Reflections

A blessed week with family, and an excellent book.
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by PAM


My siblings and I grew up with the observance of the Holy Week as an integral part of our summer vacation 'equation'.  As children, we would participate in the yearly procession in our old neighborhood, attending the Maundy Thursday/Last Supper mass, listening to the Last Seven Words reflection on TV with our parents, and then joining the Easter Sunday procession at dawn.  After our mother passed away, we moved houses in the City a few times, and we lost touch with our old friends in our old neighborhood.

These days, our family observe Holy Week with one of our 'favorite' activities: Visita Iglesia.  We enjoy our 'bonding time', especially with the young ones in our family.  We would

Visita Iglesia... a spiritual journey.

usually pick an area in Metro-Manila, and visit seven churches, praying the Way of the Cross, with the youngest among us leading and saying the reflection per Station.  This year, we decided to expand our pilgrimage out of Metro-Manila.  We started from our Parish church, then visited another church in the Metro, and then drove towards the South - in Tagaytay City and other places in the Province of Cavite - with the Chapel and Convent of the Pink Sisters as our last stop.  In the process, we were able to visit two churches that we have not visited before: the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette and the Divine Mercy Church in Silang, Cavite. And because we were on pilgrimage, we refrained from taking 'selfie' shots, or any photograph at all... and concentrated on our spiritual journey.

As this is the first time in two years that the newly renovated/reinforced Manila Cathedral has been re-opened to the public, we decided to pay it a visit before finally going home.  As always, the spiritual fortification and joy from our Visita Iglesia is refreshing.  It made our souls sing happy tunes of praise and thanksgiving to our Lord, who is our refuge - through thick and thin.  The warmth of familial togetherness felt good, too... beautiful and sweet.

As we drove from Quezon City to the Cavite area, and Tagaytay City, specifically - and back - all day on Maundy Thursday, we were amazed by how big the crowd was in every church we visited, and every church we passed by. We thought big crowd gather in the churches we traditionally visit every year. We were wrong.  We saw young and not-so-young people alike praying quietly, or following the Way of the Cross with their families and friends.  Of course, we see many of them snapping photos with their DSLRs or their smart phones, and yet, there was an unmistakable sincerity in the way they show reverence to this beautiful tradition of faith.  While Social networking sites seemed to have cultivated a 'modern culture of shallowness' among us, creating a 'picture-perfect life', and 'picture-perfect us', for the benefit of our thousands of friends... it seems that somewhere, in the deepest recesses of the Filipino soul, God resides.  We would like to think that this is an indication of the Filipinos' deep spirituality... an indication of our reverence for and strong faith in God.  It's beautiful to watch... and it makes us feel great.  

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'The Road' that is worth taking

I finally read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, and whew, what an experience it was!  

Yeah, I bought a paperback edition almost two years ago now.  However, after reading the first five or six pages, I decided to stop, and continue reading when I had enough 'leisure reading time'.  Why?  It didn't sound like the type of book that one reads just to pass the time while stuck in traffic or something... then again, it's Cormac McCarthy, and "The Road" won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2007, so what did I expect? 

I chose to read "The Road" this Holy Week because I feel the need to reload my "moral artillery", which is growing thin, like the proverbial cartilage on my knees, as I bear the heavy weight of responsibilities in my work place every single day.  There are questions on the feasibility of nuclear energy in the Philippines as an alternative to conventional energy sources of high-carbon dioxide emission.  The point is to save the earth from being suffocated by the load of carbon dioxide emitted by thermal power plants that use fossil fuels.  And, nuclear power plant, being low-carbon emission power plant, is suggested as a

Compelling, moving... unforgettable!

sustainable alternative to fossil fuel-fed power plants.  While the technology has been proven to be robust, safety issues in operating nuclear power plants remain to be a stumbling block that prevent nuclear energy from becoming a 'mainstream' energy source, what with the Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disasters.  And, how many times did unscrupulous leaders use power generation as a camouflage in building nuclear weapons?  In the end, it's not just about developing a robust technology... in fact, that is the easy part.  The more difficult part is using the technology well - for the common good, and for a truly sustainable future.  Unfortunately, the work of scientists and engineers, like myself, usually starts in technology development and ends in making the technology work on large scale.  We don't usually call the shots in the Board Rooms where crucial decisions are made regarding the utilization of the technology, where moral questions are answered... or ignored - if they are asked at all, that is.  

In the middle of sorting things out, technology-wise, "The Road" brings the focus back to humanity, to morality... to what is right and wrong.  The story revolves around a father ("man") and son ("boy") tandem - survivors of an apocalyptic event that turned the richness of earth to ashes.  McCarthy carved a compelling plot with the sharpness of his artistry on a tender block of nagging moral issues.  Before the reader knows it, McCarthy has left the sharp knife in the reader's hand, to continue carving... and the tender block turned out to be the reader's own heart! Very clever, indeed.  

The story proceeds to show how the loving relationship between the man and the boy evolved into an entwining of their souls - so beautiful.  And this beauty shines in the face of all the endless adversaries along the road... the road that is lined with the terror of darkness and the ugliness of starvation and death.  It is more than amazing how McCarthy could conjure a feeling of hope and goodness, and draw a picture of optimism using heartbreaking hopelessness and the crushing agony of nothingness as background. 

"He was beginning to think that death was finally upon them and that they should find some place to hide where they would not be found.  There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasnt about death.  He wasnt sure what it was but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness.  Things that he'd no longer any way to think about at all."

I finished reading the book around midnight of Good Friday, a way of personal Holy Week reflection... and it was too good, it wrenched my heart.  I only wish that McCarthy's sketch of the future is just that - a sketch, imagined, fiction.  But for us who see science, technology and innovation as a way of life, may this serve as a warning... a limit to our tendency to satisfy our curiosity to our heart's desire without distinguishing right from wrong, a limit to our big appetite in exploring the 'unknown'.  May we be brave enough to heed the warning and, like the boy in McCarthy's fictional future, may we learn to listen - to God's breath - with our hearts.    

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