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Inspirational Story

Sister Christine Tan:
Friend of the Poor

By  Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

As tempest rages around her, the Good Shepherd nun and former PCSO board member remains serene

"IN PRAYER, when you go deep into the silence, you could actually feel God. You and God are merged as one. In that utter stillness you could feel the light, and the fire, and the tight embrace . . . and the tenderness  enfolding you. Then you become strong like a bull. You go straight like an arrow." 

Sr. Mary Christine Tan, 69, a nun of the Religious of the Good Shepherd (RGS) for 44 years who lives in the slums of Malate, speaks about her intimate prayer experience in hushed tones. She does not often share this but when she does, her words fall clear and sparkling. And they are few.

As the tempest rages around her and she is being demolished for speaking out, she remains serene. People come in droves and stand in the sun to support her, letters pour in. This adds to her joy, knowing that Filipinos are not stupid. But it is from the silence that strength comes. In prayer, she says, God's voice was clear and comforting. "I will never abandon you." 

When her short letter (written at 2 a.m.) landed in newspapers in March and started a forest fire, she was not very surprised at where that got her. Her message stressed only two points: One, her unceremonious removal from the board of the government-run Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) after her 20-month stint and despite her efforts to help what she called "the truly poor." Two, what she perceived to be the disproportionate allocation of funds, much of which went to the projects of the First Family, with little left for the regular beneficiaries.

Her clincher: "National elections are coming and I have not learned to steal." Her words stung and stuck. The media would not let go. It's been a month, but the PCSO issue continues to play alongside other damning developments that threaten the shaking Joseph "Erap" Estrada presidency.

Because of her track record, people took her charges seriously. Sr. Christine is no stranger to tempests and pests. She is not an unknown just come out of the woods. She had been a fearless leader, having led the Association of Major Religious Superiors of Women of the Philippines (AMRSWP) during the dark days of Marcos rule, a nationalist and human rights advocate, a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission. A friend of the poor, the wounded.

Former President Corazon C. Aquino recommended the nun to be in the drafting of what was to be the soul of the republic. "She possessed the qualities I was looking for: integrity, patriotism, selflessness and dedication," Mrs. Aquino told the INQUIRER recently. "I think Sr. Christine is a great woman, she has clearly shown by example how we should love God and our neighbor."

Sr. Christine admits that her immersion among the poor for the past 20 years has made all the difference in her life. It is among the forgotten and the lost that she has found the true essence  of her religious vocation. 

'Mengie'

She was christened Amanda and nicknamed Mengie, the fifth of seven children of Judge Bienvenido Tan, Sr. and Salome Limgenco. The Tan brood lived in a big house in  Malate, nor far from St. Scholastica's College, where all six Tan girls went to school.

When she was in her teens Mengie was stricken with a lung ailment that kept her in bed for long periods. She was very bright but she had to quit school. "Everything was black," she looks back. She lay in bed listening to the strains of "Rustle of Spring" and "Rhapsody in Blue" wafting from the school. Her mother fed her special diets and imported supplements that tasted yucky. Mother's love poured all over her.

Mengie bounced back, pursued a bachelor's degree and majored in mathematics. The bout with illness made her brave, she says now. "She was the quiet one," recalls an older sister. "But she was resolute."

Hierarchy thrived in the Tan household. The two eldest, Consuelo (a biochemist) and Bienvenido Jr. (lawyer, businessman and later ambassador) were the disciplinarians.

Then came a succession of five girls: the late Tessie Suarez (businesswoman and educator), Caridad Manga (guidance counselor), Amanda (Sr. Christine), Leticia Sevilla (a practising lawyer in the U.S.) and Angeles Alora (dean of the UST College of Medicine). The five lived in the shadow of their bright eldest sister Consuelo and stuck together through thick and thin. They were a team. "There was no way for me to stick out," Sr. Christine recalls.

The call

The call to the religious life did not come like a bolt from the blue. "I nurtured it," Sr. Christine confides, and it grew and ripened in her until it was time to hearken and heed.

"I had a math teacher in high school named Sr. Fe Javier, a Benedictine whom I admired," she recalls. "She was very good and kind and I wanted to be like her." Sr. Fe, now in her 80s, Mengie as "sincere and a very good girl." 

Later, it was the late Sr. Liguori del Rosario, OSB, that she turned to for matters about "my interior life." "She was a visionary, an intellectual, she had great love," Sr. Christine says of the mentor she loved so much.

But Mengie was not going to be a Benedictine. "I could not see myself working in schools for the rich. I wanted to be with the poor." The Benedictines had yet to immerse themselves deeply among the very poor like they do now. The Good Shepherd Sisters were then known for their work among so-called "moral deviants," the lost sheep. Mengie wanted that.

On one of her visits, she saw in the convent parlor a huge picture of the Good Shepherd bending toward the abyss to save an injured person. "When I saw that, I told myself, ah, this is it." 

Being frail, Mengie was made to wait for a couple of years. Her mother told her, "Finish college or you'll become their muchacha." When she got her degree, Mengie knocked on the convent door once again. One spunky Irish nun tested her. "Go to Hong Kong," she prodded the aspirant, "and find the Good Shepherd Sisters near the railway." Clueless and alone, Mengie left for Hong Kong and looked for the nuns.

In 1954 the 23-year-old aspirant left for the novitiate in Los Angeles. Sr. Christine remembers, "I had my savings and visa ready. I gave away my beautiful clothes and shoes to the poor.

Mama cried when she found my closet empty. Papa was sure I'd be back in one week. Letty offered her savings for my return trip. My students at the Young Ladies' Christian Association (YLAC) were sobbing, Mama was weeping. At the airport I knelt before Papa and asked for his blessing. He took out his cigar  and with it made the sign of the cross on my forehead. If not for the grace of God I wouldn't have made those few steps to the plane."

The Filipino novices had their religious formation in the U.S. at that time. Since 1912, when the American and Irish nuns arrived in the country, until the 1960s, the Good Shepherd nuns in the Philippines were under the L.A. Province.

The congregation, presently one of the largest in the world, was started by St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier in the early 1800s in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The nuns make the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, plus a fourth one the vow of zeal. The congregation has a contemplative branch. The mother house is in Angers, France. There are 17 Good Shepherd houses in the Philippines.

Life in the U.S. novitiate was a honeymoon, but Mengie noticed it was not "poor enough." Apple pie, ice cream and candy bars galore. They picked apricots and roses as huge as fists. The Filipinos outnumbered the Americans then, but the culture was Western. "We were taught to eat lanzones with a fork," she laughs. And she sensed racism. "They thought we were dumb".

We'd be drilled on how to say 'bat' and 'cat.' Some of us had written dissertations in English and we were better than the teacher. But that was minor, not enough to make me leave." 

One had to die to the world and leave memories behind, the ego had to be tamed, humility was the greatest virtue. Once at recreation she blurted out that she had made that Hong Kong trip. "Boy, I really got it." Down she went to kiss the floor.

Vows and Vatican II

After the six-month postulancy, Mengie was clothed as a novice and given the name Sr. Mary of Saint Christine. (Names were simplified later.) Her parents flew to the U.S. for the occasion. After she made her first vows in 1956 Mengie came back to the Philippines. Her first assignment was Baguio, where she taught math in the boarding school for troubled girls. After that she was called back to the U.S. for an assignment. She made her final vows there in 1959 with her sisters attending. 

Sr. Christine came back when the Second Vatican Council in Rome was in progress. It was the 1960s, and changes in the religious life were encouraged. It was springtime in the Catholic Church, thanks to Pope John XXIII. Ecumenism and aggiornamento were in, Latin was out. It was a time for reform and renewal. Nuns changed their long religious garb into simpler ones.

It was at that time that her mother died. "I was not allowed to go home and see her even though I knew the rules had changed." Sr. Christine has not forgotten how it felt.

She remained in the background but not a few had already spotted her as someone special. She was a gifted soul. "No," she protests. "At that time we simply went from dot to dot." She was put in charge of vocations and later of the junior sisters. She learned,  searched, absorbed. She got exposed to Asian spirituality, which she would later pursue and plunge herself into.

The young sisters in her care looked up to her. "She really loved us and built us up," Sr. Rosemary Bacaltos, a councilor in the congregation, remembers. "She made us grow, she was open."

But we had no inkling then what she would become. Now she continues to disturb us when necessary, she is a dissenting voice."

The martial law years

In 1970, Sr. Christine Tan was elected Superior of the Philippine Province. She was only 39 years old, the first Filipina and the youngest in the entire order to hold the position. The geographical province at that time included the Philippines' dozen convents plus in Asia and the Pacific.

"The first thing I did was zero in on our vow of poverty. We had to live simply. Then I just had to open as many doors as I could." Reforms were swift, radical. There was no time to lose. She literally threw out what were unnecessary.

"We had to be ready, the drums of martial law were rolling in the distance," she says. The iron fist of the Marcos dictatorship wrecked and ruled. The churches became havens for those on the run.

Sr. Christine was elected chair of the AMRSWP, a thorn on Marcos' side. She gives credit to the brave women (and men) she worked with, among them, Mother Angela Ansaldo of the Religious of the Assumption and Sr. Blaise Lupo of Maryknoll.

At that time Franciscan Sr. Mariani Dimaranan was thrown in jail, several priests were tortured, many activists were killed or disappeared forever. Political figures like Jose W. Diokno and Ninoy Aquino, journalists and academicians, farmers and workers were thrown behind bars. The country was one gaping wound. During those dark times, the militant religious orders outshone the timid church hierarchy.

From that era, Sr. Christine has many stories of suspense. And hilarious ones too. Not so funny was when she, as AMRSWP chair, was summoned to Rome by an aging cardinal in charge of religious orders to explain her activities. He threatened her with the big E. Sr. Christine remembers well their repartee.

One activist-on-the-run then who is grateful to Sr. Christine is Karen Tañada, granddaughter of the great Lorenzo Tañada. While the military was hunting her down Karen hid among the Good Shepherd contemplatives. Recently, Karen wrote a moving account of that experience. "Until now," she wrote of Sr., "I am in awe of her."

Ninoy and Cory Aquino (Sr. Christine's school mate), Geny (of ABS-CBN) and Chita Lopez were her friends. During the years that Ninoy and Geny were in jail, Sr. Christine gave her support, but not only to them but to the unknown ones, as well. Recalls former President Aquino: "Ninoy and I appreciated very much her strong and courageous stand against the dictatorship. She made us feel that she would always be there for us. She would attend Ninoy's trial before the military commission. She was also very good to our children and they all liked her and felt they could open up to her."

Asian breeze

During her term as Provincial, Sr. Christine opened the convent for the Asian breeze to flow in and the sisters to dig into their Asian soul. She drew from zen and Hindu influences. She brought in noted names in the field: Fr. Anthony de Mello, Fr. Oshida, Sr. To Thi Ahn, Sr. Noelle Pinto.

She recalls: "One of them used to tell me that it's hard to teach the religious to pray because their heads are full of theology.  The poor touch God straightaway."

In 1976 Sr. Christine's term as Provincial ended. She had broken ground.

She went abroad to visit Asian centers of spirituality, carrying with her the cries of a country in travail. She plunged into silence. She listened to Asian voices and pondered in her heart the words of Jesus, the Buddha, Gandhi, Tagore.

"I will deck thee with trophies, garlands of my defeat... my life will burst its bonds in exceeding pain...I know the hundred petals of a lotus will not remain closed forever and the secret recess of its honey will be bared. From the blue sky an eye shall gaze upon me and summon me in silence. Nothing will be left for me, nothing whatever."

To the slums

When she came back, she was assigned to Welcome House in Paco for three years. After that off she went with a handful of sisters to blaze a new trail among the urban poor. The place: the slums of Leveriza in Malate. Her co-pioneers: Srs. Zenaida Pineda, Annunciata Salamatin, Mary Vincent Borromeo and Evelyn Coronel. They rented a small place at the end of an alley.

They all slept in one room and on the floor. (They still do now, but in a better place.) Plumbing was bad, the roof leaked. They were not among the first to give up the comforts of traditional convent life, though. Many sisters before them had already opted to live among marginalized groups. 

It's been 20 years since that time. The sisters' presence has made an impact on the place through the Alay Kapwa Christian Community, an organization to which many poor belong.  Alay Kapwa livelihood programs and cooperatives have multiplied and expanded as far as Cavite, Quezon and Cebu have improved, homes have been built, people with big hearts have been drawn in to take part. " We have to have an impact, make a difference."

Many learned the meaning of Jesus, of alay sa kapwa. She hears a woman say "Pagbibigay sa kapwa na walang hinihintay na kapalit" (Giving to others without expecting anything in return) and she swoons. Someone says "Pagpapasalamat sa hamon" (Thanks for the challenge), and she can't believe her ears. "Hamon," Sr. Christine repeats, "not biyaya" (blessings). For her that kind of awakening means more than the torrent of words of support that the urban poor have showered on her these days.

A solid core

In 1998, when she agreed to sit in the PCSO board and took her oath before Erap, people wondered why, when she did not vote for this president. Sr. Christine wanted to help.

Well, things at the government's charity agency did not turn out as expected, and the rest is history. Senate investigations have eaten into her time, but it's okay, she says. People's consciousness have been raised. She just does not relish the media attention, not when a TV crew barges into the sisters' private abode.

Speak she does. Recently she gave a moving talk at a forum for the religious organized by the AMRSWP. "Sr. Christine has come full circle," a nun said. "She led us to fight the dictatorship. Now she is back." 

Harvard-trained theologian and dean Sr. Amelia Vasquez, RSCJ, of her friend thus: "She is like a rock, an arrow going straight. There is a core of silence inside her, a solid core that does not easily crumble. Her reading of Jesus is sound. Nakuha niya." She calls her a searcher.

Sr. Christine exudes a strong presence, and people sometimes tend to step back. "She's really affectionate but not mushy," Sr. Amelia adds, "and she listens at a very deep level." Many are easily drawn to her, are fiercely loyal to her. When she senses that, watch her pull away. She does not like to be fussed over. She shows she cares but not in a touch-y, feel-y way.

The short, warm notes from her are gems. And she has a gift for words. (Her personal pieces on the late Sen. Jose Diokno and Geny Lopez published in this magazine were very moving.) 

She is transformed when she is around children. A great storyteller, she seems to have a secret language with them. When chided that she's over-doting, she protests. "I ask a child, 'Ano ang almusal mo? ' (What did you have for breakfast?) 'Kanin po.' (Rice) 'Ano ang nasa ibabaw?' (What was on top?)  'Asukal po.' (Sugar)." Her heart breaks into small pieces.

She sometimes takes the children to Luneta to play. "Once I asked them what it was they wanted to buy _ "'yung gustung-gusto ninyo." (Something you really, really want.) A small voice said: "Eraser po." She was stunned. 

Like a candle

"As a nun," she says, "one of the greatest sacrifices I had to make was giving up having children of my own, not a husband." Chastity, she explains, means giving up one's life, using it for others, "like a candle that burns itself out." The vow of poverty, she stresses, is also about time. "Every minute must be used  well and deliberately. It's not so much having six pins or seven pins. It's being for the other rather than for the ego. God must consume me so much that I just have to consume others. That is religious life."

What makes her angry? "When the rice is burned." Greatest shortcoming: "Impatience." Over what? "Stupidity." When she's up to here with the PSCO brouhaha, what does she  do? "I watch a movie." She laughs. Something she has learned from the poor: “Pagkakasiyahin." (Making things enough for everyone.)

Her idols: Diokno, Tañada, Golda Meir, Gandhi, Edith Stein, the Jewish intellectual who became a Carmelite nun and died in the gas chamber. A favorite book: the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt. She loves Rachmaninoff. 

What's a day like? "Usually we wake up at 4:30 a.m., do meditation together. Sometimes the neighbors chant with us.  We finish breakfast at about 7:30 a.m. Then we are running, meetings. There's a fire, someone dies, gets saksak (stabbed) or goes crazy. We rarely have suicides. We had one, he was a drug addict."

She does not think their lifestyle is severe. Sleeping on the hard floor is good for the back, she shrugs. And the pollution? We're all getting sick but we're comfortable. What's bad is the drunkenness here. The men drink late into the night. That is severe. Sometimes I even give them food."

Prayer and the poor

But she salutes the women who are strong. "The men have no staying power, tamad (lazy). They join Alay Kapwa and then drop out. At first we tried to help everybody but we created parasites. The hardworking are helped, the tamad are left to die, completely."

Generous individuals including her brother, Ambassador Benny Tan, present chair of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation and a veteran of social development projects, have poured in help. Says Benny of his sister: "She is very focused."

At their recent Jubilee Assembly, the Good Shepherd Sisters paid tribute to Sr. Christine for breaking ground during "the angry '70s", and bringing out "new wineskins for new wine." She is amused when reminded of it, then rattles off a few things about fidelity to the call. "Just do it," she blurts out. She loves her congregation, yes, but not in a sentimental way, and is grateful for the opportunities to be holy and be with the poor.

What in her life, you ask, would she consider the knife that cut very deep into her heart? Long silence. "This attitude of the Church," she answers, "of those above." Is that personal? "Yes, how they treated me, how little they understood. But I have put that all behind me." Pause. "A long time ago."

It's a hard but happy life in the slums where the Good Shepherd nuns (Srs. Zeny, Mary Vincent and Christine) and the Alay Kapwa have grown roots. Work never ends. It is only prayer that sustains.

It is in prayer and the poor, Sr. Christine says, that she has found the pearl of great price. For her, even the Holy Mass has taken on a deeper meaning. "Wow," she gushes, "when you hear, 'Do this in remembrance of me' - isn't that something?" Encountering God is a passionate experience, violent, tender, adds, "We have to be like God to the poor."

She beams. "I've never been so happy in my life. Here I have found the God that I have not known before. Every day is magic."