FAMILY PORTRAITS

by James F. Donelan

(This homily was written in 1988, taken from his book, God's Crooked Lines, 1998, published by Tahanan Books, Manila.)

I had intended today talking on the topic "Teenager and the Mass, " which I began last week. But I was distracted by a book. I had met Jaime Zobel at the blessing of the Makati Supermarket, and we talked about photography to which we are both addicted. As a result he sent me his latest album entitled Filipino Portraits, a collection of photo portraits of the men and women who made the miracle of EDSA. This was the source of the distraction.

For I was moved as I turned the pages and looked at the faces and character they expressed, so well caught by Zobel's art, and I was saddened, for though only two and a half years have passed since EDSA, three of the key actors in that incredible drama have passed on to other far-off pavillions, where heroes gather in the halls of Valhalla.

There was Chino Roces, that grand old campaigner of the truth. Zobel's camera catches his face, lined with a thousand furrows, like an Ansel Adams photo of a plowed field. His last words to those gathered round his deathbed were a question: "Is our country going to be all right?"

There was Jimmy Ongpin, a close personal friend. If any single person could have be said to have brought Cory Aquino to power, it is Jimmy Ongpin. For it was Jimmy who galvanized Makati and the business community. It was he who roused the sleeping giant. Without Makati, without Ongpin, the revolution would never have gotten off the runway.

I recall how I was sitting in my room in the Jesuit residence in New York, reading a long letter from Jimmy, when the phone rang, and incredulously, I heard Louie Jalbuena say that Jimmy was dead. By his own hand. I simply could not believe it. The letter I held in my hand was so upbeat, so positive, so full of hope. Jimmy talked of his family with love and pride, of his work, of the country and its president. It was not the letter of a man who had given up on life.

What happened, then? He was simply a casualty of the revolution. He had given so much of himself out there on EDSA and as the government's first minister of finance, faced with a 28 billion-dollar debt that there was nothing left to sustain him in his own hour of need. It touched me to read what he wrote next to his picture in the album: "I will tell my grandchildren that now I really do believe in miracles." Zobel's book and all of us who knew Jimmy will make sure that his grandchildren learn of the miracle that Jimmy wrought.

The picture on the page following Jimmy Ongpin's is sheer irony. For it is the portrait of another casualty of war, another fallen hero. It is a powerful picture--Zobel's photography at its best. To the left, the sleek fuselage of an F5 jet fighter thrusts its prow forward as it is silhouetted against an apocalyptic sky. To the right of the plane, edged in light, garbed in flight suit, holding helmet in hand, and standing straight and tall against the sky that is his element, is the pilot. As Ongpin helped make EDSA what it was, so this pilot had the weapons to undo it all. For People's Power could not touch him up there, in his winged chariot. He could have turned the friendly helicopters into flaming wrecks, for he had been so commanded by his commander-in-chief. He could have turned EDSA into an avenue of blood. A simple task for his powerful jet. What kept his fingers off those deadly triggers? He said later that he knew the time had come to reform our government. "I didn't want," he said, "to destroy that hope. I wanted peace." His final words, like Jimmy's, are ironic. He wrote, " when I get old and become a grandfather, which I greatly wish would happen, I will tell my grandchildren that a real brave man is never a man of violence." The pilot's name, of course, is Lt. Sol. Francisco Baula, Squadron Commander, 6th Tactical Fighter Squadron.

Once again, it will be our sad task and the mission of Zobel's book to tell the grandchildren of this brave pilot, that their grandfather, though trained for war, was a man of peace. High in the skies over Camp Crame, he refused to fire on his own brothers-in-arms; ironically, it was they who, in the end, fired on him. And killed him.

There is no need to draw any moral lesson from all this. But it is hard to know what to say to Chino's question: "Is our country going to be all right?" We can hope and we can pray, but we have to do more than that.

I have said several times in this chapel over the last 17 years that nothing better symbolizes the moral corruption, political immaturity, and social inequity we suffer from than the annual sacrifice we offer to the merciless gods of the sea, to Neptune or Poseidon, in which hundreds, even thousands of poor people go down to watery graves. One disaster following another even before responsibility and punishment for the earlier disaster has been determined. I have watched this annual holocaust for 41 years. From when, in 1947, I first saw the inter-island steamers sail from Davao harbor crowded to the gunwales, listing like a drunken sailor. Two of the three greatest sea tragedies in the history of mankind have taken place in our waters.

Yet, to date, no one has been held accountable. Five years ago, Ninoy Aquino was assassinated. To date, no one has been held accountable. Two years ago, a commission was set up to regain Marcos' stolen wealth. To date, not a single "crony" has been brought to trial, and the commission itself has been accused of enriching itself with leftover
assets.

"Is our country going to be all right?" Jose Rizal answers Chino's question. "We must deserve our freedom," he says, "by improving the mind and enhancing the dignity of the individual, loving what is just."

Improving the mind?

Do the public schools to which you don't send your children "improve the mind?"

Enhancing the dignity of the individual?

Does the running social sore that is Tondo and the long wound of the Cavite coastal road with its thousands of squatters enhance the dignity of man? Or degrade it?

Loving what is just?

Do we love what is just? Do we have even the slightest care for it? Will the seas continue to take their dreadful toll? Will "salvage" be the most used word in our lexicon? Will Evelio Javier rest unavenged? And Rolando Olalia? And Lean Alejandro?

"Is our country going to be all right?"

Rizal continues, "So long as the Filipino people do not have sufficient courage to proclaim their right to a life of their own, as long as we see our countrymen ashamed in their private consciences while in public they keep silent at oppression, so long as they wrap themselves in selfishness and praise the most despicable acts, while they beg for a share in the spoils, so long as this is true," asks Rizal, "what right do we have to freedom?"

"Is our country going to be all right?"

Perhaps.

But only if, up from its ranks, come new leaders. New leaders. The old order must change and yield its place to the new. For the old order is spent. It has frittered away two precious years maneuvering and jockeying for position for the presidential lottery of 1992. It knows no other way. So we need new leaders, leaders who are men of conscience, and who will, by the power of their example and their unselfish heroism, inspire us to similar heroism.

These new leaders will come either from our ranks, from the rising generation, or they will come down from the hills.

The choice is still ours. But not for long.