A PILGRIMAGE TO THE FLOWER OF CARMEL

Homily at Novena in my Home Parish 2012

I thank you that every year, you invite me to celebrate this novena for the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. It is always a pleasure to return to my home parish and give thanks to the Lord and His Blessed Mother.  It is always a pleasure to feel the scapular not only around my neck but surrounding my whole life as a struggling Christian and priest.

This year my visit is also a pilgrimage.  Because come to think of it, I have much to thank Our Lord and Our Lady in my life.  I come to celebrate this Mass as my gesture of gratitude for the gift of my mother, who is my primary link to this parish and this place.

When I was young, my mother was a very active teacher. She was also an athlete competing in inter-school baseball.  She was playing and training students.  On her team uniform I saw a word I never saw before.  On the back was written:  Carmelites.  I read it with curiosity saying:  car-me-lee-tess.  She corrected my pronunciation.  And I asked her:  but what is a Carmelite?  She said:  Our team is named after our Patron, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.  A parishioner, a follower of Carmel is called a Carmelite.  I learned something new from my mother, the teacher.

Maybe that started my gradually unfolding love and devotion to this beautiful, small image of Our Lady, who I regard as the special mother of my call to the priesthood.

My mother died about two months ago.  And only now, in the privacy of my room and in the serenity of prayer, am I appreciating the intensity of a loving mother’s presence in one’s life.  My mother said that to lose a mother is always difficult no matter how old you are.  You never outgrow the need for a mother. I believe that because now I experience it.

When my mother discovered her lung cancer, I started praying for her my daily Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.  I don’t know what entered my mind one day but I wrote Pope Benedict XVI entrusting to his prayers my mother’s fate.  Months after, I received a small package from the Vatican with a letter from the Pope’s secretary assuring me of the Pope’s concern and blessings for my mother.  Inside was a picture of the Pope as well as a Rosary specially for my mother.

My mother was delighted and inspired by the Rosary.  In fact, she was the only person at home I saw praying the Rosary (in her own hurried pace) every night before bedtime.  The Rosary the Pope gave her accompanied her everywhere and the day she died, we found it in her bag, the bag she carried to the hospital. Mother Mary joined my mother in her two years of agony, anxiety and pain. Her Rosary was a source of strength as she prayed it with her grandchildren each day.

When it became clear that medicine was not about to make my mother well after all, I started praying that God will not prolong her sufferings.  Not that I wanted her to go.  But I wanted her to stop feeling the unimaginable pains she alone experienced. If only the cancer transferred to me!  But it was not to be the case. She must bear her Calvary episode herself, beholding the Cross and standing there with Mother Mary.

On her last hospitalization, I prayed the Rosary each day for her with great intensity.  I also felt very comfortable lifting her up in prayer to Mother Mary, who was herself a mother who knew pain.

It still makes me shudder just to remember how much my mother suffered in those last four days.  It was unfair for such a gentle, simple, beautiful soul to be relentlessly wracked in pain. 

But every time I whispered prayers to her, she calmed down as if joining us in her mind.  I prayed the entire Rosary this way and she was serene the moment we stopped.

It was after one such time watching her suffer terribly that I went to the chapel of the Philippine Heart Center and there I begged Mother Mary to accompany my mother to heaven.  I want you to be the one to welcome her home, I said to Mother Mary.  Please assure me of that, I begged.

Some time before she died, my mother began to be slowly peaceful. It was then that we prayed around her, whispering in her ear the lovely prayers I knew she learned by heart since she was young.  I cannot forget that at the end of the prayer “Hail Holy Queen,” my mother breathed her last.  It was consoling and so great a sign that Mother Mary took her by the hand and led her to Jesus waiting in paradise.  What a blessed death.

And so for the first time, I come home as a priest without a biological mother.  I come to this church asking Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to be truly a mother to me now and to love and care for me as my own mother has done in her lifetime.

Mother Mary, thank you for sharing my mother with me for these past years of my life.  Now that she is at peace in heaven, wrap your scapular on me again as a testimony of your great love for priests. Bless each of us with your motherly love.  Lord Jesus, may your mother always intercede for us.