It was a Sunday. As young Vincentian novices then, we were spending the whole day of Sunday in the apostolate at the communities in the mountains of Angono, Rizal – with a group of subsistence farmers near the famous prehistoric petroglyphs in one of its caves.

When we went home that late afternoon, what met us was the news of Ninoy’s assassination on the tarmac. There was the drama of Galman and all the commotion with it on our TV screen. The news was not clear then – the unknown assassin did it, the communists planned it, etc. But the news was very disturbing.

We were Martial Law babies. We heard of the First Quarter Storm. We heard of the church repression and of church leaders that went missing. We heard of farmers and political prisoners who disappeared. But this was a bit far from our young minds. Even Ninoy’s death. No one among us knew Ninoy at close range. We sang “Tie a yellow ribbon” then, but that was all about it.

Yet a moral chord was hit within our young minds that night. Something was definitely wrong. There was something not in order. Something happened that was certainly evil.

On the rooftop of our Angono seminary that overlooked Laguna de Bay and the Pasig, our young minds lured by the McGyver imagination of our generation, were trying to figure out how to launch an attack at the Palace through a guided missile by the Pasig River. Of course, it was born out of frustration that we were stock on top of this mountain, and could not do anything at all, like the rest of “imprisoned novices” of our time.

But there was something that we did that Sunday night which I will never forget. I do not know if my classmates still remembered that. We had this old Spanish Vincentian priest who is our novice master. We asked him a question which only young inquisitive minds can ever ask:

“Can we pray for the death of the dictator?” We were thinking: if he has wrecked havoc to thousands and millions, would it not do the country good if he goes? Is it even moral to think so? To our surprise, he said: “Yes, you can.” We did not expect an old conservative Spanish priest would agree with us. From then on, we always included that in our evening prayer intentions.

God did not listen to our prayers. At least, not that soon.

But that sincere prayer enlarged our young hearts toward a sense of justice and fairness – that things could not go on this way, that the dignity of peoples should be defended at whatever cost, that our lives could not just go on as usual while the people around us are dying – Randy Echanis, Zara Alvarez, the 33,000 victims of extrajudicial killings, the poor farmers – all of them waiting for justice and our human action. That one day, God will come and render us justice. For God listens to the cry of the poor, as the psalmists keep repeating to us.

It took three years after that, when this same group of young novices – now in our last years of theological training – took to the streets to join the many others who have awaken up in the EDSA revolution that Ninoy started to inspire in our hearts three years earlier. 

I really hope that we do not need three years to do it again. The same evil forces are back. Duterte is a new cohort. Things cannot remain this way. TAMA NA. SOBRA NA. LABAN NA!

Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, C.M.
St Vincent School of Theology
Adamson University
danielfranklinpilari@yahoo.com
08.21.2020