Bishop Chito Tagle told us yesterday that Bishop Claver’s last request to him was that they put together a book. Bishop Cisco would write a somewhat-autobiographical account of his experiences as bishop. He was asking Bishop Chito to then add his own “theological reflection” on the “history” (more or less) which he (Bishop Cisco) would set down. Bishop Chito said later in class that Bishop Claver seemed especially concerned that the events which culminated in EDSA UNO, his role in them, be rightly remembered. Maybe, with good reason, he considered the story of those days as the high point of his own life-story.

Let me share, then, part of what he would perhaps have written... 

1986, February 12. The CBCP “emergency assembly” at Intramuros broke up a little after six. They had been discussing, all day, what they were to say on the snap elections just concluded. The house as a whole uncertain just what exactly they wished to say...

Bishop Cisco, with his superb gift for writing, writing clearly, sharply, briefly, eloquently, in the shortest time, had a text done not long after eight PM. 

His text: “In our considered judgment, the polls were unparalleled in the fraudulence of their conduct...”  Four paragraphs follow, giving in detail how the massive cheating was done, how violence was used, “intimidation, harassment, terrorism, murder.” 

Next, “These and many irregularities point to a criminal use of power to thwart the sovereign will of the people. Yet, despite these evil acts, we are morally certain the people’s real will for change has been truly manifested.”

Then, the stark, unambiguous conclusion: “According to moral principles, a government that assumes or retains power through fraudulent means has no moral basis. For such an access to power is tantamount to a forcible seizure and cannot command the allegiance of the citizenry. The most we can say then, about such a government, is that it is a government in possession of power. But admitting that, we hasten to add. Because of that very fact that same government itself has the obligation to right the wrong it is founded on. It must respect the mandate of the people. This is precondition to any reconciliation.”

A couple of pages follow, all leading to the ringing ending. “Now is the time to speak up. Now is the time to repair the wrong. The wrong was systematically organized. So must its correction be. But as in election itself, that depends fully on the people, on what they are willing and ready to do. We, the bishops, stand in solidarity with them in the common discernment for the good of the nation. But we insist: Our acting must always be according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that is, in a peaceful, non-violent way. May He, the Lord of justice, the Lord of peace, be with us in striving for that good.”

There it is. In the tensest of moments, in an hour’s time, a four page text, the eloquence and the rhythm of the language manifest, the thought clear and ringing as a bell, passionate but in full control of every line and phrase  –  a declaration of principle, of judgment, of protest and resistance; with total conviction and the power of emotion, but with reason, with balance, with prayer, with faith. That is pure Cisco Claver...

That statement made history, large and loud history; it is forever part of the history of our land. Fr Jim Reuter liked to say, “Never in the history of the Church have bishops ever taken such a stand. It was an historic first. It was the small beginning that went on to even greater things.” First it led to the one peaceful “people power” revolution, EDSA Uno, unique and almost totally bloodless, watched on television screens the world over.

And in time, as I myself heard Lech Walensa say, in front of Mrs. Cory Aquino in Florence, in 1995, it started off similar revolutions in the communist empire, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other nations in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world. Without blowing it up too much, in a true way, there was Bishop Cisco’s handwritten text at the source of so much history. In later years I thought, perhaps it brought him a quiet sense of pride and joy.

This is only one statement, a sample. There were, on almost every major issue and theme, yet other CBCP texts he authored. The historic PCP-II (Second Plenary Council) document of 1991, long sections, the national situationer and reflection on it; later, the densely-packed CBCP discussions on faith and culture, on faith and politics. It was to Claver the CBCP turned, and for this, he was there for his fellow-bishops. 

 

On Facebook yesterday Fr Danny Huang wrote of Bishop Claver’s “humility, humor, humanity.” One story will have to suffice.

A young sister, assigned to the Malaybalay area, told people at the Bishop’s office one morning she had been summoned to a town near Cagayan de Oro for a lunch-time meeting with her congregation’s other nuns in the district. Their Mother Assistant had unexpectedly come from abroad, wanted to meet every one of them that day. The message reached her rather late. Now she couldn’t make it by bus. No car, no driver; could someone help her find a way? The Bishop was in his office even before his breakfast; he heard her. Fine; he would bring her himself, with his jeep. They took off at the moment’s notice, Bishop himself driving, going at a pretty good speed, as the road allowed. Halfway down, it seems, the jeep developed some minor engine trouble. Bishop Claver tinkered with the machine, fixed it quickly enough, but got his shirt wet and badly soiled. He did get the jeep running again, running faster, trying not to be late for lunch. Arrived at the sister’s convent, some – but not too many – minutes late. The Bishop said to the sister, “Go on, go in right now. Don’t be late.”

Much excitement at lunch. Much chatting, laughing, stories. Nearing the end, the local superiora asked, “How did you come?” “With the Bishop!” “Where did he go?”  “Ay, ay, with the excitement, I forgot! I assumed he went on further to Cagayan to take lunch at Xavier.” “Check,” the superiora said. Sure enough, there in the workers’ shed was Bishop Cisco, dirty shirt taken off, only in t-shirt, finishing a meal with the sisters’ houseboy and driver, the driver who invited him into the workers’ shed for lunch, thinking he was a driver also. I’m told the superiora almost died on the spot. But Bishop Claver just laughed and said, “Had a good lunch, sister. Thank you!” And left a short time later, because he had a Mass that afternoon back in Malaybalay. A Cagayan priest told me this story. He said it’s all fact.

If you knew Bishop Cisco, not really hard to believe. “Humility, humor, humanity.” And now after his passing, may we add, “Holiness”?

 

When Fr Tim Ngodcho died suddenly, only 48, Bishop Cisco preached at the funeral Mass here in this oratory. Fr Tim’s father was Bishop Cisco’s first cousin, and the homily was one of the most personal and most revealing I had ever heard from him. A side of him opens up in it, which he rarely rarely revealed. Let me cite from it, because we want to hear more of his own words tonight.

Bishop Cisco first says quite a bit on Tim’s difficulties in “fitting in” into the standard Jesuit ministries and even lifestyle. Tim had his “odd moments and different ways.” Bishop said, “I remember a young Jesuit asking once, referring to some of Tim’s idiosyncracies: ‘Are they because he is an Igorot or because it’s him?’ At the time I said: ‘It’s him!’ I revise that answer now. ‘It was both – and more’.”

He continued: “I readily confess I arrived at this conclusion only this week as a result of the little to-do about where his final resting-place would be. To his family and relatives, there was, predictably, no question whatsoever, ‘In Bontoc, of course.’ But to the Provincial, predictably too, I must say, there was no question either: ‘In Novaliches, of course, with his Jesuit brothers.’ Something had to be done to reconcile the two conflicting :’of courses’ – or rather to make Tim’s people see the Solomonic compromise offered by the Provincial, which was – to have a wake for him in Bontoc, and another in Manila, and to bury him in Novaliches.”

“People at home were mystified why it had to be so. A little explaining was in order and I had to give a little lecture on death and other traditions of religious orders – those concerning the vows more specifically. ‘Tim is under vows as a Jesuit,’ I said. ‘and he is obliged to obey the Superior’s disposition of him, even in death.’ That might seem like a facile ‘Jesuiticism’, except that we all hold, don’t we, that our vows are perpetual, even beyond death?”

 

Bishop Cisco pursues the theme of the role of our human personal roots, roots in land and home and culture somewhat further, and tonight we can’t follow him all the way. But towards the end of the homily he says, reflecting more on Tim Ngodcho: “Paraphrasing someone, I don’t remember whom: ‘You can take Tim out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of Tim.’ The mountains were in him. The trouble was, I suspect, that he kept looking for the mountains outside of himself, even in the lowlands, among alien lowlanders.”

Bishop Cisco explains how one has to transcend the lower mountains of his home place, looking further afar, enlarging one’s vision, seeing the wider horizons. In this he himself was prodigiously successful. Bishop Chito Tagle said yesterday, that in the CBCP, Bishop Claver often opened them to the bigger framework, the history behind things, the larger perspectives. But in one small respect, Bishop Cisco never outgrew the mountains of Bontoc, either. Wherever he went, he built dikes made of stone, the special way the Igorot people made and make them, near their homes and villages. The world renowned rice terraces are not in Igorot territory, but the same high skill and style that made them, belong to the Igorot people also. They have their terraces, too.

When he studied at Woodstock, Maryland, theology-student Cisco Claver built strong dikes and stone walls wherever the earth was eroding, or was weak and needed support. Our anthropologist Frank Lynch used to say that, if in centuries ahead Woodstock would become an archaeological site, scholars would really be mystified that there were unusual strong walls and dikes there in the middle of the USA, dikes and sustaining walls that only indigenous peoples in southeast Asia knew how exactly to build. Someone said Fr Cisco built terrace dikes at the Auriesville tertianship also, in upstate New York, when he spent a year there, ending his Jesuit training. And near the Ateneo Jesuit residence, around the gardens Fr Henry Irwin created, he set up some low walls also. And Peter Walpole was telling us at lunch that at San Jose, there are working terraces which purify the dirty water as it runs down from behind the college covered courts. Bishop Claver built them too, only a few years ago. They are still working well. Everything he built, he built well, purposively, enduringly. (Basic church communities, for instance, one of his enduring passions.) He was never one to destroy; he built up, always. And he built to last.

I have gone on too long. I find I have so much to say, and I have only skimmed over the surface. Let me sum up. I think Bishop Cisco was one of the very greatest Jesuit priests we have ever known. Not in our country only. He was really and truly a great man. A noble tribute to his great Igorot people, to us as Filipinos, to the Church in our country, and (as a blurb in his final book says, if I remember) the kind of bishop who embodied the hope of Vatican II, a man for the future of the Church. And from him, in a true sense, I learned so much what loving one’s country, what loving the Church means, in deed and in truth.

But let me now end with the words the Daily Inquirer cites today, from Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato, whom Bishop Cisco once told me was the fellow-bishop he shared most with, in many projects they planned together, in mind and heart and purpose, and (let me add) in true love of the Church. Said Archbishop Quevedo of Bishop Claver: “Filipino prophet without peer, truest priest, innovative humble shepherd, a very dear friend. He is with Jesus whom he proclaimed with eloquent words, spoken and written, in all areas of human life. Who can take his place? My tears flow.” 

Dear friends, dear brothers, here gathered before his remains, our tears flow. Truly, our tears flow.

  2 July 2010