Prayer to Mama Mary can help a lot. My trips to Europe and New York happened because of my devotion to the Immaculate Conception. My success surprised my fellow citizens in Roxas City, Capiz.

The Catholic Church celebrated two days ago, on 8 September, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saint Augustine described the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an event of cosmic-spiritual and historic significance, an appropriate prelude to the birth of Jesus Christ.

“She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley,” he said.

The fourth-century bishop, whose theology profoundly shaped the Western church’s understanding of sin and human nature, affirmed that “through the birth, the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.”

My faith in Mama Mary’s power of intercession for my needs and those of my loved ones has been of greatest help, from the time I was born in Batan, Aklan, almost 88 years ago to the present.

According to my mother, I lived because Mama Mary saved me from the fury of a storm during which while holding the Miraculous Medal she prayed for God’s help. Up to now, I wear this medal on my necklace.

The medal has brought me a lot of blessings. The following cosmic or miraculous events are two of them:

Thanks to God, I’m still alive to enjoy a life that is as glorious as it was in 1971 when I was at the peak of my youth at the age of 35 years, 24 years before I married my present wife, Monette. Then I was already strolling on the splendorous boulevards of Paris, France, and other cities of Western Europe under the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) scholarship granted me by the Civil Service Commission after I passed its competitive exam for scholarships on public administration at any college or university of the successful aspirants’ choice.

Of the thousands who took the test from all over the Philippines, only three from the Commission on Audit (CoA) passed. I was one of the three. I chose to enroll at the University of the Philippines.

Luckily, at the time Dr. Raul P. de Guzman, the dean of the UP College of Public Administration and head of the UP Local Government Center, was a member of the IULA Executive Committee. He nominated me for the scholarship and I was accepted by the scholarship board.

The scholarship was life-changing. It brought me to the highly developed countries of Western Europe — France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, England, Switzerland, Portugal and Spain — for almost three months in the company of 20 participants from sixteen countries: Afghanistan, Cyprus, El Salvador, Fiji, Iran, Korea, Laos, Mauritius, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Swaziland, Turkey, Venezuela, Yugoslavia (still undivided), and Zambia.

After learning the way of life of the people in every country that you visit you realize that people are the same. They all react similarly to the kind of environment that surrounds them. What governs the world is the law of good and evil, ugliness and beauty.

They laugh, cry, get excited and greet each other the way we do among our ourselves. The citizens of Rome greet their neighbors in the morning similar to how our people in Quiapo greet their neighbors as they open their windows, with the same Hispanic or Latin intonation and hilarity.

But all that time I remained focused on why I was there. I observed the systems of sanitation, cleanliness and beautification; how efficient the water systems were; how and when garbage and waste were collected; how the local finance and developmental projects were implemented.

Then came 1981 when I went to New York, USA, 14 years before I got married to my present wife.

(To be continued)