It was a day of 15,000 steps and three work-related activities in different places. Fresh from a red-eye flight to Rome, I was running on less than eight hours of sleep in a span of 48 hours.
Not only that. Since the start of the year, I have gone from one major coverage to another — the Feast of Jesus Nazareno that was attended by eight million people, the Iglesia ni Cristo rally that was attended by more than a million, and a small yet significant activist gathering of Catholics at EDSA Shrine a few days before I flew to the Eternal City.
I returned to Rome at the invitation of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, to speak about journalism before around 150 Catholic communicators around the world. It was part of the Jubilee of the World of Communication, a time of renewal for Catholics involved in media work, in which Rappler CEO Maria Ressa was a much-applauded keynote speaker.
“I am tired!” was my only feeling in the afternoon of Friday, January 24, when I reached the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, around 6.1 kilometers from the site of my last activity, the Holy See Press Office. It took a train ride and around 15 minutes of walking as I carried my laptop, tripod, and a bottle of prosecco given to me as a gift.
The Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of the Pope as the bishop of Rome, was the location of one of five holy doors that have been opened for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope. Four of these holy doors are found in four papal basilicas, including Saint John Lateran, while the fifth is found in a Roman prison.
Passing through a holy door this Jubilee Year — a year-long event that happens once every 25 years — is significant for Catholics because it symbolizes “the passage that every Christian must make from sin to grace.”
It also means obtaining a plenary indulgence, the remission of punishment in the afterlife for sins that had already been forgiven on earth. It is purity. It is grace.
For an opportunity such as this, one would love to pass through a holy door in perfect condition: fresh, well-rested, ready to feel like one is in heaven.
Exhaustion, an inability to think of anything else except for “I am hungry!” and “I want to sleep!”, was not supposed to be part of the picture.
“Lord, I am tired. Help me,” was the only thing I could whisper as I passed through the holy door, prayed, and knelt inside the Basilica of Saint John Lateran.
But as I prayed in the oldest Roman basilica, consecrated in the year 324, I thought of the meaning of tiredness in our work as journalists. Is it truly an unwelcome guest? Or is it a core experience, a reminder of our weaknesses as we battle self-importance and conceit? I entered a holy door of a papal basilica, but I felt more like entering into our fragile humanity.
We journalists, especially the more crusading ones among us, are often afraid to admit that we are tired or weak. We need to run after a story. We need to fight for the truth. We need to save the country and, perhaps, even the world from perdition! We have much to do. We cannot rest. We can never project weakness.
I believe the Jubilee Year of Hope is an invitation for us to first admit that we can feel tired and weak — in other words, hopeless. But it doesn’t end there.
Our task is to decide to hope in the face of hopelessness. Hope is not a sentimental feeling, such as an imagined ecstasy when one passes through a holy door in Rome. It is, instead, a decision — an act of the will.
Hope, as Maria said in her speech on Saturday, January 25, “comes from action.”
“Even at the worst of times, hope is not passive; it’s active, relentless, and strategic. Our faith traditions carry centuries of resilience; we need to share those stories of transformation,” she said, echoing many of her speeches since she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.
We can feel tired and weak, but we need to draw our strength from our core — our anchor in the stormy seas of life, as the likes of Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg turn our planet into a pool of despair.
The problem with our world today is that we have lost a sense of a center. Everything is fleeting, like a Facebook feed where we end up scrolling and scrolling for anything that will catch our fancy. We have turned into a culture of many options but no decisions — no convictions. Why? Because we have lost our sense of purpose.
I believe that, after having admitted our weaknesses, the first step to hope is to find our anchor — our source of hope — in whatever form it may take. For many, it is an ideal, a lofty aspiration from the heroes and visionaries. For people like me, it is Jesus, through whom “we boast in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2).
“Not only that,” Saint Paul continues, “but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, proven character, and hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” Romans 5:3-5).
We “boast of our afflictions” but “hope does not disappoint.”
When I spoke to young Catholic communicators on Saturday afternoon in Rome, one of the participants asked a question along these lines: How does a media professional practice faith in daily work?
I can relate to this question, I said, because I often find myself tired in fulfilling my work as a journalist. “There are impossible deadlines,” I said, eliciting laughter from the audience. It was, in fact, the moment I saw them most amused. Then I corrected myself, “Actually, all deadlines are impossible” — eliciting even more laughter from them.
But whenever I am able to beat impossible deadlines, find an elusive interviewee, and obtain an important document; when I am able to think clearly despite lacking sleep; when I am able to produce journalism despite the obstacles, then I am reminded of a source of hope that is greater than myself.
Media work comes with a humble discovery that one cannot do things alone. If I am able to accomplish the impossible, it means it is not only me at work.
I find much hope — and freedom — realizing it is the work of God, not a personal enterprise.
I take inspiration from this prayer popularly attributed to Saint Oscar Romero:
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
– Rappler.com