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There lived in Manila in the year 1613 a certain Doña Ana de Vera, one of the principal ladies of the country at that time and a woman of great piety. This Doña Ana and her son, who was an official in the Noble Ciudad, were from Madrid. At the Court and Villa they had enjoyed the patronage of Don Juan de Silva, in whose retinue - on de Silva's appointment as Governor-General - they had come to the Philippines.

Señor Vera had tried to dissuade his mother from coming along - she was fifty and rather fragile of health - but Doña Ana had mockingly feared he would degenerate into a savage in 3 days if she were not there to keep house for him. So, across two oceans and half the world she had come, one of the many spirited women who, hard on the heels of the conquistadores, sallied forth with kettle and skillet, with fan and mantilla, devoutly resolved that even in the wilderness the rites of the altar and of the hearth should be performed with as much elegance as at the Court itself.

Now there was stationed in Manila at that time a wild young soldier named Francisco López, who was as evil as Doña Ana was good. This Francisco was a lost soul, his every action being so public a scandal even decent people knew who he was and shunned him like a leper.

Riding around the city in her carruaje, Doña Ana often saw him in the streets: swaggering insolently if sober, reeling and howling if drunk - but his swart bearded face of a Lucifer never struck her with terror. Alone, perhaps, in all the City, she knew another side of this man's character.

Being the Camarera of the Santo Rosario - the Virgin whose shrine at the Dominicans the Dutch pirates were soon to make famous - Doña Ana was often at the Virgin's chapel when it was deserted, and at such times she always found the notorious Francisco there, kneeling in an obscure corner, his head bowed and a rosary dangling from his clasped hands. She never disturbed him, he never disturbed her. She was Spanish enough not to be shocked at this commingling in a single nature of vice and piety. He was Christian enough not to be shocked that she was not shocked. So, without a word or a look between them, the virtuous old woman and the wicked young man became each other's friend. While she moved about her tasks at the altar, her face and hands gleaming like fine gold against the rich black of her skirts and mantilla, he knelt in his corner, red-shirted and black-bearded, praying, and sometimes, weeping quietly.

From the blue dusk of her altar, the Santo Rosario, radiant and majestic and Motherly, smiled as lovingly on the wanton as on the saint.





One day Doña Ana came down from the altar to find Francisco waiting for her. Keeping a respectful distance away, he requested and was given permission to speak. Whereupon he asked if the señora would give her his blessing? When she looked astonished, he smiled gaily and explained that he was going away. The troops were being sent to Ternate. They were leaving from Cavite immediately and from Cavite would take ship. Ternate was, as the señora knew, a perpetual battlefield. Many who went there never returned. But he was glad to go, said Francisco, with a toss of his tawny curls.

He did not regret to leave the city. No doubt the city would feel equally unregretful! Alas, he had no friend to wish him well on his journey.

And his mother, that saintly woman, was on the other side of the world, in Malaga. Would the señora take his mother's place and equip him with her blessing? It was not good that a man, however sinful, should leave on such a perilous expedition with no one to bless him, said Francisco, smiling doggedly.

But Doña Ana, whom these words had moved to tears, approached and took him by the hand and led him to the altar. And pointing to the Sacrament and to the Virgin, she reminded him that no man was so sinful he could not, by a sincere contrition, make God his friend and the Virgin his mother.

And what were human solicitudes compared with those of heaven?

But if he wanted her blessing, said Doña Ana, she would gladly give to him and would pray for him while he was gone and he must not think of himself friendless on earth for she was his friend.

So, he knelt down and she blessed him - and as she looked at his bowed head the sudden knowledge filled her that this man would soon die. Long after he was gone she still knelt before the altar, praying the Virgin to recall her promise that no one devoted to her and her rosary would suffer a death so sudden as to make impossible a last act of sincere contrition.

***********

It was now October, the solemn fiesta of the Santo Rosario has just ended and Doña Ana, was in a quandary. As Camarera, she had the signal honour of being in charge of the vestments of the Virgin and only this morning, as she was about to change Virgin's mantle, she noticed a wondrous thing. The gold sandals of the Niño Jesús as well as the Virgen's manto were lined with cake mud and were wet. Doña Ana was puzzled. The throne upon which the image stood on its pedestal was high enough and there was no mud or water anywhere around. She scrutinized the pieces and with increasing amazement noticed that even the Child's gold sandals had some quantity of sand and were worn out.




Doña Ana de Vera inspects mud stained hem of the Virgin.


Informed of the incident, the Father Commissary of the Holy Office and the Prior of the Convent of Santo Domingo decided that the vestments and the sandals be kept away from the eyes of the curious until an explanation of the strange occurrence could be logically given.

The year was 1613. It was October.


******************


On the 7th of October, 1613, Don Juan de Silva, Governor General of the Philippines, had ordered two galleons and some minor escorting boats to carry some reinforcements to the Spanish garrisons at Ternate. In one of the galleons - the Guadalupe - Francisco López formed part of the crew.

Somehow everyone on board this ship had manage to dodge Francisco's company. Was he not an utterly immoral man? True, he had one redeeming feature: strangely enough, he daily prayed the Rosary. And yet....

The unleashed fury of a monsoon typhoon off Mindoro wrought havoc upon the fleet, sinking all the vessels but one. Only a fraction of the crew managed to reach the shore safely. A few men had saved themselves by swimming ashore, Francisco among them and some other Spaniards, but the rest were recently converted natives - soon took to the hills. They were pursued by the Spanish officers, but overpowering these, the former made good their esape. Of those left behind, it seems Francisco alone was spared death, if seriously wounded.

So, the poor Francisco lay on the flooded ground, unable to move; all his bones being broken and his whole body crushed to a pulp; the brute rain washing away the blood as fast as he shed it. And what with the cold, the rain, the exhaustion, and the loss of blood; he knew he must die in an instant.

And straightaway he fell to dwelling, not on the salvation of his soul, but on the things of earth his sense had enjoyed and would never enjoy again: thinking with anguish of food and drink and warm women, and of his home in Malaga... And was it not a monstrous injustice (thought Francisco) that, while the sun shone in those places and men ate and drank and were merry, he should be dying here in the mud, wracked by pain and cold, his bones broken and no part of his flesh ubruised? And he begun to pity himself, lamenting himself as the most ill-used creature on earth...

Francisco feeling he was near his end, called on the Virgin of the Rosary. He felt he had been faithful to her in his fashion, saying her beads daily and saluting her at the angelic hours. She had always seemed near and clear to him; he had known her all his life. He had only to call on her and she would surely come and save him, thought Francisco - whereupon he began praying her name aloud.

Straightaway he was shaken to the bone by a terrific blast of lightning. The earth reeled and his senses blurred. Through stunned eyes he saw towering above him a woman robed in sunlight and crowned with the stars. But her face blazed with so fearful an anger she seemed the wrath of the storm made manifest. Seven swords plunged their cold steel in her heart but her left hand clutched a sword of fire. Silent she gazed at him, stern and beautiful - and he shook and sweated and shut his eyes against her, whimpering that he knew her not, that he had never known her, that it was not on her he had called. When he dared to look again She was gone and the rain had ceased but the night was gathering fast all about him and the chilly wind whistled through the ruins of his bones.

And now did fear grip him in earnest: despair enhanced his torments. He was lost. He could almost hear the devils chuckling. So, he had known the Virgin all his life? But she had appeared before him and it seemed he did not know her after all and he realized how vast the mysteries were he had taken so lightly. He had felt too safe, too sure. He had dared to take Heaven for granted! And meanwhile, he had followed his appetites wherever they had led him. And they had led him far indeed; they had lost him utterly...

Here at the ends of the earth, alone under the skies, he had been stripped naked to the bone and cracked open to the marrow,that the act of dying, at least, he might do honestly: knowing himself evil; knowing himself doomed to hell; and knowing the judgment just.

A great weariness possessed him. If he was damned, then damned he was! He felt no bitterness, only a desire to die quickly and perish in hell. And so exhaused was he in flesh and spirit he was sure he would die instantly if he but held his breath. But though he held it, though he relaxed his will, though he surrendered himself completely to dying - he could not die. Something seemed to stop him, to hold him back.

He was not alone. The night was alive with presences. And with the clairvoyance of the dying, he knew what they were: people out in the world were praying for him. The night hummed with their voices, he could almost see their lips moving. Girls in school, old women by the wayside, priests at the altar, farmers in the field, and families gathered round the hearth - were praying, were praying for him, and for all sinners, now, and at the hour of their death.

From the towns and cities of Spain, from Europe and from Africa, from the new worlds in the West and from the old worlds in the East - came the voices: choiring and clamoring and imploring God to forgive him his trespasses as they forgave those who trespassed against them.

And the poor Francisco, though desiring intensely to die, found himself unable to do so, for the whole world seemed to have gathered around him, in choir upon choir of soft voices; determined to prevent him from dying.

And how could he ever have thought himself alone, wondered Francisco. He thought that he had set himself against the world, against the human community of which he was part but had always rejoiced to play the outlaw and outside of which he now desired to place himself eternally, by dying unrepentant, by dying in despair - the last gesture of utter egoism.

And the world labored to save him now as it had labored to save him all his life. Monks were rising in the cold night to worship - because he had worshipped so little. They respected silence - because he had babbled so much. They enslaved their flesh - because he had been enslaved by his. Nuns went hungry (to atone for his greed) and were chaste (to atone for his lust) and humiliated themselves (to atone for his pride). For such is human solidarity that where any of us lack others may supply and the virtue of a single member nourishes the entire body.

And remembering how he had never done anyone good but rather had corrupted many of his infection, he marveled that the world should still care to save him, that its prayers should be clamorous about him, soaring in the night to the stars and to the very skies, knocking at Heaven itself on his behalf until he quaked to think how precious was a human soul and how shamefully he had wasted his own, and how full the world was of lovers, of God's lovers.His heart ached with love for them; his heart ached and glowed so warmly with love, contrition flamed aflower in it and, crying out in a loud voice, he prayed God to have mercy on him and to forgive him his sins.

In that instant the voices vanished, and looking down the still shore were ragged palms leaned wearily on each other, their long boles black against the moonlit sky and the shattered glass of the sea, he saw coming towards him a woman with a child. His heart leapt. He knew her at once: he had known her all his life. How many times had he sought solace at her shrine in Manila! Up the shore she hurried, he robes trailing in the mud and radiating the moonlight. And now she had arrived at his side; now she was kneeling down in the mud; and now the two holy faces were bending over him, warm and fragrant and luminous. But what poignant sorrow was in those lovely faces! What a world of grief! And knowing himself the cause, he burned with shame, he ached with anguish.




In the year 1613, La Gran Señora de Filipinas stepped on mud...


Every sin he have ever committed seemed to become a fresh wound in his body and each wound separately pained, agonized, suffered death-pangs, died, grew bloated, putrified, and sprouted worms - until his whole body seemed rotted and matted with worms.

But with each separate pain, with each separate agony and death, the sorrow diminished in the hovering faces and he seemed to perceive new beauties in them, and not only perceived but understood, and not only those faces but the moon and the stars above them, and the leaning palms also, and the sea and the prone earth, and why he was lying there - the two faces growing even more beautiful and still more beautiful, as each throb of pain seemed to multiply his sight and his senses, and not only more beautiful but nearer, clearer, more profoundly, more completely understood... so in the space of one spellbound moment, as he passed from pain to greater pain, and from rapture to greater rapture, each pain intensifying the rapture and each rapture intensifying the pain, and always with so increased a radiance of the understanding that he seemed every moment to tremble a the verge of total wisdom, the two faces that hovered nearer as he beheld them ever clearer seemed at last to pass into his being, to become a part of himself, to be growing inside him, filling his mind with a beauty so absolute, so vibrant, it throbbed aloud, it thundered aloud into music, flooding his mind with music...

A human voice shocked his rapt ears self-conscious, whereupon the music perished; earth and sky stopped and were silent; and the two faces that now loomed immense, seeming to fill the whole sky, became unbearably radiant; dazzled and blurred with radiance; and vanished, glorious, in a keen heavenly blaze of light that, with infinite dismay, he saw swiftly fading into the mere dull glow of the sun; seeing also - though without astonishment, without full consciousness, as if drugged - that it was night no longer but broad daylight and that the ground around him was not muddy but hot and dry and the air above murmorous and that the mere dim light of the sun was pouring down from the noon sky upon a dim sea out there, where a vague ship leaned at anchor, and upon the dim shore down there, where vague figures had jumped off the boat and were stumbling among the rocks and palm trees, cupping (now definite) hands to their mouths to shout halloo there, halloo there.

For the anchored ship - the Nuestra Señora de Guía - the only vessel that had not been sunk with the rest of the fleet, had to turn its course, nonetheless due to strong winds met at Kalabite point. Don Pedro de Almazán, the commander, had sent ashore some soldiers to see if the island be inhabited and food available, but they now found only corpses utterly decayed among the rocks and murmurous with flies. But one of the soldiers, a certain Gonzalo Salgado, amazed to hear his name being called, sought out the voice and discovered, with great horror, what seemed another heap of ripe carrion save that its eyes moved and sounds rattled in its throat.

But its body was bloated, its face horibly mutilated, and the entire carcass, from head to foot, a single enormous, grayly gaping, hoty odorous wound, swarming with flies and oozing pus and a foul oil and so thickly matted with worms you could scoop them out by the fistful, as the moist flesh seemed to have been scooped out indeed, having fallen away from the bones in so many places the skeleton already glittered triumphant through the last decayed rags of mortality. But this pile of rot moved its eyes and opened its mouth, calling Salgado by name; proclaiming itself Francisco López; and said "All praise be to God! At length I see a Christian!" and asking did Salgado not know him.

And Salgado, indeed, had known Francisco in Manila; both of them had sailed for Ternate on the same day but on different ships; and how (asked Salgado) had Francisco come to this mishap? And when Francisco related how his ship had been wrecked on the same day it set forth, Salgado cried out in amazement. For the troops (said he) had sailed on the 7th day of October but it was now the 20th of the month, wherefore Francisco had lain on this shore for 13 days, mortally wounded and without food or drink, and at the mercy of the elements. It seemed incredible, it seemed a miracle that he lived!

On hearing which, Francisco fell silent, and wonder, like a faint echo of what wondrous music he had heard, swelled in him. But he told Salgado how those 13 days seemed but a moment to him for the Holy Child and His Mother had come and smiled at him, and their faces were so beautiful he seemed to have gazed too briefly, only for a moment but behold, the moment had lasted 13 days!

Then he begged Salgado to go and fetch a priest from the ship that he might properly confess himself and be absolved, since for this reason had the Holy Persons sustained him alive these many days, but now he felt his hour upon him.




Francisco López receives Extreme Unction - Confession & Holy Annointing


Salgado, then, rushed for help. The boat surgeon nodded his head in utter disappointment. There was nothing he could do. So a Franciscan priest, Fr. Pedro de los Cobos, OFM, who was among his rescuers, was fetched (and with him a curious concourse), he confessed and was shriven, and turning to the soldiers about him he begged them to forgive him the former scandal of his example,urging them also not to despair if life be painful. For a lifetime (said he) was barely enough to educate us to the beauties of this world, which are but finite - and to educate us for God, whose beauty is infinite: could a mere lifetime, however long and however ardous, be deemed sufficient?

And they, not understanding him, stared at each other, wondering was this Francisco? But though he spoke to them, he seemed but dimly aware of them; seemed to be gathered away already; lifting his eyes from their faces to stare, calm and unblinking, at the sun; dying thus indeed: his lips parted, as if the last breath were a cry of wonder, and his eyes arrested, his eyes fixed in wild rapture at the noon sun; the priest crouched at his side and intoning the litany; the soldiers grouped around in awed attitudes - the palms ascending, the sea shimmering, the ship termulous behind and below them - their armos and helmets golden and bristling with lightning as the sun clashed hotly with the proud steel, clashing as hotly...

***********



The Canonical Investigation of the Witnesses by the Commission


The public clamour could not be stifled, "A miracle, a miracle," they all averred.

His Grace, Monsignor Miguel García Serrano, Archbishop of Manila, fearful of the danger of superstition and scandal, appointed a regular commission to hold public hearings.

Some ten witnesses swore to the truth of their testimonies - enlightening and unimpeachable - that established definitely the miraculous character of the event.

And its fame was made all the more secure when Manileños, upon careful computation, discovered that this judicially declared event had taken place at the very date that puzzled Doña Ana de Vera, in 1613, had noticed a "wondrous thing" - "the Holy Child's gold sandals and the Virgin's manto were lined with caked mud and were wet." - as if the Mother and Son had been walking on a coast.

The verdict was reached in 1621.

Indeed, the Santo Rosario, the Queen and Mother of the Philippines, had left her throne in Santo Domingo in Intramuros to keep the penitent Francisco López alive for 13 days in a faraway shore in Mindoro!