When I Die

By Mario Gregorio Masangkay
Baranggay Kagawad, Sta. Cruz, Ibajay, Aklan

 

I was born into a Roman Catholic household, and was raised as a nominal Roman Catholic. I was Christened and given confirmation without my knowledge. Christening and confirmation were all the sacrament I ever received. In my teens, I almost became a Seventh-day Adventist. I balked when I discovered that the SDA spirit of prophecy was dead; and my SDA spiritual mentor, a deaconess, married her eldest brother’s youngest son (24 years her junior), and sang “when the roll is called up yonder I’ll be there” each time especially bright lightning flashes crisscross the night sky.

I feared she’d guide me back to Cain’s time when inbreeding was okay, and everything around was fossil. I couldn’t imagine how I’d cook and eat fossil chicken with fossil “kamarunggay”. And so, without a mentor, I strayed religiously. I came to believe that I am a living soul; that there are two Gods, Father and Son; that the millennium will be spent on this earth; that no man will go or be brought to heaven; that a soul could be burned to ashes; that capital punishment and divorce are Christian; that the rupture is a figment of the imagination; that Jesus Christ was crucified and killed on Wednesday; that babies who die rot in their graves and don’t turn into cherubs; that the spirit of prophecy means the intent or essence of the prophecies in the Bible; that burnt offerings and sacrifices will be offered during the millennium and in the new earth; that purgatory is a big-money earner; that the 2300 “days” of Daniel 8:44 has not yet begun; that there are three classes of angels, all of them spirit, sexless, immortal, and the lowest ranked, wingless; that the speaking in tongues means speaking a foreign language; that healings in healing and miracle crusades are fakes; that one should observe the kashrut.

I excommunicated myself from the Roman Catholic Church at the start of the 1986 EDSA Revolution, and didn’t join any church since. I didn’t accept Jesus Christ as my “own personal savior” – I was not greedy or selfish enough to deprive others of a savior. One could call me irreligious, and he would be closest to the truth.

So, if I die tonight, what would happen? I would be a stiff cadaver in three hours. The embalmer would have difficulties in embalming dead me; because my skin is so sunburned it feels like crocodile hide, good enough to make shields out of, for use in the Trojan War. Some of my colleagues in the “sangguniang barangay” (ex-barrio council) would express sorrow and sympathy with their sour-smelling mouths, then rejoice in their hearts, for a thorny and rusty barb would have been removed from their dilapidated throats. Believing that I have a soul, they’d probably consign it to hell with the most urgent and most fervent requiescat in pace, lest I stir a whirlwind in the devil’s domain, and he, in frustration, should send me back to them.

The wake would be the most silent and forlorn. Not one would know what prayers to recite. Sure, there are prayers for the soul of the dead (kaluoyi ang kalag sa purgatoryo), but there is none for a dead soul. The funeral would be a worry. No Roman Catholic priest would say mass for the soul of dead me, for there can’t be a mass for dead soul me. Besides, my unconfessed sins could pile up to way beyond the church ceiling; and during the mass, those sins might topple over and crush the priest. A Protestant minister would also refuse to conduct the service, because I wasn’t properly baptized, didn’t speak in tongues, nor danced and praised the Lord with them.

And where would dead me be buried? In a hole in the ground, of course. Caves are very scarce in Ibajay, and they are for tourist (to look at - -hushmariosafe- -not for burial.