“THIS IS such a difficult time, it’s very painful…I always thought that a mother should not bury her son. But … we cannot change things, we just have to accept.”
In grief Dr. Leticia Yap finally welcomed home her son Jerome Gerald, dug from the rubbles of Haiti. Her immense pain and depth of sorrow an image of Mater Dolorosa. That Inquirer picture of her by the box bearing the remains of her son an evocation of the Pieta.
“A bishop friend told me that only God the Father knows how I feel because He lost His only son in a violent and tragic way…After he said that, I have been trying to convince myself not to feel sad anymore … but it’s not easy.”
The bishop be forgiven: for forgetting the Blessed Mother, her heart pierced by seven swords of sorrow.
No word would be enough to assuage the pain and sorrow of Doctora Yap over the loss of her Jerome.
All we can offer her is the consolation that Jerome’s holocaust is that which is most pleasing to God: Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13).
“I think he lived a good life.” Doctora Yap said of her son. A life rich in the fullness of the Christian virtues of faith, of hope, of love Jerome lived, serving in humanitarian missions in the very heartlands of human deprivations: Liberia, Kosovo and Haiti.
Jerome’s death is that of the righteous, that which is celebrated in the Book of Wisdom (3:1-9) thus:
But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and the torment of death shall not touch them.
In the eyes of the unwise they seemed to have died,
and their departure was taken for misery,
and their going away from us, for utter destruction:
but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of men they suffered torments,
their hope is full of immortality.
Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them. And found them worthy of himself;
As gold in the furnace he hath proved them,
and as a victim of a holocaust he hath received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them.
The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds.
They will govern nations and rule over peoples,
and their Lord will reign over them forever.
They that trust in him will understand truth,
and they that are faithful will abide with him in love,
for grace and mercy are upon his holy ones.
and he watches over his elect.*
With human sorrow, we weep with Doctora Yap. With spiritual joy, we rejoice. Jerome is in the bosom of the Lord.
In grief Dr. Leticia Yap finally welcomed home her son Jerome Gerald, dug from the rubbles of Haiti. Her immense pain and depth of sorrow an image of Mater Dolorosa. That Inquirer picture of her by the box bearing the remains of her son an evocation of the Pieta.
“A bishop friend told me that only God the Father knows how I feel because He lost His only son in a violent and tragic way…After he said that, I have been trying to convince myself not to feel sad anymore … but it’s not easy.”
The bishop be forgiven: for forgetting the Blessed Mother, her heart pierced by seven swords of sorrow.
No word would be enough to assuage the pain and sorrow of Doctora Yap over the loss of her Jerome.
All we can offer her is the consolation that Jerome’s holocaust is that which is most pleasing to God: Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13).
“I think he lived a good life.” Doctora Yap said of her son. A life rich in the fullness of the Christian virtues of faith, of hope, of love Jerome lived, serving in humanitarian missions in the very heartlands of human deprivations: Liberia, Kosovo and Haiti.
Jerome’s death is that of the righteous, that which is celebrated in the Book of Wisdom (3:1-9) thus:
But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and the torment of death shall not touch them.
In the eyes of the unwise they seemed to have died,
and their departure was taken for misery,
and their going away from us, for utter destruction:
but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of men they suffered torments,
their hope is full of immortality.
Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them. And found them worthy of himself;
As gold in the furnace he hath proved them,
and as a victim of a holocaust he hath received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them.
The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds.
They will govern nations and rule over peoples,
and their Lord will reign over them forever.
They that trust in him will understand truth,
and they that are faithful will abide with him in love,
for grace and mercy are upon his holy ones.
and he watches over his elect.*
With human sorrow, we weep with Doctora Yap. With spiritual joy, we rejoice. Jerome is in the bosom of the Lord.
