MATHILDE BECKERS

(Homily delivered by His Excellency Gaudencio B. Rosales, Archbishop of Manila during the Funeral Mass for Mathilde Beckers on April 7, 2004 at the chapel of the Notre Dame de Vie Institute in Novaliches.)

 

“If you believe, you will see the glory of God.” (John 11:40)

These words were addressed to Martha and Mary, not just to console them, but to assure them that they can look beyond their sorrow and at the loss of their loved one. The glory of God is far greater than the life of their brother Lazarus. And Jesus is inviting the sisters to look beyond the familiar face of a cherished one.

This morning we already are looking farther than the familiar figure, for us, too small to be German, and very Filipina-like (in the Twenties) with her hair perpetually fixed in a bun. Our faith has taught us to see, after the passing away of this woman, that Mathilde is more than what she has always appeared to be.

For those who believe the glory of God is seen in this woman.

For us who know her only as a friend and collaborator in the vineyard of innumerable ministries in the Philippines and for those who sat in many of her classroom lectures, we see only the other end of Ms. Beckers’ Christian life. We see her as “in mission” for the Church of Jesus Christ right here in our country. As a committed member of the Institute of Notre Dame de Vie, she was sent to the Philippines in 1963 by no less than the founder of the same Institute, the Reverend Fr. Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus.

Forty-one years in mission “ad extra” from her native Aachen in Germany, forty-one years in the Philippines, so very long years that she became almost like a native Filipina in her love for the local Church and her dedication to train teachers and catechists. A story was told of Ms. Beckers organizing young students from MLQU (Manuel L. Quezon University ) in the Sixties, getting them to attend a session where the young can listen to the word of God, pray and share among themselves the fruits of their reflections. “If only the young can hear of and love the one God” she would mumble to herself.

Such a zeal for the word of God and for the young can only grow into something that should reach out to more young people and more experienced teachers trained to become well informed, better prepared, zealous and contemplative (praying) catechists. MOTHER OF LIFE CENTER, attached --- more than just academically --- to Notre dame de Vie, became an important and influential Catechetical School. The spirit, the character, the professionalism and the prayer imbibed in the institute are like “brand names” that more than 1,200 MOLians take with them wherever they go and wherever they serve as “re-echoers” of the Word that is Jesus the Christ.

Mother of Life is MS. Mathilde Beckers

We say this because for more than a generation MOTHER OF LIFE CENTER is MS. MATHILDE BECKERS. We say nothing more of her pioneering efforts to supervise, teach, administer, write those letters to benefactors, and as the saying goes, “bring home the bacon” for Mother of Life.

But all these are only Mathilde Beckers in mission. We never saw her moment of call, her first years in the Christian commitment and her “calling to the desert” in the midst of the world that was trying to grow up from the rubbles of war, then the world of Mathilde in West Germany. She saw the cruelty and the insanity of war right where it started. And already amidst all these insanities Mathilde was already a servant for the Youth Movement in Germany during the Nazi occupation. And in between that attraction and call to help the young and her mission, there intervened a critically important stage for Mathilde, a condition she brought with her from that moment of call in Germany to her mission here. It is a way of silence converted into a way of life. It is a presence before whom she was always present. It is a way of communing with the Lord wherein she is always a receiver.

Only an apostle can say “love the church”

In many of this wordless communion, exposed powerless before the love of God, Mathilde, the disciple and learner, became an apostle. These countless intervening quiet moments made the difference between Mathilde Beckers’ simple call in Aachen and the mission that the good Lord Jesus has now crowned in heaven, even with her moral remains here with us in the NDV Chapel in Barrio San Agustin, Novaliches, Quezon City.

When she said—and we were told that in her last conscious though weak moments she made a plea—“Tell the catechists to love the Church,” Miss Beckers was not only re-echoing the words of NDV’s founder. “We must have a deep love for the Church”, or merely restating “I am a daughter of the Church” as the words of St. Teresa of Avila.

No!

Mathilde Beckers was not only a catechist. Prayer and contemplation made her an apostle. She served Jesus as one sent to teach. And as one who had done this work for Jesus Christ in the Church, Ms. Mathilde Beckers, like any apostle, could more than say…”Serve the Church .” To all of us she has now the right to say “Love the Church.”