Francis X. Hezel, SJ
I listened to our Micronesian Jesuit at Charley's Cabaret
Tuesday night relate the beginnings of the Church in the Marianas. My Protestant colleagues will, of course,
argue that the Jesuit Father was referring to the Roman Catholic Church, which
to them is hardly "church".
Won't get into that debate. Ecclesia, the household of God, is a
very comprehensive category, not limited to the Christian understanding.
In fact, the Pinoy "bahala
na" that fitted well to the Spanish sense of que sera sera (what will be, will be) was originally derived from a
providential reliance on "Bathala na" akin to the Islamic Anshallah, and my evangelical friends'
"God will provide".
Pagan in Myanmar, and Pagan in the Rafaluwasch Northern Islands, are probably from the same language stream,
made a geographical term before our European colonizers turned them into hostile
or non-conversant infidels in the Christian belief system. This is not unlike the word "Asia",
its etymology derived from Europe's designation of the area beyond them to
mean, "that which is not Europe", the landmass from Asia Minor to the
Urals of the Tsar and east to the Pacific.
We appreciated the Father's historical sense of balancing
the "violent conversion" (e.g., Hispanic Quiroga on the recalcitrant
locals), on the one hand, and the opposite notion that a stranded Choco (whose
ancestry might have traded with the islanders before Spain came) fanned the
rumor that the padres murdered children with their rites of baptism to eternal blessedness
with water that was allegedly poisonous.
Our Padre Hazel's historical sense walked us through the
Spanish mission's original intent to be a blessing more than a curse, and the observation
that the military would do more harm than good.
The tragic consequences of the gentle Fr. Vittores and 31 volunteers who
intended to bring the Christian mission in the manner that Europe understood pagan
islanders of the Pacific, ensued the "Spanish-Chamorro 30-year Culture War"
in historical accounts, two months after Padre Vittores made landing. Fr. Fran suggests that neither protoganist
side was singularly homogenous.
A culture clash, written in a tract that revisits the
"Spanish Chamorro Wars", covered in the 700+ pages tome that Don
Farrell produced for PSS to update of the text we used in 6th grade class at
PSS' SVES. Don was in the audience along
with former members of the sponsoring Humanities Council Board who served when
I was a member, including Refaluwasch Lino
Olopai, legal luminary Robert Torres, NMC regent Elizabeth Rechebei, and the
ever-vivacious Lynn Tenorio. Current
NMHC executive director Scott Russell introduced Fr. Fran and Honora Tenoria
staffed the registration table.
Fr. Hezel met the faithful of the CK RC Wednesday. He explored with the faithful the theological
significance of the start of the mission, a direction I might have pushed
further had I the chance to ask Fr. Hezel to speak more as a creature of 2015
rather than as the distinguished MicroSem scholar poring over ancient documents. In fact, our reflection title is on the being
of the man rather of the roles he played and the litany of accomplishments in
his name.
To ground us on the personal level, I met Fr. Fran in Truk
(now, Chuuk) more than 30 years ago when I was a member of the brief
development "blue shirts" in the Marshalls, at Xavier High School,
and had watched his scholarship unfold.
As creatures of 2015, we partook of the what has since been
dubbed as the "earthrise consciousness", a consequence of the 1968 Apollo
photo of the earth rising on the lunar horizon, which addressed our separate
national and colonial identities into the unity of a global citizenship. An "earthbound commitment" followed
the consciousness that fueled such preoccupations as the health of the planet
in light of climate change, the balancing of the social process as economic
corporations make the political and cultural subservient to its monetary
allegiances, and profound humanness a willful option to everyone.
Theology is clothed in the metaphor of the eternal realm and
Ptolemaic storied cosmology rather the sociological reality of shrine-like
functions of skulls in many AustroPolynesian homes, to wit, it points to the
symbolic power of our innate human profundity, an other world in the midst of
this world, rather speculations of a world beyond this one from which we escape
with the help of a savior like Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and the Papal Laudato Si'.
We had previous eras of giants; it is time to praise the
ordinary. Fran Hezel is in my list!
Thus, my push for profound humanness for those who deign to
choose, and not revert to the automatic mode of bahala na, the previous era's metaphors of transcendence,
immanence, and piety, notwithstanding.
OK, we've gone a little abstract here, and that's why the
physicality of a sandal-thong memory-challenged Jesuit before a Charley Cabaret
audience resonated authenticity more than all the angels in heaven, IMHO.