Keeping the faith

HONG KONG – Sunday Mass yesterday morning at St. Joseph’s Church on Garden Road was a sight to behold. Hundreds of Filipino workers, mostly women domestic helpers, queued up in orderly fashion to enter the house of worship – pew upon pew.

Downstairs, hundreds more began their wait, in patient and disciplined fashion, for the next Mass. Since there are 220,000 OFWs employed in Hong Kong, now described as China’s Special Autonomous Region (SAR), you can imagine how Catholic churches, like St. Joseph’s here on the island, and Rosary Church on the Kowloon side, are jampacked on Sundays.

During the service, a Filipino choir sang beautifully. The choir members were attired in uniform gowns of white and aquamarine blue, and accompanied – what else – by four guitarists (three males, one female) who strummed away as only Pinoys can. The congregation recited each prayer, from the Our Father to the Apostles’ Creed, and the Confiteor in one voice, full of fervor and conviction. The worshippers sang along with the choir, every note true, every syllable clearly expressed. There were hymns which gladdened the heart, in English and Tagalog. ("Aawitan kita!" The choir keened, their throats throbbing in response to the mother tongue!)

The American parish priest delivered an upbeat sermon, reminding his Filipino listeners that "each one of you is unique … no two persons are ever the same," a personal message each wanted to hear, immersed in daily anonymity as they are, as OFWs. The padre challenged the congregation: "How do you solve an unsolvable problem?" He answered his own rhetorical question by saying: "You chop it up into smaller problems, then resolve them one by one!"

The usherettes came out to shuffle from pew to pew, holding out felt bags of maroon color for the palimos. Each OFW gave generously. Then the usherettes – in their neat identical blouses and dark skirts – trooped forward with practiced movements, bowed reverently towards the altar, and retreated to the sacristy to place their "collections" in the collection box.

Here, I could only muse, is a full-fledged Filipino parish operating proudly and piously in the heart of Hong Kong. In their place of labor and exile, in the diaspora, our Filipino workers were uniting in prayer – proclaiming their belief in God as well as their identity as Filipinos. (We call them, unctuously, "heroines" and "heroes", yet treat them shabbily when they arrive "home" at our airports. What snobbery and hypocrisy! Didn’t Jesus condemn the Pharisees as "whited sepulchres"?)

I confess I was touched to the quick, to see our compatriots, our countrywomen, praying together with such fervor and joyful conviction. They prayed, perhaps, for a better and happier life. They prayed, no doubt, for their families at home – whom they support. (LBC cargo once said that its outlets overseas sent $3 to $4 billion home annually from OFWs all over the world!) Living in loneliness and hardship in foreign lands, our workers send their children, or brothers and sisters to school, build homes for their parents and for themselves. What more can we say?

Poll surveys (like Pulse Asia) have said that millions of Filipinos, in depair, want to leave the Philippines for good. Yet, there are still other millions of Pinoys and Pinays, striving in foreign climes, dreaming of coming home.

Those who wish to depart are said to be the middle and moneyed classes.

Where, in turn, do we stand – you and I?

* * *

The one thing that moved me most, at that Mass in St. Joseph’s, was the public act of the hundreds of Filipinos in that congegation affirming their Christian faith. The late Father Horacio de la Costa was never more right than when he wrote about us, saying that "this pauper among nations conceals two jewels in its rags" – our music and our faith. We are truly one when we sing and when we pray. This is what I saw in Hong Kong yesterday. And I was almost in tears. Old age, I guess, embarrasses one by making him maudlin and sentimental.

Yet, by this token, I’m certain, our nation endures – renews itself, strengthens itself, recaptures the vision splendid of our destiny. If we keep this faith – burning and bright – I believe there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome.