SCRUTATIO SCRIPTURAE
SISTER PILAR
A
Scrutatio for the 3rd Sunday of the CHRISTIAN SEASON OF THE
CHRISTIAN PESACH/PASSOVER
Readings
from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer
Readings
for the Pauline/Vatican II Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
Readings for the Tridentine Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
Gospel
Offertory:
Let me share with you the REMARKABLE LIFE of the NELLIE GRAY of the Philippines and the Consecrated Life through this article taken from the Manila Standard Today:
A life well-lived, a glory well-shared
By Francisco S. Tatad | Posted on September 12, 2012 | 12:01am |
At 4:44 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2012, Sister Mary Pilar Lahoz Verzosa of the Religious of the Good Shepherd died in the peace of our Lord at the De La Salle University Medical Center in Dasmariñas, Cavite. She would have turned 68 on Sept. 24th.
For 34 years, she was the face and heart of Pro-life Philippines, the movement she founded in 1978. In a world besotted with the pomps and promises of the culture of death, she was the restless spirit that tried to catechize everyone she could on the true meaning of human life, family, and marriage.
In my own pro-life and pro-family speaking sorties abroad, whether in Rome, Prague, Geneva, Rio de Janeiro, Ottawa, Vancouver, Amsterdam, Madrid, Milan, London, Derbyshire, New York, or somewhere else, the first question that usually greeted me upon arrival was, “How’s Sister Pilar?”
How she came to bear the pro-life torch was no mere accident. In 1974, the young nun listened spellbound as Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, the founder of Human Life International, spoke of the horrors of abortion, after the US Supreme Court had legalized it through its ruling in Roe v. Wade. Father Marx awed his audience with video presentations on abortion and exhorted them to wage a vigorous fight for human life in the Philippines.
Sister Pilar had given up a promising career as a nurse, after topping the nursing board exams, in order to become an RGS nun. She was working in the Good Shepherd Home for single mothers when she heard Father Marx. He had such a deep and instant effect on her that right there and then she decided to become a staunch defender of human life. She took a copy of one of Father Marx’s videos—“Abortion —A Woman’s Choice”—and with that, started her lone brave crusade.
Carting along a heavy 16 mm film projector, films and various handouts, the young nun went to schools, parishes, and community centers to talk to young and old alike about the beauty and wonder of human life, and the horrors of abortion. Soon enough, volunteers were swarming in—-teachers, parish workers, women and men from religious and Church-mandated organizations.
In 1978, her desire to learn more about family planning took her to Australia for the International Conference on the Billings Ovulation Method. That confirmed her conviction that couples trying to avoid a pregnancy for grave reasons need not at all resort to contraception or abortion, which Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae condemns as intrinsically evil.
Through the Billings method, developed by Doctors John and Elizabeth Billings, and known as the heart of Natural Family Planning (NFP), a couple could harmonize the marital act with the woman’s cycle of fertility in order to avoid or achieve pregnancy. Sister Pilar learned that even Mother Teresa of Calcutta (now Blessed Mother Teresa) was using the method with great success in her work with the poor in Calcutta, which would win her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
On Dec. 10, 1978, the Pro-Life Movement of the Philippines was formally launched with the full support of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines and every possible Catholic organization. Some 10,000 delegates filled the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City to the rafters.
Since then one success followed another, and one challenge followed another. In 1987, Pro-Life Philippines succeeded in supporting the inclusion of a pro-life provision in the draft of the new Constitution. This became Section 12 of Article II, which provides: “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”
In 1988, then-President Corazon Aquino signed a proclamation declaring every second of February as the start of Respect and Care for Life Week. Sixteen years later, then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo would sign a new proclamation declaring every 25th day of March as “the Day of the Unborn in the Philippines.” But the biggest challenge to the Movement came in 1994 when the Ramos administration succeeded in reorganizing the leadership of the Senate in order to facilitate official Philippine support for the anti-life and anti-family agenda at the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development.
Under the leadership of the then-Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, Pro-Life Philippines organized the biggest pro-life rally the country had ever seen. The message to Ramos was: Don’t endorse the Cairo agenda, protect the Constitution, culture, moral convictions and consciences of Filipinos.
What began in Cairo 18 years ago has now grown into an oversize monster called the reproductive health bill. Sister Pilar had remained indefatigable in her fight against it. But her Master (ours too) has obviously decided she has already done so much here on earth, it was time she did more from a higher and much nobler place.
fstatad@gmail.com
May we be CHALLENGED to be like NANAY PILAR...
MAY WE HEARKEN TO THE CALL OF OUR ETERNAL LORD AND BELOVED SHEPHERD TO STAND UP FOR THE SANCTITY OF LIFE!
EVERY TIME THAT WE ARE GATHERED TO CELEBRATE THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT OF THE DIVINE LITURGY OF THE MOST SUBLIME SACRIFICE OF THE MASS, MAY OUR BLESSED LORD AND SOLE GIVER AND FULFILLMENT OF LIFE IN ALL ITS RICHNESS AND SPLENDOR BE MADE MANIFEST TO US AND IN US SO THAT WE MAY LET HIM REIGN IN OUR FAMILIES, OUR COMMUNITY AND OUR SOCIETY!
PSALM 23
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