Fr. Madhu & The Agony in the Garden

It's been quite some time since my last entry here. Actually, what stirs me to write here is my confrere who's right down there lying in state. Fr. Frans Madhu was killed last Palm Sunday Barrio Mabongtot, about 4 hours walk from his parish in Lubuagan, Kalinga. He arrived here in the Philippines last Palm Sunday 2005. What a coincidence? He did come full circle in only two years!!! On that fateful afternoon of Palm Sunday 2007, April 1 to be exact, his life was taken away from him sans any motive!!! I heard that comment quite a few times from the confreres who brought his body last Holy Wednesady from his place in Kalinga down here in CKMS for burial come Easter Monday.

One Claretian sister was supposed to have commented yesterday afternoon that her uncle and nephew were murdered last November 2006 by Fr. Madhu's assassin. What has kept that man scot free during these five months? I heard that the police assigned there could not simply do that - for fear that there would be a tribal war? Where's the connect?

What really interests me most is this: Fr. Madhu mentioned about his fears to some confreres - at least 2 of them - and I talked with them about his fears. These fears appeared to be kind of unfounded. Last December, in a conversation with Fr. Alphonse, he mentioned he was afraid for his life. He texted Fr. Alphonse three times after that short talk - once when he was on the bus on his way to Kalinga, another time some two hours later, and a third time upon arriving Kalinga. His text message always carried that line: "Please pray for me..." Wasn't that ominous enough?

Fr. Siervas mentioned that once last January this year Fr. Madhu himself went straight to his room in Urdaneta to tell him about his fear. What that fear was all about he never really got to say apparently. But there was this lingering fear. This sounded to me like Jesus on His Last Thursday experience at the Garden: He agonized at the thought of a violent death. Was it this type of fear that Fr. Madhu experienced? It made me ask this question: What is death then for? What makes us scamper in fear at the thought of death?

Maybe I'll keep these thoughts here for a while. The truth is: there is a need to resolve this killing, or else it may provide fuel for some more serious crisis up there in Kalinga between the tribes in Mabongtot and Lubuagan. That CICM priests and even diocesan priests have been killed there and that their bodies have not been found since then - aren't these sufficient enough to keep the police more courageous to do their jobs! Or else how else are we to be freed from fear? Well, for one, guns aflourish in that place as if there were no gun ban these days! HAAH! Really scary!