God’s Creative and Loving Gaze

by S. Ma. Angela Nenette Santiago, RVM

As the Main Chapel bell rings majestically, as the Apostolic Nuncio together with four (4) Bishops and thirty or more priests solemnly march towards the altar, as the Choir of Juniors and Novices jubilantly sing the Jubilate Deo, and as I look at the many faces of joy among my own RVM Sisters and visitors, all I could imagine was the face and posture of Mother Foundress lovingly gazing at Her Divine Majesty and her Divine Majesty lovingly gazing at her on that afternoon of March 17, 2007. It is a gaze of mutual profound gratitude; Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo grateful for the loving protection and humble recognition that her Divine Majesty had bestowed to what was once a small seed, now a tree bearing much fruit; and God grateful to her humble servant for allowing her Master to take over her life. It is a gaze of mutual love. It is not because God had been generous to Mother Foundress but because Mother Foundress had embraced the loveliness of God who had revealed Himself to her and had entrusted her with gifts … and gifts undeserved.

This is the image that kept lingering in my heart and mind as I continue immersing myself in the memory of the Centennial and Jubilee Celebration last March 17. Everything and everyone in that afternoon celebration, I realized carry a significant memory and history. The structures in the Mother House Compound had undergone much repairs and renovations, yet imbedded in its deepest stone is the memory and history that cannot be erased by the changes necessary at the present times. This place carries over the memory of the humble beginnings of our Congregation in the Walled City of Intramuros, the beaterio. This place brings alive the memory of our hundreds of Sisters, who by the sweat of their brow faithfully did their best to bring to life the dream of our Foundress… the dream who in itself is the dream of the Father …that all of us maybe one… collaborators with God in bringing about the Kingdom … the dream who in itself is the Father, to be in communion with Her Divine Majesty, in all things. We are blessed with memory and history not only of a hundred years but more than three hundred years filled with million stories of how the loving and creative God of Mother Foundress cared for us, protected us and even praised us through the Decretum Laudis in 1907. The Spirit of God that filled Mother Foundress flowed to us and is made alive in us.

The Centennial and Jubilee Celebration was indeed a celebration of praise and gratitude not only for what Mother Ignacia and our Divine Majesty had given us but its deepest sense, it is a profound gratitude realizing that God had gifted us with much and gifts we don’t deserved …yet God, by his magnanimous heart had chosen us, His sinful beloved. The Celebration brings anew to the awareness of our heart that by our humanness, we don’t deserved everything that we have now, yet God had remained faithful and constant in His care and protection. We can imagine Him lovingly gazing at us as He gazes on our dear Foundress. Beyond our weaknesses He looks at our love-liness, at our inner beauty, polished, purified and revealed by His tremendous love.

The book Letting God Come Close says, “We do not exist until God desires us into existence. God desires us into existence and in so doing makes us desirable to God. This creative touch of God continually creates us and keeps us into existence evokes in us a correlative desire for God and for what God wants.” I believe this is the essence of the heart of Mother Foundress as God continue revealing to us our place and mission in the Church. We are who we are now because God is. God had desired for us and this desire made us desire for Him more and more. For St. Ignatius of Loyola, it is the magis.

As I end this reflection with relishing now, not only God’s loving and creative gaze on our Mother Foundress but also His gaze of fidelity and constancy to us, the daughters of His beloved Ignacia. By our own merit, we don’t deserve the gift of the Decree of Praise yet by God’s desire, He willed it. I would like to borrow a part of St. Augustine’s famous line, “The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you…” God did not forget us a single moment. God always look at us, gazing at us … lovingly, faithfully. He filled what we lack, he completes us. He sees the desire of our hearts and He desires that we happily His. One hundred years ago, He gifted us with His identity in the Catholic Church through the Decree of Praise. One hundred years later, we savor this identity …we relish God’s loving gaze to our Mother Foundress … we relish God’s loving gaze on us.

To God be the glory! Amen!

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“Profound gratitude arises when I realize through God’s grace
that everything I have is gift and a gift undeserved …”

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