Your Eminence Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal, Archbishop of Cebu, your excellency Bishop Antonio Rañola, Priest Formators, Professors lay formators, friends and benefactors, Good afternoon.
I have always wanted to be close to God. and I realized that priesthood would be an excellent avenue for me to reach this intimacy with the Divine. Then I wanted to live and die as a priest; a good one at that. So great was my yearning that one time I told myself that it would be a great success, should I be able just to be admitted to study in the seminary. I have always imagined then the close relationship between God and the priest; that a priest is to be within whispering distance from God.
I became a seminarian and I wanted to experience this idealized imagination that I had before, the picture of being so intimate with God that I could hear him whisper. During those first months and years of my seminary life, I thought I was having a close relationship with God attaining it through my own efforts. I would spend much time on my personal devotions even on study periods and I would really find time to visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The feeling was good. I then felt flattered by the expressions of appreciation from people who saw the good seminarian that I believed I was The horror of committing sin and the avoidance of persons and situations that might soil my efforts to holiness tended to separate me from the rest of the community. That was my feeling. I was tempted to view myself as the best of all seminarians there is, thanking God of my goodness and comparing it with the misdeeds of others. It sounds familiar, isn’t it? Ahh…the Pharisee and the Publican.
My journey in the major seminary somehow dips me into the reality that I’m no longer a child, with someone to enforce authority from the outside that would allow minimal commission of evil deeds. To me, what is taught here is to appreciate the authority of God in my conscience thus becoming more helpful in the adult spiritual life because that authority goes with me anywhere. Here it is that I come to appreciate sin vis-à-vis the love of God. This is captured in a strophe of the praeconium of the Easter Proclamation rendered in Cebuano.
O katingalahang panumbaling alang kanamo,
O dili masukod nga pagpangga sa imong gugma,
aron matubos mo ang ulipon gitugyan mo ang imong bugtong anak
O palaran nga kalapasan,
O gikinahanglang sala ni Adan nga nakaangkon alang kanamo
sa ingon kadako nga Manunubos.
No, it’s not that I’m here committing sin liberally up to my heart’s further discontent but it’s in the formation content of this “best seminary in Asia” that I came to meet real people and dialogue with them about their experiences or non-experience with God. People who hate to go to Church not because they hate God but because of the attitudes of some personages in clergy whose character and countenance rather clouds the gospel message more than preaching it by their lips and hands.
I was always grateful that I became one of those students who were recommended to study abroad through the assistance of the good Opus Dei priests but His Eminence [Ricardo Cardinal Vidal] was not able to sign my papers and so that I fell without having started to fly, but, I gracefully landed on no less than the the motherly palm of God in this venerable institution. Oh happy fault. God knows best. Nothing happens by chance. I believe in the Divine Providence and why God chooses to form me/us in this seminary.
In this seminary, is taught and practiced that leadership is service and that’s one thing that I hope I have imbibed. That the erection of magnificent triumphalistic edifices without the corresponding building up of the church of the poor is insulting to the God of compassion and justice who always takes the side of our least sisters and brothers; that magnificent churches could well be an excuse that we are indolent to build up The Church; the people of God. But even as I am speaking of this I also feel I am too small for the noble task of building the people of God.
Now to this lifetime commitment that I am into, I maybe afraid of the things that come my way; I don’t know what the future holds for me but I’m sure God will be there. I trust in his grace in me and I hope that this grace in me will surely meet the Grace that is him. I believe I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me… and I trust that none can be against us if God is for us…
Your Eminence Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal I am very grateful to your person the sign of unity of the Church of Cebu and a tangible presence of Christ the Good Shepherd. To the formators thank you for your words of teachings but more so thank you for your deeds worthy of emulation which inspire to you live what you teach that which you yourselves have lived. To our lay formators especially nanay Minnie Dosdos thank you for your undying labor in the vineyard of God. To our priest companion Fr. Dondon Aquino and to my Spiritual Director Fr. Bob Rice SJ both know me well and both earn my filial trust. To my benefactors and sponsors, Mrs. Carmen Mercado, Ms. Veronica Bariquit and Mrs Nene Abella also Sec. Ace Durano, thank you may God who will never be outdone in generosity keep you as apples of his eye. To our newfound friends brothers and sisters thank you. To my classmates, the brothers of St. Fancis of Assisi thank you, real brothers you will always be to me. To my family, to my parents Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel and Charlie Dutosme thank you God's gift to me is his gift to you, may we always be grateful to God for it.
To the Blessed Mother Mary and St. Joseph, I am ever grateful to these two guardians of my vocation. To God, God! may you help me sing of your mercies forever.
Lastly, may God humble me down all the more because of this praise I have received.
I thank you all.
