Fr. Noel Y. Bava, SJ
(Fr. Weng, former Editor-in-Chief of the Windhover, was ordained last April 14, 2012 and was missioned to Zamboanguita, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon.)
I put my helmet on, strap my elbow and kneecap pads close, lug my backpack at the rear and jump into the motorcycle waiting to speed me away to the next barrio Mass several kilometers away from the Jesuit convent in Zamboanguita. An hour or so of driving along alternately rocky and muddy roads brings me to breathtaking scenery of mountains and hills, the meandering Pulangui river and rice and cornfields of green and brown. Intermittent rains make puddles on unpaved roads while the wet wind chills my skin. I have to hold my breath while crossing hanging bridges, careful not to lean on either side lest I plunge into an engorged river below. Where the motorcycle cannot travel, my companion and I brave the river using a bamboo raft to cross to the other side. A group of wide-eyed children of an indigenous tribe sheepishly wait for us at the chapel. Thus begins a day in the life of a newly ordained priest.
Several weeks after my priestly ordination, I am still not used to being addressed as “father.” When someone asks how it feels like to be a full-pledged minister of the Church, I invariably speak the words overwhelming, joyful, grateful and humbling though these adjectives do not come close to describing what I really feel. I once described during a sub-community Mass that I felt like a young groom lost in the melee of events surrounding the ordination. Now, I know full well that something has fundamentally changed yet I am just beginning to make fuller sense of what that gift is all about and what it demands of me. There are times when I wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror, asking the person looking back at me whether the person who entered the Society of Jesus eleven years ago is the same as the present one who has received a wholly undeserved gift.
I say Mass in a language I could barely speak to a people whose culture and tradition are strange to mine. I hear the confessions of pious ladies who seem not to have done anything seriously sinful and I head meetings of lay leaders to talk about ways to increase participation in Church activities. Giggly teens and curious children approach me to receive priestly blessings. Life is so simple here. But people are mostly happy despite the poverty all around. Some school children leave home at 3 a.m. to walk to school. Though some would have a packed meal for lunch, a good number come with empty stomachs. The same goes for the alagads (servant leaders) from the different chapels. I am still, therefore, making sense of how utmost beauty and extreme poverty could co-exist side by side, such that it almost becomes a travesty.
Then I look at myself and ask what I can positively contribute to make peoples’ lives a little less painful and a little more bearable. I do not have discernible talents of which to be proud, I lack skills with which other pastors seem to teem. How can I possibly give these people something they can latch onto? Something to verify what we unabashedly proclaim in the pulpit: that God is great, generous to a fault, merciful and all-loving? Then I realize that I am asking the wrong question. It is not so much what I can accomplish in so little time. Because if this were all just me, I will achieve very little. Rather, it is how I allow myself to become the gift that God can use to pour His blessings upon his people. In that way the undeserved-ness of the gift of ordination becomes truly, meaningfully and powerfully a life-changing gift — for me and for the wide-eyed children, the giggly teens, the persistent lay leaders and yes, even the pious women of the village.
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