I was actually about midway into what was to be my column for today when what my wife was watching on her cellphone pierced my writing bubble and seeped into my consciousness. It was Fr. Randy Raagas of St. Joachim Parish in San Joaquin, Palo, Leyte in the midst of his homily in yesterday's Mass there. Fr. Randy used to be assigned as "cura " in our parish of St. Francis of Assisi here in Jugaban, Carigara, Leyte.
Those who know Fr. Randy know there is no escaping his homilies. If you have somewhere else to go and just dropped in on his church to say a quick Our Father and Hail Mary, do not make the mistake of doing it while he is delivering the sermon. I can guarantee you his words will nail you to where you are until he finishes. You will certainly be late for your appointment.
And so I was soon riveted to Fr. Randy and his homily from Arlene's cellphone, completely forgetting that I was in the midst of my column. I did manage to subconsciously feel deep in my gut the sinking feeling that I will have to abandon that column and write another one. I have this writing disability that once interrupted in my thoughts, I can never finish what I have set out to write, not being one who does drafs.
But what the heck. I cannot pass up on Fr. Randy's homily. And hearing it once more, almost in its entirety, gave me a strange kind of joy, knowing I am really sad that I do not get to hear his homilies as often as I would want to. Yet the joy is greater because it is not mine. I am happy in a most genuine way that Fr. Randy is now sharing his " gift " with others in another place, widening the blessings that his homilies bring.
My immediate reaction on first hearing Fr. Randy was " here is a priest who will never make bishop. " To me, bishops are those priests who are kicked upstairs for some reason or another, real or imagined. But priests who can really deliver great sermons are needed where they are, to be the real hands on shepherds of the flock. Men of the cloth cannot employ force to whip the faithful in line. They can only use the power of words.
And boy, what force the words of Fr. Randy wield. In the three years that I caught Fr. Randy in our Jugaban parish, I can only count with my fingers the times that I was not moved into tears by his homilies. Human as he is and cannot be great all the time, still even in his " off days " he manages to be good. He is the best homilist I have ever met in my entire Catholic life. Not even in my native Cebu has there been one like him.
I think the gift of Fr. Randy lies in his ability to make the gospels and the readings, both essentially rooted in spirituality and in the divine, relatable to ordinary people like you and me. He " humanizes " the word of God so that we may identify with them. He makes us see ourselves in the gospel and readings as if we are characters in them. He plucks tales of everyday human stories to match the teachings to illustrate their meaning.
He does not merely repeat the gospel and the readings and pound and harangue about them in exactly the same words as written. That is a trap that can only make the word of God, repeatedly drilled into our ears since childhood, cramped, numb and boring, to the point of even becoming meaningless by constant repetition. Instead, Fr. Randy breathes new life into The Word at every Mass by making it something we see in real life.
Real, ordinary people comingle with saints and Bible characters, along with God, Jesus and the Holy Family in Fr. Randy's homilies. That is why when he talks of God chastising a sinner or picking up the fallen, we can't avoid feeling being one or the other. We are moved. We are touched. We are humbled and cleansed. We realize we are not just attending Mass. We become participants in an actual unfolding of a living miracle.