As a small boy, I had never thought about becoming a journalist.

Influenced by my family and community, I wanted to enter the priesthood. My next choice was to become an elementary school teacher as I had been inspired by the kindness of my history teacher in Grade 5. In a way, those who are called to become journalists should also like history. We should be familiar with our personal history and that of others, in order to understand ourselves and others better.

This sense of history and knowledge of the history of other nations is really very important for journalists, as they will provide a wealth of knowledge and wisdom in our analysis of some problems that we may be called to comment on or write about. We can then even offer solutions.

In the Background In high school, I was invited to write for our school newsletter, where some of my reflections, poems and stories were published. Back then, I was so shy about using my name for a poem that I asked a fellow schoolmate if I could attribute my poem to him. Then at one of our editorial board meetings, the editor got angry with us writers because he wanted good articles.

He advised us to take a good look at a certain article, saying, “This is the article that we need! “ It was amusing because that article or poem was mine and I had only asked this friend if I could publish it under his name. I felt happy because I had allowed others to shine while I myself remained in the background.

On another occasion in college, a friend of mine asked me if he could borrow one of my poems and give it to a girl whom he had a “crush” on.

If it were possible, he would tell her he had written it himself. His poem, or rather, my poem then became a best seller in the university as his “crush” published it in the university journal.

Afterwards I felt I could continue to write as people liked what I wrote.

There, my vocation as a journalist started. But always as a background journalist... allowing others to shine.

The Art of Loving and Interreligious Dialogue It was in 1994, during a letterwriting contest sponsored by the then Prudential Bank, when my writing career took off on the national level.

I submitted my letter to the Pope Contest in time for the Papal Visit, or the historical World Youth Day held in Manila in 1995. I was very much inspired to write to the Pope and to tell him my desire to become a Christian writer who would tell the world about God‘s love, especially here in Asia as the Asian market was beginning to open up to more readers. I told the Pope that I wanted to be an expert in dialogue, and especially in dialogue among world religions, which are so present in Asia. I told the Pope that I would have liked to write a thesis on interreligious dialogue and to look for points of convergence among these great religions. But more so I would have wanted to be the living thesis of God’s love, like Mother Teresa who had overcome the barriers of religions by her life of service and love for Hindus and Moslems in India.

Full of youthful idealism, I was then invited to stay in Tagaytay in Mariapolis Peace, a little town which is a center for Interreligious Dialogue with the great Asian religions. When Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement, visited Asia in 1982, she was struck by the religiosity of its people, but also by the division and variety of cultures and religions present in the region.

Thus, she dreamt of a place where different religions of Asia could come together in dialogue and peaceful coexistence.

This center is today located in Mariapolis Peace, Tagaytay.

I stayed in Tagaytay from 1998 to 2000. I had the chance to live and work with different peoples from varied backgrounds, yet they only had one goal: universal brotherhood, that of building one human family.

Courses offered there helped us to get to know other religions in Asia and in one of those courses, they introduced the most common denominator in all great religions, and that is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others what you would like others to do unto you.” In Mariapolis Peace in Tagaytay, there is only one law – the Law of Love, and to make it easier to remember and practice, its citizens have encapsulated it in a cube of love so that they can practice it daily. This cube of love has six sides: it tells us-to love everyone, to see Jesus in others, to be the first one to love, to make ourselves one with others, to love our enemies, to love one another. These are the different aspects of the new commandment of love which Jesus left us. This Art of Loving being lived by many in the Focolare Movement has become the very instrument for dialogue with members of different Christian churches, diverse religions, and with people of other convictions and cultures, etc. Constant practice reminds us and helps us to understand its principles. And the fruit of this practice is happy and fulfilled lives, as witnessed and attested to by many people whom I have personally gotten to know. These persons have in turn been able to affect social structures and bring about positive changes in families and society.

In my stay in Mariapols Peace, I was able to live the Art of Loving even more concretely when, together with some youths, we started a social center in 1997. We began with a daycare center for about 30 children.

Now this social center has grown to cater to almost 500 children from 300 poor families. We have also sponsored some graduates who eventually found good jobs. Pag-asa social center is in its 14th year of existence and is still actively serving, with many volunteers coming from the families we have helped. It is also visited every year by a Buddhist lay movement, the Rissho Kosse-kai, which sends their young people for a period of exposure and service.

This experience in Tagaytay has really prepared me to be a journalist, in building dialogue and unity in society today.

NetOne Media as an instrument to bring about a united world In 2000, I had the chance to continue my studies in Theology in Rome, Italy. There I was able to attend the first NetOne International Meeting for Journalists, an international meeting for journalists who want to build unity in media. It was a very strong experience for me, a real turning point in this journalism of life and dialogue.

The NetOne meeting also coincided with the jubilee year for journalists as it was the Jubilee Year of 2000 celebrated particularly in Rome.

In her talk during the convention, Chiara Lubich, pointed out to us a very good model for a communicator, the communicator par excellence, and he was no other than Jesus, especially at that moment when he was suffering on the cross, almost silent and speechless. He could only cry out: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.” I really admired Chiara’s intuition… Christ was communicating the most when he was in a state of incommunicado… meaning he was expressing and communicating his love most fully when he was in that moment of great suffering and approaching his death, when he could no longer express himself. Later on, I understood what she meant as I myself had a chance to live and experience something similar.

Right after those three days of international media congress, my birthday fell on June 11. I was excited as I called up my family in the Philippines just to know how my mother and father were doing. I talked with my sister who initially seemed like she was holding back some information.

Later on, she explained the real situation in our family. My mother was gravely ill, as she had suffered a stroke, became paralyzed, and could not communicate. The words of my sister: “cannot communicate,” struck me because Chiara Lubich had just talked about Jesus on the cross as the greatest communicator, although in a state of being incommunicado.

I was surprised at the chance God was giving me to understand what I had just learned from the NetOne Media Congress. The person whom I loved most here on earth was dying.

In two weeks, I was able to board a plane back to Manila from Rome.

Upon my return to the Philippines, I immediately rushed to Makati Medical Hospital, where I saw my mother paralyzed and with many gadgets and tubes connected to her. I was devastated. It was my first encounter with a relative very close to me and approaching death, in a most fragile state. Nine months passed however, before she eventually left us.

Another model which Chiara Lubich gave media people and which really helped me was the picture of Mary Desolate who at the foot of the cross absorbed all that was evil just like the negative of a film, allowing the positive to appear in the picture.

The image of the Pietà, or Mary at the foot of the Cross, silently loving in suffering, allowed me to keep on standing calmly by my dying mother’s side.

These two images of Jesus on the Cross almost incommunicado and Mary at the foot of the cross, silently loving in her way, helped me to overcome this trial in my personal life.

With such a disposition, now, the way I see events happening in my personal and in the communal history of our nation and of the world also have changed. I see history guided by the hands of a loving Father, and even the sufferings that we are experiencing can be just a springboard to make us better persons, better nations, and a better humanity as we grow in love, care and understanding of each other.

Jose Aranas