By: Telly Gonzaga-Ocampo
The Angel on Holy Tuesday!
We have a breath of fresh air knowing that Pope Frances was discharged from the hospital and was there to greet the people at the Vatican on Palm Sunday to usher in the Holy Week observance. We also had our share of the initial days of the Holy Week.
Last Holy Tuesday, we the senior citizens of the “world” went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Doors of the designated pilgrim churches of our diocese. Now we understand why they are called the designated churches. The main doors of these churches are opened for pilgrims in the jubilee year like all the other catholic churches all over the world. This door in Rome is also to be opened once in every twenty years.
Our first stop during our Tuesday pilgrimage was the church in Taloto. It was a small church, then, when my Tio Brely (Fr. Gabriel Villamor Oppus was the parish priest there. And today, the church is surrounded with local flowers and flowering shrubs. Flowers like Caballero and Kalachuchi welcome you to their church. The church is not stone-walled but it is secured by iron grills and you can see the well-maintained garden around you. It was nice for the parish to place a prayer mounted on a stand to start your station on the cross. And there is another prayer before leaving the church door.
We did not bother to ask for the name of the priest since confession was going on.
The church of St. Vincent Ferrer of Maribojoc is not part of the designated churches, but we visited it, just the same. The church is restored to perfection and we learned that one of the supervising architects became a covid victim and was not able to see its completion.
Simbahan sa Kasilak in Loon. This was our next place. The visit was also like a homecoming for the sisters Cora and Gemma. Both were born in Loon and baptized in this church. They are now transferring residence after their ancestral house was fully destroyed by the earthquake of 2013. Both have residences abroad but will soon be in Panglao once the construction of the house shall have been over. While waiting for the finishing touches of the house, my Blue Apartelle in Taguihon, Baclayon, Bohol is their temporary home.
Before proceeding to the St. Vincent Church in Calape, we took our lunch in a very unassuming resto amidst the greens and trees. When you go this place, you would feel that you are truly in a garden. In the seniors’ group (among us), it is Carrie who knows the whereto and wherefore of places to go for good food, fresh and green.
The church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Calape was our last pilgrim church. This is a beautiful church in baroque architecture which reminds us of the San Sebastian church in Manila. The parish priest who built the church was padre Eliseo Villamor Josol.
Going home, we could not help but visit Dauis church of Our Lady of the Assumption. This was another church that was almost leveled to the ground by the earthquake of 2013. You are always awed by the church of Dauis including its tranquil beauty, the painting on the ceiling and the Dome by Francia.
My tour on Holy Tuesday did not end up in the churches. I was supposed to go to the wake of Jomari Borres, the husband of Purita Gonzaga. My daughter drove for me and my senior mind brought us to the ancestral house of the Gonzagas near the San Antonio De Padua Church. We were lucky that there were two persons working on the platform for the “hugos”. We found out that the wake of the late Jomari Borres was not at the residence of the Gonzagas but at the Borres’ place. And the helper at the Gonzaga residence did not know the location of the Borres residence.
However, our Holy Tuesday angel “appeared” in the form of a kind person who guided us all the way from J. A. Clarin to upper Dao where the Borres residence is siutated. He was truly an angel. We were able to thank him, but we forgot to ask for his name.
