The Faces of Two Women, and the Hands of a Third

The Prayer for today’s Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist begins: “Father, You chose Luke the Evangelist to reveal by preaching and writing the mystery of Your love for the poor.” With this prayer in mind, I thought it was fitting that the photo above was featured in today’s online issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Indeed, the faces of these two women succinctly captures the dilemma of our world: even as our culture invites us to the worship of the beautiful, the sexy, and the trendy, Christ’s Gospel always reminds us of our call and our mission to minister to the lowly and the poor.

This Feast of the Evangelist is also special for me because today would have been my grandmother’s 88th birthday. Lola (literally, grandma in Tagalog), as all her grandchildren and great grandchildren called her, was Elpidia Antonio Soriano Vda. de Zamora. Widowed at 36 with four children in her care and an unborn child in her womb, this unlettered woman knew what it was like to be poor yet gave to her children the one treasure she possessed: her Catholic faith. I don’t remember Lola as a great and glamorous dame; rather, she was the silent old lady kneeling in front of the image of the Mater Dolorosa, her back hunched by years of washing other people’s laundry, her hands worn and calloused as much by water and detergent as they were by the beads of her rosary.

I remember my Lola’s hands and find in them a model for the Priesthood. Indeed, should not the priest’s hands be as much worn and calloused by his prayers as much as they should be by his labor for God’s poor? Even as I find myself falling short of this ideal, this balanced dedication for both ora and labora, I also am confident that Lola continues to ask the Mother of our Joys and our Sorrows to teach me what it means to be a lowly servant magnifying God, our Lord and Lover of the poor. At the end of my days I pray that I might see the faces of these two women—my Lola and our Blessed Mother—and that they might lead me by their worn and calloused hands into the welcoming arms of Him who has so richly loved us in our poverty.