Thursday, December 13, 2007

FIESTAS & BIRTHDAYS

TODAY, DECEMBER 13, IS the feast day of Saint Lucy (Santa Lucia), who was martyred for the cause of her faith and who is the patron saint of our little neighborhood here in Cebu City, the Philippines. She also happens to be the patron saint of all those who suffer from blindness and those who are suffering from different eye ailments.

Now let me tell you a story about my late grandfather, Atty. Gervasio Lavilles. At the turn of the 20th century when little Basyo was still five years old he suffered from blindness borne out of complications from the contraction of measles. It so happened that his mother, Sebastiana, was a devout Roman Catholic and prayed her special intentions for the speedy recovery of Basyo to Jesus through the intercession of St. Lucy.

She was doing the novena prayers for that purpose and on the ninth day of her novena she heard her little Basyo inside their room gleefully calling her mother to come inside and to watch a beautiful bird fluttering about inside the room. Together with relatives they decided to investigate Basyo's object of interest.

True, indeed! There was a beautiful bird that was rare in their locality of Lambunao, Iloilo and was fluttering about in the room until it flew out of an open window. But, wonder of wonders, little Basyo could see again!

In honor of St. Lucy, our neighborhood decided to erect a chapel in 1978 and celebrate her feast every December 13th of every year.
Tonight we will be having guests and we have prepared some special food.

Tomorrow, December 14, will be the 12th birthday of my youngest son, Cherokee. We decided to celebrate his birthday in advance today to coincide with the neighborhood fiesta. As we were eating breakfast today at 6:45 AM, two full rainbows appeared in the southwestern sky. Seeing rainbows in their full arch are rare nowadays, especially, if they are a pair!


May God bless us all!



Document done in OpenOffice.org Writer 2.2, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.

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