PROUD TO BE A DOMINICAN BY THE GRACE OF GOD (Part 4)

MY DOMINICAN JOURNEY CONTINUES

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP

Some years ago, when I was assigned to UST (1965-2009) after two years at Santo Domingo Convent in Quezon City, I taught a course in bioethics at the Major Seminary of Vigan (North-West, Luzon). I had 24 students of theology. One afternoon, the students organized a basketball game (Filipinos love basketball and Manny Pacquiao, the great boxer). The members of one team had a lovely T-shirt on with this inscription on their back: “I am called soon to be chosen.” God called me and I was chosen thanks to his grace and love. Chosen to be a Dominican missionary. This call to follow Jesus by the path of St. Dominic is indeed the Good Lord’s greatest gift to me.

On May 8, 2022, the Diocese of Macau celebrated Thanksgiving Sunday, which was Good Shepherd Sunday, with the priests and religious women and men who were completing (in 2022) 25 (Silver Jubilee), 50 (Golden) and 60 (Diamond) years of priesthood or religious profession. Around 30 priests concelebrated with our Bishop Stephen Lee. The Church of St. Lazarus was full with lay faithful, and brothers and sisters. I – a Diamond Jubilarian – was asked by our dear Bishop to preach the homily in English. I accepted gratefully and respectfully, and preached on the Good Shepherd. It was a wonderful experience: eucharistic, fraternal and joyful! Thank you, Lord! I had another celebration of the anniversary of my 60 years as a Dominican priest in my own town: this was incredibly familiar and joyful. This time, the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee with our community in Macau was internal, prayerful and – as I wanted – “low key.”

By the way, I celebrated my Golden Jubilee (2012) in the Diocese of Macau and also magnificently with my Dominican community that prepared a loving and elegant program with dinner: I felt at home! It reverberated gloriously later on (June 29, 2012) in my town in Spain. My Silver Jubilee in Taipei with my co-novice and friend Amado Diago OP, missionary in Taiwan for a long time, a man who loved life, Jesus, and people. The celebration took place at the Dominican School of the Dominican sisters Missionaries (misioneras) of St. Dominic, to whom I was then facilitating a spiritual retreat. As usual, it was a grand, colorful and joyful festival centered around the Holy Eucharist.

Looking back to the journey of my life, I have to say that the past is in God’s mercy and it is never too late to be better and holier. However, tomorrow will be better if I begin today, the only thing in my hands: O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts! (Ps 95:7-8). The future is in God’s Providence and the present in his loving hands. Thus, my life is grounded on the grateful past, looking to the hopeful future and walking in the loving present by steps of love. With God’s love and the grace of the Holy Spirit we walk the Way (Jesus) towards the embrace of God.

About two years ago, I had a long conversation, a wonderful encounter with a young man and a young woman in our community’s meeting room. Both were Chinese and Christians (of the staff of the Macau Weekly O Clarim). After a fruitful and joyful exchange of one hour, they asked me: If you had a chance to begin your life again, what would you be? Without any hesitation I answered: A Dominican priest. This is what I love most in my life: to be a priest of Christ of the Order of Preachers (OP).  I would change one thing, though: I would try much harder to be good, to be more faithful to my Dominican vocation, to cooperate better with the grace of God, to be, in particular, more Christ-centered, and therefore, more prayerful and more compassionate – and joyful. I remember the words of our Dominican brother Blessed Reginald (13th Century): “I have no merit living in this Order, because I’ve always found too much joy in it.”

 Thanks to God, the journey continues! From Macau, where?  Continue in Macau, go back to the Philippines, or to Spain? Again: only God knows. As my father told my weeping mother, when I was sent to Washington DC: “Do not worry! God is everywhere.”

And to close, and as your brother, let me suggest to you, to all of you called by Jesus:

Be loving! We all have been called. You have been called. God never fails us. He only asks us to cooperate with his never-failing grace and love. What matters most is love. Every day try to do what you have to do with love. Love as charity is the virtue of life, the value that gives life to the other virtues, to our deeds – and leads us to heaven. The only thing that will accompany us to the other life is the love we accumulate through life. We are what we love. “In the evening of life, we will be examined on love.”

Be prayerful. Why am I still a Dominican, a happy Dominican? By the grace of God and the prayers of Mary Our Lady, of my mother and friends and other brothers and sisters. My fraternal advice: be faithful to prayer. There is always a remedy for those who pray.

Be compassionate, that is, share something with the poor, and forgive always. Try to see Christ in the faces of poor people (“proxies of Christ”): I was hungry and you gave me food … At the personal level, here is peace – interior peace – in forgiving, which includes forgetting the offenses of others as offenses, or remembering them as healed wounds.

Be joyful and hopeful. A Christian is a happy person: he or she is in love and therefore is joyful: joy is a characteristic of love as charity. In spite of concrete moments or days of certain sadness and, perhaps, of tears, be joyful. We trust God: He is in change. Hope – my favorite virtue -is the virtue of the journey. Graced hope: a loving, prayerful, patient and courageous, and joyful hope. Undoubtedly, tomorrow will be better.

Thank you, Lord, for my vocation. Sorry Lord, for my infidelities. Help me Lord through the remaining race of life. I love you, Lord!