Bargaining With Faith

Columban Father Saenz is from the USA. He did some of his studies in Manila and has contributed to these pages on a number of occasions before. Misyon’s editorial office is in Bacolod City where the cathedral is dedicated to San Sebastian, patron of the diocese.

In 1995, while on my First Mission Assignment as a seminarian, I was assigned to San Sebastian parish, Puerto Saavedra, in southern Chile. According to history, San Sebastian was a lay martyr in the early 4th century. He was a Roman military officer who became a Christian and refused to declare the Emperor Diocletian as divine, becoming an early ‘conscientious objector’. Sebastian was sentenced to death, tied to a tree and shot with several arrows. In Puerto Saavedra there is a wooden carving of his image, brought to Puerto Saavedra some 100 years ago by Italian Capuchins, depicting this death. There a great devotion grew and on San Sebastian’s feast day, 20 January, thousands of pilgrims come to celebrate and pay their ‘mandas’.

Bargaining spiritually
Mandas are promises a pilgrim makes to a saint. Promises often consist of making a vow to visit the saint on his feast day for a number of years with an offering of money. In return the saint will fulfill the desire or wish of the pilgrim. To a western outsider it sounds like a bargain is made: ‘if I do this for you, you will do that for me’. Often I questioned this ‘bargaining spirituality’, considering it backwards and infantile. After all, wouldn’t the money be better spent in buying food for the poor pilgrims’ families? Wasn’t prayer enough?

During that time I was preparing young people for confirmation in a small rural chapel in a place called
Yarquenco. I would arrive Sunday afternoon by bus, teach catechism, stay the night with the community and return in the morning. This provided a great opportunity to share with the families. One family, the Lipans, had three of their four daughters preparing for confirmation. As the feast of San Sebastian approached, the family became excited and made great preparations. One day the father,
Alonso Lipan, told me that he was ready to pay his manda to the saint.Inwardly, I groaned and thought ‘another one!’ I asked Alonso why he was paying the manda. He explained.

In need of a miracle
Alonso’s oldest daughter, Maritza, had developed a tumor on her spine between the shoulder blades when she was a year old. She had three operations and the doctors took flesh from Alonso’s leg as a tissue transplant to close Maritza’s wound. However, her health did not improve. There was nothing more that could be done. Therefore, Alonso offered only what he had left – his faith. On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 8 December, he took Maritza to Temuco to the shrine dedicated to the Virgin and there placed her under her protection and that of San Sebastian. Furthermore, he promised San Sebastian to visit his shrine in Puerto Saavedra on his feast day for twenty years and to give an annual offering. In return, Alonso asked for good health for Maritza.

Fellowship with the choir

Dawning understanding
My thoughts turned back to the image of San Sebastian in Puerto Saavedra. He is bound, helpless and defenseless. His body is wounded by arrows. Yet, his eyes are looking to the heavens above. It is an expression of offering all that he has left – his faith. I looked at Alonso Lipan and saw the same – a helpless man who can do no more than give his faith. Like San Sebastian, who greatly loved his God and refused to surrender to the emperor, Alonso greatly loved his daughter and refused to surrender to her illness. His spirituality was not backwards or infantile, it was a complete dependence on God. His manda was not a bargain but a prayer of great faith. It was a faith that was stronger than mine. Then I realized my previous view of a ‘bargaining spirituality’ was badly misplaced.

In 2006 I visited Alonso, Maritza and the family. Maritza is now almost thirty, lives in Santiago with one of her sisters, and is working. Life is not easy but Maritza is healthy and happy. Alonso, even though has completed the manda, continues to visit San Sebastian on his feast. Alonso’s faith was enough to give Maritza life.

In 2007 I visited Rome. I went to the basilica and catacombs of San Sebastian. There I saw the tomb of the saint in the basilica and I remembered the Lipan family of Chile. I looked up at the ornate ceiling and saw the image of San Sebastian, tied to the tree and with arrows in his body, helpless yet with an expression full of faith. Often in life, faith is all we have to bargain with. The Lipan family taught me the true meaning of this.

You may email the author at gcsz99@gmail.com or write him at:
Padres de San Columbano, Casilla 311,
Correo 22, SANTIAGO, CHILE