Prayer 1: As a Roman Catholic, Praying from Cebu City, Visayas, the Philippines
Oh heavenly Father, dear heavenly Father, I have sinned. I know that I am a human being. Nasayud ko nga ang pagpakasala kabahin sa pagka tawo. But Father, oh heavenly Father, each day I sin and it hurts me.
He who descends from me sins, and he doesn’t take the time to pray and seek repentance, and that hurts me too.
I am praying for my son’s sins. I am praying for my sins that come because he sins and he is my blood, and because he sins I sin as the one who gave him life.
Tomas was a good boy. He never got into trouble. There were arguable signs he was different. Once when he was little a Carmen Soriano song came on the radio, and he danced to it. He used his thighs and flipped his head around like he had long hair. I didn’t think a single thing about it. He was a child. Little children do all sorts of things like running around naked or putting their hands all over their private parts. Otherwise Tomas was like any other boy. He liked Thomas the Tank Engine and those fighting guys from the animes. He didn’t have a lot of friends, but we wanted him to study and to pay more attention to school than making friends. My husband is a very successful and respected doctor in the community, and we were looking forward to Tomas becoming one too.
Tomas doesn’t live with us anymore. It has been over fifteen years since he left us, or perhaps close to seventeen, eighteen. I haven’t done the math. You think it would get easier because it has been years, but every day I miss him. He doesn’t live with us to punish us. He claims he is gay and wants to live with other men, and we would never have let him if he had stayed in Cebu.
It isn’t right to sin and be proud of sinning, the way he does.
That is why I pray, my Lord. Every day I sit down and I pray. You already know this. I love you for your forgiveness and I love you for your charity and I love you for listening. Oh my Lord. You are my one true Lord.
I don’t feel forgiven yet. It’s not you, my Lord. It’s him. He has to seek his own forgiveness. He has to kneel and ask to be saved. I’m sure right now he is putting his lips on the private parts of a man. Tomorrow some man will be wrapping his legs around him, and then another day he will bend down to five or six of them and arouse them at once. He should know that what he is doing is wrong. Every day he should pray and be begging you not to send him to Hell.
It’s like he is doing everything in his power to be sent there. It’s like no matter how much I pray for him to go forward on the right track, he keeps making the wrong decisions.
My sister and I had a talk a few days back. She told me that I should defy the very words I have been taught and learn in my heart that it is acceptable to be gay. She has nothing but the best of intent. I love her for trying, and I forgive her for giving input where it doesn’t belong.
I was fine with what she said when we spoke, but since then I have been angry. It feels like nails are being pressed into my skin each time I talk to you. Who is she to reject our teachings? Has she not read Leviticus? Has she not read Corinthians and Romans? Paul says that effeminates will never inherit the Kingdom of God. Who is she to allow my son to have pleasure in this life, only to be damned in his next?
God, teach me to forgive her. God, teach me to forgive my son too.
I am his mother. I love him more than he loves himself. My son thinks he knows what is best for him. Kana maoy idiocy. He put crayons in his mouth as a boy and thought chemistry was a useless subject in his teens. He’s going to random countries and teaching English. He doesn’t even tell me what countries he’s in.
I know he’s making nonsense for himself. I know he’s getting into a lot of trouble, and he doesn’t want me to know. I know he’s hurting and sad and alone. I don’t need him to tell me. A mother always knows the pain of his son, whether he confesses it or not.
He doesn’t want to come home. He doesn’t want to listen to me.
It’s as much my fault as it is his own that things are like this.
And yes, my sister is right on that front…perhaps if I learned to accept him, he would find a way to come back home.
But to accept him goes against everything I have been taught. I was formed to think in a certain way. And the way in which I was formed is the right way. I listened to my father and mother, and even though we didn’t live with money, we lived with dignity even until my father died and my mother married again. I didn’t seek further education. I got married and fulfilled the duties of my home. I listened to everyone and did everything right.
Why is it then that I feel so unhappy? Why do I feel like I have been deceived?
God, is there something you are trying to tell me?
How do you think I should feel about what my sister has asked?
I ask you time and time again, and you never answer, God. The doorbell has rung. I need to see who is here. I’ll come back to you tomorrow.
Please answer me tomorrow, my Lord. I’m so lost without your guidance.
