Man’s Search for Meaning

CEBU, Philippines - A very interesting forum with an equally interesting theme, “In Search for the Meaning of Life” was held last Wednesday, August 6, from 1 to 8 p.m., in the Convention Hall of Sacred Heart Center.

Much as it really interested me, being myself a philosophy major, I simply could not make it to the venue due to the distance of my residence from Cebu City, some 45 kilometers. What particularly caught my attention in an article about it (in The FREEMAN of Sunday, August 3) was a quote from our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal: “It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice.”

The guiding power of my own personal experience is that I am a man who wants to try what life has to offer. I had been a celibate priest for eleven years, from1968 to1979, and I have been a married priest for more than 35 years now.

People, particularly my students in the Graduate School of Cebu Normal University, were asking: Which is the better state for a Roman Catholic priest, the celibate or the married state? My answer was that they are like parallel lines that never meet. The celibate priest has consolations and problems not experienced by the married priest; likewise, the married priest has consolations and problems not experienced by the celibate priest. As someone humorously puts it: “The celibate priest has less pleasures, while the married priest has more problems.”

Thus, I really cannot categorically say which is the better state. All I can say is that I tried them both and felt at home in both because I am a man who wants to try what life has to offer.

To paraphrase the quote from Dr. Jose P. Rizal above, my life is not useless because it is a very important part of two edifices: the family that I have been building more than 30 years now and the school which I established after I retired, the Ocaña Learning Center, Incorporated (OLCI) which has been in existence since June, 2004.

Let me conclude with two lines which I composed:

It is life’s problems that give it meaning,

And it’s these problems that keep us going.