Fire of God

When it starts to get dark, the Church of St. Arnold and St. Joseph, a modern building shaped like a funnel topping a hill in the University of San Carlos Talamban Campus (USCTC), lights up, as if to fight the incoming night. Classes end and the sound of birds, crickets and cicadas follow as soon as the hustle and bustle in the classrooms and hallways die down.

But not for long as noise returns as a group of students gathers inside the church to start A  prayer meeting. A band starts to play rock music with Christian lyrics and the campus comes alive with drumbeats and guitar riffs.

This is how members of the USC Campus Ministry conduct their regular prayer meeting. In fact, just before the prayer service, the band sometimes warm up with secular music, often those of contemporary rock bands.

Playing pop music next to the altar is not new in USC as the Church of St. Arnold and St. Joseph itself was designed for such mixed use of religious and secular activities in keeping with Vatican II’s redefinition of the church as both a place of worship and community center.

The Campus Ministry reaches out to students through music that they can relate to. Rock music speaks of juvenile angst and joy and if religion has to appeal to young people, it has to do so in their language.

Music has been a major draw for new recruits. The sound of electric guitars and drums seems to turn  communal worship into a mini rock concert. Soon, the music no longer just beckons but becomes an expression of faith.

The Campus Ministry’s use of rock music makes religion cool, almost like an underground culture. In the increasing culture of secularism among the youth, this rather strange Catholic youth counterculture brings to mind the belligerent activities of the early Christians in the catacombs beneath Rome.

Such sense of belligerence continues even as the members graduate. Some of them formed new groups like the Fire of God (FOG) Catholic Charismatic Community, which meets for regular prayer meetings and “gigs” at a center near USCTC that is part prayer hall, art gallery, and restaurant.

Called FOG Gallery Café, the place has a coffee bar with tables and lounge chairs in a garden setting. It has beach pebbles on the ground which gives the place a cozy resort ambience. We recently held summer art workshops there: an art play for kids below 10 years old and basic painting lessons for those 10 and above.

These workshops recently culminated in an exhibit held in the gallery café showcasing the best works of the students. It was a small and intimate event with mostly parents, relatives, and friends of students in attendance, perhaps curious to find out how summer has turned their loved one into an artist.

Parents were very proud to see their kid’s being able to make use of vacation to produce art and not just waste it on a computer game. One of the students, a call center agent, was surprised at her own discovery of her artistic potentials. She had never painted and did very little drawing before. But she learned really fast at the workshop and produced works that were admittedly better than those of many fine arts students in the university.

In keeping with the “gig” culture of the venue, we asked one of the students to play the violin. A writer friend from the literary group Bathalad also came to read poems in both Cebuano and English.

It was a small yet joyful evening of art, music, and poetry. In my opening remarks, I urged the students to keep the fire of art bruning, which I believe is also the fire of God.

With my partner Kay Paler-Rivera, an artist who is also a member of FOG, we continue with the second batch of our painting workshops which will begin  on May 16. Send me an e-mail if you are interested or visit FOG Gallery Café across Cheaverz near USCTC. You may still view the exhibit there.