15 August 2021. Sunday

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I mean to write my Intro today, at least to start it, Sunday, the Solemnity of the Assumption of our Mother Mary. I have meant to ask blessings from her as I write, and more so to ask for her holy prayers for the entire humanity in these hard times.

This is supposed to be the “COVID-19” issue of the Fabilioh!, the deadly virus that hit the world almost two years ago. But when I heard the Jesuit-bred Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) last night at CNN, he said that this new variant Delta is a totally different one that “has made things a little bit complicated.” Delta is more transmissible like chicken pox. It hits kids as much as the old. And its symptoms are similar to the common flu.

As I write now, three Jesuit houses in our campus are on lockdown—the Jesuit Health & Wellness Center (JHWC), the Arrupe International Residence (AIR), and the East Asian Pastoral Institute (EAPI). Some foreign scholastics in AIR got infected a few days ago, and so they had to be isolated in the high school facility run by the Philippine Red Cross (PRC). Their older brethren had to be quarantined at the JM Lucas Infirmary. A foreign priest was also tested positive at the EAPI, and that too locked down. Not to mention a priest at the JHWC who is now in critical condition at a hospital because he, too, got the virus.

Yesterday, the DOH reported 14,249 new COVID-19 cases from the previous day’s 13,177. Here in Metro Manila, we are on our second week of ECQ and we wonder if any ‘Q’ could, at least, minimize the number of the infected. We see pictures of desperate attempts to get oxygen from patients inside their cars parked just outside a Cebu hospital. The other day, St. Luke’s Medical Center both in Global City and Quezon City, announced that they had reached their full capacity while patients waited admission at their emergency rooms. If big hospitals have reached their limits, we wonder the status of the smaller hospitals around the country. And we wonder still, “Will the local health system soon collapse?”

Times are hard. People have died and are dying. People have mourned and are mourning. People have hungered for food and will hunger for more. And we continue to wonder—“When will this end? How will it end? … Will it end?”

Amidst the chaos and panic around us, Ateneo has been doing what we do best for the least, lost and the last – service for the poor and the vulnerable in this time of the pandemic. Vaccinations have been undertaken at the grade school cafeteria. AMPLify, the Ateneo Molecular Pathology Laboratory near the new Rizal Library, has been doing testing. The college covered courts have been busy all-year round loading and unloading all sorts of vegetables and other food stuff (thanks to Tanging Yaman Foundation, Inc.) to be given out to the hungry. And the high school grounds have been used as an isolation facility in partnership with the Philippine Red Cross—just to mention some.

Today as we think of our heavenly Mary, we reminisce two scenes. When Mary saw how the local shepherds worshipped her tiny babe in the manger, she also wondered and “pondered these things in her heart.” There was a disconnect in her mind. Why would they worship her infant wrapped in swaddling clothes? When the young boy, Jesus, got lost in the Temple and told her and Joseph that he was busy doing his Father’s business seemingly apathetic to their worries, Mary again wondered and she treasured these things in her heart. What was he talking about? Who was his Father? What was His business?

What was divinely beautiful in Mary was that she pondered and treasured all these things that went beyond her, that surpassed her mind, but never her heart. She did not think of answers her own way. Rather, she gazed at her heart where the Spirit was while she waited fully awake. She contemplated at the Face of God within. She knew that with patient endurance, fervent faith, and a sure hope on God alone, she would unfold these mysteries in God’s time, in God’s ways, and would know more deeply and more lovingly what it was and how it was to live as the Mother of the beloved Son of God.

Maybe, this is the same Call behind the COVID crisis for all of us—to wonder, ponder, and treasure all these things in our hearts.

Let me end this Intro with the prayer of Pope Francis that I got from one of my Viber groups the other day:

Eternal Father, You have made the whole world stop walking for a while.

You have forcibly silenced the noise that we have all created around us.

You have made us bend our knees and ask for miracles.

You closed Your Churches so that we realizehow dark our world is without You in it.

You humiliated the proud and the powerful.

The economy is collapsing, businesses are closing.

We have been very proud to think that everything we have, everything we own, have been the result of our hard work.

We have forgotten that it was Your grace, Your mercy,that made us who we are and has given us everything we have.

We are going around in circles looking for some cure for this disease,when in fact we need to humble ourselves and ask for guidance and wisdom only from You.

We have been living our lives as if we are here on Earth forever,as if there is no Heaven, no Purgatory, no Hell.

Perhaps this virus is actually Your way of purifying and cleansing our souls,bringing us back to You.

Today, as these words travel the internet,may all who see them join their hearts and hands in prayer,asking for forgiveness, asking for healing and protection against the virus,but above all, asking that Your Holy and Divine Will be done and not ours.

God, we beg You, deliver us from all evil on Earth if it is Your will!

Father, You have been patiently waiting for us to turn our faces to You, to repent of our sins. We are sorry to ignore Your voice!

Selfishly, sometimes we have forgotten that You are GOD!!

Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my house, but one word from you will be enough to heal me!

You Lord only need to say the Word and our souls will be healed.

We ask You for healing and deliverance in Jesus’ name!

By the infinite merits of his Most Sacred Heart and of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Amen.

Our Lady of the Assumption, pray for us.

+AMDG+

Kit Bautista, SJ

DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF ALUMNI RELATIONS