(Homily delivered by Bishop Emeritus Emmanuel T. Cabajar, C.SsR during the funeral mass for Fr. Amado “Picx” Picardal on 6 June 2024 at the Redemptorist Church in Cebu City)
My personal bonding with Fr. Picx took place mainly between 1975 and 1989. I was living incognito in Bo. Luz as an organizer under PECCO program when I was put in charge of our postulants one of whom was Picx. He was also one of my first students in Liberation Theology in Davao Regional Seminary. Then we preached missions together in Maigo and Iligan City in Lanao Norte, Hinatuan in Surigato Sur, Arakan Valley in Cotabato and in San Fernando, Bukidnon. He was my longest partner in mission work.
Fr. Picx was a well-rounded person. He was a long-distance runner, a cyclist, a visual artist. He did a lot of drawing in his boyhood. He was also a poet and a musician with a sense of humor. One day he said to me, “Sir, nakahimo na kog kanta.” Is that so? What’s the melody like? He replied, “Wa pa mahuman. Usa pa lang ka nota!”
Picx was also a one-man-combo, ready to entertain even if you didn’t want it. He was a teacher – well conscientized on social realities, deeply committed to do justice and peace. Above all, he was a missionary, who followed St. Alphonsus’ example by preaching God’s word to the most abandoned, especially the poor.
Fr. Picx was passionate in serving the poor, even willing to risk his life for them. I had a glimpse of that during our mission in Hinatuan. Black propaganda was vicious against Church workers. Many a time, a dead body, allegedly of a rebel, would be left in front of the Church. The parish priest, Fr. Olvis, allegedly inciting people to rebellion, was arrested and imprisoned. The CHDF spied on our prayer meetings to discourage people from attending. Anyone with a bible was ironically labeled a communist. Our team felt vulnerable. I felt deeply that the big challenge was for us to continue on and learn how to proclaim God’s word in a situation of violent conflict. However, the team saw it prudent to withdraw from the parish.
Though quite risky, Fr. Picx asked to be allowed to stay on. Fr. Ramon Fruto, our superior, allowed him and myself to stay and finish the mission.
Although the people were too afraid to attend seminars, they were willing to come to Mass. So, Picx and I devised a Misa Pamalandong in which the liturgy of the word, incorporating some reflection, discussion and input on biblical passages, lasted four to five hours before moving on to the liturgy of the Eucharist. The Misa Pamalandong became our main vehicle for sharing the word. You can never imprison God’s word! The Misa-Pamalandong, really became Kairos, an opportune time of grace, a locus for the people to encounter God.
In his encyclical, ‘Spes Salvi’, Pope Benedict XVI raises the question: can our encounter with God who shows his face to us in the word made flesh be ‘performative’ or life changing so that we know we are saved through the hope it expresses? The Pope then tells the story of an African slave-girl, Bakhita, who has a similar experience as the early Christians – beaten and condemned to slavery. But Christianity doesn’t advocate for social revolution that leads to bloodshed. Jesus doesn’t offer political revolution. Instead, he offers his life even to the point of death, which brings something different – an encounter with the living God. It brings peace. It brings hope that’s stronger than the sufferings of slavery. It transforms life from within.
Jesus brings a new kind of relationship, as St. Paul describes in his letter to Philemon. Those who relate to one another as masters and slaves, as employers and employees, as amo and sulugoon, inasmuch as they belong to the one Church, become brothers and sisters, receiving the Lord’s Spirit and the Lord’s Body together. There is a transformation of life from within, even if the external structures may still remain the same. For St. Paul what governs the world is a personal God. There is a spirit who reveals himself as love. That love is the person of Jesus.
We can know the person of Jesus through two images: the philosopher and the shepherd. The true philosopher is one who knows how to teach the basic art of being authentically human, the art of living and dying. He knows how to point out the path of life. As the true philosopher, Jesus holds his gospel in one hand and his staff on the other. His gospel brings truth. His staff conquers death. Jesus points out what we must do to be truly human. He shows the way and the way is truth. He himself is way and truth. Therefore, He is life, whom we all seek. He shows us the way beyond death. He is a true teacher of life. In imitation of Jesus, the teacher, Picx also held the gospel of truth in one hand and his pilgrim walking stick on the other.
The same message is clear in the shepherd image that expresses simple and peaceful life, for which we long. It has a deep content. I was touched by the singing of Psalm 23 during the wake for it tells us, “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me.”
The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death. The true shepherd walks with us even on the path of final solitude where no one can accompany us. On that path of final solitude, the shepherd accompanied Fr. Picx for He himself has walked that path. The shepherd has descended into the kingdom of death and has conquered death. He has returned to accompany us now and gives us certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through. The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies us is the new hope that arises over our life, like it did for Fr. Picx, like it did for the early Christians.
In Fr. Picx as a missionary, I see images of the philosopher and the shepherd. He teaches the poor as he journeys with them. I picture him walking across hills and valleys in Arakan, bringing with him his ‘balon’, ang maayong balita, the gospel of truth, and sharing it with poor who hunger for God’s word.
When I composed the music and lyrics of “Balaang Tawag”, I had in mind Fr. Picx, my only priest companion, and our lay missionaries. Our experience with the poor in Arakan, seen in the light of the gospel is inspiring. We would walk 10, 20, 30 kilometers a day for four, five, six hours often under the blazing sun or in a heavy downpour and negotiate treacherous rivers. At times we groped in darkness and walked in solitude. But it was the awareness of God’s sacred call to break bread in the chapels, and share His word in the homes of the poor, that inspired and energized us to keep going despite the hazardous journeys. Often renewed as brothers and sisters in gospel friendship through prayerful reflections, the seemingly burdensome tasks felt easy and light. How many a time I did notice Fr. Picx jumping out of bed, even without washing up, to hurriedly join the lay-initiated early morning praise! Solidarity with the team in its prayer life was one that he valued so much even as he also tried on his own to connect with the Lord in silence and solitude.
Fr. Picx believed in hope. His faith gave him something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality serves as “proof” of the things that are still unseen. His faith draws the future into the present to change it, as in the case of St. Alphonsus, who renounced everything to help those suffering in body and spirit. St. Alphonsus was touched by no other than Jesus, who emerged from his hidden struggle to be his authentic self, amidst a culture of egotism, that pursued power, wealth and prestige at the expense of the poor, a culture deeply steeped in sin. To change that reality, Jesus saw a model to follow in his cousin, a simple honest man but fearless in preaching powerlessness, simplicity, and humility; demanding a letting go of what was false and inauthentic. That is why Jesus went all the way from Galilee to the River Jordan to be baptized by his cousin. His baptism personally meant a radical option to accept the call to mission, and that a change has begun in which God would reach out to the poor through Him. Instead of using power to destroy his enemies, Jesus became poor and powerless, and allowed his enemies to apparently destroy him. As a follower of Jesus, Fr. Picx was aware of hostile elements wanting to destroy and silence him but he opted for fidelity to Jesus and to his radical option for mission.
In His own time, God reached out to the poor goatherds of Scala in a new way, through St. Alphonsus, who inspired hope in others especially those living in darkness and without hope. He also edified and inspired hope in his followers, the Redemptorists. Fr. Picx was inspired by St. Alphonsus’ way of acting and living, which is de facto a proof that the things to come are not only a reality that we hope for, but a real presence that we believe in – a real presence that changes our life in the here and now.
The Vat II document, Gaudium et Spes, reminds us that the quest for God is a search to find life in its full expression. When we open our life to God’s real presence within us, we find that we are in touch with a love that is at the very center of Christian life. Such a life is connected with the sufferings and cries of the poor because these are carried in the heart of Jesus, our Savior. That is why Picx was so passionate with justice and peace for people of good will. The love of Jesus propels all life. This love makes all relationships new. It makes us brothers and sisters to one another. As the prophet Isaiah says, “Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is!” (Is 43,19).
Fr. Picx was in touch with that love of Jesus in his heart, his passion, his fire for justice, peace, and mission. In the face of the poor around him he saw Jesus’ face reaching out to him. And it became Jesus himself appealing to the elderly and the youth in the barrios, the prisoners in jail, the poor and destitute. Fr. Picx’s authentic spirituality allowed that love-relationship to break out of the narrow confines of our religious houses and propelled him even to distant shores to proclaim God’s love to the poor, the forgotten and marginalized in the peripheries.
I would like to propose that we continue to pray to our Mother of Perpetual Help, whose life was based on the certainty of hope. For Mary Jesus is truly the philosopher and the shepherd who shows her what life is, and where it is to be found. With Mary let us believe that in Jesus, God reveals himself and gives us a spirit of love, which is the fundamental attitude of every believer. Fr. Picx you radically changed in Jesus and so you could say with St. Paul: “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.” We hope and pray that we, too, can say the same. “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.” Amen.
READ ALSO
Fr. Amado “Picx” Picardal: Missionary of Hope in the footsteps of the Redeemer
IN MEMORIAM: El Amado de Dios by Fr. Edilberto Cepe, CSsR
Bruno’s last view of Fr. Picx