Fr. Quirico T. Pedregosa, Jr, OP passionately shared with the Chapter participants and Sisters of the Province on Church “Situationer”, the Emerging Poverties, and the Challenge for Synodality Today as they gathered online on January 11th. Sr. Lilia Nuesca, Provincial Leader, welcomed the Sisters with a challenge in the light of this talk on how to enflesh the synodal journey of communion, participation and mission in crafting our Chapter Resolutions to better serve the People of God especially those in the periphery.
Fr. Quirico began by recalling PCP II vision of the Philippine Church as a community of Christ’s disciples becoming a Church of the Poor. However, after 31 years since PCP II, the Philippine Church is far from becoming a Church of the poor, and much too is still to be desired in her engagements for social transformation and that integral evangelization is far from being carried out. A lot more must be done both at the level of catechesis and concrete apostolic engagements.
The emerging poverties lie more in the rural areas where there are many more or poorer small peasants and fisher folks. More indigenous people are marginalized and deprived of their rights over their ancestral lands. More people located in low-lying areas, close to rivers, hills, and mountains have become victims of frequent floods, mudflows, landslides, and other natural disasters. As always, it is the poor people that suffer more, as they have fewer or no resources to deal with calamities. Many are becoming victims of human trafficking, in perverted forms of sex or human organ trafficking. Moreover, with the lack of adequate moral formation, there emerges a new kind of moral poverty among the youth in the form of disregard of moral norms and values.
On synodality, he posed the challenge to ask ourselves as consecrated members of the Church, what we can and should do to practice more communion, participation, and mission. Our three-fold challenge then is the call to practice more communion, participation, and mission. To have inclusive communion in the Church we are to practice universal fraternity and social friendship and promote the laity’s exercise of ministries, charisms, and even personal gifts and talents. For it belongs primarily to lay people to evangelize and transform according to the values of the gospel the different spheres of human and societal life. As servants of God’s word, we must intentionally go out of our way to be with our least brothers and sisters. Tayo na ang lumapit sa kanila.
We need to encounter the least up close which calls us to the spirit of dialogue. Our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into privileged and preferential religious care” by accompanying them on the road of life primarily as ministers of the gospel, as religious, not as social workers or political activists. And we are to work in faith together with the least towards the realization of God’s kingdom in their midst rather than in building merely an earthly city.
Sr. Estrella Vasquez, the moderator of the session, thanked Fr. Quirico for his piercing thoughts that move us to live the ‘MORE’ of St. Magdalene. The work of evangelization ahead is so vast that needs collaborative efforts from all, indeed synodality is the call to action. May the Holy Spirit guide us to enflesh this call in the next 6 years.
