BROTHER
MIKE: EL
SHADDAI’S MIRACLE TOUCH | PREFACE
Outside
the laws of gravity,
the ultimate truth is that there is no such thing as
impartiality.
The historian, the biographer, and the author of non-fiction, who
thinks
to rise above prejudice, betrays his secret predilections in the choice
of his materials, and the nuances of his adjectives, if not the incline
of his politics or the fold of his religion. And since one’s
knowledge
of another is always incomplete, writing a biography is a precarious
enterprise.
Only a fool would try to compress an adventure of a lifetime into a
hundred
pages of hazardous conclusions – especially in abbreviation of an
account
of the life of an evangelist, whose activities are still producing a
wealth
of materials embarrassing to a biographer, whose work becomes
progressively
out of date, as facts not to be guessed at, becomes known as time
changes
the colors of the portrait that has been painted.
This book might as well be read as “narrative” biography, which
I begin with a profile – a profile of one known to millions as “Brother
Mike”, who, next to the Bible, is revered by prayer-partners of the
El Shaddai Charismatic Renewal Movement (of the Roman Catholic Church
of
the Philippines) as an Agnus Dei, who has burst upon the scene
as
the greatest multiplier of Christ the world has seen since the
crucifixion.
For Mathew, Mark, Luke and John combined, were never known to have
regularly
gathered a crowd of 5,000 for regular weekly healings sessions, as the
inventory of 12 basketfuls of fish and loaves of bread leftovers is a
mathematical
account of those who could have been fed if there were more at the
Sermon
of the Mount. Contrast this to the sight of multitudes of half to
a full million which crowd Metro Manila’s Luneta Park to tie up traffic
into knots ten city blocks away, just to listen to Brother Mike preach
and pray for God’s blessings that washes the saints and sinners alike
among
the crowd. By this preponderance of numbers, the foregoing
acknowledgment
of one man’s virtue is a compelling tribute which a couple of
millions
of card-carrying El Shaddai prayer-partners today would attest
to,
without doubt nor hesitation.
Yet, as I set out to write about Mariano Zuniega Velarde, I did so with
the intention of uncovering a hoax. The masses of Filipino
society,
I thought, had to be warned against a hazard – a bewitching demagoguery
that ought to be exposed. Such was the design which I
pursued.
I surmised the astute evangelist guilty of many errors, which beguiled
as many unwary souls. A year of El Shaddai prayer-meetings,
however,
bore no fruit to confirm my suspicions. Thus, my thesis of a
breathtaking
fakery crumbled. Instead of a demagogue, the figure of a prophet
emerged.
Acclaimed historian of the 20th century, Dr. Arnold Tonybee, whose
survey
of over a dozen civilizations compresses 5,000 years of recorded human
activity, in A Study of History suggests that the decline of
religion
could be traced to the error of universal churches (among them, the
Roman
Catholic Church); abandonment of its original role and function in
society:“...to
enable human beings to enter into direct personal relation with a
trans-human
presence in and behind and beyond the Universe, instead of being
introduced
to this ultimate spiritual reality only indirectly, through the medium
of civilization or of the pre-civilizational society that is the
individual’s
social setting” – meaning the mistake of interfacing church rituals
with direct worship, as oil on water, which only denied the
individual's
personal access to God.
Esoteric liturgy only mystified the faithful, instead of priming him
with
the experience of relating earthly life with a divine presence, as well
as stimulating his vision of God’s reality beyond the universe. It was
this fascinating relationship which King David of the Genesis
demonstrated
when he sang, hopped, and danced from the plains of his annointment to
the top of a mount to praise and thank God for the power he had been
blessed
just before he was enthroned as king of Israel and Judah.
So,
everywhere in the open-air settings of the El Shaddai prayer-meetings,
Brother Mike recreates King David from the mold of the crowd, when on
his
bidding, they sing, hop, and dance as King David did, to thank God for
the graces they have been blessed.
By that mystique, Tonybee seems to suggest that Brother Mike is
correcting
a mistake and returning the Church to the grandeur of its original role
and the nobility of its primary function in society. And it has
been
said that a revolution never goes backward. And not a few see
that
the forward movement of the El Shaddai prayer-meetings which has grown
by leaps and bounds, not in arithmetical, but in geometrical,
progression,
marks Brother Mike as the ablest proliferator of religion worldwide as
attest the fact that in the world today, no one can draw a multitude of
half to a full million, rain or shine, the whole year round, every
Saturday
of the week.
Bishop Fulton Sheen, a doctor of divinity and medic to stricken souls,
in the Life of Christ, wrote: “...to preach to people to do
good
is meaningless without the power to do good.” And
talking
about the Philippines of 1999, religion has been divided into two
worlds:
between all those who preach to people to do good; and Brother
Mike.
He preaches to people to do good but gives them the power to do good as
well. In a pillow-soft voice, he dramatizes the hunger of the
individual
for self-esteem, that could only come as a gift from God. He bids
them then to raise their arms to the heavens like a forest of trees
lifting
its branches to pray, that their own outstretched hands be blessed with
the power to heal themselves, neighbors, friends, and enemies.
Still, Brother Mike’s festive prayer-meetings have been dismissed by
some
as “shallow” showmanship. But that derogation bounces off against
a great wall of faith. Prayer-partners see Brother Mike’s
mystique
as a way of painting a vision to make it simple. Another way of
saying
that, indeed, Brother Mike is a prophet. Only prophets can paint
a vision to make it simple, as Joseph of Egypt simplified the Pharaoh’s
dreams – (seven fat and sleek cows devoured by seven other thin and
gaunt
ones; and seven healthy heads of grain swallowed up by seven other
heads,
lean and scorched by the wind – to be no more than seven years of
plenty
and seven years of famine) – to make the Pharaoh wise. Ant the
perception
is fast growing that Brother Mike is simplifying the rituals of the
Church
to make the wise, simple, and the simple, wise.
BRO.
MARIANO R. LOGARTA
June
1999
Makati
City |