Someone called my attention the other day. She gently pointed out that in all my recent storytelling about our parish’s history, I had left out a vital piece of the puzzle—a pillar that gave true flesh to Fr. Tito’s Theology of Life. She was right. I had spoken at length about the songs, the youth, the farmer-apostoles and the panimbahon, but I had quietly glossed over how we survived the cold, hard realities of daily economic life.
If you look back
at our transition from the old Arancel system to the voluntary Pledge
System, it was never meant to be just a spiritual or administrative reform. It
was an act of survival. But Fr. Tito knew that a pledge on paper could not feed
a family when sickness struck, or buy uniforms when school opened, or purchase
seeds come planting season.
So, out of the
pews of St. Rafael grew something revolutionary: the Bueoligan sa Parokya ni
San Rafael.
The Bueoligan
was our very own parish credit union, born directly out of our local oath—"Rong
pagpas-an ku krus it pag-iegmanghuran". It wasn't a bank. It was a
sanctuary against predatory loan sharks. When Msgr. Pet Frac took the reins, he
refined it even further. He brought in the Grameen solidarity model of
microcredit, weaving it together with the human-scale economic principles of
E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful. Msgr. Pet showed us that economics
didn't have to be cold or distant; at its best, economics is simply love made
tangible in small, manageable doses.
Of course, our
history has never followed a straight line. In a season of interregnum, when
institutional centralization crept back into parish life, the Bueoligan was
quietly cast aside. Yet its spirit endured, refusing to vanish. Years later,
under the pastoral care of Fr. Jarvin Aguelo (2018–2024), that old spark was
discerned anew. He sought to gather the scattered embers, rekindling its
presence. The effort, however, leaned more toward fortifying the Pledge than
advancing the vision of a revived credit union.
I tell you all
this because as I listened to Jose Cardinal Advincula speak on synodality and
hearing Bishop Jojo Villareal ask his haunting question—"Now that we're
here, what now?"—my mind didn't drift to the grand choir singing
majestically or to the sophisticated liturgical vestments of the ministers and
the acolytes.
My mind went back
to the dusty roads of Balete of bygone years. I thought of Fr. Tito riding in Pautwas,
with a seminarian on vacation and a convent boy riding beside him. There was no
grand entourage, no lavish meals expected from poor host families in the
barrios. Pautwas carried a ministry that traveled light, bringing a
priest who smelled like his sheep, ready to listen to a community that didn't
just watch the liturgy, but became its living voice.
That is why I keep
coming back to the prayer Jesus taught us. When we pray “Our Father,” we
are reminded that synodality isn’t a corporate strategy; it is family life.
Before we are administrators or experts, we are brothers and sisters.
When we pray “Give
us this day our daily bread,” I think of our Apostoles-Farmers bringing
home a bed of Japanese Red Worm to build organic vermiculture plots through dagyaw,
and I think of the Bueoligan shielding a mother from debt. Daily bread was
never something manufactured by algorithms or instant conveniences—it was
received through patient labor and human solidarity.
And when we pray “Lead
us not into temptation,” I realize our greatest danger today isn’t open
hostility to faith. It is the subtle temptation to measure our vitality by
budgets, digital metrics, and grand performances where choirs sing and the pews
stay silent.
Of the recent,
Pope Leo XIV reminds us in Magnifica Humanitas to protect the majestic
dignity of every person from being swallowed by economic utility, our own local
past offers us a clear compass. The legacy of Church workers who have gone into
the great beyond reminds us that the Kingdom of God has always grown from
below—from calloused hands, shared tables, and communities that dare to walk
together.
And so, the
Bueoligan sa Parokya stands as a reminder that solidarity is not an abstraction
but a daily practice. As E.F. Schumacher once wrote in Small is Beautiful:
“What is needed… is the courage and wisdom to make decisions on the basis of
human needs rather than abstract economic calculations.”
This is the heart
of our parish story: something small, yet beautiful—an economy of brotherhood,
a liturgy of daily bread, and a solidarity that makes the Kingdom visible in
Balete’s dusty roads.
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