31/05/2024
๐๐๐๐ | Obispo Maximo Tomas A. Millamena is known as the Centennial Obispo Maximo for leading the Iglesia Filipina Independiente in her centenary celebrations on August 3, 2002.
Here is his homily from the Solemn Service at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila on August 2, for the opening event of the centennial celebrations.
SERVING THE PEOPLE OF GOD,
CELEBRATING OUR BIRTHRIGHT
We are blessed, for our eyes have seen the hundred years of the Holy Iglesia Filipina Independiente. We wonder at the paucity of words to express the joy pouring out from our hearts. Our spirits are singing and shouting โREJOICE!'
Today, we offer to the Triune God our sweetest adoration in worship and prayer as we commence to celebrate with immense jubilation a centenary of love, life, and liberation. The Spirit of God pours upon us today His wonderful presence and power, bringing us together from different parts of the country, to lead us in renewing our covenant with God as His people.
I invite you then, my beloved sisters and brothers, to remember the wonderful works wrought by God in the midst of our people a hundred years before this moment we celebrate.
Yes, it was a hundred years ago today, on August 2, 1902, when the workers in the confederation of labor organizations known as the Union Obrera Democratica, the first labor union to appear in the history of the labor movement in the Philippines, were gathered by the Spirit of God in a poor corner of Manila to seek justice for the works of their hands. They raised their clenched fists against the sacrilegious covenant established by the local feudal industry and the capitalist system of production. The day after, August 3, 1902, the Union Obrera Democratica continued their protest at Centro del Bellas Artes, where it proclaimed the birth of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente.
The proclamation congregated the revolutionary forces, religious independents, nationalists, trade unionists, and socialists into the Iglesia Filipina Independiente. Her birth signaled the parturition of a class-based, socially involved, and politically oriented indigenous church and a manifestation of the resolute desire of the Filipino people for social, political, and religious independence. From that moment of birth, the Iglesia Filipina Independiente joined the national democratic pilgrimage of the people of our land towards self-determination and self-creation.
Today and tomorrow, brothers and sisters, we shall celebrate the proclamation of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, again with great joy and jubilation in our hearts.
We will celebrate our hundred years of faithful adherence to the historical heritage entrusted to our hands by the people of our land. We dared to drink from the cup of the revolution, affirming the hope of our people for a country that enjoys its independence, is proud of its identity, and upholds its integrity. We will celebrate our birth, which is interwoven with every twist and turn of our peopleโs aspiration to become a free nation of free people, as a Church of national independence, integrity, and identity.
We will celebrate a hundred years of spirituality of service and solidarity to our people who were marginalized and made poor by systems and structures that nurture oppression. God has called us to become the incarnation of Christ to our people who are fettered for hundreds of years to colonial and feudal bo***ge. We carry in our struggle the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ, and we preach to our people that only in Jesus, our Lord and Liberator, can we find our liberation.
We will celebrate a hundred years of doing theology, a theology that prophesies rather than philosophizes. What we have is a theology that leads us to confront the evils of social injustice and inequality, a theology revealed through participation in our peopleโs struggle for social and spiritual emancipation, a theology that seeks to transform social structures according to the demands and designs of the people.
We will celebrate a hundred years of mission for God and Country. In this, we are hurt by suffering but never broken, scarred by the struggle but never yielded. Yes, we dared to declare we are for God and Country โ PRO DEO ET PATRIA โ and we will never depart from this birthright!
But we are here not only to cherish the days that have passed but also to face the challenges of the days to come! We are called by God to vigorously continue and carry on the ministry of serving the people in the new century. We are bound by our prophetic pledge to continue raising our voice against those who possess power but oppress the poor of our land. Professing and proclaiming faith in Jesus, we continue to affirm our ministry of serving the people in their concrete human and historical situations.
Before our eyes, we see how the poor peasants in the country are more and more being uprooted from the land they till to join the ranks of landless agricultural workers. We see how fertile lands are landscaped to become golf courses and commercial complexes, and while some are reserved for cultivation, it is for the planting of cash-crops and cut-flowers, not for food. Our hearts agonize over the growing number of landless peasants who are driven off to the capitalist agribusiness production and locked in feudal relations.
Our eyes have seen the specter of multinational companies exploiting the workers through contractual, piece-rate, part-time work, and flexible labor schemes. Our souls bleed for these workers who receive lower wages and fewer benefits, are deprived of security of tenure, and can hardly assert their trade union rights. We have seen how the number of contractual workers is constantly increasing with retrenchment and job reduction schemes; and of late, buyouts, mergers, and bargain-basement sales of ailing firms have also resulted in the significant loss of jobs for our people. The blind adherence of the government to the evils of liberalization and deregulation left our economy vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by giant transnational corporations and international banks. With the economy skidding to a halt, it is the peasants and the workers who are being pinned and dragged beneath the wheels.
The Spirit of God is telling us that land and labor are life for many of our people; and we uphold the struggle of the peasants and workers for genuine land reform, national industrialization, and against imperialist globalization.
Before our eyes, we see how people working for the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the land and who stand by the side of the poor are hastily condemned as political enemies of the state. The abduction and detention of many civilians of dissenting political opinions and those who express opposition to the governmentโs social and economic policies create a nightmarish situation. The harassment, inhuman torture, and brutal killing of mass and peasant leaders, labor organizers, and numbers of innocent civilians in both urban and rural areas are shameful disclosures of the political reality of human rights violations and political repressions plaguing the country.
Our eyes have seen how the pouring out of US troops on our shores desecrates our national sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is most disheartening to see how the leaders of our people are idolatrously beholden to the military might of an imperialist power, sacrificing the laws of the land on the high altar of imperialism and letting the dignity of their own people be trampled underfoot by its arrogance and be devoured in the interest of its giant monopoly corporations and banks.
The Spirit of God is beckoning us amidst the status quoโs elitism and situation of fascism to be peacemakers, inciting and inspiring us to work for peace that is based on justice.
Before our eyes, we see the coming of an epoch where our people are increasingly asserting their role in social transformation. The peasants are carrying the torch of agrarian revolution in the countryside; the workers are militantly advancing the socialist conversion of the capitalist mode of production; the young people, students, semi-proletariat, professionals, public servants, and church people are marching in the frontline of the crusade against imperialism and its apparatuses.
We, the sons and daughters of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, drawing from the wellsprings of our historical heritage and moved by the imperative of our faith, shall continue to accompany our people in their exodus for abundant life and liberation.
This is the way we worship God - allowing ourselves to be instruments of the Spirit of God to witness to His life-giving and liberating love.
My beloved brothers and sisters, the roads we have traveled for a hundred years may have been rough. The waters we have sailed for a hundred years may have been stormy. But we never wavered from, nor abandoned, our pastoral and prophetic ministry even during the worst of times. Conflicts and contradictions have not dampened our zeal to undertake the best efforts in fulfilling our missionary tasks, although many times, we confess, our best efforts were not sufficient enough.
Such devotion to the tasks of serving the people, notwithstanding the many obstacles along the way, served as our strong and steady sail that enabled the Iglesia Filipina Independiente to endure the journey towards our first centenary. We are ever grateful for the continuous grace and guidance of God, and to the countless women and men who never hesitate to cast their nets into the deep, willingly walking the tedious and thorny path, and gladly sharing themselves through sufferings and sacrifices so that the Iglesia Filipina Independiente can truly become the Church of our People.
Therefore, come and let us advance the godly and patriotic duty to our people. Proclaim the love of God the Father, our salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to the people journeying towards genuine freedom, independence, and prosperity!
May God bless the Iglesia Filipina Independiente! Long live the Filipino people!
Most Revd Tomas A. Millamena
Obispo Maximo X
August 2, 2002
Quirino Grandstand, Luneta, Manila
