IN-DEPTH
FILIPINO AMERICANS
FR. MARTY SILVA, S.J.: Helping souls to thrive
“The aim and end of this Society is, by traveling through the various regions of the world at the order of the [Pope] or of the superior of the Society itself, to preach, hear confessions, and use all the other means it can…to help souls. What might ‘helping souls’ include? Apparently, whatever made sense to a self-aware Jesuit and his superiors, from expeditionary treks to mapmaking to astronomical research. Instead of specifying businesses his Jesuits should pursue, Loyola only warned them to avoid occupations that could tie them down or limit strategic flexibility...by explicitly putting themselves at the Pope’s disposal, they made it impossible to turn back and therefore enforced flexibility. Like it or not, when the Pope came knocking they were committed to go.” – Chris Lowney, “Heroic Leadership,” 2003. It was Good Friday, 2016, when I joined the Stations of the Cross, and watched the Passion of Christ enacted during the Gospel at Mass at Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood. I was in line to do confessions, when a Caucasian parishioner spoke of the kindness of Filipinos.
“They are very sweet,” the parishioner said. “This is my home parish with mostly Latinos and Filipinos. When they bring food, they invite us to join in with them.” “Yes, that is our fiesta culture, we want everyone in the town included,” I told her. When the Mass started, only a handful populated the pews, and later, over 200 attended the service. Two priests (one was Fr. Marty Silva) heard confessions and two lines formed with a dozen each, with no let up till the end of the service. As Fr. Silva said to me, “You suffered a great loss, that of your mother. You need to be kind and to be encouraging of your own self,” I felt lighter, as if a mountain inside me had vaporized. GOD CHOOSES AND PREPARES HIS SERVANTS WELL Fr. Silva completed his Economics degree from the University of the Philippines in 1983. After graduating, he immigrated to the United States. He spent 18 years in corporate finance in the telecommunications and banking industries, and then, an MBA from Pepperdine University in 1995. But, God had a different plan for him. After decades of working, he started to question: “Is there something more to life than this?” The turning point came when he completed the Spiritual Exercises, a 30-day retreat started by St. Ignatius of Loyola. Though its format and content are written in a book, it is described by Lowney as, “not a book to be read: [because] one achieves self-awareness not by reading how someone else achieved it but [within the retreat] through focused reflection on one’s own experience.” Toward the end of the retreat, Fr. Silva started to better appreciate Jesuit mottos such as “finding God in all things,” and “man living for others,” much like what Lowney described, “‘men of the exercises,’ implicitly celebrating the camaraderie born of their common spiritual boot camp but more crucially signaling their allegiance to shared vision and values.” Lowney continues, “The Exercises were designed to help individuals choose or confirm a life direction…allows Jesuit managers to tap a well-spring of energy and goodwill, as well as remind recruits of their unifying value system…actions to be
done, not rules to be read or studied.” THE EFFECT GOT FR. SILVA CURIOUS ABOUT JESUITS’ LIVES. “I saw how the pattern of Ignatius’ life had parallels with mine. Furthermore, I felt that the Society’s spirituality, philosophy and “way of proceeding,” resonated with the way I looked at my own life,” Fr. Silva shared. He started to realize how what he had done was part of the larger picture, part of God’s design for his life. “It became more than work and money, it became about doing good in the world,” Fr. Silva said. In 2005, he entered the California Province novitiate in Culver City, the same province to which his cousin, Fr. Joaquin Martinez, S.J. belongs. Fr. Silva also had two uncles who were Philippine Province Jesuits. As part of his novitiate experience, he was assigned to a home for the developmentally disabled in Seattle, where he “physically cared and spent recreational time with them.” Shortly after, he did what is termed as a “long experiment,” working in campus ministry at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Newman Center in Honolulu, according to the Summer 2015 edition of Mission Magazine. TAKE AND RECEIVE O LORD “I never really liked the idea that we are Catholics only on Sundays. God has to be found everywhere, and an essential element of Ignatian spirituality is to see God’s actions in everyday living, then we offer ourselves wholeheartedly to God in order to follow his will,” he said. This is in the spirit of the Suscipe prayer “Take and Receive” of St. Ignatius, and then, he recited the words to me: “Take Lord, and receive, all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To You, O Lord, I return it. All is Yours, dispose of it wholly according to Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace, for this is enough for me.” “When you are in that place of humility, God’s grace works.” Fr. Silva continued, “As a result of aspiring to this ideal, through the Society I lived more consistently with who I felt that I am…with the right values, WRITER PROSY ABARQUEZ-DELACRUZ, J.D.
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