Pros

by Yas Jayson Thursday, October 12, 2017 2 palagay pensive bottles

Father Pros was my first spiritual director. Raised by an aunt together with his brother who became a general, he felt the call to priesthood in his highschool. He went on to become one of the pioneer Filipino Oblate missionaries. Jolo, Sulu has a special place in his heart.

He was already old when I first met him so it was natural and insensitive of me to feel like I was punished when I knew that I was assigned to him. What could a sixteen year old boy and an octogenarian missionary with nasty diabetic wounds would even have to talk about?

But Father Pros was full of surprises. Our first spiritual direction session seemed boring as he was the one who mostly did the talking. And whenever I had to reply, I would need to shout near to his big and hairy ears. I was not getting the right amount of direct advice since all I had to do was to listen to him talk about many things. I envied those who had younger priests assigned to them. He has extensive wisdom on spirituality of sexuality and he would describe in great details to me how the union between a man and woman perfectly demonstrates God’s nature, order, and will. For someone who did not experience the love of his parents and has not been married or with a woman for that matter, Father Pros seemed to know a lot about the topic.

He was kind of a mystic too and I struggled to understand his methods of counselling. He would begin our conversation with the words “What are you looking for?” What am I supposed to reply to that? In other days he would remind me: “You do not have to know the everything of everything, just the something of everything.” Man, I was really a lost kid those days.

I knew I had to endure him for at least a year but one day, he showed me his collection of classic poems. I love poetry! That was when everything I perceived about him changed. He would recite some poems he managed to memorize that week and let me borrow his collections for weeks. We became poem-buddies. Then he started to tell me about his special relationship with the seminary’s dogs Dexter and Putol. He said that even dogs could teach us about God. In every aspect of nature there is an imprint and signature of God’s love, order and design. I began to look forward to our weekly conferences. I would thrill on days when I am assigned to bring to him the Holy Communion. This old missionary would look into the Host as if one would look on a lover. That’s when I knew a person could love someone forever.

When You Are Old

By William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

"What are you looking for?" It was all eleven years ago. I’m not a seminarian anymore nor that sixteen year old boy I don’t even know he remembers. But those words from him have found some deep chamber in my soul and stayed there all these years. It made me love philosophy. It made me love profoundly.

Today I learned that Father Pros has died and will lie in state in the place he considered his unhappiest moments – in the seminary. For a missionary to be a assigned in the slow world of seminary to form future missionaries and leaders was like putting a lion on a beach. I wonder how many poems has he managed to remember since the last time we met.

If I would meet five people in heaven, I wish one would be Father Pros. I think he would be interested to know what I had been looking for.

Thanks, Father Pros. You made me know something.

You are now home. I hope to meet your there someday.