Bishop’s idle time: Gospel stories written in traffic

Bishop Pablo Virgilio David and his latest Gospel book. EDWIN BACASMAS

When he was first assigned to the Diocese of Caloocan in 2016, Bishop Pablo Virgilio “Ambo” David was traumatized by the “horrific” traffic jams that had become a staple of daily life in Metro Manila.

But rather than be resigned to his fate, the 59-year-old prelate used his idle time while stuck in the gridlock to write real stories of mercy, love and faith that have been playing in his head for years.

He has produced two collections of stories and is working on a third, “The Gospel of Hope According to Juan/a.”

“I realized that I could type in the notes app of my phone. So I started writing stories when stuck in traffic jams so I would be less stressed out. It was a creative way to kill time,” David said, chuckling.

He began work on the first volume, “The Gospel of Mercy According to Juan/a,” in February 2016, barely a month after he was assigned to Caloocan.

It was published by St. Paul Publications in July 2016 and is now in its fifth reprint. The second volume, “The Gospel of Love According to Juan/a,” came out in July 2017.

This confessed “probinsyano,” a native of Betis in Guagua, Pampanga, is a younger brother of Inquirer columnist and sociology professor Randy David.

This David, however, is also famous in his own right. He became vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, assuming his post in December 2017.

Bishop “Ambo” is also known for speaking up on the spate of killings in the government’s war on illegal drugs, lamenting his diocese as a “killing field.”

‘Culture shock’

Before his assignment to Metro Manila, he was the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Fernando, Pampanga, and the parish priest of Holy Rosary Parish in Angeles City.

Having spent most of his time there, David admitted to experiencing “culture shock” when he had his first brush with the city’s infamous and horrific daily bottlenecks in January 2016.

Although he had a driver, the prelate was still stressed out by the traffic jams—until he discovered the handiness of the notes app on his iPhone.

“Back then, I had 50 titles of unwritten stories always swirling in my head. Whenever I’m stuck in a traffic jam, I could churn out two stories in one go until my thumb went numb,” David said.

Later, a friend introduced him to the wonders of the portable keyboard, which he connected to his iPhone via Bluetooth, enabling him to type away with ease.

Each volume in his series has more than 20 short stories of love, mercy and faith, which David experienced himself, or were related to him by numerous people he encountered in his life as a priest.

Magic of storytelling

Some of his former parishioners in Pampanga or regular churchgoers in Caloocan may be familiar with some of his stories, as he often tapped the magic of storytelling for his homilies.

“I’ve been engaged in storytelling before in my preaching and homilies, but I wasn’t really writing it down as a story. What forced me to do it was being stuck in traffic jams here,” David said.

His “Gospel” series were cowritten with Nina Tomen, his former parishioner and volunteer in Pampanga who studied literature at the University of the Philippines.

It was not the first time for him to get published, as he had written and published several scholarly pieces in previous years, as well as poetry, essays and reflections.

Voracious reader

David considers himself a voracious reader, going through F. Sionil Jose, Nick Joaquin, NVM Gonzalez, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Steinbeck, Rainer Maria Rilke and Haruki Murakami.

“I love stories. I’m a reader of fiction. I learned much of my writing skills through reading novels,” he said.

David begins his stories not with a pen and paper or a laptop but by praying in church with a cup of coffee in the morning.

He wakes up before 5 a.m. each day, makes himself a cup of coffee and sits in the chapel to read and soak himself in the Gospel and have his daily conversation with Jesus Christ.

Ambo’s prayer

“When you pray, you don’t just talk to God. You allow God to talk to you and the best way to let him talk to you is through the Scriptures,” David said.

He added: “My prayer goes like this. ‘Jesus, a lot of people will be listening to You today. Talk to them through me.’ That’s how I psych myself. People come to church to listen to God, not to me.”

His vivid imagination and good memory allow him to recall events and details even from his younger years, and weave these into a story and testament of faith.

His stories are inspired not only by the Scriptures but also by real slice-of-life tidbits that he himself experienced, or were told to him by people who touched his life.

“The stories of real people and the Scriptures meet. I meditate on the Gospel and it’s in prayer that I am able to recall stories. It’s my contact with real people that motivates me to write,” David said.

His parishioners and friends who follow him on Facebook may be familiar with some of his tales, as he posts some of his works on the social networking website.

“I don’t really use all of my stories in my homilies. Some I just share because it’s significant to me. It may be in a retreat, a recollection, or other venues for preaching,” the prelate said.

Such was the success of his Gospel series that the first book sold out quickly at local church bookstores. During a visit to the Vatican in 2016, he gave Pope Francis the first volume as a gift.

The third volume, “The Gospel of Hope According to Juan/a,” will have a piece contributed by Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, who wrote the foreword to the second volume.

A favorite tale was when he stayed in Berlin, Germany, for his studies in theology in the late 1980s, just before the Berlin Wall was torn down.

East Berlin teen

David crossed the border into East Berlin and was followed around by a teenager who was trying to buy his jeans. The priest tried to dismiss him but as he neared the border, the boy pleaded with him.

“He asked me in German, ‘Sir, please buy one shirt from me. There is a letter in the shirt, give me whatever money just to show the police that I sold you this shirt,’” the bishop recalled.

It turned out that the boy had a brother who crossed the border several years ago, and that the boy was only finding a way to mail the letter to his brother.

David paid $10 for the shirt and was initially horrified at the possibility of being jailed when the inspecting policeman went through his belongings.

Inwardly scolding himself for taking such a risk because of the letter, the then priest regretted it upon reading the boy’s letter.

The letter, written in German, simply wanted to tell the brother that their mother had died.

“I really was glad that I dared to deliver his letter. He just needed to tell his brother that their mother was dead. Here was a boy, a total stranger, who begged me to deliver his letter,” David said.

Fatimah’s secret

Another story that touched him was that of Fatimah, a Muslim woman with a secret friend—Jesus Christ.

She got in touch with David for his expertise as a Bible scholar, in the hopes that the Jesus Christ who had comforted and talked to her as an abused child was the same one in the Bible.

Although initially doubtful, David gave her some readings from the Bible.

One day, Fatimah called up the bishop, crying and exclaiming that the Jesus Christ in the Bible agreed with her personal experiences of Jesus Christ as a friend who comforted her all her life.

David admitted that he was a little envious of Fatimah’s experience of having personally known Jesus Christ, despite the differences in faith.

“Once, she received communion. She described the experience as like walking on the clouds. She loves Jesus more than I do and I’m the one who’s a Catholic,” he smiled.

The experience, David said, moved him to cultivate a more personal relationship and conversation with Jesus Christ, which he tries to do every morning with his coffee time in church.

“At first I was trying to size up her mental state. I realized He was talking to me through her. It was through her that I took my prayer, friendship and relationship with Him more seriously,” he said.

Tell own stories

David is hopeful that through his Gospel series, people will be inspired not only to move with the stories of faith, mercy and love but also to tell their own stories.

“Telling stories is one of the greatest ways of witnessing the faith, how God touched and changed us. I want to motivate people to evangelize, too, to do their share in witnessing the faith,” he said.

And what if some people’s stories do not have a happy ending?

“If there’s no happy ending, then the story is not finished yet. If we want our stories to have a happy ending, let Jesus Christ be part of that story,” David said.