Requiem mass for +Rev. Fr. Boy Daguman, former guest priest of DSPNSDA. Thank you for your service to the Lord’s vineyard. #RIPFrBoy
If hushed tones one must speak of God’s mysterious ways. For the human mind in order to sustain its faith must be fed mysteries, not necessarily because it is a “sucker” for such, but more accurately because they make up a milieu compatible with faith.
As commentary to this, I shall discuss the case of Fr. Ramon “Boy” Daguman. He’s been to our Church these past 8 years more or less and has become what you might familiarly call a “fixture” here.
The day before yesterday, as he was saying mass, he looked very pale to me. I thought at once he must gravely out of sorts. Suggesting that I should take him to the hospital for check-up and the all-important medical care to pre-empt any worsening which his malaise clearly promised to bring to a head. At all costs this should be avoided. But Fr. Boy was adamant not to be taken to hospital, which resolve he was eventually unable to sustain. He was admitted to San Mateo Hospital at 7:30 PM, but he died at 1:30 AM (August 6, 2019), less than six hours later. The matter for wonder in this was that, an hour post mortem, an application for his post as assistant priest or rather guest priest came in request from Fr. Jevin (of NLOP in Industrial Valley Complex, Marikina City) for his fellow Indian Priest from Kenala, India. The sequence of events as this case unfolded show the unmistakable hand of Divine Providence: one has departed, another has arrived. No gap has insinuated itself in the matter of succession, or rather the transition from one state to the other was smooth enough to merit confirmation of Newton’s or was it Spinoza’s? dictum. NATURA VACUUM ABHORRET (Nature abhors a vacium). We might as well have posted whilst Fr. Daguman was yet in hospital: NO VACANCY.
This might look to the shallow observer by whose number the world is overwhelmed as more business-like than commiserative or compassionate. Nonsense. I’m only saying that labouring in the Lord’s vineyard is a 24/7 set up with labour disputes and consequent compromisory arbitration which for the most part is betrayal of the worker by his supposed defender-counsel kept at minimum. In other words: all is well in the Lord’s vineyard and all manner of thing shall be well, keeping us steadfast in faith hopeful of the joyful harvest which Christ’s passion and resurrection promises all of us.
P.S. An epigraph to the foregoing piece I attach, St. Victricius’ words: I inspired the wise with love and peace, I taught it to the teachable, I explained it to the ignorant, I imposed it on the obstinate, insisting on it in season and out of season.
