JAIME CARDINAL SIN, GOODBYE!

(Message of His Excellency Most Rev. Gaudencio B. Rosales,
Archbishop of Manila, during the Funeral Mass for His Eminence Jaime
L. Cardinal Sin, on June 28, 2005 at 9 a.m. at the Manila Cathedral)

We remember His Eminence Jaime Lachica Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila, as a Shepherd and a Priest.

As a shepherd he guided the flock safely through the treacherous ravines of “self-seeking” as with his staff and his crook he made the flock feel secure and encouraged.

As priest, he was both elder brother and father to the clergy and the Religious Brothers and Sisters, and he accompanied and led them to the devoted service of the Church and society. The Catholic Laity also was no less his inspired co-workers in the Lord’s vineyard. Cardinal Jaime L. Sin was a true priestly shepherd.

He was more than a pastor. In the country’s only experiential dictatorship, he was the ultimate outspoken prophet, who, completely unafraid of despots, denounced what was unjust, dishonest and oppressive. A recognized patriot in the country’s recent history.

He was gradually brought up to the role of an innovative radical servant-leadership; he more willingly grew into those roles only because the earlier Jaime progressed in his love for God that he met, knew and followed in Jesus the Lord. He could not be wrong when he fell in love with and followed Jesus as he gave himself to Him in prayer and surrendered himself so completely to the same Lord in the Priestly and Episcopal ministry. In the priestly he did not select assignment; he only chose what work was given to him.

The second commitment for him was entirely unassailable, because when he was confident that he loved God in Jesus Christ, the next love for him was more than sequential (a sequel) – he must love and have compassion for his fellow humans. He never veered from the Lord’s saying that “in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brethren of mine, you did it to me.” (Matt 25:40). He was certain that it is in the poor that he would eventually encounter Christ.

This revealed to us “the secret” of His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin’s tremendous concern for the yearning of every human person to be free of tyranny, ignorance, poverty, selfishness and injustice. He did not only want to bring Christ to his sisters and brothers, but he also wanted to meet Christ in them again. In the gesture of love for others, he was generous to the point of forgetting himself or putting himself always at the last.

He knew that the fullness of his love for God is his love for the poor.

Today in this Manila Cathedral, we give back to God the frail human remains of our collected dreams; we thank God for the memory of His kindness and compassion for us expressed in the person of Jaime Cardinal Sin.

From here, we move from legacy to (the) Eucharist, because remembering our beloved Jaime Cardinal Sin, we know we have to continue pursuing his dream for a people who still hunger to be free from every form of tyranny.

From SERVICE we transit to the Eucharist, where Jesus said, “Do this in memory of Me.”

Every good thing from His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin is now memory. But let the memory of deeds become in Jesus a Eucharist worth doing again in the Lord’s Blessed Memory and Name.

You Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin, thank you very much for serving and inspiring us in love, and for teaching us that to serve is also to love.

May you now enjoy the embrace of Jesus who loved you first.

And may you now rest in His Peace!

Amen!