9-year-old

Today, I officially become a 9-year-old priest!

9 years old. That was the age I had my First Communion. I remember being very excited to finally receive Holy Communion just like the rest of the family! Oh, I knew deep in my faith it was Jesus I was receiving.

9 years old. That was the age I decided to become a priest... to enter the seminary after I graduate 6th grade and on to the path of becoming a priest. I was already willing to tackle the 17-year priestly formation.

9 years old. So young... yet, I felt like I was older than the rest.

It's the same feeling that I have now, as a 9-year-old priest. I seem to feel that I have matured quite fast than I had expected. Physically, I look more like over 40... although others compliment me with a face that looks younger (?!). In terms of character and personality, I feel I have been undergoing more than the usual. I feel like I am really getting old faster than the usual pace traced down by the physiological and psychological experts.

Yet, more than the maturity being felt inside and out, one thing remains very important:

that I was born, raised and formed to be what I am now... a PRIEST!

It's a treasure I carry deep within my heart.

I suppose it's the same with my "brothers" who became priests like me on that day.

Part 5: Transition

The week after my talk with the Provincial, I was finished with my letter to the Rector Major requesting for secularization, plus a letter of request to the Bishop of Yokohama that I be incardinated into his diocese (including my bio-data). I mailed the letter to the Provincial and personally handed my letter to the Bishop on November 4, the day when he came to Yamato for the Confirmation of around 70 members of our parish. Months later, when the Provincial was in Rome for the General Chapter, he called me up directly at my cellphone and requested me to repeat the letter according to the form that was prescribed by the Salesian Congregation. It turned out the Provincial first showed me the wrong form. Anyway, this time, the letter (called Indult for Secularisation) was addressed to the Pope. It has been months now, but I have not gotten any notice that I am already granted the permission to live outside a religious community.



But how is it that I am now presently living with 2 diocesan priests in a parish not handled by Salesians? That is another story... and I do not intend to write about it anymore. Let it just be known that my staying here in Shizuoka is a temporary thing... a product of some trauma from some past misinterpretations, judgements and cold shoulders. I have been deeply hurt by the treatment I have gotten as maybe they have been hurt by my going away. But anyway, it's past, even if I have to still grapple with the pain that was inflicted in my heart.



I love Don Bosco and I love the Salesian Congregation! I love the Salesian ideals and its mission! And believing that the Salesian Congregation has also loved me, I put my whole trust to the fact that this very Congregation is helping and supporting me in this new path of being priest. Character and personal idiosyncracies are merely decorations. Though they can deeply hurt, all I can do is just go on and follow my heart.



I have been virtually with the Salesians since I was 3, when my brother entered the aspirantate. I have been actually with the Salesians since I entered the aspirantate myself at the age of 12. My very prayers, my very thoughts and ideas, my very dreams and apostolic spirit... they all come from Don Bosco. I may not be with the Salesians living these things now... but let it suffice that I am one of their own, spreading the very work that they do now in their communities, schools and other works.



May Don Bosco always guide my every step.

Part 4: The Decision

This is just to follow up my prior intention to just relay my story as to why I have decided to become a diocesan priest. There is no intention whatsoever to put down anybody.
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It was in Yamato that I was getting to be more attuned to the life of a diocesan priest... most especially on the pastoral side of it. Together with prayer and much thinking, by the time after summer of 2007, I was 80 % decided to become a diocesan priest.

I have wanted to make this decision known as smooth as possible, meaning, I did not want my Provincial Superior to immediately know my intentions. Some might say I should have actually consulted him first. But -- and in this part, I admit it is a very PERSONAL FEELING -- I felt that the Provincial was not the type I could hang on for any consultation. I trusted he would respect this decision.

So I started telling this to very close friends and priests who, in some way or another, had had a role in what I am today in Japan. The first I told to about this decision was my elder brother, also a Salesian priest, through e-mail. Glad to receive a promise of prayers as a response. After a month, I finally told my parents through skype. I had them sit together so that I could see them at the screen and told them about my decision. Touched was I to hear them saying that they are very supportive of whatever decision I make. Through the months that followed, I have told some Salesians and some Filipino friends, too. I got the same response: a promise of prayers and a sweet "Good Luck!"

And the Provincial? Well, I was planning to tell him my decision by late November or December, since that was the time he would usually think of movements among the salesians for the next school year. But there was someone who squealed to him about me, so that by the end of October, when I was handing him a letter to ask permission for me to join the other diocesan priests going for an exposure trip to South Korea, he confronted me on what I decided.

I immediately admitted that I was already decided. And he started asking me questions that -- FOR ME -- hampered on the principle of loyalty and consistency on the decision I have made in the past. He asked questions like: "What was your intention in making your first profession?" "Why did you make the perpetual profession in the first place?" "Why did you really desire to come to Japan?"

With the pastoral demands that I have met in the past, he even told me directly saying, "I actually inquired about you and there is this one Filipino Salesian who says he knows you very well and he actually said that you are the type who is very individualistic." At that point, I really felt offended. I told the Provincial that that Filipino Salesian does not really know me in the first place, because from the very days of my aspirantate, I have always given my time, effort, talents... and even health!... for the sake of the community. I told him that I have so many confreres in the Philippines who can attest that I was a community-builder rather than a loner. Yes, to the expense of my health... by the time I was in my 20's I was often getting sick with much fatigue or stress. And as for my seemingly non-involvement in community life here in Japan, I had my own personal reasons for that aside from pastoral demands. I just felt that it was not the forum to defend myself at that time.

I just asked him what was for me to do with this decision. He directed me to the steps that a Salesian takes when he is to leave the Congregation. He asked me to make a copy of what was written in the Salesian documents. And that evening, I went back to Yamato, with a violent mixture of freedom and betrayal.