“What does it mean to say that a human being is good? What does it mean to say that God is good? How are the two statements similar? How are they different?”
This was the only question in an exhausting theology exam I took last Wednesday. It all revolved around the language we use to speak meaningfully about God - who, in reality, is beyond words and human knowledge.
In my essay, I had to demonstrate the reasonableness of using language and reason when speaking of God by distinguishing between univocal, equivocal, and analogical terms. In true Thomistic fashion, I argued that we can only make sense of divine language by way of analogy. When we say “God is good” and “a person is good,” the value of "goodness" is held in common but in God, it is expressed in the highest possible degree.
But while I was writing my answer, I was sobbing. Sister Mary Joseph had died just past midnight. I wept because, in my lifetime, it was the ridiculous goodness of this Good Shepherd Sister that had most shaped my understanding of what it means to be good.
I first met her in 2016, when I began working with the Good Shepherd Sisters as their grants manager. I was a skinny young man presenting slide after slide to the Board of Trustees about how to sustain the mission, both financially and meaningfully. Looking back, it was harder than any exam I’ve ever taken. Most of the board members had doubt painted across their faces—except for Sister Joseph, who instead fixed me with a piercing gaze.
After everyone had expressed their fears and hesitations, and I was already preparing to look for another employer, she stood up and said, “Let’s might as well be daring and give this boy a chance.”
What followed were years of working with the sisters, both locally and across the region: developing projects, securing grants. I walked the same streets they walked, shared in the problems they worried over. I came to claim their mission as my own. I love them all, but it’s common knowledge that Sister Mary Joseph held a special place in my life, and I in hers. People could only guess at the depth of my bond with this rebellious nun who seemed to read hearts with uncanny clarity.
You see, Sister Mary Joseph never left Tagaytay after encountering God in the lives of mothers and migrants who had come to the tourist city in search of better opportunities. That was twenty years ago. She organized the vendors who gathered outside Maryridge Convent, waiting to sell their pasalubong to retreatants. It was with them that she heard the gentle call within the call from the Good Shepherd: Feed my sheep, tend my lambs.
Armed with a business degree and years of experience in a multinational company before joining religious life, she took out a small loan and began baking buko pie. It was an instant hit. Along with the Tagaytay sisters, she founded Bahay Pastulan. Later, her older sister, Sister Aimee, also a Good Shepherd, joined her.
She then brought in the famous ube jam recipe from the Good Shepherd convent in Baguio and began adding more products. This allowed her to employ more mothers, more school dropouts. Demand grew absurdly high. But Sister Joseph didn’t want to grow the enterprise into a corporate beast. She had a ridiculous idea: resist full automation, because it would mean job losses. From the start, her priority was to create work for those whom the world deemed unemployable and crooked.
To this day, many production steps remain manual. She partnered with farmers all over Luzon, offering them premium prices for raw ingredients, a practice she had learned in Baguio. Their prices couldn't compete with mass-market goods, but that was never the point. For Sister Mary Joseph, dignity was part of the equation. She haggled with Chinese suppliers in Divisoria to manage costs. More hands, more jobs, more people with secure income and a path out of poverty. And many did escape poverty because of her.
She spoke to everyone as an equal. She never simplified her vocabulary for the workers. Instead, she encouraged them to raise their own standards of expression. She was quick to correct but quicker to forgive and give second chances. She taught financial literacy, rotated tasks so workers could learn different skills. One day someone might peel ube, another day run the register.
Her business philosophy was simple: trust them, and mean it.
Then came another ridiculous idea: outsourcing. She encouraged staff to start their own small businesses and become guaranteed suppliers for Bahay Pastulan. Instead of competitors, they became mission partners. And the profits from Bahay Pastulan? They flowed straight back into the Good Shepherd Sisters’ ministries across the country.
One day she shared with me her secret: You can never go wrong by way of generosity. Be generous not only with money, she said, but with love. Give it freely. Never expect it to return in a specific form, time, or shape. With the Good Shepherd, you will never be in want.
Every now and then, I’d drive up to Tagaytay for official work but I always made time for lunch with Sisters Mary Joseph and Aimee. They knew my simple joy: ginisang munggo. Even with just two hours’ notice, I’d arrive to find a steaming pot waiting. It became a ritual.
When the pandemic hit, I worried. With no tourists in Tagaytay, she had to let go of many workers. So I had an idea. I started a small marketing firm and bought all her available stock at the retail price. I also bought products made by mothers in Sariaya, Quezon, supported by another “crazy” nun, the late Sister Zeny.
I named the venture SPEW Organics, after the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare from Harry Potter. I had no customers in mind, just a ridiculous trust in God. I built a website, launched a Facebook page, and posted a sale.
The next morning, I was woken by a flood of inquiries. Thousands of people waited patiently for their orders. News outlets picked up the story. As demand grew, I started hiring mothers (motherpackers, we called them) along with undergrads, jeepney and taxi drivers. I simply mimicked everything I’d learned from watching Sister Joseph. We even started supplying in bulk to companies.
Bahay Pastulan not only survived the pandemic. It retained all its workers during the hardest times.
So when I made the decision to leave everything behind and follow this call to the priesthood, I found myself going up to Tagaytay once again. With just a few words and her trademark laughter, she helped me understand what it means to let go of one’s idea of a fulfilled life... and to surrender it to a God who is ridiculously good. That was five years ago. I’m still here, still studying, still being formed for the priesthood.
“What does it mean to say that a human being is good? What does it mean to say that God is good?”
I ended my theology essay by writing that our understanding of God’s goodness is largely dependent on the kinds and depths of goodness we experience in our own lives. Sister Mary Joseph showed me that par excellence. From how she lived her life, I learned never to retaliate, to restrain myself from returning hatred, and to believe that people are always capable of growth.
But that must begin with forgiving myself. By loving all the versions of me that I used to hide. Because I can only be good to others to the extent that I allow myself to receive goodness.
I once told her she had to stay alive until my ordination because she always joked that she wanted me to bury her. But I can't do that anymore. And now that she’s gone - or rather, gone back to the Father - it breaks me that she won’t be there when I finally become a priest.
Hindi mo na ako nahintay. Another empty chair, perhaps, on ordination day.
I had to stop crying because it is exams week. I’m sure Sister Mary Joseph would scold me if she knew I was spending more time crying than reading my theology books or being faithful in my formation.
During the Mass before her cremation, I gave my ugliest sob. Then, full stop. Wipe, wipe. Smile. I grabbed my bag and prepared to head back to the seminary; when they asked me to close her coffin.
I looked at her one last time. Same stern face. Same calm expression. Eighty eight years old. A body that toiled for fifty six years as a nun. She had returned to her Good Master, whom she served so well.
And if anyone ever asks me why, in the Gospel of John, Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd, I will think of my memories of a nun who loved me deeply and prayed for me without ceasing.
Sister Mary Joseph, the good.
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