ISA Holds Public Lecture on Spirituality of Immersion

By way of context. Fr. Capucao recalled that in the 1970s the word babad (Filipino word for soaked, absorbed) became part of the jargon of activist and progressive Church members in the Philippines.

Babad then came to refer to immersion in the concrete life situations of the basic sectors, the community, the urban and rural poor, and the workers holding pickets.

Immersion became widely accepted among church workers after Vatican II. They came to recognize the significant contribution of the poor as evangelizing agents, and to gain new impressions about the Church – for example, about a church immersed with the people (simbahang babad sa tao and Church of the Poor (Simbahan para sa mga Dukha).

“Poverty is at the center of the Gospel,” Fr. Capucao pointed out. In Asia, poverty includes material poverty, spiritual poverty, voluntary poverty, solidarity and struggle with the poor, and lastly, seeing the poor as shapers of their own history.”

Immersion became an integral part of the conscientization process, with much learning, unlearning and re-learning taking place such that it is now seen as a new way of experiencing and understanding reality and as a basis and source of solidarity and commitment.

“The basic attitude in undertaking babad,” Fr. Capucao stressed to the 30 participants at this activity of ISA, “is to be a learner and a listener (especially listening with a heart) and not to behave like a tourist, a `developer’, a social worker, a preacher/missionary and definitely, not as a messiah.”

In terms of the spirituality of babad, Fr. Capucao explained that God unveils the hidden purpose of his will through societies, cultures and nature itself.

“God can be experienced in the beliefs, customs, practices and languages of the people. The task is to read the signs of the times and to scrutinize them in the light of the Word”(Gaudium et Spes).

Fr. Capucao discussed the following elements of babad: one, Transcendence (God, Ultimate Meaning, Makeidiapat, Bathala, Allah); two, Intra-personal (self); Inter-personal and societal (others, socio, political, economic, religious, cultural, religio-cultural, socio-economic-political) and Ecological (nature, environment, Cosmos).

He also stated that immersion demands a spirituality of Harmony, a spirituality of Search, a spirituality of Oneness, and a spirituality of Transformation. Here, one may relate the learnings from the Agtas (indigenous peoples covered by the Prelature of Infanta) by Fr. Capucao’s bishop, the late Julio Labayen, OCD.

Widely lauded for introducing and helping flesh out the concept of the Church of the Poor in the Philippines, Bishop Labayen wrote that he had become a better person, citizen and Christian and acquired a new point of view by learning of the Agtas’ sense of how the divine is imbedded in the gentle breeze of nature and how it is known to them by only one name: Makeidiapat.

“Immersion places us in direct contact with reality and at the same time enables us to interpret (or to make sense) of this reality. Immersion is therefore a hermeneutical event,” Fr. Capucao explained.

He cited the Asian epistemological approach developed by Felix Wilfred and used in babad: wholistic; focused on ontological relationships of the part to the whole; and using intuition into the whole reality to understand and strive for wisdom, especially on relationships of the part to the whole and of the whole to its parts.

He also warned, “To babad is to risk and to being ready to experience pain but also to gain victory. To plunge is to make a decision amidst an impasse (a crisis situation) where the response is either to hold on or to let go. This decision sets up the conditions for a new awareness and for places one would never dream of before making the decision. And so, to babad is to be open for surprises and to allow the Spirit to blow where she wills.”

During the open forum, Fr. Capucao was asked about the gains from immersion by University of Vienna Department of Theological Ethics professor Dr. Gunther Prueller, Ph.D., who was with nine other colleagues for the 25^th year of Sandiwaan, a solidarity program between the Catholic University of Vienna and the Inter-Congregational Theological Center (ICTC).

“It is not always reciprocation but solidarity,” replied Fr. Capucao. “In my diocese, there is a project to build a big dam for water to Metro Manila. Development is good, but the issue is for whom? This dam will dislocate the Agtas. There is a campaign but it is like the fight between David and Goliath. We will need many voices. The son of my godmother has made a video Damn the Dam which we have uploaded on YouTube.”

Another professor from Vienna asked how host communities have evaluated the immersionists. Reactions vary, said Fr. Capucao.

“At times, the impact was symbiotic. Using self-reflection and talks with the Dumagat tribe, one sees that they have been exposed to consumerism but that they have also learned to go back and attend to their well-being. It also depends on attitude. Some of them accept aid but through dialogue, they can be prepared for the immersion, which should be processed afterwards. It is important.”

Some host families tend to pamper seminarians with the best food they can offer, together with their baul (chest of good clothes, beddings and household goods painstakingly assembled).

Fr. Capucao replied that hospitality is part of Filipino culture but he faces problem when seminarians are treated like princes.

“It is important to orient host families that seminarians want to experience the local situation. The problem of toilets can be traumatic to Europeans but they can learn from approximating ordinary life. And it is important to be mindful and conscious of the community when it comes to swimwear or showers taken within sight of people.”

For his part Pastor Patrick McDivith of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) inquired why involuntary poverty was not added to the elements of poverty.

Fr. Capucao acknowledged that In the Philippines, the reality is involuntary poverty but among Asian religions there has always been voluntary poverty. Many of his parishioners lead simple lives, he said.

Among the indigenous peoples with whom the Silsilah Movement in Mindanao dialogues, hardly anyone refer to themselves as poor, reported Alfrein Quirioner, Program Coordinator of Silsilah’s unit in Manila’s Quiapo Church adjacent to a sizable Muslim community.

“If they self-perceive as poor,” Fr. Capucao suggested, “the dialogue should come from a dialogues of cultures and there should be research on the economics of poverty as well as on the perception of happiness.”

In his talk Fr. Capucao had said that religion articulates spirituality and is its language and medium when expressed through symbols.

At the open forum Mr. Quirioner recalled his college professor saying that the world “is full of symbols and texts which we have to interpret by knowing their language. I can also relate to spirituality of babad, particularly Transcendence. Dialogue in the Silsilah Movement with God, self, others and creation transcends what the eye can see and gives a deeper reality – that God calls us to do good without discriminating.”

The public lecture ended with a plaque of appreciation for Fr. Capucao from ISA and a bottle of schapps from the immersionists from Vienna. #

Perla Choudhury