Nora Neri Barzaga

By: Nora Neri Barzaga

“More things are wrought in prayer than this world ever dreamt of.” I learned this quotation in High School and it has been the guiding inspiration of my life ever since.

My mother and the Dominican sisters of Santa Catalina College in Manila nurtured me with the Catholic catechism, day in and day out, from kindergarten to fourth grade by repeating over and over and over until I learned and memorized the whole booklet! It didn’t matter whether I understood it or not but it became part and parcel of my whole being automatically guided my behavior while growing up and learning the ways of life.

Prayer was an essential exercise in our family; we just grew up with it and it was a very natural thing perhaps too natural that we took it for granted and somehow at times lost the devotion and holiness that should be accorded to it. The rule in my grandmother’s house was that at 6:00PM every day, wherever you are or whatever you are doing, when you hear the bell ring, you dropped everything and be at the “Cuarto ang Santos” (prayer room) within 5 minutes for the Oracion which started with the Angelus followed by the Rosary. Woe to anyone who misses or disobeys this rule, the penalty for which will be an hour of kneeling before the altar in that prayer room. This specific ruling applied to all the grandchildren ages 3 to 18 and each one of us was assigned to lead the prayers on a rotation basis. This was the background or kind of environment that I was brought up into. My mother, being the youngest in a family of six children, inherited grandma’s huge manor house and we, of course, lived with lola until she passed away. However, no grandchild grew up without undergoing the discipline mandated by grandma. Why is this so….. grandma fulfilled her children’s needs: economic, spiritual and, I dare say political. When she died, everything changed.

My Faith and Me

My faith clearly became a conscious and a vital part of my life when during World War II at the age of 11, I felt fear, I saw cruelty, death, and the whole world going topsy turvy. In times of crisis, you cling to your faith, believe that God is with you and will spare you. It was most difficult time but our faith carried us through, we survived and learned some great lessons. Most important, we learned that God is always with us and for us when you seek him.

Again, at the age of 14, when I left home to go to the big city to “seek my fortune” I was on my own, earning a living at daytime and studying at nighttime. I couldn’t rely on my parents knowing what hardships they had to go through after the ravages of the war. I had my faith as my greatest weapon  against all odds in the great big city where you encounter the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the honest and the dishonest, and infinitum, as you learn the ways of the world. You pray deeply for guidance, counseling and strength. Through God’s help, thru the years, one job led to another, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from the University of the East, got married, had three well behaved children, and in 1973 finally found my niche in the business world as Executive Secretary to the Chairman of the Philippine National Oil Company. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I came to the United States in 1989, worked with Stockton Unified School District for 12 years and retired in 2002. I became a Eucharistic Minister at Annunciation in 1999, resigned in 2005; serves Plymouth Square Catholics since 2000 to present and Dameron Hospital since 2010.

One person who has been a guide and an inspiration in my faith life is my Mother because it was she who taught me how to pray, pray, pray, believe and trust God in everything that I do. She inculcated in me the importance of how a good catholic woman should behave and comport herself both in public or in private. She impressed on me how to be charitable, compassionate, gentle, and above all, to be humble. My Mother – she was all of these and much more, yet she was as down to earth as any human being can be,

Looking back into my childhood, adulthood, and finally widowhood, I realize that it is prayer that sustained me all throughout. It is the source of one’s strength in times of sadness or joy; the solution to problems we encounter as we journey through life; and most importantly, it is the medium through which we show our love and thanksgiving to God. As St. Therese of Liseux said: … ”Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events, to the heart that loves, all is well.”

I thank God for all these blessings and I pray that the Lord will me continued good health, peace and joy in my heart, enabling me to serve him for as long as I live.