HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon
Remembering Padi Tom Ambucay

Fr. Thomas Ambucay is one of the older Anglican priests who instilled faith and hope that there is active and meaningful spirituality in the Anglican faith. This, despite published controversial news about the Anglican Church having mismanaged its resources and losing millions of investments in some rural banks or having illegally dismissed an academic officer.

Just when the clergy is known to drink excessively losing their credibility, or leave their ministry in the country’s terrain to greener pastures abroad, the un-assuming Padi Tom Ambucay lived a harmonious life on and off the pulpit in church stations which he served in northern Philippines.

Padi Ambucay, 67, is from Kin-iway, Besao. He died of a stroke and multiple organ failure last May 6. In his lifetime, he was not known to have built a mansion, drove a fancy car, or ran to the US or the UK for better, economic life.

He lived with his congregation in rural areas and his congregation loved him.
National Economic Development Authority officer Michael Umaming who was then a development worker in the diocesan center in Bontoc in the 1980s recounted how the people of Guinaang petitioned the late Bishop Bob Longid to let him (Ambucay) be retained in the Anglican Church at Guinaang and not go to Isabela.

National Council of Churches in the Philippines Secretary-General Padi Rex Reyes Jr, who was then working at the diocesan center in Bontoc in the ‘80s, also recounted how one early morning, despite the need for sleep, Ambucay along with other residents of rural Guinaang, accompanied a pregnant woman to the main town in Bontoc to deliver her baby.

As Padi Rex said, Ambucay lived with and for the people, a true clergyman who lived up to the life of Christ, and who breathed the scriptures with the people whom he served. While Ambucay had his human frailties like drinking and smoking, these acts were not criticized heavily as to having discredited him as a priest, so observed relatives, the public, and me. On the other hand, some Anglican/Episcopalian priests have excessive drinking habits which discredited them to a point where people didn’t attend mass.

To keep active faith in the Christian Church, a priest like Ambucay, made a Christian believe more in Christ. As such, the church became not only a social gathering place where people congregated in order to attend a meeting or meet a date. The church, with Ambucay’s example, became a refuge where people not only entered its gates because they needed to get wedded, bury a dead relative, baptize a child, or do a silver wedding anniversary.

Priests are there to inspire people to believe in the Christian faith and believe in Jesus Christ.. The church needs priests like Ambucay who project credibility while harmoniously living on earth. (References taken from Yahoo’s Kotim ya Eta (KyE) forum)