2014/12/10

Co-Author Cherry Castro Aquino


CHERRY CASTRO AQUINO

Cherry is an Assumption high school graduate. She graduated from the College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, New York, majoring in Speech-English. She has been working with Father Jim Reuter since 1976. She was a member of Father’s team of facilitators that traveled the country conducting over 100 seminars on media literacy and media education—how the mass media affect our lifestyle, values and attitudes. Their target audiences were bishops, priests, nuns, teachers, students, parents, and lay leaders. Together with Father Reuter, a team also conducted seminars on scriptwriting and radio production. Her primary job when the National Office of Mass Media was still operational was directing and editing radio dramas which were aired over 41 radio stations of the Philippine Federation of Catholic Broadcasters nationwide. She is married to General Flotz Aquino, a retired Philippine Air Force officer. She considers as her greatest achievement her eight children, twenty grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. She makes it a point to visit Father Jim at Our Lady of Peace Hospital at least once a week—bring him his e-mail and lunch he likes. “No one retires from Father Reuter!”

Co-Author Ma. Rowena Juan-Matti


MA. ROWENA JUAN-MATTI

Rowie was born in Manila on March 14, 1967 of Bienvenido Uyboco Juan and Ma. Rosario Tambunting Juan. She married and has two children, Beatriz and Celina. She graduated from De La Salle University with a degree in Psychology and Marketing, and subsequently took up Day Care Administration at the San Francisco State University. She pursued her graduate studies on Masters of Entrepreneurship at the Asian Institute of Management. She has been in the field of education for almost 20 years now, managing Sacred Heart School, which her mother founded 43 years ago, and pioneering Math and English Enrichment Programs in the country. In 2005, she started her own franchise of Galileo Enrichment Learning Program systems. Her vision is to nurture the love for learning in pre-school children and see more children excel in school and to develop their potential. Rowie met Fr. James B. Reuter for the first time in a retreat when she was in fourth year high school at the Assumption College, Makati. She met him again in 2005 as a spiritual counselor. Their cooperation began at this time. Having been greatly influenced by Fr. Reuter’s spirituality and profound love for Jesus and Mary, she was inspired to share his teachings with as many people as possible. As such, she has embarked with him on a journey to produce Mama Mary and Her Children Book 2.



2014/12/08

With All My Love

WHEN I CAME to the Philippines, I thought that I was a missionary bringing to the Filipinos the beautiful values of God. But I discovered, when I got here, that the beautiful gifts of God had arrived in the hearts of the people, long before I did. It was a strange fulfillment of the truth in the Gospel: “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” The desire to become a missionary came to me when I was seven years old, in Grade Two, at Saint Mary’s Catholic School, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, U.S.A. It never left me. I went to a Jesuit High School—Saint Peter’s Prep in Jersey City. I was fascinated by the gentleness, the wisdom, and the genuine desire of the teachers to show us how to live according to the law of God. So I became a Jesuit, and a missionary, and I came to the Philippines. I thought I was coming to give. But I was not. The Filipinos gave to me. From them I learned how natural it was for them to love God, by loving each other.
These are not just words. It is an amazing reality. During the Japanese Occupation, one of my students, Ramon Cabrera, went into the underground. He was picked up by the Japanese. They asked him to give the names of all his friends who were in the underground. He said, “I don’t know any names.” To make him talk, they beat him in the mouth with a gun butt. They broke out all his teeth. They smashed his jaw and his nose. Then they asked again for the names of his friends in the underground. He said, “I don’t know any names.” So they brought him to the cemetery, gave him a shovel, and told him to dig his grave. He said, “Dig it yourself!” So they bayoneted him. As he dropped to his knees, he looked up at the Japanese and smiled. And then he died. “Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friend”… “Whatever you do for the least of these my little ones—you have done it to ME.” He would not give the names of his friends in the underground. At the age of ninety-four, in the hospital with pneumonia, I am saying this to tell you—all of you, my friends…

• The Filipino has deep, strong courage…
• He has courage enough to die for his friends…
• He loves God with all his heart, because—
“Greater love for God no man has—that he lay down his life for his friend. Whatever you do for the least of these, my little ones, you have done it to Me.”

What I discovered when I came to the Philippines was that the Filipinos do not need missionaries.
I did.
And so I am deeply grateful to God for sending me here.
I did not choose Him.
He chose me.