Summer Abroad 2026 - The Philippines

Silver Sonder Jubilee
Reflection on My Summer in the Philippines
Br. Louis-Marie Lim, O.P.
July 2026

sonder 
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own–populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness– an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know exist, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

From the back cover of John Koenig’s “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”
 
Introduction
They say as you become more conformed to God, you become more yourself. There is the classic Catholic adage: grace builds upon nature. “Sonder” tells of the “epic story that continues invisibly around you… with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives…” 
 
My summer in the Philippines –the place of my ancestral and spiritual heritage– gave me a deeper glimpse of that “Epic Story” that God has been writing since Genesis 1. And not some removed abstract story… One that I am invited to fully be a part of.
 
I have discovered that the more I encounter who I am, the more connected I am to the rest of the Mystical Body of Christ. Now that I have a clearer picture of my role in this “Epic Story,” the more united I am to those around me. 
 
The Epic Story
“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness, freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength.”
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
 
During the week of Creation, God made all that there is, and called them “good.” The Visayan waters, Guimaras mangoes, Baguio mountains, Bicolano volcanoes, and all those sextillions of stars out there are all works of art by the Creator. 
 
Finally, out comes man “made in the image and likeness of God.” What a strange saying.
 
Of this ultimate creature called “man,” what did God say? 
 
“Very good.”
 
But two chapters later, the devil in his sad envy toward us, tricks us into thinking we can be God without God. 
 
And since taking that fruit, we are held captive by he who is called the Accuser. Like the poor victims of human trafficking that scourges Southeast Asia, the enemy in his absolute evil trafficks souls.
            
The Lord could have given us up. “They disobeyed Me, why bother?” But He refuses to abandon us.
 
And so He began a literally unbelievable scheme to return us to our original glory. He first chose a people who were complete losers in the eyes of the surrounding empires. 
 
He promised Israel unending prosperity. But those Israelites enslaved in Egypt, oppressed by Assyria, exiled to Babylon, persecuted by Greece, and controlled by Rome cried, “Lord God! You promised us… why do your promises come up empty?”
 
No one ever –especially the fallen Lucifer– expected God’s answer of ultimate sabotage: He Himself would join us in our finite humanity. Then, that Man on the Cross would bridge the chasm that kept us away from our eternal beatitude…
 
Spiritual Heritage: Santiago → Santo Domingo → San Lorenzo Ruiz
Although literally ages and oceans apart, the Epic Story of this God-Man –our Friend– called Jesus is clearly visible in three wildly different men… who are all somehow mysteriously interconnected.
            
For Santiago (Saint James) and his fellow Apostles, they are sent to the ends of the earth after witnessing that their best friend truly has triumphed over the enemy, sin, and death. Strengthened by the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church is born.
            
While “Doubting” Tomás goes to India, Mateo the Tax Collector goes to Ethiopia, and even Pedro the Denier ends up in Rome, Santiago goes to Spain. 
            
One of the brothers that asked to sit at God’s side, Santiago utterly fails at telling the souls in ancient Iberia about his friend Jesus. I can only imagine the anguish he faced sitting on the banks of the Ebro in modern-day Zaragoza, España.
            
Suddenly, that young woman we know so well appears to him: we now know her as Ina at Reyna ng Simbahan (Mother and Queen of the Church). As conformed to God as is possible for a creature, Mary bilocates to Zaragoza from John’s home in modern-day Turkiye. 
            
She tells him to not be afraid, as a gentle and consoling mother does. James returns home to Jerusalem, drinks the cup from which Jesus drank, and sets the apostolic standard: martyrdom.
            
The old saying goes: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Eight hundred years later, Paio the humble hermit discovers the remains of Santiago in northwest Spain in modern-day Galicia…
            
As I finished my Camino de Santiago –30 days and 900 kilometers of walking– this statement is written in several languages on the long-awaited streets of Santiago de Compostela: “Europe was built on the Camino de Santiago.” How could Saint James have guessed that from his dusty bones would arise the Camino, where people all over the world seek his friend, Jesus?
 
The Camino teaches us that we are pilgrims on this earth; we long for a destination, a Person.
 
The Camino teaches us about the original goodness of humanity.
 
The Camino teaches us about the merciless weight of our baggage, physical and spiritual.
 
The Camino teaches us how to trust and move at the promptings of the Holy Spirit. 
 
The Camino de Santiago teaches many lessons, but less than 100 kilometers south of Burgos, on the Camino Frances route (the path I walked) is a tiny town in Castilla y León where there was another young girl, uncannily similar to Mary of Nazareth, who had a dream of a hound lighting the world on fire. 
 
Soon after, Pope Honorius III papally approves the Order of Preachers on 22 December 1216. Santo Domingo (Saint Dominic) has built from the ground up a good, true, and beautiful way to live out friendship with Jesus. 
 
As the Domini canis –the hounds of the Lord– grow into the Dominican family we witness today, European powers begin to venture to the ends of the earth. European and Spanish colonialism contained the entire spectrum of human acts: from evil to sacred. 
 
The Filipinos certainly carry deep wounds from Spain’s rule. However, there is still a deep appreciation for all the good things the Spanish imported onto Filipino shores. Of course, we give thanks to God for those Spanish missionaries who left homelands and loved ones to introduce us to the God-Man and our friend, Jesus.
 
Spanish spiritual heritage touches every local Church I have participated in: Colorado, Louisiana, Dallas, and even St. Louis (founded under Spanish Upper Louisiana Territory). 
Spain and the Dominican Order’s spiritual heritage is undeniably palpable in the life of the Filipino Church: the architecture, statues, processions, devotions, even loan words in Tagalog. 
 
Dominican spirituality runs deep in the intellectual life of the Philippines; look to the University of Santo Tomas. Yet despite originally coming from Spaniards, both UST and the Church there today are deeply Filipino.
 
The Philippines through its centuries of Christianity indeed has a steadfast faith. The Filipino Church certainly faces its own challenges: cultural Catholicism, syncretism, clerical abuse of power, etc. But the underlying sensus fidelium is powerful. There is a sense of an ethnically united and communal faith that is simply not the case in the American Church. The piety and devotion in Manaoag is proof.
 
The Philippines is mysteriously the ancient Israel of Asia. It is a small, poor, often-forgotten country surrounded by giants like China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. 
 
Want to learn about a particular local Church? Encounter its saints. San Lorenzo Ruiz and San Pedro Calungsod –the two canonized Filipino saints– were humble, poor laymen. 
 
Lorenzo Ruiz is eerily like me: Chinese father and Filipina mother; “Chinoy.” He was a sacristan in Binondo (I am a sacristan at our coristado/Studium) –Manila’s Chinatown– and a lay Dominican. 
 
By giving up his life for the God-Man and his friend, Jesus, Lorenzo Ruiz was instrumental in making the Philippines a bastion for Christ in Asia. In a way, we Filipinos are Lorenzo Ruiz and vice versa. You hear this in other places like Mexico: Mexicans are Juan Diego…
 
The Tagalog language itself is a testament of the deep mixing of cultures, that of formal Tagalog, English, and Spanish words, but still being completely Asian in its form. This brings up my reflection on identity. 
 
There were many moments where I said to myself, “Wow, I am so American.” On the other hand, there were many moments that I said to myself, “Wow, I am cut from the same cloth as these guys.”
 
My whole life I have never fully fit in somewhere (do any of us “fully fit in” anywhere?). Despite looking like everyone else in the Philippines, I was obviously not fully one of them. Despite being an American citizen, I’ve grown up being “[one of] the Asian[s].”
 
This summer was a further experiential discovery that for us all, our primary identity is our relationship to the Lord. Before I am American, or Asian, or Filipino, even before I am Dominican, I am Christian. Jesus –the Incarnate Word of God– is my friend, and I am a friend of His.
 
Since I did encounter my own personal nature by seeing myself in the Filipino brothers, I recognize and intend to further develop my Filipino heritage: availability and hospitality (see Br. Joseph Diogo’s reflection), childlike joy, and resilience amidst life’s cruelties, to name a few. I am even learning Tagalog further now, and just like Tagalog, these attributes carry a distinctly Filipino essence that is probably impossible to express in words.
 
Grace builds on nature. I learned this summer that by leaning into my Filipino nature more, it will open more channels to receive God’s grace.
 
Psalm 147:20 says, “[God] has not done this for any other nation…” In His Epic Story, He chose the Philippines out of all the countries in East Asia to bring Him to the whole world. 
 
There is arguably no other nation that is so well-represented in every corner of the world. There are Pinoys of course throughout the rest of Asia, but also Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and international waters. Filipinos are so widespread around the world that the Dominican Province of the Philippines currently has houses in Malta, Gibraltar, and Hungary in order to serve the Pinoy diaspora.
 
We learned that Filipinos are a people made for the sea. Places may be oceans apart, but it is precisely those oceans that connect people to the rest of the world. Even the Spanish and American colonists recognized the charism of seafaring the Filipino people have.
 
Speaking of spanning the world, through the centuries of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, eventually came my Lolo (Grandpa) and Lola (Grandma). From them came my mom. They moved to the U.S. and here I am.
 
So where does the Epic Story bring me today? 
I am a baptized and confirmed Catholic. I am a professed Dominican corista (student brother) of the Province of St. Martin de Porres. I am a “Chinoy-American.” After a childhood in Colorado, college in Louisiana, and novitiate in Dallas, I now live in St. Louis. 
 
From this widespread mixing of identities is the nature that God has given me to play a part in the Epic Story that He specifically reserved for me. 
 
So we return to “sonder”. At 25 years old, it is my Silver Jubilee of life. As I look back on my first 25 years, and over the churches and cities in the Philippines, the U.S., and abroad, I often catch myself wondering that each face in the crowd has a deeply complex heritage and story just like mine. 
 
I will never know how all our storylines interconnect in this lifetime. But I have found in my life of missionary discipleship that when someone encounters the God-Man and becomes friends with Him, He reveals the Epic Story to him/her. 
 
When we learn that there’s a role in the Epic Story that only and perfectly fits us –as we are and because of who we are–, all we can do is say “yes” and keep following Jesus, the God-Man and our Friend.
 
At the end of it all, there will be no more pain, no more tears, and no more sorrow. 
 
At the end of it all awaits the destiny that has been awaiting us since the beginning. 
 
At the end of it all, we will be completely united with each other and rejoice together in the eternal beatitude that will have no end.
 
At the end of it all, we will see God face to face.
 
Mary, Mother and Queen of the Church, pray for us.
Maria, Madre y Reina de la Iglesia, ruega por nosotros. 
Maria, Ina at Reyna ng Simbahan, ipanalangin mo kami.
 
Saint James, pray for us.
Santo Domingo, ruega por nosotros.
San Lorenzo Ruiz, ipanalangin mo kami. Amen.