Thoughts on the killing of Fr. Rabusa

The killing of Fr. Jovencio Rabusa in Cansojong, Talisay a few days ago cries to high heavens for its senselessness and brutality. Here’s a totally innocent man, a holy man, walking quietly on a dim lit road, a man dressed simply like any ordinary man, sans any sign of affluence. And yet he got pumped with bullets even before he could say amen!

I’m sure that when the assailants accosted the priest the latter did not resist nor refused to yield what he was carrying (a mere clutch bag). But they shot him just the same. What a tragedy - for Fr. Rabusa and for all of us! A life has been snuffed out, a life of service for man and God. How many years does a man labor day and night to prepare himself to become a minister of God? Yet all these for Fr. Rabusa got nullified in just one moment one dark night.

No doubt that in the Naga parish where he served there will always be a haunting emptiness inside the church. The faithfuls will miss his presence especially every time the Holy Eucharist is celebrated. They will still hear a voice intoning the Gospel, but it won’t be the voice of the father. They will still see the bread and wine raised for all to adore, but the hand would be that of another priest. And in the sanctified moment of the Holy Communion, the good father would not be there.

The death of an ordinary man is tragic. But the death of a man of God is tragic several times over. An ordinary man usually lives only for himself or if he does also for others, his concerns are basically secular in nature. Food, clothing and shelter are the usual targets of his efforts. A sense of spiritual awareness may be alive in him but normally this is only tangential, if not superficial in extent.

But a man of God lives for God and because of this he lives that others may learn how to live also for God. He may be interested in the things of the world because he believes that “a modicum of material comfort is necessary for the practice of virtue”. But all his thoughts and all his strengths are directed towards something outside of this world, towards the supernatural, that is, and if at all he gets his hands on the exigencies of living this is only momentary and is never an end in itself.

The death of an ordinary man means only the death of a breadwinner. His passing away could deprive some people of their means of subsistence or dislocate their lifestyle. But the death of a priest means the death of a caretaker of souls, the slaughtering of a shepherd, so to speak, tasked to oversee the safety of a flock. The loss is therefore acutely painful because it means the possible loss of countless souls. The hand that wields the staff is no more. What will happen to the flock when the wolves attack? The parishioners of Fr. Rabusa are certainly feeling painfully their loss. Yet that loss is also a loss for all God-fearing Cebuanos, and they too should be sorrowing as much. Each of us is a brother or sister to that priest in Christ. We are a part of each other in faith, and when one of us passes away a part of us does too.

But even considering such metaphysical thought, our loss suggests something more disturbing in the real world about us. If an innocent man is killed just for a pittance of a cell phone, what’s our margin of safety as we walk on our streets at night? What about our children and others in the family, how safe are they outside our compounds?

As we worry about this situation our immediate question is, where are the authorities who are supposed to keep our environs free from criminal elements? If there are homicidal people prowling in our streets, why were no preventive measures taken? In the case of the Rabusa killing, we breathe a sigh of relief for the quick apprehension of the suspects. But the solution to criminality is more than just catching the culprits and keeping them locked. Criminality is a form of mental aberration brought about by prolonged exposure to anti-social tendencies one observes in his milieu. And the home is its breeding ground. There the formation of a future criminal takes place given the unceasing impact of negative influences abetted by want and privation, and the absence of a humanizing atmosphere.

That atmosphere is ideally religious in nature. Religion awakens one’s awareness in the Almighty, the very source of whatever is right and good in one’s relationship with his fellow human beings. Such awareness is the light that floods the mind with concepts of the true and the upright thereby keeping it beyond the reach of darkness and evil.

Sadly, many homes these days don’t have that atmosphere anymore, for one reason or another. Are we surprised if these become the breeding place of rogues and psychopaths?

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