Lessons to learn on San Pedro Calungsod

FLORENCE, Italy: Exactly a year ago, I was in Paris on a very unexpected trip, which brought me to two great Christian pilgrimage sites, in Lourdes where our Blessed Virgin Mary appeared before a little girl named Bernadette Soubirous to proclaim that she was the Immaculate Conception, and to Rue de Bac, an obscure part of Paris, where the Virgin Mary appeared to a young girl named Catherine Laboure to ask her to craft the miraculous medal wherein millions have been made since and millions more continue to wear them to get the protection of our Blessed Lady.

In 1854, Lourdes was a sleepy village at the foothills of the Pyrenees, while Rue de Bac remained what it is today after 200 years. The church there pales in comparison to the magnificent Notre Dame by the banks of the River Seine. Yet these two places now are great Catholic pilgrimage sites because those humble and innocent girls who were visited by our Blessed Virgin Mary, joined the convent and changed their lives in the service of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today, St. Bernadette’s mortal remains are in Nevers, France and St. Catherine Laboure is in Rue de Bac, both their bodies incorrupt… and they are so beautiful in their lifeless state.

When the Year 2012 ushered in I have no plans to go to Rome, nor did I have an idea that then Beato, now San Pedro Calungsod would be canonized this year. Even when both Ricardo Cardinal Vidal and Arch. Jose Palma made the announcement of his canonization public, coming to Rome wasn’t even in my head. But somehow, if you surrender your life to the Lord, he will make things happen. So here I am, sitting on a bench at the Piazza del Duomo in the heart of Florence fronting the Basilica de Santa Croce… pondering why am I here? How is it that even if I didn’t plan this trip, I’m in Italy? What message should I impart to our readers?

Last Sunday, during the canonization of 7 new Saints, including San Pedro Calungsod, I was consumed by a great but unexplained feeling that the hundreds of thousands who flocked St. Peter’s Square perhaps were there to attend this very historic occasion, but unknowingly, they were honoring people who were nobodies. Come now, who among us knew about that obscure young kid named Pedro Calungsod, a Catechist and a nobody; yet the Vicar of Christ would honor him as a canonized Saint together with six other nobodies. What the people in St. Peter’s Square were honoring was the humility of those who were made saints.

In Rome, as we walked along the streets and buildings where once the Roman Emperors roamed and at the Vatican where the first Pope, St. Peter was executed on an inverted cross… and in Florence, where the great artist, Michelangelo (he did the Sistine Chapel and the Pieta inside St. Peter’s Basilica and many more sculptures in Florence) lived and is buried in the Basilica de Santa Croce just a few meters from where I am sitting, it struck me that there’s a lesson that all of us must learn about life… that power is truly temporary!

Here in Florence where the Medici family ruled, where they even had two family members elected to the Papacy because they were perhaps the most powerful family in Europe (they even conquered the walled City of Siena) yet, we ask… where are they now? None of the Medicis has become saints, but that obscure nobody from the Visayas, who went to Guam on a mission to spread the word of God has become a saint. Yet no one in Italy or even in the Philippines knew who he was. He was killed and his body thrown into the sea to be forgotten.

But God works in strange ways. For sure, San Pedro Calungsod was received by our Lord Jesus Christ the moment his soul left his body 400 years ago. In short, San Pedro Calungsod already got his heavenly reward, long before all of us were born. Yet somehow, divine providence resurrected his name and elevated him to become the 2nd Filipino saint for all of us Filipinos to emulate. Being a laity and a catechist, the Vatican is sending us a message in this Year of Faith… for each and everyone of us to rethink about our Catholic faith and why our parents were Catholic?

Perhaps it is Rome or Firenze which teaches us a very good lesson on what materialism would bring to our souls… nothing but destruction. 2,000 years ago as written in Scriptures on Matthew 16:19, our Lord Jesus Christ gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven to St. Peter with a divine promise “I shall give you the keys of the kingdom and the gates of Gehenna shall not prevail against it.”

Rome is the center or the headquarters of Catholicism. The Roman Emperors have long been gone, the Medicis or the Borgias are in their graves. But the Catholic continues up to today, as strong as ever in spite of all the efforts of the evil ones to try to discredit and destroy her.

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