Message delivered by
His Eminence Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales
during his Thanksgiving Mass
as Member of the College of Cardinals
on April 1, 2006 at the Manila Cathedral.

May the ever faithful and loving God be properly thanked for the giftedness in the life of those who tried and continuously try to do His will and serve the people in whatever form or level of poverty they are in.

When I told my father that I felt like I wanted to become a priest in 1947, my dad told me that that was not what he wanted me to be. “I’d rather see you a doctor.” (We come from a family of doctors.) fter much dissuading, he finally relented and said, “if that is what is going to make you happy, then you may try it…I ask you only one thing, if you have to be a priest; I want you to become a good priest.” All I tried to --- these forty eight (48) years of my ordained and priestly life --- was to be a good priest.

After much prayer, after years and decades of reflection I felt that it was God who made the request in the voice of my father, ‘all you have to be us a good priest.’

And so it was since 1958, in Marauoy, in Banaybanay, Lipa City, in Antipolo and East Rizal, at San Carlos Seminary in EDS and St. Francis de Sales Seminary in Lipa, in Malaybalay and the mountains and hills of Bukidnon and across the great river-divide of Maradugao river till Bumbaran and Wao, Lanao de Sur, Batangas again, and now Manila. I have always tried to be a good priest (human frailty remaining here and there, making God’s plan to make me His son romantically enigmatic, but certainly possible, a today reality).

What I failed to ask my father was: would becoming a good priest be a hindrance to being a good pastor, bishop or archbishop. If it were, I would have much to answer before God on Judgment day, but I would let my dad free because he did not know this was somehow the result of what he wanted me to be: as a good priest.

His holiness, Pope Benedict XVI picked up me from those episodes of ministerial and priestly life, an election so distant from my father’s dialogue on priestly desire and calling. He named me as one of the fifteen (15) new members elevated to the College of Cardinals, one of those who can listen and take part in the discussion on Church’s needs and issues worldwide, and offer advice.

The Pope’s Message.

But I must share with you the Holy Father’s personal message. He said that “the Philippines has a special role in the evangelization of the Orient.” He mentioned this twice in our (four) encounters during the Consistory. Was he thinking of the thousands of Filipinos and Filipinas in different Asian countries living and working as missionaries. Or did he have in mind the Christian witnessing that Filipinos even here and abroad could give to our neighbors.

In February 21, 1981 Pope John Paul II spoke to Filipinos repeating the words if the late Pope Paul VI…”At this moment one cannot but think of the important calling for the people if the Philippine islands. This land has a special vocation to be the city set on the hill, the lamp standing on high (Matt. 5:14 – 16) giving shining witness amid the ancient and nobles cultures of Asia. Both as individuals and as a nation you are to show forth the light of Christ by the quality of our lives.”

If this was what Pope Benedicts XVI meant to recall, then, three popes of recent memory had spoken to us now of our calling and responsibility to give the noble cultures of Asia, a witness of our faith, even from where we are now, with the quality of our social, economic, political and religious life.

Underneath this challenge to our Christian vocation is a call to unity in the manner of our witnessing, and a challenge to collaborate sacrificial effort to make our society true communities of believers, eliminating injustice and inequalities that deny anyone a dignified life. This is both Christian and a mission. And Asia is looking to us for light which already we have received in Christ.

Arise, let us meet the challenge! God love and bless you all!

+Gaudencio B. Rosales
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
Intramuros, MANILA

April 1, 2006