For as long as I can remember, even from my earliest years in the seminary, my parents and my sisters carried me with love, sacrifice, and unwavering faith. They supported me in ways big and small, quietly and wholeheartedly, just so that one day my deepest dream of becoming a priest would be fulfilled. Many of you can testify to this truth. You knew my parents. You saw how simply they lived, how honestly they worked, and how tirelessly they gave, even when they had so little for themselves.
Together with my three wonderful sisters—Margie, Malou, and †Monette—I finished my studies because of the sweat, tears, and self-denial of my parents, †Rodulfo Vargas Arcilla and †Murita Sarmiento Molina, both now of blessed memory. Whatever direction I take in life, and whatever moral compass guides me today, comes from the values they planted in us when we were young, values that still shape me as a priest, a brother, and a man.
My Papa died in 1996, just as I was nearing the final stretch of my seminary formation. His passing tore something inside me. As the only son in a family of six, the grief felt heavier, like a mantle I never wanted to wear. I still remember how much he loved me, how he once told me to give him all the pain of my broken left arm after my vehicular accident in Palta, Virac on May 31, 1993. That terrible day—blood everywhere, my arm shattered, and months of recovery—remains etched in my memory. The titanium brace they placed in my arm (or whatever its medical name is) is still with me today. I often joke that if St. Peter checks for cyborg parts at the gates of Heaven, I pray mine won’t deny me entry.
After Papa’s death came the heartbreak of losing my youngest sister, †Monette, to a brain aneurysm. She died in Manila, far from home, far from the people who loved her all her life. And then in 2014, my Mama followed them, after a brief but painful battle with lung cancer. One by one, those who formed me, raised me, and loved me into becoming who I am returned to the embrace of God.
Now, I often imagine them as clouds above me—soft, silent, but present. Whenever I feel down, exhausted, or crushed by the demands of life and priesthood, I look up at the sky and whisper: “Help me. Guide me. Do not leave me alone.” And somehow, the clouds seem to move gently, as if answering.
But beneath that quiet faith lies a pain I still struggle to name. I am a seminarian-son who failed to spiritually prepare his Papa before he breathed his last. I am a brother-priest who was
absent when †Monette needed comfort, prayer, or the simple warmth of a hand. I am a priest-son who never had the chance to anoint his own mother nor hear her final confession.
These are wounds I carry, wounds that still sting, even after all these years. There are nights, even now, when I wake up suddenly and cry. Grief is strange like that; it has no schedule, no warning, and no patience. It enters without knocking. And each time it does, I am reminded of a painful truth: I was present for so many of God’s people, but not for my own.
How many rough roads have I crossed? How many rivers have I waded? How many distant barangays have I walked for hours just to administer the last rites to strangers who now rest peacefully in God’s arms? And yet… when my own blood, my own heart, my own family were dying, I was not there.
This is a burden priests rarely speak about. We give our whole lives to others—joyfully, freely—but sometimes at the cost of missing the final breath of those who first gave us life.
I do not write this to complain. I do not write this to seek pity. I write this because this, too, is priesthood. This, too, is sacrifice. This, too, is a cross I carry quietly, hidden beneath layers of cassock, duty, and smiles.
But even in these frustrations, I find grace. Because grief has softened me. Loss has taught me compassion. Regret has made me gentler, slower to judge, quicker to love.
My pains do not diminish my vocation, they deepen it. And whenever I look at the clouds, my Papa, my Mama, my Nene, I remember that I am not alone. I never was. I never will be. Perhaps that is the most beautiful truth: Even wounded priests can lead souls to God, because grace flows through brokenness, not perfection.
And through all this, prayer has been my anchor. Prayer healed what I thought would remain shattered forever. Prayer taught me to forgive myself when guilt tried to chain me down. Prayer gathered the broken pieces of my heart and slowly rebuilt me from the rubble of pain and frustration.
I know in my heart that God is always there, and He will never abandon me, especially in those moments when I miss my beloved ones the most. Prayer is the quiet place where I meet Him, where wounds become wisdom, and where sorrow becomes strength.