Passionate wives
published 6 Oct 2007
Josephine, Lulie, Herminia and Cynthia are friends. Jo works at the Community Coordination Bureau of the Office of the Ombudsman. Lulie, a retired US Embassy employee, is an entrepreneur. Minia used to be a teacher; she is now a homemaker. Cynthia, a pharmacist by training, runs the family’s real estate leasing and administration business. Jo and Lulie are married; Mina and Cynthia, widows.
They have one more thing in common: their devotion to the works of St. Josemaria Escriva, whose fifth canonization anniversary is celebrated today. All are active in the Opus Dei movement with Cynthia as a supernumerary and the remaining three as cooperators (non- members who are nonetheless active). Each of these women has a compelling story to tell.
Miracle baby
Sometime in 2002, Jo Mojica and her husband started wishing they could have another baby. They felt it would not be good for their daughter to be an only child. At the Manila Cathedral, Jo asked then-Blessed Josemaria to intercede for her, as she had been having difficulty conceiving. Lo and behold, the following month, her doctor told her she was pregnant.
The surprises didn’t end there. Jo had a very sensitive pregnancy. She experienced threatened abortion. Her cervix dilated as early as her second month and she was thus required to be on complete bed rest. While resting in the hospital, on Oct. 6, 2002, she watched the canonization of the saint. She closed her eyes and uttered a fervent prayer. She asked St. Josemaria to please save her baby. The following day, she had an ultrasound and learned that her cervix had closed. That child, Joelle Marie Tashe, is now a brilliant, happy four-year-old. These miracles are corroborated by her medical records.
Through gusty winds
Lulie did not imagine that her friendship with her co-parents at St. Theresa’s College could transform her life. Initially, they got together to while the time away waiting for their daughters’ classes to end, exchange a few anecdotes and recipes, swap reviewers and ideas for the girls’ school projects. Lulie had at this time just availed herself of an early retirement package from her embassy job and felt as though she must re-orient her life.
Lulie and her husband had gone the rounds of other Catholic groups, hoping their involvement in such would make them closer as a couple and improve their spiritual lives. They had thus far been disappointed, because most organizations felt like social clubs.
Eventually, Lulie relented to a co-parent’s incessant invitations to recollections and retreats. Then she felt she became more at home in her faith. Opus Dei encouraged her to shun the noise outside and seek comfort in contemplation. She even found herself able to hear mass seven days a week, a feat she had never thought possible.
It seemed, however, that just when Lulie had committed to be a cooperator in Opus Dei, and embraced a more active prayer life, it was then that her personal problems became worse. She began to have trouble with some relatives, her children, and especially her husband. She had a delicate pregnancy at age 42.
Lulie would normally have given up. She was amazed though at her resilience and optimism in the face of these tests.
She was able to have her baby through normal delivery. She and her husband are still together, holding on despite the many harsh tests their marriage has weathered. Lulie believes she can take on anything, as she continues to “offer [her] brokenness to the Lord… for His grace is sufficient.”
Oasis
Minia’s husband was a seaman. Their three children grew up used to not having him around most of the time. His homecoming, however, was always a cause for celebration. In one such vacation, the family noticed he was thin, weak and sickly. Consultations with the doctor revealed he had leukemia.
Minia was given two more years to be with her beloved spouse. She nursed him through his many treatments, all of which proved futile. It broke her heart to see him everyday weaker than he was the day before. She saw how he, seized with a desire to stay alive, raged against and fought his cancer.
She thought she had been sufficiently prepared for his passing. When he finally did, in August 2002, Minia was nevertheless devastated. She was used to being alone, but nothing prepared her for her husband being actually gone. She says she is lucky that the companionship offered by her children and her friends sustained her.
One such friend, Cynthia, knew how it was to grieve the loss of a husband. Several years earlier, she herself had grieved her husband’s death, too, a sudden one from heart attack, when their only daughter was just a toddler. This left her in shock and denial for many months. She used to wait for her daughter’s classes to finish, staying in her car or sitting on a church pew, wallowing in her grief. For a time, she did this every single day.
One day she decided to isolate herself and went to the Blessed Sacrament in Santo Domingo church. In silence, not thinking of anything nor consciously conversing with God, she started to feel immense peace.
This was the beginning of her journey. Her refusal to accept her husband’s passing was gradually replaced by a passive acceptance. Her confusion as to which step to take next was taken away through three-day retreats that cleared her mind and enabled her to discern how she wanted to live the rest of her life.
Perceptions
Opus Dei is perceived as an elitist club with very rigid rules. These four women insist that’s not a fair appraisal of what they do. They claim that their organization is actually largely misunderstood. Contrary to the common notion, its members and cooperators alike merely strive to sanctify every little piece of work, every minute detail of their lives. Love of God is emphasized, and everything else, even Opus Dei as an organization, pales in comparison.
Jo, Lulie, Minia and Cynthia say they recognize it can’t be that way for everybody. While some are content with occasional prayers, once-a-week services and generally just being good persons, they decide to up the ante a bit, so to speak. They are inspired by the words and the works of their leader, St. Josemaria. They feel they are called to do this, hence they respond passionately. And it is not fair to judge them or put them in boxes, in the same manner that nobody is entitled to judge anybody who doesn’t feel he has the vocation.
It’s a free world. That’s not being elitist; that’s being real.