Shalom, Fr. Tony!
Homily delivered at his Requiem Mass (15 August 2005)
For Fr. Anthony Raymond Ceresko (1942-2005)
By: Fr. Randolf C. Flores, SVD
Divine Word Seminary, 4120
Fr.
Anthony Raymond Ceresko, OSFS was my
colleague, my mentor, and my dear friend.
Around 11:00 pm of Friday (12 August 2005), I woke up
to read an urgent “text” message in my mobile phone: “Fr. Ceresko is in
critical condition.” From
Later, one of his doctors explained to me the sudden but expected
weakening of Fr. Tony’s heart due to complications of pneumonia, dehydration,
lack of food (he had not taken in food for three days), and renal failure. The medical reports said: “Septic shock,
acute respiratory failure, type I secondary to community acquired pneumonia,
high risk pre-renal asotemia secondary to severe
dehydration, hypertensive athero sclerotic
cardiovascular disease, valvular heart disease.” He
had been ill since Tuesday, and the SVD confreres had to compel him to go to
the hospital, and with only the seminar driver with him, because he preferred to go
alone, he was admitted in the hospital at 11:00 am of Friday.
I think, most of us, right now and in the days to
come, feel a great loss of this great man. Nonetheless we feel grateful to God
for this wonderful gift of life and service, and that gift of wisdom of Fr.
Ceresko. Displayed outside the crypt where he was laid for the wake, are the
books and some of the many scholarly articles he had written. He had published
six books, three of them are reprinted in the
The
works of Fr. Ceresko bear witness to his desire to be, his life’s suffering,
his mission and his hope.
His desire to be—“Salesian simplicity”. This was also
title of the first chapter of his last book, St. Francis de Sales and the
Bible (
In the song of Mary on the solemnity of her assumption
(15 August), it says: “My being proclaims the greatness of the Lord…For he has
looked on the lowliness of his servant….He has filled the hungry with good
things” (Luke 1:46.48.53).
When I was searching in his closet for what he was
going to put on for his wake, his clothes and shoes were all worn out. He had
to wear that pair of worn out shoes because that was the best that he had. The
old chasuble that he wore was his favorite whenever he celebrated the
Eucharist. In fact, he was to preside in the mass on that Thursday and had
reminded the seminarians to prepare that old chasuble. “Why do you have to
worry”, Jesus once said, “about your clothes? Consider the lilies of the field,
they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his splendor has
not clothed like one of these” (Matthew 6:28-29).
The suffering that he endured. In the
second chapter of that recent book, he discussed on “Love and Suffering in the
Old Testament”. Fr. Ceresko’s suffering is shown in the many visits to doctors
here and abroad. To inform others of his
passing away, I had to scan his mobile phone for numbers. There were only like
ten numbers saved and most of those belonged to doctors and hospitals. Two years ago, he was in out of the hospital
due to a viral foot infection that was getting worse and affecting the rest of
his skin. The doctors had suspected a problem in his blood or in his heart. I
saw how he suffered at that time, especially of not being able to walk, because
that was the only “luxurious” recreation he would like to do—walking at least
five kilometers day, rain or shine, where he was. And he could have walked in five years around
9,125 kilometers. The book of the Prophet Isaiah resonates this: “How beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him who brings good news” (Isaiah 52:7)
Inside his locker was a rack full of medicines. The
bag that he had brought in the hospital contained a thick file of his medical
records. With that frail body battling lot of illnesses, some shared but mostly
unshared, we could not believe Fr. Tony was only 62 years old. Posted at door
of his room is this quotation from Saint Francis de Sales: “The same
Everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and
every day of your life. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He
will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then, and put aside
all anxious thoughts.”
His mission. For
him, it was service to God’s Word--in the solitude of books, in the lonely path
of thinking and research, the “loneliness of the just man” as the first Psalm
implies. He had served the church in his
honest quest of the meaning and the truth of the biblical text. This ministry
had made daily interaction with other people quite limited. But a lot of
biblical students here and abroad has engaged and will continue to engage with
him in his works and in his insights. He had lived that he taught; practiced
what he preached. He was indeed a oblate missionary of
the Word.
This service to the word is also service to that
Word-made Flesh, to Jesus with whom he had always wrote of as “friend” in the
covenantal sense of the term --commitment and fidelity. He was a faithful friend of Jesus. It is on
this committed friendship with Jesus that we have hope that Fr. Tony will share
in the “fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20, from the
Second Reading of the Solemnity of the Assumption).
In a way, it was also a service to the word, to the
Divine Word School of Theology where he taught for five years. I remember in
1999 when we deliberated to accept a certain Fr. Anthony Ceresko, OSFS to teach
in our school of theology and to live in the SVD seminary—I could not believe
that Ceresko whose works I have referred to in my Licentiate thesis at Rome’s
Pontifical Biblical Institute would be coming to teach here in our unknown
school of theology. Indeed, he had brought fame to our school by contributing
scholarly articles to respected biblical journals here and abroad, affixing his
address as Divine Word School of Theology,
Once he gave a speech some years ago in an academic
convocation of this school of theology. The title reveals that service to our
school: “Not Microsoft’s “Word” (For Windows [?] But “The Divine Word” (And A/The School of Theology): What does this text (ing) mean?”
His hope. If
there’s a word that would summarize the life and works of Fr. Ceresko, it is the word,
“hope”. Hope was the underlying theme of
his works. It was this theme of hope that led him to interpret the biblical
text from a liberation perspective. It was this theme of hope that he stayed in
It was Tuesday two weeks ago (2 August) when I talked
to Fr. Tony for the last time. He was telling with excitement that the school
of theology had organized a huge gathering to discuss the political crisis of
the country and to discussed the bishops’ statement on the situation He said that he raised an observation that
that bishop’s statement lacked the terminology of hope. While most of us have
seen a hopeless situation, he saw the light of hope in our country. He had hope
in the goodness of its people.
It is on this theme of hope that Fr. Ceresko allowed
me to work with him as his doctoral student. He was convinced that the bible is
a literature of hope and hope becomes strongest in situations of despair. He had wanted me to explore the theme of hope
in the book of Job, the book he loved most, the book on which he had doctoral
dissertation. He wanted me to study hope within history and also hope for
eternal life that could be intimated in that book.
It is probably coincidental that we say goodbye to
this righteous man on this great feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. This feast re-expresses this hope
that Fr. Ceresko had worked on, the hope that the mystery of Assumption reveals
to us. Fr. Ceresko had, in fact, liked
to call Mary as “dear sister”—affirming that hope for all people to be children
of God. In a reflection that he shared
at a prayer vigil on the eve of the Feast of the birth of Mary in Sept. 7,
2002, he wrote these poetic lines:
“Let me sing you a song, dear sister,
on the eve of your birthday.
Let me add my voice to the chorus
of many generations in praising
your loveliness and virtues.
And please allow me to address you as “sister”, “dear
sister”,
companion disciple of your son, Jesus.
Even Broadway and
have stolen from your luster
in echoing your lovely name:
Maria-Maria, Maria, Maria.
Say it loud, and there’s
music playing.
Say it soft, and it’s almost like praying.
Maria—Maria, Maria,
Maria.
On that early dawn of his passing away, I stayed with
Fr. Tony for an hour alone in the morgue while waiting for others to assist
me. In the tag, it said: “Cadaver of
Anthony Ceresko.” The man whom I had
admired most is now a cadaver. And if it were Job he would made this lament:
“If the only home I hope for is Sheol….where is my hope?” (Job 17:13.15).
This lament has its answer
in Job himself, in this passage which Fr. Ceresko had spent years of
“wrestling” for its meaning.
For
I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that
at the last
he will
stand upon the earth;
and after
my skin
has been
thus destroyed,
then in
my flesh I shall see God (Job 19:25-26)
That fateful Saturday,
after Fr. Ceresko’s body was returned to the seminary, I drove back home to
Naked I came out from my mother’s
home;
Naked I will go back there.
The Lord has given;
The Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the
Lord! (Job 1:21).
