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Articles by Country
USA
Come, Risk the Sacred Journey
By Sr Alicia Alambra FMM
Come risk the sacred journey, enter now uncharted place.
Risk the sacred journey inward to the ocean deep and dark.
Step by step we make our way through
Desert plains and mountains steep.
Step by step God’s Spirit leads us . . .
Driving around is like taking the given daily choices of everyday life and choosing the right direction so as to arrive at our destination. What is important are the four directions of North, South, East and West, so I always figure out these directions in order to find my way easily.
Mission in the Hospital and in Life
By Josephine Mata
The author, a physical therapist by profession, is from Quezon City. She graduated from University of the East Ramon Magsayay Memorial Center (UERMMMC) in 1996 where she later taught, from 2004 till 2009. After graduation she worked for three years as a clinician at Metropolitan Hospital, Manila. She then entered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMMs) but left during the novitiate. She is a volunteer catechist in St Francis de Sales Parish, Beckley but sometimes attends Mass at Sacred Heart Parish, South Williamson, West Virginia, near where her brother lives and where the parish priest is a Filipino from Oriental Mindoro, Fr. Rey Landichio.
When patients get sick they are in their most vulnerable state. They are at the mercy of other human beings - mere mortals, limited but nonetheless gifted (or so they wish to think of themselves). I am talking about healthcare providers, doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals and the insurance companies.
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’.
A Catholic in the World
CHRISTMAS AWAY FROM HOME
By Leonides ‘Junby’ Saguisag Jr
Prior to migrating ‘for good,’ I spent my summer vacation, April and May 1997, in the United States, trying to get a feel for life there. It would be a little over a year before I’d finally migrate in June 1998. My reason for emigrating was really more of a ‘going along for the ride’ rather than an outright search for a ‘better life,’ as many other migrants have done. My maternal grandmother was already living in the USA then and had petitioned for my parents to join her. When my parents' petition came through I was a nineteen-year-old college student, finishing third year at Ateneo de Manila University, majoring in Computer Science. The opportunity to be based in Silicon Valley, the heart of the computer industry, was too good to pass up. So when I was granted a Resident Alien visa, the ‘green card,’ I took the chance that God had given me and emigrated a few months after I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in March 1998.
San Lorenzo Ruiz: Beloved in Bremerton
By Suzanne Goloy-Lanot
The author, from San Juan, Metro Manila, lives with her husband Leonardo, from Mandaluyong City, in Bremerton, Washington State, USA, with their daughter Adrienne Marie and son Jean-Lenard, both young adults. This is her second article in Misyon.
Twenty-five years ago, I worked with one of the nation’s leading financial institutions in the Chinese district of Manila, within walking distance of Binondo Church. At that time, there was much talk about the beatification of Filipino martyr Lorenzo Ruiz. This was wonderful news to me, knowing that someone who once walked the very streets I walked on and who once worked in the very same area I worked in had made a connection with heaven! This made me aware that heaven had come closer to earth.
SHARING THE FLORES DE MAYO IN THE USA
By Armando Machado
The author, who writes for The Catholic Northwest Progress, www.seattlearch.org/progress, is originally from
Unity with other cultures
‘It is the tradition in our country — and here we have unity with other cultures,’ Pilar said Sunday morning shortly before the start of the parish's annual Flores de Mayo celebration, which drew several hundred people.
A longtime Assumption parishioner, Pilar works as a volunteer at the event each year. She said she is thankful for the parish's support, and for the loving leadership of head organizer Filipino-born Cris Finnigan — a fellow longtime parishioner.
