Final blessing

As he raised his hand for the final blessing, the aging priest remembered his good friend Fr. Godofredo Alingal, S.J. He pictured him in his head one cold early dawn waking up to a loud knocking from his convent door. Kibawe, Bukidnon. The year, around 1980.

He pictured him shaking off sleep, walking down the long staircase to the large wooden door. He might have hesitated. He must have felt a bit of foreboding, perhaps a shiver of fear that he quickly dismissed as simply the dark cold of morning. Earlier that week a close friend had warned him that things were heating up in his work with the people against military abuse. It might have been a good idea for him to go away on a short vacation until things cooled down.

Fr. Alingal took care of his flock. But they were mostly mountain dwellers not yet fully adapted to the requirements of a post-colonial social system that continued to impoverish them just as surely as it did in the time of the Spanish and the Americans. The colonial masters were gone but only by the fiction of law. In the hills, nothing changed. The people had little by way of “civilized” amenities, no piped-in water, no regular health services, hardly any government. But they had identity. They called themselves by the name of their culture, which was rooted to the land itself. They lived here for as long as their oldest elders could remember and it was hard for them to imagine a time when they could be driven away. After all, only God owned the land.

They were wrong. Indeed, the land was something very easily taken away by words on a few sheets of paper, usually thin onion skin and legal-bond, inevitably machine-typed by a lawyer or some minor government bureaucrat. This was the period of martial law and there were powerful people in the shadows moving to expand their landholdings in Mindanao where there were still large tracks of government lands that could be acquired cheaply if you had the right political connections. And if the dwellers protested, the military could always come in to pursue their war against rebels of all colors, real or imagined.

What should a good priest do to protect his flock? Fr. Alingal fought against military abuse. He had friends who called themselves “community organizers.” Their basic philosophy was simple. The oppressed individual was helpless if he or she was alone. But a larger social unit, a people’s organization or kapunongan could empower itself to confront its problems. They could pool resources to gain information on the workings of the legal system, gain education on their legal rights, even hire a lawyer to help fight threats like forceful eviction. In practice, this sort of self-education was also the best way for the people to eventually overcome the clutches of poverty and oppression. Theories have been written on it:  “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinski and “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paolo Freire.

This method of community organizing worked well. It worked so well the organizers soon fell at odds not only with government but also with the revolutionary movement, which spread quickly with and perhaps because of Marcos’ martial law. His cronies were behind the systematic oppression. The rebels were working to create the ideal climate for armed revolution. The idea of the oppressed successfully working for their interests through peaceful and legal means was the very antithesis of the claim that armed revolution was the only answer. The people and their organizers lived inside a war. And it was a war where the opponents insidiously needed each other. The rebels needed abusive military to justify their revolution. And while the revolution raged in the hinterlands, Marcos could always justify the continuation of martial law to the people of the cities who knew no better. This stalemate assured politicians that financial and military aid from the US would always be forthcoming.

The priest remembered Fr. Alingal and thought of the president’s recent State of the Nation Address. Both the president’s critics and supporters wished for a “road map” for development. The priest could not help but shake his head at the foolishness of it. After so many years, it is still the same, the rich and powerful in Manila dreaming up their old dreams of making the country rich when the problem is how to free the poor. Move money around, here and there. Eventually, some of it will fall into secret hands. That is the road map as it has always been.

The priest thought: The only real work is with the poor. His hand cut the air in a final blessing, downwards then sideways, left to right, in a final sign of the cross, even as he imagined in his head Fr. Alingal’s hand touching the door-latch in front of him. He wondered what his thoughts were before he turned it. Did he know what lay behind the door? If he did, would he still have opened it? He knew the answer. Knock and it shall be opened. It is the obligation of a priest. The full weight and force of the bullet caught Fr. Godofredo Alingal, S.J., in the heart knocking him backwards and in that short instant freeing him from the burden of his life and calling.