Something strange happened to me one afternoon I was on my
knees praying in a small obscure chapel somewhere in Italy. I was alone, wrapped in the silence and
the faint smell of incense, when the door flew open, somebody rushed in and
noisily knelt down on the pew opposite mine. I turned to see an adolescent boy in school uniform—then he
started sobbing shamelessly. And
then I started weeping—feeling nothing, but weeping. “Lord, what is this?”,
I thought, judging my situation as weird. I’m not a cry baby, I didn’t know the guy; for all I know he
was sobbing because the school principal had reprimanded and sent him home off
time, so why were tears coming down my face when I was numb as a stone? Not understanding my tears I simply
thought: “Lord, whatever it is causing
him so much grief, come and comfort him, that he may know You are real.” I don’t know how long it took but I
stopped weeping when he calmed down.
Tears. I was to
later hear that there is such a thing as “gift of tears” but over the years I
have not had the slightest interest to google its definition or purpose. I did not care if my tears were a gift
or not—it was enough to let it be, content to believe that in His own time, IF
He so wishes, He would let me know what my weeping meant.
That involuntary tear jerking incident was to recur in Sta.
Cruz church (in Manila, Philippines) where I sat next to a woman crying while I
was savoring solitude in a crowd of strangers. I again wept without feeling anything but found myself
thinking “I have no idea what this woman
wants from You, Lord, but please make her feel Your love before she leaves this
church.”
This passive-commiserative crying-praying experience would
be repeated a few more times so unexpectedly, and my one-of-a-kind “prayer
response” would vary, from “Please solve
his problem fast so he and his family will know Your power!” to “What
if I stroked the old man’s back to comfort him, would it be Your touch he’d
feel, Lord?” Everything was so
crazy and off the cuff that I just learned to accept these incidents without
question. It’s humbling for a
hard-boiled heart like mine to be unable to control my own tears, but God is
God and has every right to be weird and wonderful.
Next episode, in my office: two persons were conversing
within earshot about Fr. So-and-so wanting to leave the Church. I didn’t know the priest in
question—apparently a mutual friend of theirs—but again, I wept with zero
feeling. Good thing I was poring
over my computer and had my back to them, thus they didn’t notice I was
blotting off my tears.
No impromptu prayer came out of me that time, but on a
similar occasion, when the priest being talked about was someone I knew,
something different came. My tears
“waited” until as I was alone, taking a break with the Blessed Sacrament in the
CBCP chapel. I remembered what
we’d discussed about the priest, and I wept as usual without emoting. And then an unspoken question dawned on
me: “Why, Lord? Do I weep like this
because something’s going on that’s hurting You?” I realized it was a question that did not expect an answer.
Since then my secret weeping over persons or situations
acquired a tenderness, a poignancy that was neither personal nor impersonal. I would come to see or hear about
something that would trigger the weeping and revive the question, “Do I weep like this because something’s
going on that’s hurting You, Lord?” I need not be emotionally involved with the person or
in a situation for the tears to be shed.
There would be no casual prayer, no words uttered, although I know I’m
praying somehow, somewhere deep.
There would simply flow quiet tears blending sadness and serenity—as I
had shed a couple of hours ago (and which would continue despite my replying to
mundane texts), while watching footages of super typhoon Yolanda on television.
Certain images of devastation combined forces to tamper with
my heartbeat and spur my imagination.
Fallen electrical posts seemed like public servants powerless and
helpless before nature’s wrath.
The mad scramble for wet sacks of rice spilling out of a damaged
warehouse made me wish people would rest from posting food pictures on
Facebook. Coconut trees with their
tops blown off standing erect against the sky but shorn of glory, like
defrocked cardinals. A teenage boy confessing to the world, “I am not a thief,
but yes, I stole from that store—we’re hungry! We will die from hunger!” An odd Pieta
Just as Yolanda’s victims direly need food and other
materials to help rebuild the devastated provinces, they also need healers to
rebuild their lives. They need
“shock absorbers” to nurse them back to normalcy, and to prevent their faith in
God from being snuffed out by this tragedy. A wild desire wells up within me: I want to be there to help
carry their cross…I can’t offer much but I can listen to anyone who desperately
needs a listener. I am prepared to
weep with them, too.
