happy.  To think otherwise is to put oneself in a position that will inevitably lead to many disappointments.

It would likewise be a big mistake to think that finally having the things you want will make you happy.  The possession of beautiful and expensive things is by no means the key (much less, the prerequisite) to happiness.  

Not so long ago, I stumbled upon two pictures on the internet that powerfully showed me how true that statement is. One was a picture of five little children pretending to take a “selfie” of themselves using, not a mobile phone, but the sole of a rubber slipper.  From the picture, one could tell that the kids were not rich.  Three of them were barefooted.  The humble house in the background had a fence made of rusty G.I. sheets. Obviously, their parents could not afford to buy any of them a mobile phone – not even a cheap, second-hand one.  They had to make-believe that the rubber slipper was a mobile phone. But their young faces glowed with immense happiness – one that made you yourself happy just by looking at it.

The other picture was that of a little girl sitting inside a small pail filled with water.  Again, from the picture, one could tell that she did not come from a rich family.  The pail looked old and rather dirty.  But on the little girl’s face shone a ray of joy that many of us would gladly exchange our precious possessions for, if it were only possible to make such a barter.

Those children were happy not because they possessed beautiful and expensive things but because they had chosen to be happy with whatever it was that they had.  In contrast, many children of rich families are perpetually unhappy in spite of the fact that they have the latest models of the most expensive mobile phone brands, and they have huge swimming pools right in front of their living rooms!

Indeed, happiness does not come from getting what you like, but from liking what you get -- even if what you get is not exactly what you wanted originally.  It’s the attitude you choose to adopt vis-à-vis your current circumstances that makes all the difference.

But, at this point, one can ask:  can I choose to be happy even if I have just lost my job, or someone has just broken my heart into many little pieces, or someone I love has just died?  Of course, people will probably think you have gone crazy if you choose to be happy in the middle of such circumstances.  And if you choose to be happy after you have just lost a “loved one,” the police will probably suspect that you had something to do with his or her death. But, humour aside, the answer to the question is yes – you can still choose to be happy even in the middle of such unhappy circumstances.  

At the height of Adolf Hitler’s madness, when he was sending people with the slightest Jewish blood to concentration camps and gas chambers, one of his prisoners was a man named Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who happened to have a Jewish ancestry.  Frankl survived the experience and later wrote a book about how he was able to endure the horrors of being a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps by finding a personal meaning in the unspeakable sufferings that he and his fellow prisoners had to go through.  He kept his sanity and his will to survive intact by choosing to find meaning in his sufferings. He then concluded that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  [1]

If we find ourselves frequently (or worse, perennially) unhappy, it is probably because we have unconsciously chosen to be unhappy in any set of circumstances.  We have probably adopted an attitude of unhappiness towards life in general, without our knowing it. And there are many ways by which we could be unwittingly led to make such a choice.  

For instance, our cultural upbringing probably discouraged us from being “too happy” lest we would end up being very unhappy.  I recall that, in the town where I grew up, older people used to warn us, children, against laughing too much or smiling too frequently.  They told us that unhappiness is the jealous rival of happiness.  Once unhappiness sees us being “too happy,” it will make every effort to drive away our happiness and put itself in its place.  It took me a while to disabuse myself of this cultural belief.

Our distorted religious views could also make us adopt an overall attitude of unhappiness.  I used the adjective “distorted” for a reason:  more often than not, it is our erroneous interpretation of the doctrines of our religion that encourages us to be unhappy, and not the doctrines themselves.

As Christians, for example, we are taught to be sorry for our sins and do penance for them.  We are taught to make amends for the wrongs we have done.  But, we are not taught to spend the rest of our lives torturing ourselves for the sins we have committed, or destroying our lives in order to “pay” for our sins.  Rather, after having asked and received God’s forgiveness, we are taught to stand up, sin no more, and proclaim – by word and deed – the good news of God’s salvation.  As sinners, we are not taught to follow in Judas’ footsteps but Peter’s.  Judas could not bring himself to believe that God would forgive his sin, and he ended up taking his own life.  Peter, on the contrary, deeply regretted his own sin but allowed God to forgive him and make him whole again.  Yet, how many of us, to a certain extent, wrongly follow in Judas’ footsteps instead of Peter’s?

Incidentally, Christianity is ultimately a religion that brims with joy.  As Pope Francis points out in his apostolic exhortation, “Envangelii Gaudium”:  “The Joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew….  The Gospel, radiant with the glory of Christ’s cross, constantly invites us to rejoice.” [2]. Still, no amount of Gospel passages that invite us to rejoice will ever succeed in doing so unless we decide to believe and heed them.

Finally, it is possible that the view of life which we have adopted inclines us towards unhappiness rather than happiness.  Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us possesses what the Germans call a “weltanschauung” – a certain view of life, a personal “philosophy” of life (if you will).  If  the personal “philosophy” we have adopted makes us see life as nothing but an endless parade of useless tasks, meaningless events, worthless persons and what not, it would very difficult for us to choose to be happy at the same time.

And yet, the Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus convincingly asserts that even if life is indeed “absurd” as we believe it is, even if life is indeed bereft of any inherent meaning as we believe it is, we can still choose to be happy.  Like the Greek mythological figure, Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to spend his entire life pushing a huge rock up a hill, only to see the rock roll back down every time it neared the top, we can choose to adopt a very different attitude towards our “futile and meaningless existence.”  In his famous essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus imagines Sisyphus choosing to find meaning in his apparently futile and meaningless task.  He imagines Sisyphus going down the hill after the rock has rolled back down, and making up his mind that the there is meaning in what he is doing.  “If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow,” Camus then concludes, “it can also take place in joy….  The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” [3]

At the end of the day, the wonderful thing is that we do not have to remain prisoners of the faulty elements of our cultural upbringing, our misinterpretations of the teachings of our religion, or the pessimistic personal philosophies we have unconsciously adopted.  We can always break free from them; and the process of our liberation begins with our being aware of the existence of our attitudinal enslavements. 

We can choose to be happy anytime, anywhere, and in spite of anything.  Or we can choose not to.  It’s really all up to us.

_______________

[1] Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning  (Boston, Mass.:  Beacon Press, 1992 ), p. 75.

[2] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Holy See:  Vatican Press, 2013), pp. 3 & 6.

[3] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (London: Penguin Books, 1975), pp. 109 & 111. 

On Growing Old

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

Those of us who sometimes find ourselves complaining of the inconveniences that come with growing old would do well to remember what the French entertainer, Maurice Chevalier, once said:  “Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.”  The alternative to growing old is, of course, dying young.  If we don’t like to die young, then we should be ready to bear with the inevitable inconveniences that come with growing old.  We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

One thing good about growing old is that its manifestations come in gradual, almost predictable stages.  Can you imagine what a terrifying experience growing old would be if its manifestations appeared in sudden, unpredictable surges?  How would you feel if you slept one night with a full hair on your head and woke up the following morning with all your hair suddenly gone?  Can you imagine what a shock it would be if you took a nap one afternoon with a beautiful and youthful face, and woke up an hour later to see an old, heavily wrinkled face in the mirror?   Fortunately, nature is very kind when it comes to the manifestations of old age.  We generally lose our hair, our teeth, our youthful features in gradual, almost predictable stages.  Nature gently prepares us for our old age step by step.  Unless we have resolved to closely monitor every little manifestation of our own aging process, we will hardly notice the fact that we are indeed growing older every single day.

Not so long ago, I had several vicarious experiences of what it would be like if old age manifested itself in surge-like movements.  When I first started using YouTube, I enjoyed searching for the music videos of the 70s rock stars I used to idolize when I was still in high school.  Back then, I collected posters of such rock stars and secretly wished I had their long, uncombed hair; their young, devil-may-care looks…  I expected to see the same young, carefree rock stars in the music videos I searched for on YouTube.  Well, some of their old videos met my expectations.  But their latest ones were quite a shock!  Not a few of the videos featured old men with white hair and wrinkled faces; and it took a while for me to get used to the idea of old men beating their drums and making their electric guitars weep like wild teenagers.  The shock was, of course, a result of the fact that I had not been able to see how they looked during the years in between.  I did not witness the gradual transition.  All I saw was the sudden metamorphosis.

The shock would be the same if old age came to us all of a sudden, and not in the progressive, almost foreseeable way it comes to each of us now

Not everyone lasts long enough to reach old age.  For that reason alone, old age is indeed a gift – a gift we should be immensely grateful for because we happen to be among the lucky ones to whom it has been given.  But, it is also a gift for several other reasons. 

Old age is a gift because it is a time in our life when we can finally take a more relaxed attitude towards life in general.  Much of our young life had been spent doing things that we “needed” to do – getting an education, preparing ourselves for our future, obtaining a degree, finding a good job, working hard to provide for our family, building a house of our own, sending our children to school…  But, by the time we reach our sixties (and even if we have not officially retired yet), much of that should have been over and done with.  Finally, we can slow down and find time for the things we “want” to do:  to travel, to read all the books we’ve been wanting to read but simply had no time to, to play the guitar or the piano again after many years of having to put them aside in order to concentrate on our studies and our careers.  Old age is “me-time” in the truest of that phrase.  

Old age is also a gift because it is an opportunity to celebrate what we have achieved in life, regardless of its degree of significance in other people’s eyes.  Even if others think we have not really achieved that much in our life according to their standards, there is always something we have done which deserves to be celebrated by us – something that we should feel proud of and happy about.  When I graduated from San Pablo Seminary in 1982, one of the best gifts I received was a card from one of my teachers, the late Ms. Agnes Bautista, the caption of which read:  “It is not how far you have reached that matters.  It is how many obstacles you had to overcome in order to get there.”  Indeed, it is not the size of the house we have built, the kind of car we drive around, or the names of the schools we were able to send our children to that matter.  It is the struggles we had to wage in order to achieve them that ultimately count.  Many of us had to overcome enormous obstacles in order to reach where we are now.  While we were out there struggling, there was not much time to stop and pat ourselves on the back for our own efforts.  Old age provides us with the long overdue opportunity to do precisely that:  to be grateful for what we were able to achieve, to celebrate not only our victories but also the battles we needed to wage in order to achieve them.

Old age is, moreover, a gift because it provides us with the opportunity to put a proper closure on our life – something which many of those who die all of a sudden will not have the privilege of doing.  Sudden death often leaves the deceased – as well as the bereaved – with plenty of “unfinished business.”  Growing old until one dies, on the other hand, gives us the time to finish our pending business before we depart from this life for good.  We are given the time to ask forgiveness from those we have wronged, to make amends, to try to repair what can still be repaired with regard to the things we might have broken, to rebuild the bridges we have burnt, to reconnect with the people we have alienated along our way.  

More importantly, old age provides us with the opportunity to reconnect and, perhaps, even make peace with our own past selves.  I read somewhere that each of us is, in a way, a house inhabited by several past “selves.”  Inside one room of that house lives the young boy we once were still struggling with his fears.  Inside another is the teenager we once were still grappling with his regrets.  Out in the garden, alone, is the disillusioned young man we once were still trying to get his faith in life back.  We are often unaware of the presence of these “co-inhabitants.”  But they are very much a part of us; nay, they are “us.”  Their unresolved issues, their unaddressed cares and concerns influence the decisions we make and the steps we take in our present journey, without our knowing it.

Old age gives us the time and the opportunity to reach out to the young boy we once were and assure him that there’s nothing more to fear, for the monsters and the demons he continues to be afraid of are now gone; to reach out to the teenager we once were and assure him that making mistakes is part of growing up and that his 60-year old self has actually become a much better person because of the lessons he learned from his mistakes; and to reach out to the disillusioned young man we once were and tell him the good news that, many years later, his 60-year old self has discovered that, in spite of everything, life is good – and it’s a great privilege merely to be alive.

Old age is, furthermore, a gift because it gives us the opportunity to give something back to life without expecting anything in return.  In our younger years, much of what we did was probably done with a view to receiving a corresponding reward: a promotion, a salary raise, a good professional reputation, the respect of our peers…  We needed those things then and, hence, many of our efforts were exerted in the hope of attaining them in return.  In old age, we can finally serve for the sake of serving, and give for the sake of giving – with no eye on what will come back to us as a result.  Old age is “me-time,” but it can also be, at the same time, the very opposite of “me-time” which is “others-time.” Those two “times” can comfortably sit together when one is old.

Finally, old age is a gift because it affords us the opportunity to prepare for our death according to what our own religious beliefs tell us.  As Catholics, we believe that part of the preparation we must undertake for our death is to approach it with a soul cleansed through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Other religions have their own prescriptions for their followers as to what they must do to prepare for their own death.  Old age, fortunately, gives all of us the time and the opportunity to undertake those prescribed preparations for our inevitable leap into The Great Beyond.

I am not saying, of course, that everything about growing old is good and beautiful.  I have no intention of sugar-coating old age.  Let’s face it:  old age is  something we all wish we would not have to go through without having to die young.  And the older we get, the more our minds are visited by questions about who will take care of us when we get sick, how we shall die, how long and how painful our dying will be, and so on and so forth.  We will all die someday; and no matter how hard we try to prepare for it -- the time, the place and the manner of our dying are ultimately beyond our control.  The thing to do is to cherish each new day of our life as a priceless gift, and to trust that He who knew what was the best time, the best place and the best way for us to be born into this world also knows what would be the best time, the best place, and the best way for us to leave it.