Since we are travellers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is of our life, for the end of our roadway is our home (St Columban, 8th sermon).
GospelJohn 9:1-41 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
[For the shorter form (9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38) omit
the text in brackets.]
As Jesus passed by, he saw a man
blind from birth.[And his disciples
asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the
works of God might be displayed in him.We must work the works of him who sent me while it
is day; night is coming, when no one can work.As long as I am in the world, I am the
light of the world.”]Having said these things,] he
spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the
man's eyes with the mudand said to him, “Go, wash
in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So
he went and washed and came back seeing.
The neighbours and those who had
seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to
sit and beg?”Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but
he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.”[So they said to him, “Then how were your
eyes opened?”He
answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to
me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I
do not know.”]
They brought to the Pharisees the
man who had formerly been blind.Now it
was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.So the Pharisees again asked him how he had
received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed,
and I see.”Some of
the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep
the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such
signs?” And there was a division among them.So they said again to the blind man, “What
do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a
prophet.”
[The Jews did not believe that he
had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the
man who had received his sightand asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born
blind? How then does he now see?”His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that
he was born blind.But
how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he
is of age. He will speak for himself.”(His parents said these things because they feared the
Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess
Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.)Therefore his parents said, “He is of
age; ask him.”
So for the second
time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory
to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “Whether he
is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now
I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your
eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not
listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his
disciples?” And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple,
but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses,
but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man
answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he
comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not
listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshipper of God and does his will,
God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that
anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God,
he could do nothing.” ] They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you
teach us?” And they cast him out.
Jesus heard that they had cast
him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of
Man?”He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in
him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is
speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe”, and he worshipped
him. Jesus said, “For judgement I came into this world, that
those who do not see may see, and those who see may become
blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to
him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were
blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see’, your
guilt remains."
Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe”, and he worshipped him.
The blind man met Jesus, heard him and believed.
Our Christian faith is a gift that can be lost by an individual and by a whole community. The Church flourished in North Africa and in the Middle East before Islam came into being but the vast majority lost the gift of our faith. In our own lifetime the faith has been rapidly disappearing from places such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Quebec. Sixty years ago these places were still sending missionaries to every part of the world and their seminaries were full. Now most of those seminaries have been closed. Just over 100 years ago CICM brothers and priests (Scheut Missionaries, Missionhurst) and ICM Sisters went to the mountains of northern Luzon in the Philippines from a part of Europe that is as flat as a billiard table, most of Belgium and the Netherlands. In February 2014 Belgium made it legal for sick children to be killed, to be put down like sick animals. There was little international reaction to this, though there was to the putting down of a healthy giraffe in a zoo in Denmark a few days earlier.
There still are people in these places and others like them who are living the Christian life faithfully, often heroically. Martyrs such as Fr Ragheed Ganni of Iraq and politician Shahbaz Bhatti of Pakistan are outstanding examples. Another is the late Professor Jérôme Lejeune, doctor and researcher, who in 1958 discovered the cause of Down Syndrome (trisomy 21).
In so many places in the gospel we find Jesus going out to those considered unimportant such as the blind man in today's gospel. In what is now largely a post-Christian Western world the opposite is happening. Children in the womb who are considered 'defective' in one way or another are aborted. Because of pre-natal testing the number of children being born with Down Syndrome has gone down considerably - because they have been killed in the womb. (See here.)
At the recent Oscar awards ceremony a short movie from Northern Ireland, An Irish Goodbye, won an Oscar. Its star, James Martin was celebrating his 31st birthday the same day. He is the first person with Down Syndrome to share in an Oscar award.
Dr Lejeune cared passionately for the lives of persons with Down Syndrome and feared that society would see them as worthless, not worthy of being born. He said, The real danger is in mankind; in the increasingly worrisome imbalance between its power, which grows daily, and its wisdom, which sometimes seems to regress.
Some of the people around the blind man in today's were the ones who were truly blind, who could not see what was truly real. They could not see God's love for the man born blind. They saw the blind man as being punished for his sins and Jesus as a sinner for breaking the sabbath laws. Jesus overturned their very narrow world.
The video below invites us to overturn our own world, as the Gospel invites us to do, and to see it as Jérôme Lejeune did, with the eyes of Jesus as He saw the man born blind. And may we always treasure the gift of our Christian faith that gives us that sight.
Solemnity of St Joseph
This year the Solemnity of St Joseph is moved to Monday 20 March. The Sundays of Lent take precedence over solemnities.
Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted (John 6:11; Gospel).
I first wrote the post below for the short-lived Negros Times in October 2008. I have re-posted it a number of times because Lala's story is one that should be told over and over again. Today she has been celebrating her 35th birthday on a pilgrimage to Lipa City, Batangas, south-east of Manila, with members of Faith and Light, which holds a pilgrimage every year on or near the Feast of the Nativity of Mary. No doubt, there will be something to mark the occasion at Punla, Ang Arko, where Lala lives, the only L'Arche community in the Philippines, in Cainta, Rizal, part of the metropolitan sprawl of Manila. L'Arche, which might be called the 'older sister' of Faith and Light, is celebrating its Golden Jubilee this year.
The Pope's Universal Prayer Intention for September is: That the mentally disabled may receive the love and help they need for a dignified life. The truth is that persons with mental or learning disabilities can teach the rest of us about the dignity of life, as the photo above of Lala helping Jordan with his meal shows.
St Sebastian Cathedral, Lipa City, Philippines [Wikipedia]
Let us show our service to the poor, then, with renewed ardour in our hearts, seeking out above all any abandoned people, since they are given to us as lords and patrons. (St Vincent de Paul, used in the Office of Readings for his feast day, today.)
Both Lala and Queen Elizabeth II have have two birthdays, the real one and the official one. Lala’s official birthday is 27 September, the feast day of St Vincent de Paul, and she turns 35 today. Queen Elizabeth’s official birthday is celebrated in 53 Commonwealth countries, but not on the same date. Only the Falkland Islands observes her official birthday on her real one, 21 April. In the United Kingdom the Queen’s official birthday can be on the first, second or third Saturday in June. She turned 88 on her last birthday.
While there’s no confusion about the date of birth of Queen Elizabeth, there is about that of Lala. The young Princess Elizabeth was born in a palace in London. Lala was found shortly after birth in a trashcan in Cebu City in the central Philippines. Those who found her took her to the Asilo De La Milagrosa, the orphanage of the Daughters of Charity there. The Sisters noticed that the little girl had Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) and took her in and raised her. Since they didn’t know who her parents were they had to choose a name for her.
The Sisters chose 'Vicente' as her family name, in honor of St Vincent de Paul, and 'Louilla' as her Christian name, in honor of St Louise de Marillac. The two saints founded the Daughters of Charity in France in 1633. Lala, as all her friends know her, probably has something else in common with St Louise. She was almost certainly born out of wedlock, as the saint was, and, like St Louise, never knew her mother. I suspect that Lala’s mother, probably very young and unmarried, panicked – this possibly added to when she saw that her daughter wasn’t 'normal' - and left her baby where someone could find her and take care of her.
I first met Lala in Cebu in 1992 at a Faith and Light celebration. We had just begun a community there, after a retreat given by the co-founder of the movement, Jean Vanier, a Canadian layman, in Holy Family Retreat House, Cebu City, in October 1991. During the retreat he gave a public talk in the auditorium of St Theresa’s College, as I recall, and a group of interested people got together after that. The gathering at which Lala was present included members of Faith and Light from Manila who had come to tell us more about the movement.
I could see immediately that Lala had a special gift – she’s a natural 'ice-breaker'. Though she seldom says anything, she lights up any group into which she comes, unless she’s in a bad mood, which happens from time to time.
Lala became a member of our Faith and Light community in Cebu but I lost contact with her when I went to Lianga, Surigao del Sur, in 1993 as parish priest and to Manila the following year to become vocation director of the Columbans. But one day when I visited the L’Arche community in Cainta, Rizal, known as 'Ang Arko', I was surprised to see Lala there. L’Arche, the French for 'The Ark' as in Noah’s Ark, was founded by Jean Vanier, in 1964 when he invited two men with learning disabilities, Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux, who had been living in an institution, to join him in a small cottage he had bought and was renovating in the town of Trosly-Breuil, France. Jean had no intention of founding anything, but he realized very quickly that he had made a commitment to these two men. One of them, I forget which, chose to live independently some years later, something he could never have done had he stayed not met Jean. Out of these small beginnings has grown an international movement of about 130 residential communities where those with learning disabilities are enabled to live in a family-type situation and to develop their abilities to the greatest extent possible.
Jordan and Raymon, now young men, were welcomed by Ang Arko when they were very young. Both have physical as well as learning disabilities. The original house was in Manila but the community moved later to Cainta.
Lala and Hachiko, each looking more content than the other!
In Holy Week 2001 I attended the international pilgrimage of Faith and Light to Lourdes as chaplain to the group from the Philippines. Lala was one of the twelve or so Filipinos.
The Easter Vigil was celebrated in the underground basilica. Some of the Old Testament Vigil readings were dramatized. During the account of creation when the words 'God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him' were read, a spotlight shone on a young man in a wheelchair. But what moved me most was when 'Lala' was part of a group dramatizing the reading of the Exodus.
I simply marveled at the fact that a young woman who should never have been born, according to the 'wisdom' of so many, left after birth among garbage, was on the other side of the world helping to proclaim the Word of God to thousands of people, many like herself, and doing so with the joy that permeates her soul.
Queen Elizabeth, Queen of Canada, in Toronto in 2007. (Ever since I was a small child I've just loved the scarlet jackets of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I used to draw Mounties with crayons but never evolved into an El Greco or a Van Gogh.)
Queen Elizabeth has been blessed by God with a long and healthy life, in which she continues to serve her people with dignity. Though Queen Elizabeth is among the richest people in the world, Lala, also with her two birthdays, enjoys even greater riches, because the words of Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat, have been revealed in her life: 'God has lifted up the lowly'.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India
[optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
Gospel
Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21(Revised Standard Version – Catholic
Edition)
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to
compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just
as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses
and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things
closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent
Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have
been informed.
Jesus returned in the power of
the Spirit into Galilee, and a report concerning him went out through all the
surrounding country. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the
synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and
there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and
found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set
at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord." And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat
down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to
say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee St Luke tells us. Thirty years ago in the Diocese of Bacolod on the island of Negros where I now live in the Philippines the Spirit led nine men to jail, three priests and six laymen, all falsely charged with multiple murder. Fourteen months were to pass before the nine were released.
Two of the priests were Columbans, Fr Brian Gore from Australia and the late Fr Niall O'Brien from Ireland. The third was a diocesan priest, Fr Vicente Dangan, now deceased.
The six laymen, all working for the Church during the very difficult Martial Law years in the Philippines, were Jesus S. Arzaga, Peter Cuales, Lydio J. Mangao, Conrado Muhal (RIP), Geronimo T. Perez (RIP) and Ernesto Tajones. They became known as The Negros Nine and you can find their photos here.
While the Negros Nine were in jail in Bacolod City the late Bishop Antonio Y. Fortich appointed the three priests as chaplains there. The vast majority of prisoners were from poor backgrounds and their cases were being constantly put back. The three priests, as well as ministering to the spiritual needs of the prisoners were able to get lawyer-friends to follow up on the cases of many of those languishing, wondering if they would ever get out.
As a result of this, many of them did. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives . . . to set at liberty those who are oppressed . . .
+++
I'm writing this on 25 January. Later today the 40th annual March for Life will take place in Washington DC. 40 = 55M says the March for Life website, indicating the 55 million babies who have been legally aborted in the USA since the Roe v Wade decision by the Supreme Court 40 years ago.
Last Saturday 25,000 turned out at a peaceful rally outside the Irish parliament in Dublin to let politicians know that they don't want abortion to be legalised in the Republic of Ireland.
One of the charges often made is that those who are pro-life when it comes to the unborn and abortion are really only 'pro-birth' and not interested in the lives of children once they are born.
My friend Lala and her friend Jordan, whom I also know, might dispute this if they had the ability to express themselves in such a way. Lala was left in a garbage bin after birth and raised by the Daughters of Charity in Cebu City. Lala was born with Trisomy 21 (Down's Syndrome) and Jordan with intellectual and physical disabilities. They now live in the L'Arche community near Manila. Over the years those who have chosen to live with Lala, Jordan and others for long periods, enabling them to live normal lives, have come from as far away as Germany and Japan.
Lala helping Jordan
The late King Baudouin of the Belgians, about whom I've written in the two previous Sunday Reflections wrote in a letter to a young mother about a children's party that he and Queen Fabiola had hosted:
In one corner there was a group of handicapped children, several of them with Down's Syndrome. I brought a plateful of toffees to a little girl who had scarcely any manual control. With great difficulty, she succeeded in taking a toffee but, to my astonishment, she gave it to another child. then for a long time, without ever keeping one for herself, she distributed these sweets to all the healthy children who could not believe their eyes. What a depth of love there is in these physically handicapped bodies . . .
Lala and the little girl who astonished King Baudouin are truly sisters in Christ. He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. King Baudouin and the able-bodied children with whom the little girl with the disabilities shared her toffees were poor in spirit in the sense that St Matthew means in the first of the Beatitudes, ie, they knew their need of God. They recognised God's presence at the party, just as those who know Lala, especially those who live in L'Arche with her, recognise that the scripture has been fulfilled in their presence and is being fulfilled each day.
The Negros Nine were involved in organising Christian Communities where people would work together for the peace and justice that the Gospel demands in an area of awful poverty for many, poverty caused by greed. They suffered with the people because of the demands of the Gospel. Those of the Negros Nine who remain continue to work for justice and peace through the Negros Nine Human Development Foundation. Among other things the foundation is involved in trying to prevent the trafficking of women and minors. To set at liberty those who are oppressed . . .
While looking for a musical setting of the Entrance Antiphon I discovered Cantate Domino in B-flat, a setting of part of Psalm 96 (95) in Latin from which the Antiphon is taken, by Japanese composer Ko Matsushita. This came out of the Sing for Japan Choir Project, an international response to the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011. I had not heard of Ko Matsushita nor had I heard of the Sing for Japan Choir Project. I discovered quite a few videos of Cantate Domino and finally settled on one featuring the Kaohsiung Chamber Choir from southern Taiwan.
The Entrance Antiphon is taken from Psalm 95 (96) 1, 6. The above is Cantate Domino in B-flat, a setting of verses 1, 2, 4, 5 ,6, 11 by Japanese composer Ko Matsushita. Verses 1 and 6 are highlighted.
Cantate Domino canticum novum,
cantate Domino omnis terra. Cantate Domino benedicite nomini eius, adnuntiate diem de die salutare eius; quoniam magnus Dominus et laudabilis valde terribilis est super omnes deos; quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia at vero Dominus caelos fecit. Confessio et pulchritudo in conspectu eius,
sanctimonia et magnificentia in sanctificatione eius. Laetentur caeli et exultet terra commoveatur mare et plenitudo eius.
Entrance Antiphon
O sing a new song to the Lord,
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
In his presence are majesty and splendour,
strength and honour in his holy place.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor . . .
And in so many ways, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we can say with Jesus, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
I first wrote the post below for the short-lived Negros Times in October 2008. I have re-posted it a number of times because Lala's story is one that should be told over and over again. This evening she will be celebrating her 33rd birthday with a quiet dinner at Punla, Ang Arko, the only L'Arche community in the Philippines, in Cainta, Rizal, part of the metropolitan sprawl of Manila.
Lala, with Jordan
Let us show our service to the poor,
then, with renewed ardour in our hearts, seeking out above all any
abandoned people, since they are given to us as lords and patrons.(St
Vincent de Paul, used in the Office of Readings for his feast day,
today.)
Both Lala and Queen
Elizabeth II have have two birthdays, the real one and the official one. Lala’s
official birthday is 27 September and she turns 33 today. Queen
Elizabeth’s official birthday is celebrated in 53 Commonwealth countries, but
not on the same date. Only the Falkland Islands observes her official birthday on
her real one, 21 April. In the United Kingdom the Queen’s official birthday can
be on the first, second or third Saturday in June. She turned 86 on her last
birthday.
While there’s no confusion about the date of birth of Queen
Elizabeth, there is about that of Lala. The young Princess Elizabeth was born in
a palace in London. Lala was found shortly after birth in a trashcan in Cebu
city in the central Philippines. Those who found her took her to the Asilo De La
Milagrosa, the orphanage of the Daughters of Charity there. The Sisters noticed
that the little girl had Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) and took her in and raised
her. Since they didn’t know who her parents were they had to choose a name for
her.
The Sisters chose 'Vicente' as her family name, in honor of St
Vincent de Paul, and 'Louilla' as her Christian name, in honor of St Louise de
Marillac. The two saints founded the Daughters of Charity in France in 1633.
Lala, as all her friends know her, probably has something else in common with St
Louise. She was almost certainly born out of wedlock, as the saint was, and,
like St Louise, never knew her mother. I suspect that Lala’s mother, probably
very young and unmarried, panicked – this possibly added to when she saw that
her daughter wasn’t 'normal' - and left her baby where someone could find her
and take care of her.
I first met Lala in Cebu in 1992 at a Faith and Light celebration. We had just begun a community there, after a retreat given by
the co-founder of the movement, Jean Vanier, a Canadian layman, in Holy Family
Retreat House, Cebu City, in October 1991. During the retreat he gave a public
talk in the auditorium of St Theresa’s College, as I recall, and a group of
interested people got together after that. The gathering at which Lala was
present included members of Faith and Light from Manila who had come to tell us
more about the movement.
I could see immediately that Lala had a special
gift – she’s a natural 'ice-breaker'. Though she seldom says anything, she
lights up any group into which she comes, unless she’s in a bad mood, which
happens from time to time.
Lala became a member of our Faith and Light
community in Cebu but I lost contact with her when I went to Lianga, Surigao del
Sur, in 1993 as parish priest and to Manila the following year to become
vocation director of the Columbans. But one day when I visited the L’Arche
community in Cainta, Rizal, known as 'Ang Arko', I was surprised to see
Lala there. L’Arche, the French for 'The Ark' as in Noah’s Ark, was founded by
Jean Vanier, in 1964 when he invited two men with learning disabilities, Raphael
Simi and Philippe Seux, who had been living in an institution, to join him in a
small cottage he had bought and was renovating in the town of Trosly-Breuil,
France. Jean had no intention of founding anything, but he realized very quickly
that he had made a commitment to these two men. One of them, I forget which,
chose to live independently some years later, something he could never have done
had he stayed not met Jean. Out of these small beginnings has grown an
international movement of about 130 residential communities where those with
learning disabilities are enabled to live in a family-type situation and to
develop their abilities to the greatest extent possible.
Jordan and
Raymon, now young men, were welcomed by Ang Arko when they were very
young. Both have physical as well as learning disabilities. The original house
was in Manila but the community moved later to Cainta.
Lala and Hachiko, each looking more content than the other!
In Holy Week 2001
I attended the international pilgrimage of Faith and Light to Lourdes as
chaplain to the group from the Philippines. Lala was one of the twelve or so
Filipinos.
The Easter Vigil was celebrated in the underground basilica.
Some of the Old Testament Vigil readings were dramatized. During the account of
creation when the words 'God created man in his image; in the divine image he
created him' were read, a spotlight shone on a young man in a wheelchair. But
what moved me most was when 'Lala' was part of a group dramatizing the reading
of the Exodus.
I simply marveled at the fact that a young woman who
should never have been born, according to the 'wisdom' of so many, left after
birth among garbage, was on the other side of the world helping to proclaim the
Word of God to thousands of people, many like herself, and doing so with the joy
that permeates her soul.
Queen Elizabeth, Queen of Canada, in Toronto in 2007. (Ever since I was a small child I've just loved the scarlet jackets of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I used to draw Mounties with crayons but never evolved into an El Greco or a Van Gogh.)
Queen Elizabeth has been blessed by God with a
long and healthy life, in which she continues to serve her people with dignity.
Though Queen Elizabeth is among the richest people in the world, Lala, also with
her two birthdays, enjoys even greater riches, because the words of Mary’s
prayer, the Magnificat, have been revealed in her life: 'God has lifted up the
lowly'.
This column, updated 29 September 2011, appeared in the short-lived Negros Times 13-14 October 2008. The above was the picture that appeared with my weekly column. Last Tuesday, 28 September, the feast of St Vincent de Paul, was Lala's 'Official Birthday'. I only remembered that yesterday and thought of posting my three-year-old article here.
Both Lala and Queen Elizabeth II have have two birthdays, the real one and the official one. Lala’s official birthday is 27 September and she turned 32 two days ago. Queen Elizabeth’s official birthday is celebrated in 53 Commonwealth countries, but not on the same date. Only the Falkland Island observes her official birthday on her real one, 21 April. In the United Kingdom the Queen’s official birthday can be on the first, second or third Saturday in June. She turned 85 on her last birthday.
While there’s no confusion about the date of birth of Queen Elizabeth, there is about that of Lala. The young Princess Elizabeth was born in a palace in London. Lala was found shortly after birth in a trashcan in Cebu city in the central Philippines. Those who found her took her to the Asilo De La Milagrosa, the orphanage of the Daughters of Charity there. The Sisters noticed that the little girl had Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) and took her in and raised her. Since they didn’t know who her parents were they had to choose a name for her.
The Sisters chose 'Vicente' as her family name, in honor of St Vincent de Paul, and 'Louilla' as her Christian name, in honor of St Louise de Marillac. The two saints founded the Daughters of Charity in France in 1633. Lala, as all her friends know her, probably has something else in common with St Louise. She was almost certainly born out of wedlock, as the saint was, and, like St Louise, never knew her mother. I suspect that Lala’s mother, probably very young and unmarried, panicked – this possibly added to when she saw that her daughter wasn’t 'normal' - and left her baby where someone could find her and take care of her.
I first met Lala in Cebu in 1992 at a Faith and Light celebration. We had just begun a community there, after a retreat given by the co-founder of the movement, Jean Vanier, a Canadian layman, in Holy Family Retreat House, Cebu City, in October 1991. During the retreat he gave a public talk in the auditorium of St Theresa’s College, as I recall, and a group of interested people got together after that. The gathering at which Lala was present included members of Faith and Light from Manila who had come to tell us more about the movement.
I could see immediately that Lala had a special gift – she’s a natural 'ice-breaker'. Though she seldom says anything, she lights up any group into which she comes, unless she’s in a bad mood, which happens from time to time.
Lala became a member of our Faith and Light community in Cebu but I lost contact with her when I went to Lianga, Surigao del Sur, in 1993 as parish priest and to Manila the following year to become vocation director of the Columbans. But one day when I visited the L’Arche community in Cainta, Rizal, known as 'Ang Arko', I was surprised to see Lala there. L’Arche, the French for 'The Ark' as in Noah’s Ark, was founded by Jean Vanier, in 1964 when he invited two men with learning disabilities, Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux, who had been living in an institution, to join him in a small cottage he had bought and was renovating in the town of Trosly-Breuil, France. Jean had no intention of founding anything, but he realized very quickly that he had made a commitment to these two men. One of them, I forget which, chose to live independently some years later, something he could never have done had he stayed not met Jean. Out of these small beginnings has grown an international movement of about 130 residential communities where those with learning disabilities are enabled to live in a family-type situation and to develop their abilities to the greatest extent possible.
Jordan and Raymon, now young men, were welcomed by Ang Arko when they were very young. Both have physical as well as learning disabilities. The original house was in Manila but the community moved later to Cainta.
In Holy Week 2001 I attended the international pilgrimage of Faith and Light to Lourdes as chaplain to the group from the Philippines. Lala was one of the twelve or so Filipinos.
The Easter Vigil was celebrated in the underground basilica. Some of the Old Testament Vigil readings were dramatized. During the account of creation when the words 'God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him' were read, a spotlight shone on a young man in a wheelchair. But what moved me most was when 'Lala' was part of a group dramatizing the reading of the Exodus.
I simply marveled at the fact that a young woman who should never have been born, according to the 'wisdom' of so many, left after birth among garbage, was on the other side of the world helping to proclaim the Word of God to thousands of people, many like herself, and doing so with the joy that permeates her soul.
Queen Elizabeth has been blessed by God with a long and healthy life, in which she continues to serve her people with dignity. Though Queen Elizabeth is among the richest people in the world, Lala, also with her two birthdays, enjoys even greater riches, because the words of Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat, have been revealed in her life: 'God has lifted up the lowly'.
Rafael Simi (left) and Jean Vanier (right).
You can listen to an interview with Jean here. He turned 83 on 10 September.
This comment was posted when I first posted this three years ago:
Wow..I can't believe Im actually sitting here reading this post about Lala..This is wonderfull..Well, I actually grew up with Lala in the orphanage at Asilo dela Milagrosa..we are the same age..I was there from 1986-1994 until I was sent here in America to be adopted..The first time we were introduce to Lala we were a little nervous, we were very young and we never met someone like her, then she started to sing 'Tomorrow' and for some reason we were all drawn to her..As I remember, I was a little jealous because she was always happy, didnt care what everyone thought of her, she welcomed every visitor we had with a smile, she's very friendly..After I finished high school, I started working as a volunteer camp councelor but I was assigned in the office and there was this girl and she is also my age and I was ask to be her counselor for a couple of months and I was so excited, nobody knew why I was glad to do so and it all because I remembered Lala, it was 8 yrs. ago that i work at the camp, and here I am writing and remembering Lala..
I would like to thank you Fr. Sean for writing this post..
Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes
