"Mama Mary" by katha8 on FanStory.com

"Mama Mary" by katha8 on FanStory.com

Sharing with you my Faith through this poem. My Catholic Faith was made strong through my parents and relative's help. When I was studying at Rafael Palma Elementary, at Vito Cruz, San Andres, Manila, my parents would send me to our town, at Hermosa, Bataan for the summer vacation. It was the town where I was raised up to 5 years old before we moved to Manila when my grandfather lost in the election. My father served the province as my grandfather's municipal secretary while my mother augmented the income by sewing dresses for customers within our home. Sometimes, she would have extra seamstresses to help her.

When ever my parents would sent me to the province for my summer vacation, the family of Lolo Andres, Lola Puring would welcome me in their house and would feed me with the best of food to the point of denying their children. They would also let me sleep in their finest beds. Their daughter Ofelia or Pe, would accompany me in the room and was my playmate and would accompany me to the church, especially in offering flowers to the image of the Virgin Mary, that emanates silver rays from her hands. Every afternoon of May, we would collect flowers from the plants of the neighbors and would line up in the altar offering our gifts to the virgin. We were guided by adult devotees to the faith especially the nieces of Lola Puring. At the end of May, children and grown-ups are given the opportunity to relive the passion of Jesus and search for His Cross by Constantine The Great and Santa Helena through the Santacruzan I was given an opportunity to participate as a sagala as Veronica carrying her cloth, or veil that showed the image of the face of Jesus Christ, after wiping the face of the suffering Christ, carrying the cross on His way to Calvary. I was wearing a red gown provided for me by the organizers for that occasion.The blood that covered the face of Christ was imprinted on her veil that she used to ease His suffering. It is still kept as a relic to witness the authenticity of the history of the Bible, which I am just understanding now through the help of the Claretians, especially Father Bernardo Blanco, a Spanish priest, and as revealed through meditations and hearing the sermons after the gospel readings in the daily mass at the Santa Raphaela House of Spirituality of the ACI Sisters.

When I was 28 years old, my parents and my in-laws especially my groom, made it possible for us to get married at our hometown in Hermosa, Bataan, in the Parish of San Pedro Martyr, where I was baptized and confirmed. And you know what, in my heart, I was marrying Jesus. My ninang or sponsor in my baptism Tia Lourdes, was around, and some of our guests was able to sleep in the house of my ninang in confirmation, Mrs. Rivera. After 25 years, we celebrated the silver anniversary of our wedding at Nativity church in Cubao, Quezon City, and in my heart I was marrying God the Father. The Holy Spirit descends on me every time I attend Holy Mass usually at the Santa Rafaela Maria chapel, at their house of spirituality, that makes me able to accept the teachings of Christ by accepting his body in the form of the host, to my physical self to make it clean as a temple of the Holy Spirit and live under God's protection and love. Truly I am in the hands of God according to his Plan, and am trying to spread Christ's teachings of caring, salvation, and love, through the help of the Virgin Mary.