By Fr Joseph Panabang SVD

We noticed our hens didn’t want to lay their eggs in the baskets we had prepared for them. The parish priest, Fr Mietek Sagan SVD, from Poland, suggested we put one ping-pong ball in each basket to deceive them. It worked, only the color of the ping-pong ball is no longer immaculately white after being incubated twice.

Asked why I celebrate my baptismal day, 21 September every year, I always relate the reasons tinged with emotion. According to my father, when I was two years old, I was sickly. They had actually given up on me. I was counted as dead for I couldn’t move or even cry. Providentially, a missionary priest belonging to the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM) came to our village. In those days your village was privileged if visited twice a year by the priest. As had always been the case, the baptism of infants followed the Mass. My father was urging my mother to bring me for baptism. After all, there was no hope. My mother had to cover me completely, except my forehead, perhaps out of shame because my father had said I was nothing but skin and bones. During the baptism when they lit all the candles, a sudden gust of strong wind blew off all the candles out except mine. Whether it was superstitious or not, from then on my parents strongly believed I would live, despite the fact that there was no immediate improvement at all after my baptism.

And one day out of the blue, a doctor was passing by on his way to the next village, Dacalan. As our house was at the entrance to the town, he accidentally saw me struggling inside. Without being asked, he told my parents that he had just one injection left and he wasn’t even sure if it was the right medicine. My father intervened, telling him to inject me anyway, which he did and left. The following morning, my father said I was asking for water. And from then onward, I started eating voraciously on the way to full recovery, like my candle surviving a strong wind.

The story has not yet ended. My father revealed to me that actually none of those baptized with me lived long. The last of them died at the age of six. 

Now I understand why my father did not oppose my going to the seminary. Now I understand why my mother told me so confidently just before she died when I was only in Primary Two that of all her children I would one day be educated. All this because of the power of faith and hope in a lighted candle not blown out by the wind.