The Braves and the Fools

During my elementary and high school years every Saturday (later it became Sundays) when I would go to the house of my Lola, where I would spend lazy hours lying next to her while looking at the pictures in her St. Joseph Missal.

Most of the time, she would dazzled me with stories about the Japanese Occupation. By that time, she already had a large family of about seven broods. My father was born during the later part of the Japanese Occupation. It was not an easy life for my grandmother and her children, although I think she might have a far better life than the rest of the townsfolk.

Yet, she also lost a lot since her father’s ancestral house, and her family house was sequestered by the Japanese forces making it their garrison and headquarters. It was said that my great-grandfather’s house occupied almost the entire block with the main door facing the highway while the backdoor opens to the market. He was Chinese, after all, who fled poverty in China so the market is an important part of his life in the Philippines. The house was a hybrid of Spanish colonial design with a mixture of Chinese architecture. There was a well in the middle of the courtyard, which fascinates me because it gave me the idea of how large the house is. When the Americans came, they bombed the house.

As a young boy, I would often look with fascination at a very thick and tall wall made of bricks and stones amalgamated together, which is the only standing testimony left of the otherwise proud and grand house. Maybe, this was the start of my fascination with history and with ruins. I just realized that my love for touring historical sites, particularly with ruins, must have come from this childhood experience.

The movies often depicted the atrocities of the Japanese, but my grandmother told me that there were also moments when the Japanese were kind to Filipinos. Of course, it cannot be denied that at the beginning of the war, cruelty was all around. You have to run and hide to save your life.

But within a few years, there is a semblance of normalcy. The people started to come down from the mountains and went out of hiding.

The Japanese Occupation, however, showed what kind of people are. Some became collaborators for the sake of economic gains while some resisted any ounce of cooperation with the Japanese occupying forces for varied reasons.

Liberation came through the Americans, who turned out to be just the same as the Japanese; they were all occupying forces.

In both instances, you will never know who is your friend and your enemy because both can be true. The Japanese Occupation was the defining moment for my grandmother.

Nowadays, can we consider the COVID- 19 Pandemic as the defining world event for our times? The entire world is engulfed with a war, not against aggressive countries but an invisible enemy, the SARS-COV 2 virus commonly known as the Novel Corona virus or COVID-19 virus.

Thus, it is understandable that our reaction to this worldwide pandemic is to run away from the virus by social distancing or physical distancing (depending on whatever your preferred terminology is). It is not cowardice to run away from the enemy to fight for another day. This buys us time to discover the vaccine and cure for this pandemic. Running without cover in the crossfire is not bravery; it is crazy and foolish.

Our heroes and heroines are not the guerrilla fighters but the nurses and doctors who serve in taking care of those who are sick. Just like in any war, there are casualties. Many of these healthcare workers either got infected or died.

I was wondering whether during those times, if there were public masses. I am sure there are, and it might not have been a big deal if there were none. Why? It is because that was still under the time of Vatican I, where the Traditional Latin Mass is still the ordinary form of the Eucharistic celebration. Furthermore, a priest saying a mass without a congregation in attendance is not as strange as it is now.

However, despite the darkness of war and the fear of people hiding, they are assured that the Church continues to pray for them. Here the “priestly” aspect of the Church is highlighted, while it is true that the community prays for each other, the ordained ministers as “priests” pray for and on behalf of the community of the faithful. When the people cannot come to the church to attend the Mass, they still know that their priests are praying for them, even if they are not present.

Maybe, it is because almost all of us were born in an era where the Novo Ordo mass is the Mass that we know and with our emphasis on the “communal celebration,” that it is understandable to see the clamor for the public celebration of the Mass.

Actually, I would like to see if there is really a clamor for public mass because I cannot see that in the Facebook posts of my friends. Maybe, my friends are not that keen to have the public mass resume during this pandemic.

I would love to see any survey or data that would support that claim of public clamour that public celebration of masses must be resume as soon as possible. What I can see most often in the Facebook posts of my friends are either pictures of food or their rants about relief goods! But, then again maybe most of my friends have nothing to do but to eat.

The former view of the priest praying for and on behalf of the people was never derogated; in fact, it is memorialized in the theology of the Letter to the Hebrews. Anyone who would disagree with this might very well explore and review the Letter to the Hebrews.

So what is the implication to our time? I think this makes us all aware that even if the people cannot attend the Mass personally, they are not abandoned by the Church because the Church continues to pray for them and on behalf of them.

While pastoral zeal may come in various expressions and forms, one of these is that the priest prays for the people God entrusted to him. With the advent of Vatican II, the priest has become a lot and was expected to perform a lot, particularly in terms of social relevance.

However, the pastor, while he leads and follows a vision, he also responds to the needs of the people according to the needs of the time.

In the present context of COVID-19, I have several questions that baffled me concerning the public celebration of the Mass amidst the on-going pandemic.

Is it pastorally responsible for gathering people inside an enclosed space, where ventilation is very poor since many of these churches were built for good acoustic rather than adequate ventilation?

I am not an epidemiologist, but listening to various credible sources, it was already scientifically concluded that the SARS-COV 2 virus can circulate inside the building and infect people even if they observe social distancing.

Furthermore, some churches are air-conditioned, which made it particularly problematic since it made the virus stay longer in the air.

This might be debatable for some, but once again, the question is it pastorally responsible for placing people in circumstances where their health is in danger?

I read from somewhere that many of us are like the people during the Japanese Occupation who hid at the sight of the Japanese army, implying cowardice on the part of Filipinos.

I wonder if those who are saying such things now would have been alive today if their ancestors did not hide from during the war. Some fought against the Japanese, and they are the brave ones. But where do you think are their relatives were? Probably hiding, if not, they would have been dead.

In moments of the war, the boundaries are a bit blurred. The brave can be foolish, and those considered as foolish can be brave.

Those who are staying inside their houses to avoid unnecessary exposure to the SARS – COV 2 virus are not cowards, while those who are not afraid to go out on the streets, for no purpose but to just get away from boredom, are not necessarily brave.

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