FILIPINO SAINT OF THE DAY : JANUARY 3 - Roderick Flores, born this day, in 1969. It was around 5:45 p.m. of 18 August 1984 when senior scouts Roderick Flores, Eric Edmund Benedicto and Joseph Victor Giron sensed an imminent danger for junior scouts Glen Magsadia and Noel Briones. Both junior scouts had an attack of cramps while swimming with then Bro. Jose San Juan, now a Salesian missionary priest in Timor, in the waters of Ternate Naval Station in Cavite Province, site of a three-day camp of the boy scouts of Don Bosco Technical College in Mandaluyong City, Philippines. Quickly responding to the situation, Flores and Benedicto swam towards the sinking juniors while Bro. San Juan and Giron moved ashore for a rope. The two seniors reached the juniors but a big wave drifted the group farther into the rough sea. At this point, Flores himself experienced cramps and called on Benedicto who shoved him to the shore. Benedicto turned back to Magsadia who limply hung on Benedicto’s shoulders, sinking both of them. Upon seeing this, Flores, instead of seeking safety of the shore, went back to the rough sea for the two sinking companions. Reaching them, Flores grabbed Magsadia with one hand and felt the whereabouts of Benedicto with the other. Just then, another gigantic wave rushed upon them and when it finally calmed down, Benedicto, Magsadia, and Briones were ashore. A frantic, painful, sacrifice-laden search by his family, Salesians, friends and sympathizers for Roderick’s body ended in the opposite shore of San Juan in Batangas Province on 25 August 1984, exactly one week after that fateful day. The occasion of his death caused so much pain among his family and friends, but it also brought out the best in the educative-pastoral community, attested by Mrs. Enriquetta Benesa, Roderick’s adviser and the first lay principal of the school-“when so many tried to help souring the sea for his body, when we felt we were really one big family, sympathizing with one another because we’ve lost a loved one. It was also an occasion pf pride because Don Bosco has produced a boy-hero.” The four-day wake that followed in the chapel of the 18th century building in Don Bosco-Mandaluyong saw throngs of people coming from all sectors, paying homage to a Bosconian who reached the ultimate expression of love- that of sacrificing one’s life for others. He was laid to rest among some deceased members of the Salesian Family at the so-called “Salesian garden” of the manila Memorial Park in Parañaque on 30 August 1984. How could one who was as normal sand as regular as the next guy his age be so heroic? How could one so young put his life on the line to save another’s? “It was all in character,” attested now Bishop of Alotau-Sideia, Papua New Guinea, Msgr. Francesco Panfilo, who was then Roderick’s rector and friend-confessor since the boy was in grade three. “His heroism was a culmination of numberless acts of generosity he had done to help those in need.” Bishop Panfilo mused: “I can honestly say that, at least during the years of my rectorship, no one can surpass the generosity and the goodness of Roderick Flores.” dbtc.edu.ph/dbtc7/content.aspx?aid=193 santiebeati.it/dettaglio/92311
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 17:56:03 +0000
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