Hours before his death, Fr. Amado Picardal, CSsR wrote a poem for Bruno, his dog companion in his hermitage. He posted it on his Facebook page last May 29 at 7:37 in the morning as a reflection on the 47th anniversary of his profession. Several hours later, the Redemptorist Province announced his passing.
This poem was the last piece that he has written in his long career. It is entitled: “A Hermit’s Companion”.
Every morning upon waking up
I call out your name from my window
and you’d come running and wait outside my door wagging your tail
expecting a pat on the head and a fistful of kibble.
As I sit in the dark gazing at the distant sea below,
while waiting for the sun to emerge
you’d sit at my feet and join me at Lauds – praising the Creator
for another new day.
While building the hermitage
made of stone, cordwood, and bottles
I call your name and you’d come
to inspect the work of my hands
and scratch the pile of sand and bottles.
In the evening as I sit alone
gazing at the stars and waning moon
you’d come and sit at my feet
to join me in thanking the Creator
for the day that is over and
praying to see another dawn.
I hope, companion in my solitude, that you’ll always be with me
till the end of our days.
Whoever will go first, I know
one of us won’t be consoled
while gazing at the grave.
Bruno, I’m grateful for your presence in the twilight of my life
as I prepare for my final journey to eternity to meet face-to-face
the One I love to whom I sacrificed my whole life.
I hope dogs are also welcome in the heavenly home.
Fr. Picx is a good friend to many of us. He is known in the Philippine church as an advocate of justice and peace. He also worked in organizing communities and served the Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines – Commission on Basic Ecclesial Communities for years. He was the first to document the extrajudicial killings in Davao long before the War on Drugs started in Manila. For this, he risked his life.
But in this poem, beyond his passion for justice, he is concerned with his dog, his companion in solitude at the “twilight of his life”. His last hope: “I hope dogs are also welcome in the heavenly home.” I think Picx has come full circle.
Fr. Picx only repeated and poetically expressed what Laudato Si already proclaimed earlier: “We are called to recognize that other living beings have a value of their own in God’s eyes: ‘by their mere existence they bless him and give him glory’ (LS 69).
The dog joins him at Lauds praising the Creator as they together wait for another day. Or, together with the stars and the moon, they thank the Creator for the day that is over and pray to see another dawn. Without his saying it, Picx echoes the spirit of the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi: Laudato Si… “Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures” (LS, 87). “The Spirit of life dwells in every living creature and calls us to enter into a relationship with him” (LS, 88). Picx has truly come home.
COMING HOME
The subtitle of Laudato Si is “Care for our Common Home”. There is a very nice phrase there about “coming home”.
Pope Francis writes: “The history of our friendship with God is always linked to particular places which take on an intensely personal meaning; we all remember places, and revisiting those memories does us much good. Anyone who has grown up in the hills or used to sit by the spring to drink, or played outdoors in the neighborhood square; going back to these places is a chance to recover something of their true selves” (LS, 84).
Can you remember a concrete place in nature during your earlier years (a backyard, garden, farm, beach, stream) that evokes great feelings of joy and awe? What is its significance to you today? I would like to say that the heart of ecology is first of all coming home – coming home to our significant places and persons from childhood till now, coming home to ourselves who have been dissipated by the noise of technology, and coming home to God who has revealed himself in a quiet stream, in a river, or in a breeze under a tree one of those quiet evenings of your life. All of us can come home to those places because they give us rest, they make us feel at home.
In fact, “ecology” comes from the Greek word “oikos” which means home, something familiar, something close to one’s heart, something personal, if you like, something spiritual. It tells us that spirituality is not just within the soul or inside of us. It is also outside us; it is in a place. It is located in space, in a sea somewhere where I knew my father deeply because there, he saved me from drowning; or on a bench somewhere when I first heard the words “I love you” from someone dear to me. These places in our lives are called “home”; and there we have met God for the first time or the nth time in our lives.
Beyond analyzing the rise in carbon emissions, ecology is in fact about taking care of a place called home. It is about keeping a dynamic tension between “tilling and keeping”, as the book of Genesis says, between developing a place and keeping it wild. For St. Francis also advised his brothers to develop the monastery as a place of development and learning but also to leave something wild. Maybe we have developed ourselves so much that there is nothing “wild” in us. “St. Francis asked that part of the friary garden always be left untouched, so that wildflowers and herbs could grow there, and those who saw them could raise their minds to God, the Creator of such beauty” (LS, 10).
Ecological spirituality is not just about scientific analysis of globalization and climate change, not only about counting our carbon footprints, or the advantages of recycling. It is not just about protesting against mining or advocating against illegal logging. It is about all these but, first of all, it is about the heart, about Sabbath, about mindfulness and sensitivity. It is about celebrations, about coming home to the beautiful.
CONVERSION TO THE BEAUTIFUL
There is another interesting quote in Laudato Si which refers to our need to be converted to the beautiful. Pope Francis writes: “If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple” (LS, 215). I think this is what the church needs — conversion to beauty, celebration of the beautiful, gazing at the cosmos.
There are three “transcendentals” in classical philosophy: unum (one), verum (truth), bonum (good). These were considered the universal properties of all reality. But Aquinas also considers “pulchrum” as transcendental. The contemporary Thomist philosopher, Etienne Gilson, calls it the forgotten transcendental.
I observe religious people a lot. People in the churches have always been concerned with unity (“unum”) sometimes called “uniformity”. Some are concerned with the truth and dogmas (“verum”). Many others are crazy about morals or the good (“bonum”).
I have also observed that these guardians of unity, dogmas, and morality are not only rigid people. They are also the most hypocritical. There are many of them inside our churches. All of them have clenched fists and are ready to fight against heterodoxy or immorality. Even liturgy which is all about beauty has been turned into dogma. Any diversion from the rules is dubbed heresy. For them, it is the whole world that is to blame for all our ills, not themselves. They have forgotten to smile, to laugh, to celebrate. It is because we have forgotten the beautiful (“pulchrum”).
“Conversion to the beautiful” avoids this self-righteous attitude, and draws us out of ourselves – to beauty, to creation, to the flowers, to the sea, to the land, ultimately, to God… like the fishermen, gardeners, farmers. These simple people are in touch with the cosmos each day of their lives. They worship in awe and wonder each day in their waking lives for God’s creation in front of their very eyes. I was once asked by a student: “When was the last time your stopped to smell the flowers?”
In the end, we are back to the heart, to a place, to the home where flowers grow, where grains nourish us, where trees lend themselves as abode to fireflies at night, where God resides. These fill us with hope in the midst of our difficult lives.
THE SOURCE OF OUR HOPE
I once volunteered in the small village of San Antonio in Basey, Samar (Philippines) a month right after the great typhoon Yolanda struck in 2013. This area was badly hit by the storm surge; hundreds of people died; and houses were wiped away including their church building. The only thing left of their church was the wall where the crucifix was. Since there were no classes during the Christmas break, I went to help the parish priest in whatever way I could. It was Simbang Gabi time and we had to say Mass in all the destroyed churches in that small town.
In one recollection (what is called “de-briefing sessions” then) which I did before the Mass, I asked a group of farmers, “What is next after Yolanda”. One farmer stood up, grabbed the microphone, and said: “Nais po naming magtanim ulit.” I read a quotation from the Raji people in the India-Nepal borders: “Before we knew where the gods were. They were in the trees. Now there are no more trees.” Which means, the gods have left.
The next few days, the world was celebrating Christmas. In San Antonio, it rained a bit days before and the farmers were beginning to plant rice on that early Christmas morning. I was watching them from afar after my Christmas Mass.
And I told myself: “Like the first Christmas, there are no angels who come down from heaven singing Alleluia. But I guess Jesus is born in San Antonio today.” They were still rebuilding their lives again. But it was already “the feast of creation”. That Christmas morning, creation was already celebrating.
Then, I began to realize that it was these poor victims, those who cry from ecological disaster themselves, who taught me what is at the heart of Laudato Si. Hope. It is they who tell us where home truly is.
Father Daniel Franklin Pilario, C.M., is the President of Adamson University in Manila. He is a theologian, professor, and pastor of an urban poor community on the outskirts of the Philippine capital. He is also Vincentian Chair for Social Justice at St. John’s University in New York.