OF TREES AND FOREST
Faith is something that is deeply personal but also communal. The religion and spirituality that we embrace is our personal relationship with God. What we believe in is rooted in our experience as a person. We are first exposed to it through our family, specifically our parents. They introduce us to our first prayer, our first mass, and more importantly, they teach us the concept of what is right and wrong.
My mother was Roman Catholic but was not dogmatic. Yes, we were taught the basic teachings of the Church but what I remembered most from my mother and father were the values that up to this day have guided me in life. My parents taught us the value of respecting each other and other people. They taught us honesty, kindness, and sharing. My father told us to be kind to one another and that whatever we have achieved in life we should be able to share our blessings to others, especially those in need.
Our journey in faith continues in school. As a child, I spent my day in three places essentially—our home, the market where I helped my mother sell shrimps and fish, and school. For my elementary education, that school was the Holy Child Catholic School in Tondo, Manila.
I was enrolled at the Tondo Parochial School, which was the original name of this school which received me with open arms after I had to drop out from another school because I had to work at an early age. The school was one of two parochial schools set up in Tondo by the Catholic Church for poor residents there. It was founded by Jesuit priests in 1945, immediately following World War II. It moved from its original location to Plaza Hernandez just beside the Santo Niño Church where the Tondo Orphanage used to stand.
The Tondo Parochial School was very serious in giving excellent education to underprivileged kids by providing the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to make them responsible, productive, and “conscienticized” citizens. In the classrooms of this school, under the tutelage of my mentors, I learned not just my ABCs and my multiplication tables, but also the value of self-respect, of loving and giving to others, of what it means to be human in the community of God. It reinforced many of the values my mother and father taught me. It galvanized in me the virtue to self-reliance, while at the same time realizing that I was a part of something bigger.
As a kid, you never realize how you are being transformed by the people around you. You study, play, and go home. Or, in my case, study, work, and sleep. But hindsight has a way of clarifying things. When I think back, I see markers in my past where I learned stuff, or made important decisions. I have had a lot of markers in my life and my experience at the Tondo Parochial School is something that I will always cherish especially as it pertained to strengthening my faith.
But while deeply personal, faith is also communal. First of all, the Church taught us that faith must be lived and shared with others. Secondly, we are social animals, and we live in a social network of friends and even strangers. It is impossible to keep faith exclusively personal. In the same vein, communities and social groups are essentially held together by communal faith.
We try to live by these precepts in our lives and in the work that we do. In Provence, a 350-hectare masterplanned community in Malolos, Bulacan, we donated 1.2 hectares of prime land, along with a cash gift, to the Roman Catholic Church in the Diocese of Malolos. The donation is for the construction of the future La Sainte Famille Church and a school within the estate.
It has always been my belief that communities flourish when faith and education are at the center, and our business is happy to help create spaces that will foster both for generations to come.
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