THE FEAST of St. Augustine
of Hippo on August 28 has – for over ten years now – sparked cloistered moments
of contemplation centered on a visit to the Sta. Monica Parish Church in
Minalin town at the time it was declared by the National Museum as a national
cultural treasure.
The media coverage
attendant to the occasion turning, to me, into a pilgrimage. Thus:
Completed in the mid-1700s
by the Augustinians the church has remained relatively intact, having withstood
devastating earthquakes, typhoons and floods, and the Mount Pinatubo eruptions
that swamped it with lahar.
No ostentatious ornateness
but architectural splendor defines the façade – an outdoor retablo in concrete,
where niched between Corinthian columns the images – as old as the church too –
of Saints Peter and Paul, Francis of Assisi, and Catherine of Alexandria, with
the top of the triangular pediment holding the image of St. Monica. Twin
hexagonal four-story bell towers buttress the façade.
At the churchyard are the
only four capillas posas still extant in the whole Philippines. Small
chapels in red bricks, these served as holding areas for catechumens prior to
their baptism inside the church in the early days of colonization…There ended
objective coverage.
Aye, being edifices of
faith, churches are not simply viewed. Churches are objects of contemplation,
and, but of course, centers of worship, loci of adoration. More than the sense
of wonder it evokes, the Sta. Monica Parish Church invokes deep stirrings of
the soul…There commenced my personal pilgrimage. With St. Augustine, whose
presence is embossed throughout the church named after his mother.
Crowning the window above
the pasbul mayor, the main door of the church, is an escudo of an eagle
– the symbol of St. John the Evangelist whose gospel was St. Augustine’s
favorite.
“Understanding is the
reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe,
but believe that thou mayest understand.” So, I remembered St. Augustine saying in Tractatus in Ioannis
Evangelium. There. entered I the realm of faith.
At the vestibule, above
the baptistery, is the heart of Sta. Monica carved on the adobe keystone – the
image of a spade pierced by an arrow. Significant of the sufferings and
sacrifices of the mother for the conversion of her sinful son.
“But I wretched, most
wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of
Thee, and said, ‘Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.’” Thus, St. Augustine in his Confessions.
Taking center spot in the
iconography at the main altar is a painting of the Nuestra Senora de La
Consolacion y Correa. Beholding the image dredged memories of my dearly
departed maternal grandmother.
May 4, the feast day of
St. Monica (in the pre-1969 General Roman Calendar but has since moved to Aug.
27), Apu Rita took five-year-old me to this same church for Mass. As was her
wont whenever we went to any church, she told me anecdotes about all the saints
present at the altar.
Her take of La Consolacion
– from memory now – St. Monica prayed nightly to God, through the intercession
of the Virgin Mother, to change the sinful ways of her son Augustine. One
night, as St. Monica wept, the Virgin appeared to her and as a token of compassion
took off a black cloth cincture from her waist and gave it to St. Monica. It
was that cincture that finally effected the transformation of Augustine. From
then on, members of his eponymous monastic order have worn a black band across
the waist as a pledge of devotion to La Consolacion. In remembering Apu Rita, I
heard St. Augustine saying: “What is faith save to believe what you do
not see?”
Unschooled, unemployed,
unfettered from the material world, Apu Rita totally devoted her whole life
between home and “her one, true, Mother Church.” Again, hearing here anew St.
Augustine, and St. Cyprian too, declaring: “Extra ecclesiam nulla
salus.”
Lest this be misconstrued
as Roman Catholic conceit, the most recent Catholic Catechism interpretation of
“Outside the Church there is no salvation” is that “all salvation comes from
Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.” Everything universal,
nothing parochial in the expanse of the Church here.
That visit to the St.
Monica Parish Church coming a day after the local media’s commemoration of the
21st month of the Ampatuan massacre, I was moved to pray for the repose of the
souls of the victims and that justice be done. And then remembered St. Augustine
saying in De Civitate Dei: “Justice being taken away, then, what
are kingdoms but great robberies. For what are robberies themselves, but little
kingdoms.” (So, literally hewing to the current of events in Davao City
these days.)
His City of God
segueing further to the present, aye, to an ever-presence: “He that is good
is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a
king.” On the way to my parked car at the churchyard, my last look at
the church centered on an escudo of a flaming heart – the very seal of the
Augustinian Order – appliqued to the keystone of the main door.
Ah, how could I ever
forget, the very core of St. Augustine’s Confessions: “You have
made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in
you”
Maybe, I need to spend
more time in churches than in coffeeshops. That will certainly make a lot of
people less stressed, less upset, if not happier.
So, then I cry: But I
wretched, most wretched, in my every commentary, had begged charity of Thee,
and said, “Give me charity, give me unquestioning acceptance of the
powers-that-be, only not yet.”
So, then I pray: God let
me do a St. Augustine, but not yet.
