The Bell Ringer

Nono with the Jesuit Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Staff.

(Last April 12, 2008, two Jesuits were ordained to the priest­hood: Frs. Xavier Olin and Nono Alfonso. This is Fr. Nono’s thanks­giv­ing speech.)

When I am asked about my voca­tion story – how I dis­cerned or heard God’s call – my sim­ple answer is that, I heard the peal­ing of the bells. I remem­ber when I was still very young, in Naga City, the bells of the Cathe­dral that sig­naled the first mass of the day would wake me up early in the morn­ing and most espe­cially dur­ing spe­cial occa­sions like the sim­bang gabi or the grand fiesta of Ina or the Lenten ser­vices when they rang the loud­est. The bells would ring end­lessly – wak­ing me up, entic­ing, beck­on­ing, sum­mon­ing me. Among the sounds or noises in this world, I find that the sound of the bells is rather unique. It is quite out of this world, quite super­nat­ural. The bells led me to the Church and ulti­mately to God. They led me to a deep aware­ness of the exis­tence of the super­nat­ural, of the real­ity of the sacred. I real­ized that there is more to this world. There is a God who is entic­ing, beck­on­ing, sum­mon­ing us to his lov­ing embrace. I am there­fore not alone. We are not alone. We are loved.

That was the start of my love affair with God. For what is voca­tion all about but an awak­en­ing to our fun­da­men­tal rela­tion­ship with our cre­ator. To the truth that our seem­ingly ordi­nary and mun­dane lives are graced by God’s pres­ence and that these lives form a divine tapes­try. One spir­i­tual writer defines voca­tion this way. Each of us, each life is a story. Indeed, each life is like a novel. Voca­tion is learn­ing that there is a greater story – God’s story, God’s love story with humankind which cul­mi­nates in the pas­sion of his son for us. And if we are able to insert our lit­tle, finite sto­ries into this great story of God, our lives will become an adven­ture. In his Spir­i­tual Exer­cises, Ignatius speaks of the same thing. In the Prin­ci­ple and Foun­da­tion, he says that God has a dream, a vision for us, for our world. And he wants us to join him in this project, in this won­der­ful undertaking.

When I responded to God’s call — albeit with fear and trem­bling — my life indeed has become a great adven­ture. Who could ever imag­ine that this grocer’s son, a probin­siyanong intsik would one day be writ­ing for the most pop­u­lar national news­pa­per, or appear­ing in the country’s no. 1 tv and radio sta­tion. Indeed my life is a tes­ta­ment that when you offer your­self to God, he makes it bear fruit — a hun­dred­fold. In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I have come so that they may have life, life to the full.” When we sur­ren­der our lives to God, he takes us to the adven­ture of a life­time. And yet, per­haps nec­es­sar­ily, he takes us, as the evan­ge­list John says, where you do not want to go. The writer warns us, do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

By that I mean that my life the past 12 years in the Soci­ety of Jesus, in my pur­suit of God’s sum­mons, has never been a walk in the park, or a bed of roses. With the joy, comes the pain as well. When I was in the novi­tiate for exam­ple, my mother fig­ured in a vehic­u­lar acci­dent that made her bedrid­den for nine months. I suf­fered no end dur­ing that time, won­der­ing if God was being true to his promise – you see, when I sur­ren­dered myself to him, I asked him a liitle favor: if he could just take care of the fam­ily I love so much. In the philosophate, my brother was shot five times and was left for dead. Mirac­u­lously, he sur­vived. And in the last two years, my father and another brother at the early age of 41 passed away. You can­not imag­ine how painful these past two years were for the fam­ily. Once I asked Lalo, my brother, why all these pains, these strug­gles when I was try­ing to fol­low Christ. He sim­ply said, God is merely stretch­ing your heart, so that you can love more, so that it can con­tain more people.

That is why my friends, you must under­stand why my fam­ily feels so happy today. As my brother Paeng puts it, tama na ang bad news, good news naman. For them, in this Easter sea­son, my sur­viv­ing the past 12 years, my ordi­na­tion, is truly a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion. Because in his res­ur­rec­tion, we are able to rise as well from our daily strifes and strug­gles. When Fran­cis Alvarez asked me for a bib­li­cal pas­sage for my stampita give-away, I chose the verses in St Paul’s let­ter to the Corinthi­ans where he writes, “But we have this trea­sure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; per­plexed, but not dri­ven to despair; per­se­cuted, but not for­saken; struck down, but not destroyed, always car­ry­ing about in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be man­i­fested in our body.…Therefore that I may not become too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me …three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me but he said to me, ‘My grace is suf­fi­cient for you, for power is made per­fect in weak­ness.’” I have gone through a painful lot these past many years and yet here I am, still stand­ing, through the grace of God.

Truly, I thank God, for I have sur­vived these past many years, not through my own strength or pow­ers, but through his, through his love. In my dea­conate ordi­na­tion retreat I shared with Fr. Mon my real­iza­tion — I was sur­prised of hav­ing reached this far, know­ing fully well, how sin­ful I am. I told him that my sin­gle con­tri­bu­tion to this voca­tion was my weak­nesses, my rebel­lious­ness. Parang kinakalad­kad lang yata ako ng Diyos, tin­u­tu­lak: O, sige na, on to the next stage ka na. Reas­sur­ingly, Fr. Mon told me, “Oo nga, Nono Mati­gas nga ang ulo mo.”

What­ever I am now, my dear friends, this very ordi­na­tion, it is God writ­ing straight through crooked lines. In the end, I can truly truly say, God was more faith­ful to me, more than I ever was, to this voca­tion, to this great adven­ture which he has called me to embark upon. Now it is my turn to be his bell ringer.