Marian Solidarity

by Howard Q. Dee

Returning to Rome brings back happy memories of the four years I spent here representing my country in the See of Peter. When I presented my credentials to the Holy Father, we spent the time, the good part of an hour, sharing about Our Lady of Fatima and her interventions in our people power revolution in 1986 that brought back democracy to my country and brought me to the Holy See.

The Holy Father in turn recounted to me how Our Lady saved his life from the assassin’s bullet in 1981 that led him to consecrate Russia and the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The first event changed the course of history with the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe and prevented a nuclear war.

The topic assigned to me for this afternoon is “Mary in the life of the Filipino Laity”. I feel inadequate to do justice to the apostolate of the many Marian groups in the Philippines, so I will add as a subtitle that I am just speaking from the limited perspective of one Marian devotee. The year 1986 marked the beginning of a new chapter in our country’s spiritual journey with Mary and the Pope that continues to this day. I wish to share this pilgrimage with you.

Let me begin by saying that the Holy Father is a true prophet of our times. His parting advice to my country on that day in 1986 was this: “Beware of two evils”. With his left hand, he gestured and said to me, “communism, Marxist Communism”. And gesturing with his right hand, he said, “Capitalism, Liberal Capitalism”. I looked at him askance and he clarified with three words: “Materialism, secularism, consumerism”. The three handmaids of capitalism.

After 14 years, the Holy Father’s warning has become a reality in our national life. The gigantic tidal waves of materialist, secular and consumerist values have inundated Christian societies around the globe, my country not exempted, leaving in its wake a godless culture with destorted values, secularizing every human activity at the expense of our faithlife.

Little did I realize, when the Holy Father spoke to me of Marxist communism, that 7 years later in 1993, Providence would lead me to head a Government Peace Panel to negotiate peace with our communist brothers which we conducted for six years without substantial success. The fighting and killing, Filipino against brother Filipino, continues to this day. I have often asked Our Lady why? Why have you converted the communists of Russia and the whole of Eastern Europe but not the Philippines? When we love you so much? And now, we are engaged in another fratricidal war with Muslim brothers? What sin is it that is causing so much misery in my country?

I found the answer to my questions in the Fatima message: in Sister Lucia’s letter to the Holy Father, in the Holy Father’s homily during the beatification mass at Fatima, and in the commentary of Cardinal Ratzinger on the third secret of Fatima. Let me share this discovery with you.

Sr. Lucia wrote to the Holy Father that the third secret refers to Our Lady’s warnings, on the errors of Russia that would cause wars and persecution, martyrdom of the good, suffering of the Holy Father and the annihilation of nations. Then she said, “if we have not yet seen the complete fulfillment of the final part of the prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides. If we do not reject the path of sin, injustice, violations of the rights of the human person, immorality and violence…”.   There are the sins of my country – I am making this confession that you may pray for us – the sins that are causing so much division and destruction. Lucia is saying: Our Lady cannot convert our communists if we would not convert ourselves. By embracing the forces of godless capitalism and materialism, we have effectively secularized our moral, ethical and spiritual values, thus providing the fertile ground for the spread of communism and other atheistic ideologies.

We, Filipinos, take pride in being a Christian-Muslim people. But we are still trying to comprehend how our religious piety could have an impact on our national life, how our faith could be translated to a Christian response to national issues of a cry for justice, human rights, peace in the face of violence, corruption and immorality, mass poverty and destitution. This is what Sr. Lucia of Fatima defines as “responsibilities of people” whose response to Our Lady’s appeal at Fatima will determine the fate and future of nations and humankind. So, Lucia tells us, if we are suffering, it is not that God is punishing us but it is we who are punishing ourselves.

Few Christians realize that the prevailing general apostasy, the exclusion of God from human affairs, is the root cause of unpeace around us. Being “Christian” is one thing, to be a Christian witness is another. This dichotomy is the struggle that is at the heart of the Fatima during the beatification celebration last May 13.

Quoting Revelation, His Holiness said: “Another portent appeared in heaven, behold, a great red dragon…(And the dragon stood in front of the woman). These words make us think of the great struggle between good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, but ends up destroying himself”. In that one sentence, the Holy Father captures the essence of the fierce struggle in the world today, the Dragon against the Woman, the culture of death against the Gospel of Life. The Philippine arena is but a microcosm at the center of this universal struggle.

Interpreting the third secret, Cardinal Ratzinger said that the vision of the suffering church portrays this struggle, with the blood of the martyrs giving life to the souls making their way to God. Their life has itself become a Eucharist, part of the mystery of the grain of wheat which in dying yields abundant fruit. This, the Cardinal said, is an image of hope; no suffering is in vain, and it is a suffering Church, a Church of martyrs, which becomes a sign-post for man in his search for God.

Viewed in this light, we see clearly the role of the Filipino people, a Marian nation, as that of a suffering Church, standing with Mary in front of the Red Dragon, caught in this struggle, to be a sign-post for man in his search for God. It is an image of hope because this suffering of the moment, as St. Paul teaches us, is nothing compared to the glory that shall be revealed to us.

This suffering of the Filipino people can be visibly seen in the faces of over 300,000 refugees, Muslims, Christians and Lumads, languishing in evacuation camps in southern Philippines, victims of our injustice and human rights violations, of hatred, violence and immorality, the sins cited by Sister Lucia as perpetuating war and unpeace. The Marian laity is in the midst of this human tragedy, helping our Catholic Bishops feed the hungry and attend to their wounds. The Bishops could not hardly cope in providing these poor refugees with food relief of 10 cents a day for each refugee.

The image of these victims of war, mostly young children, is the face of our suffering humanity, when man turns away from God, a sorrowful mystery of our times. It is the consequence of our rebellion against God and with it comes injustice and inequity and unpeace. We see extreme poverty in midst of great wealth and advances in science and commerce. This social inequity, an injustice against humanity, is the root cause of our war.

Bishop Valles recounts a visit to the evacuation center where he was distributing relief goods. A little Muslim girl was tucking at his shirt speaking a language that he does not understand, pointing at the empty cartons in his truck. Then he realized that she wanted an empty carton. He handed her one and her face lit up as if she had obtained an object of inestimable value. The Bishop followed her and saw her laying the carton on a patch of wet grass. That night, he thought, she will sleep warmer and drier than the night before. Never in his life did he ever think that an empty carton would be so valuable.

This Muslim girl of Bishop Valles is luckier than my own 10year old Muslim girl whom I visited in the Notre Dame hospital, one of dozens who are critically ill. She had lost her mother in the fighting, and then her two brothers succumbed to sickness, and now she herself was fighting for her life, her father standing vigil by her side. She looked at me silently with her wide eyes, blood being transfused in one arm and intervenous fluid in the other. Two days later, she too died and hardly anyone took notice. She became another war statistic, one of hundreds of children who have shed innocent blood comingled with the blood of Jesus, so that our sins may be forgiven.

In my country, perhaps also in yours, there exists this dichotomy between believing and living the faith that we believe, a great chasm between responsibility and response.

So we return to the See of Peter to imbibe the living faith of the Vicar of Christ. In the mind of the Holy Father, there is no such dichotomy in the celebration of the Jubilee year. He has a particular genius in marrying the goals of the eternal and the temporal. Our goals, he said, are “the strengthening of faith and of the witness of Christians”, “to illuminate the mystery of man as we seek solutions for the outstanding problems of our time”. Faith must be a living witness. Mystery must address our sinful reality. Celebration must include conversion.

Continuing our public confession, consider the injustice that our society imposes on another sector, our indigenous Filipinos, the poorest of our poor, comprising ten percent of our population. They are literally abandoned by society to the vagueness of globalization and to an unjust, inhuman development. Ninety-five percent of their forests, their life habitat, has been destroyed by us. Mining permits cover two-thirds of their ancestral domain. Their plight cried to the heavens for mercy. They live in the stone age, having to dig for poisonous wild roots to survive droughts, victim to the ravages of hunger, poverty and exploitation, massacred as trespassers in their own ancestral lands.

The Philippines is in the midst of this universal struggle between the forces of good and the godless forces of which the Holy Father had warned. Atheistic ideologies and secular materialist values dominate all sectors of society and all facets of social life.

We hear clearly the Holy Father challenging us: “The whole of humanity…is at a very difficult time. How could we remain silent in the face of the sad spectacle… which seems to drive individuals and whole populations onto the brink of the abyss?… How can it happen that in our century, a century of science and technology capable of penetrating the mysteries of outer space, we find ourselves helpless bystanders before the horrifying violations of human dignity? It is time to return to God! Our world hungers for faith, for an authentic and deep faith, because God alone can fully satisfy the desire of the human heart.

The Pope’s lamentation is like a cry from the cross. It cannot be left without a response from us. It is clarion call to mission. This mission that the Holy Father summons us to is nothing less than the renewal, the restoration, and the reconstruction of an authentic Catholic culture, the cultivation of a spirituality that captures all the pristine truth and resplendence of faithful Christian gospel living. We are called to the same witnessing of the Saints and the martyrs of the Church, to lead courageous lives in full accord with the precepts and commands of God.

Yet in this darkness, a bright light is shinning. “The seeds of a new Pentecost and a new evangelization are being sown. As we approach the new millennium, it appears that the darkness is growing darker and yet the light is shinning more brightly”.

The Marian laity, is heeding the call of our Mother: “Do as He tells you”. The Marian Solidarity groups are responding in full force. Hand in hand with the Hierarchy, these groups are responding to the challenge of the Holy Father and of Our Lady to accept our own responsibility, to give witness to our Christianity, to live and defend the faith. They are bringing a new excitement to faith witnessing. In the midst of the apostasy is a renaissance with Mary at its center. We know that if we respond to her appeal, Our Lady will keep her promise: “in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph…An era of peace will be given to mankind”.

This Marian Solidarity was formed by 15 Marian organizations with our two Cardinals, His Eminences Jaime Cardinal Sin of Manila and Ricardo Cardinal Vidal of Cebu and former President Cory Aquino at the forefront, providing spiritual support to the Holy Father and bringing about a national renewal through Mary, through prayer, conversion, penance and reparation to bring peace to our land and to the world, renewing personal and national consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and preparing for the Second Pentecost. This Sunday, we shall be presenting to His Holiness a gift of over half a million personal pledges of prayer of the Holy Rosary and the First Saturday devotion.

One notable group is the Children’s Rosary Movement with three million young children in grade school bringing new life to the prayer of the Holy Rosary to homes to renew their faith and prove once more the adage: “The families that pray together stay together”.

Another movement of the Spirit are the various groups working and praying in anticipation of the promised triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of all Peoples and Nations.

A powerful example of Christian witnessing is the prophetic leadership provided by the Philippine Hierarchy through their personal involvement in high-level peace advocacy and mediation on behalf of poor sectors, in addressing conflict concerns and moral issues of injustice that is the primary cause of conflict and unpeace.

This same hierarchial leadership is forging strong ties with the Ulama and Ustadz of the Islamic faith, building bridges of understanding and interreligious dialogue, promoting a common culture of peace and preventing the present conflict from escalating into a Muslim-Christian war. This solidarity is further actualized by the Bishops and the Laity, working together in Tabang Mindanaw, to provide food relief and medical assistance to the hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees and assisting their communities to broker and form sanctuaries of peace for them to return and rehabilitate their houses and farms, and rebuild their schools and communities.

We can see, amid the deep darkness, a bright light is shinning in the Philippine horizon and it is light of Mary, the Morning Star of the New Evangelization, the dawn that announces the rising sun.

During this Great Jubilee Year, we have drawn much nourishment  from the spring waters flowing from the See of Peter. The Pope personifies what the late Cardinal Hans Urs Von Baltazar, the eminent theologian, foretold to be a fierce spiritual battle: “the nearer the end approaches, the more fierce becomes the battle. The more the Holy Spirit becomes present in history, the more prevalent is what Jesus calls the sin against the Holy Spirit”.

We are filled with the joy of Mary when we hear the Holy Father saying: “for in this hope we are saved. Christians are called to renew their hope in the definitive coming of the Kingdom of God, preparing for it daily in their hearts….The term jubilee speaks of joy, not just an inner joy but a jubilation which is manifested outwardly, for the coming of God is also an outward, visible, audible and tangible event”. Does he not sound like the Angel Gabriel announcing the coming of Jesus to Mary?

We are filled with hope when His Holiness calls on the Holy Spirit and boldly announces the coming of a new Pentecost. He beacons: “Open your door to Christ, welcome the Spirit, so that a new Pentecost may take place in every community! A new humanity, a joyful one, will arise from your midst. Today the Lord is passing by, He is calling you”.

Today, we share with you this joyful hope that fills the hearts of the Marian faithful in the Philippines and we pray that it will also lift your spirits and fill your own hearts with great expectancy of the coming theophany when the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of All Peoples and Nations will triumph and a period of peace will come to all mankind.

XX Mariological Marian International Conference
15- 24 September 2000

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