(Read the whole article from The Windhover, The Philippine Jesuit Magazine, Year XVI, Volume 4, 2014)
If one were to have an anthology of Catholic jokes, a good part of the selection would be about Jesuits and Dominicans, the butt of the joke depending of the sympathies of the narrator. The two orders have many things in common: unswerving love for the Lord and his Mother, the use of study and learning to better defend the Church, and a strong sense of communal identity that unites their members. Yet their approaches, deriving from the spirit and times of their founders, sometimes set them on opposite courses on many issues, such as the problem of grace and the Chinese Rites. In the Philippines, however, young Jesuits and Dominicans have found ways to encounter each other as friends and co-workers in the vineyard.
The Manaoag encounter
As part of their formation, the Jesuit novices used to go on pilgrimage to Manaoag. They would journey on foot, walking two by two going to the Shrine of our Lady of the Rosary in Manaoag, Pangasinan, approximately 170 kilometers away from their starting point in Bocuaue, Bulacan. The pilgrimage was an arduous four to five-day walk, beggng for food and sleeping in the houses of strangers. However, when they arrived in Manaoag, at the Dominican Novitiate of the Annunciation, they received the welcome of long-lost friends from the Domincian novices.
The Dominicans offered them accommodation, food, and rest from the long and tiring journey. They even invited the Jesuits to join them in their regular schedule of praying in common, eating in common, and having recreation in common. They organized sessions where they shared stories about their formation and the wealth of their respective spiritualities. Those encounters have served as the fertile seed bed where Filipino Dominicans and Jesuits formed relationships that bridged differences.
La Naval and Loyola, nurturing a brotherhood
These friendships have been further deepened by the participation of Jesuits during the feast day of La Naval. For several years now, on the second Sunday of October, Jesuit scholastics have graced the grand procession in honor of our Lady of the Rosary, La Naval de Manila, a procession that commemorates the 1646 victory of Filipinos and Spanish soldiers against the invading Protestant Dutch. Jesuit scholastics and brothers, together with their Dominican student-brothers or coristas, would join the throng of thousands of devotees walking through the streets of Quezon city, praying the rosary and shouting “Viva la virgen”. After the procession, seminarians from various diocesan seminaries in the metropolis` would join other religious in a banquet prepared by the Dominican community to cap the celebration of the great feast of our Lady. For the scholastics and coristas, the meal provides the perfect opportunity to catch up on what’s happening to their friends on “the other side”.
The Jesuits have their chance at reciprocating Dominican hospitality in February, when the Dominicans visit Loyola House of Studies. There, the sharing over a festive meal, a tour of Loyola and its environs, capped with an initimate mass with the Jesuits, provide many an insight for the Dominicans in their own journey as religious. The gifts their Jesuit friends give on these visits are always treasured by the coristas.
Looking forward to a grace-filled future
So today, when the Dominicans and Jesuits come together, they are merely following the warm friendship began long ago by their forefathers. If the problem of grace was one of the contentious issues between the members, now grace is working to bring them closer. It was grace that brought Ignatius to Manresa, grace that brought Bishop Salazar to Fr. De la Plaza. Now it is grace that brings Jesuits and Dominicans again to Manaoag, Loyola House of Studies and La Naval. Assuredly, it is grace that will further strengthen this friendship for the building of the Kingdom.
