Mother Ignacia of the healing center

One wouldn’t expect the rich and mighty to congregate at the Mother Ignacia healing center in Bagombong, Caloocan. Fitted with only a small cottage and an outhouse, the site used to be a poultry and pig farm before the Religious of the Virgin Mary (RVM) converted it a decade ago into a retreat for nuns. Yet high government officials and top professionals, big businessmen and bishops mingle there with the ordinary folk. Together they come to be healed of their pains, spiritual and physical.

Some are cured instantly, like the paralyzed boy who was brought on a stretcher last Saturday but went away walking. Others return to be touched by Sister Gloria Ross’ healing hands, like a famous lawyer whose pancreatic cancer vanished before he could start his first chemotherapy. All attest to have found inner peace, that elusive commodity no amount of money can buy.

Hundreds of big and little miracles have unfolded at the center. A blind woman began to see again after a group prayer. Estranged couples have reconciled. Stony hearts have softened to forgive. A surgeon met an accident on the way there; his crushed finger bones fused back and the bloody wound closed before his eyes as Sister Gloria intoned for Diving Help. Still spry at 76, Sister Gloria attributes the astounding healings to the Almighty. And, she adds, through the intercession of Mother Ignacia, long-deceased, whose life of poverty, chastity and good works could soon earn her beatification. Many of the cured attest to visions of a nun visiting them in their dreams, none other than the RVM foundress in the 1600s of what would become the largest congregation of nuns dedicated to charity, education, counselling and, lately, to healing.

There is no extant record to determine the exact birthdate of Mother Ignacia. But the RVM keeps a photocopy of her baptismal certificate taken from records of the defunct Iglesia de los Santos Reyes de Parian, Manila, now under the care of Binondo parish. Dated March 4, 1663, the document states her parents as Jusépe Incua and Maria Jeronima. Officiating friar was Dominican Alberto Collares, with Catalina Malinang as godmother.

Mother Ignacia was a mestiza, all biographical accounts agree. But whether she was half-Spanish or half-Chinese is unclear. More likely she was the latter, for she grew up in Parian, just outside Intramuros, where Spanish authorities compelled the Chinese to live together after a series of uprisings. Going by the surname, her father must have been Chinese; her mother might have been, too, although the natives sometimes adopted Christian names upon conversion. One thing sure, they were devout folks, for they listed their daughter without a surname but with her devotional name, del Espiritu Santo.

It was the custom at that time, according to historian Fr. Horacio de la Costa, SJ, to have a baby baptized within weeks of birth or, if far from church, upon availability of a priest. A name was picked from the Catholic calendar. The Incuas dwelt in a thriving parish beside the Walled City. Ignacia del Espiritu Santo could have been born on February 1, the feast day of St. Ignatius of Antioch. She came from a family not well-off, but of sufficient means to afford her a good Christian education.

The next record of the charismatic Ignacia comes from Jesuit priest Murillo Velarde, her contemporary. It was 1684 and Ignacia’s parents were egging her at age 21 to consider marriage. She sought counsel from her confessor, Fr. Pable Clain, SJ, then decided to follow her vocation at the Beaterio de Santo Domingo. She left family and friends; dedicating her life only to serving God, she formed a new family by inspiring other girls to become beatas (devout women) until they were three dozen in all.

Theirs was a daily rote of prayer and meditation, penance and Mass, interspersed with assigned parish or convent chores, from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. The work included teaching in nearby schools for young Spanish and indio women, then gathering firewood, drawing water and rushing back to the beaterio to prepare their food. They did everything by themselves in keeping with their vow of poverty: tend a vegetable garden, weave blankets, make their own candles, lard and salt. It was so exacting, Fr. Murillo wrote, that almost all the beatas fell ill one summer and had to rely on alms to survive. Another typhoon year, they had to beg for salt from the rector of the Colegio de San Jose. Yet the congregation continued to grow in number; so with the girls under their charge for training and counselling.

Temptation naturally was potent to leave the convent and return to the comfort of their homes, to marry and be mothers, to pursue legitimate pleasures and ambitions. But the beatas under Mother Ignacia’s tutelage persevered in their spiritual and secular work. She taught by example how to deal with the slightest thought of renouncing their vocation. Wrote Fr. Murillo: "In the spirit of penance she would carry a heavy cross and pray with arms outstretched in the form of a cross under the scorching heat of the midday sun." Only a plea for moderation by Fr. Clain, their spiritual director, tempered her bent for self-inflicted corporal penances.

Word soon reached the Heirarchy about the sacrifices of the beatas and their work for the young women inside and outside Intramuros. The Archbishop of Manila made official the rules and regimen then in use by the beaterio, for emulation by others. Mother Ignacia oversaw the steady increase of recruits, guiding them through their trials and tribulations. Her confidence never waned that what she was doing was for the greater good and the glory of God.

At age 85, Mother Ignacia felt her time had come, in the words of a biographer, "to be transplanted to the heavenly paradise ... she was ready for the welcoming warm greetings of the Master she had served so well." She prepared for it by giving up her office of congregation head. Early in the morning of September 10, 1748 she went to Mass at the church of San Ignacio de Loyola near what is now the Manila Cathedral. She knelt by the altar for Communion, bowed her head on the rail and breathed her last. Wrote the biographer: "Quietly remaining motionless on her knees ... she went to make her thanksgiving face to face with Him Whom she had enthroned in her heart. Members of the secular and regular clergy, high government officials and ecclesiastical dignitaries honored with their presence the funeral of one who in life had been a simple Beata serving God in humility and retirement." They buried her in the same church.

Hundreds of other RVM nuns have come and gone since. They now number by the thousand, teaching in schools, running retreat houses, and living with the poor as Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo did. In honor of the foundress, some are documenting her life and present-day miracles for submission to a Vatican beatification committee.

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EPILOGUE: Completed in 1632, the old church of St. Ignatius was severely damaged by earthquake in 1852. On the yard then rose the gym of the US 31st Regiment. The church was demolished shortly after the American Occupation.

In the early ’60s the Archdiocese of Manila and the Society of Jesus commissioned my dad, Arch. Jesus M. Bondoc, then dean at the Mapua Institute of Technology, to help search for Mother Ignacia’s remains. Aided by his staff and my mom, he had the church floor carefully excavated. The work took months. A few feet down, they found wooden school desks and chairs. Deeper they came upon skeletal remains of those who were crushed to death seeking refuge from the 1852 earthquake. Among them lay those of the RVM foundress.

The National Historical Commission restored the old Beaterio de Santo Domingo in Binondo. A marker commemorates the place where Mother Ignacia lived for 64 years.

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Sister Gloria’s healing sessions in Caloocan are on Tuesdays and Fridays. Prepare for a whole day of prayer and atonement. Pack picnic lunch and snacks. Be ready for miracles big and small.

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