In Memoriam, Ed Lising (+ June 23, 2020)

“One thing alone is important: to return to the Father.

The Son came into the world and died for us, rose and ascended to the Father, sent us His Spirit, that in Him and with Him, we might return to the Father, that we might pass clean out of the midst of all that is transitory and inconclusive, that we might return to the Immense, the Primordial, The Source, the Unknown, to Him who loves and knows, to the Silent, to the Merciful, to the Holy, to Him who is All. To seek anything, to be concerned with anything but this is only madness and sickness for this is the whole meaning and heart of all existence and in this all

…the affairs of life, all the needs of the world and of humankind take on their rightful significance: all point to this one great return to the Source. All goals that are not ultimate, all ends of the line that we can see and plan as ends are simply absurd because they do not even begin. The Return is the End beyond all ends, and the Beginning of beginnings. To return to the Father is not to go back in time, to roll up the scroll of history or to reverse anythin; it is a going Forward, a going Beyond.

…Our destiny is to go on beyond everything: to leave everything, to press forward to the end and find in the End our Beginning, The Ever New Beginning that has no End.”

“I, myself Am the Road, I am the Truth and the Life. And my heart has become a pathway for all who would come through Me.”

Quoted from Book of Hours by Thomas Merton

Ed Lising tried in his life to find the “Road, the Way and the Life.” And in this journey he followed with uncertainty and halting steps, he took together with all those he led, all also seeking the same Road, the Way and the Life.

Finally, through This Road, Ed Lising has finally Returned to the Father. Amen.

Ed Lising was Mission Head of BCBP CEBU, who came to, in their words” reconnoiter Cagayan de Oro,
In 1991, together w Tatang Nap Polotan (✝️), and Romy Du, and a fourth member whose name escapes me, reconnoitering the “territory” in much the same way Joshua did before entering Canaan, and BCBP finally came to roost in Cagayan in Jan 1991, with Tatang Lito Urgino giving the Saturday Breakfast sharing and continuing on to the first CLP that same afternoon with the BCBP Batch#1. Our teachers included Tatang Louie Morales (✝️), Tatang Larry Veloso (✝️), Rene Almendras, Sadi Saguisag, Joe Ecco, Jun Tan, Tatang Nemenzo, the Puno couple, Rene Congmon, Jeff Villa, Romy and Elvie Du, Kit Garcia, Jimmy Escano,Leo Luche, and many others who travelled and help to found the first BCBP in Mindanao. The rest, as they say, “is history”