From Bombi to Ambi

by Dr. Paul A. Dumol. A eulogy delivered during the funeral Mass for Consul General Raul Santiago at the Cathedral of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City, October 26, 2013. 
 
Ray Santiago stayed for a time in the Opus Dei center where I have resided the last eighteen years—once before his posting in Vienna in the late nineties and a second time before his posting in Paris almost ten years ago. After that we would coincide in activities of Opus Dei when he would return to the country. In our house he was neither Bombi nor Ray, but Amba, short for Ambassador; in time the moniker suffered a further transformation into Ambi. I don’t have any special qualifications to give this eulogy, and what I have to say is hopefully representative of what other members of Opus Dei would say who had lived with Ray in the same house.

I was present in the Mass celebrated for Ray at the DFA last Thursday and heard two ambassadors, two associates, and Ray’s brother speak their eulogies afterwards. I cannot hope to rival theirs in either depth or incisiveness. Fortunately for all of us, those eulogies have been recorded. How I wish I might hear something like them when my turn comes. At the beginning of his eulogy, his brother exclaimed, “Ray was a beautiful person!” It was clear this was an observation that had crystallized in his mind partly after hearing the four eulogies before his. He himself said more to bolster that claim.

Ray loved his work. That much is clear to everyone: it was his predominant virtue, so to speak, and also in the view of others, his tragic flaw—the good soldier’s sword by which he kills and is killed. I would say on the basis of the DFA eulogies and as someone completely ignorant of his inner life that he exemplified the ideal of sanctification of work luminously. This is the enduring memory I will have of him, not because I ever witnessed him at work, but because I, like many other members of Opus Dei, have heard him speak about his work in informal get-togethers. I remember his get-togethers about his work in APEC, Vienna, and Frankfurt long after he gave them. The last time I heard him speak on his work, he talked about his first weeks in his new assignment--Cairo. Ray would focus on a challenge he had to face and proceed with a narrative as exciting as Tom Clancy, even if it was about the work of the Filipino rapporteurs in an APEC meeting. His story about the rescues the Embassy staff made of Filipinas and their mestizo children in Kosovo or Serbia during one crisis was, however, genuine Clancy. In the get-together you could see Ray being gradually possessed even physically by the event he was recalling. He would start speaking faster; his vocal pitch would rise, and then he would burst into a cackle that was his characteristic laugh. All throughout the narrative, as he reviewed the thinking process that informed the way he handled that situation, you saw what a fine analytical and practical mind he had and above all how he loved what he was doing. At a certain time he had a boss whom he found difficult, so difficult that his stomach lining was discovered to be perforated with ulcers. Well, I met that boss last Thursday, and one of her anecdotes to me was how, after Ray had been transferred to a different office, he dropped by her office and told her that he missed the pressure.

Was he merely being charming? This was entirely possible, because Ray was a master of charm: the twinkling eyes, the radiant smile, the eager voice, that chortle—all these made him look and sound years younger than he really was. But it is entirely possible he did miss the pressure: he seemed to thrive on pressure. Some of the eulogies last Thursday, in fact, hinted that it was really the pressure of the situation in Cairo that did him in.

Ray had a sense of humor. His stories always had an eye for the humorous detail that would have his audience sometimes howling with laughter. At home in the center he would unload or vent, not with everyone, but just with a chosen one or two, about a problem he was facing in the office. To witness Ray Santiago in a rage was to be treated to a performance, but it was mostly Shakespearean bluster. All you had to do to defuse him was to crack a joke, and he would break into laughter and start adding funnier details. Ray was cheerful—by nature, it seems. At one point he was known as Mr. Hello Hello in our center, because he would enter the dining-room for breakfast greeting everyone with a loud “Hello. Hello.”

Ray loved his family. But this was a discreet love. He didn’t usually talk about his mother or siblings, and he certainly never told us what he was doing for them. He was concerned about his mom; he was concerned about Martin; I remember him mentioning Cricket; while he was posted in Vienna, he had stories about his sister and her children. He took his role as kuya, and implicitly as padre de familia in the absence of his dad, seriously. For a time he was obsessed with tracing his family tree, and that meant trips to the Mormons in White Plains, Nueva Ecija, Batangas, and even Bacolod, where he would sometimes wander through cemeteries deciphering old tombstones. That was Ray. The operative word here is “obsessed” because Ray was gifted with the quality of creative obsession.

That was on display before his posting in Paris. He commissioned the manufacture of furniture with which he wanted to stock his Paris apartment, explaining how this was much cheaper than buying pieces in France itself. He threw himself into the study of Philippine colonial furniture, the better to guide the carvers of the pièce de résistance of all his efforts, a four-poster, a faux Tampinco. I took him to see the eighteenth-century pieces of a close friend, and I recall him examining with his Harry Potter glasses the different woods that made up a wardrobe, admiring the workmanship. Ray had an eye for good workmanship, and as he was with furniture, so was he with clothes. He examined the sewing, the cut, the fit of a pair of pants or barong with a critical eye. He himself was usually impeccably dressed—hindi nakukusot, as someone would say, and this even when he would ride a jeep, because Ray went to work at the DFA for a time riding a jeepney he took on Pasay Road. Later he settled for a cab. I vaguely recall a lecture he made to me about the need for the right coat hangers and also bags in which to hang suits. And yet he was no clothes collector. He wore a bottle-green ramie barong for the longest time, partly because he would leave it behind upon being posted and bring it out of the closet only when he would come home every six years. Matipid siya.

Ray was no foodie, but he knew when something was good or awful. He didn’t like the food in Vienna, he confided. During the celebration of his 40th, we bought him a small chocolate cake from Bizu for him to eat while everyone else ate of the official cake. I will not forget how he consumed the chocolate cake quickly, even feverishly, and systematically, as everyone pretended not to notice. The cake obviously lived up to its name, which was Nirvana. He loved musicals, which I discovered by accident, coming upon him listening to Phantom in the living-room. This was, he said, the way he learned to relax in Vienna. He was also a fan of Les Mis. He liked Blanco’s paintings and read Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist. Ray deliberately cultivated his taste, which he knew he had to have to a fine degree as a diplomat. By the time of his passing, he was a pleasurable companion at conversation, able to hold his own on a variety of topics, but especially on the Filipinos in the countries to which he had been assigned, because Ray was an observant person.

Ray loved his country. I recall his enthusiasm when the bilingual edition of Gaspar de San Agustin’s Conquistas came out. He bought copies to give away on behalf of the Philippine Embassy. He loved history and appreciated scholarly research. When I needed a copy of Blumentritt’s obituary on Rizal which had been published in an Austrian journal at the end of the nineteenth century, I had no doubts whom to turn to, and he did not let me down. Ray knew exactly where to look for it and, of course, found it, photocopied it, and sent it to me. His long-term plan included teaching at the University of Asia and the Pacific after leaving the DFA. In fact, he was for a brief time a teacher at the History Department of UA&P.

Earlier I mentioned Ray’s sense of humor. I have not forgotten one occasion on which he was asked to host a birthday celebration. I had never seen him emcee before and realized he was good. He even attempted jokes, not all of which were successful. One successful jab at humor was the question, “What would you see if you looked up a gorilla’s nostrils?” Answer: A fingerprint. The crowd howled in disbelief, but that was Ray. Even when he was coarse, he was elegant.

Ray, last Thursday kulang na lamang na gawin ka nang santo sa DFA. Ngayong hapon, gusto ko namang ipakita na karaniwang tao ka. Saint Josemaría distinguished between worldliness and being of the world. Worldliness (ang pagiging makamundo) is to be avoided, while being of the world (ang pagiging sa mundo) is part of the very nature of the lay person, indeed, of the human being and should be lived. I don’t think there was ever any doubt that Ray was a lay person or that he was a man of this world, and now especially after his death and the eulogies we have heard from friends, colleagues, and relatives, it is vibrantly clear that Ray was a man of God. Ray was the furthest from being pietistic; he never made a show of his piety, and I will not contradict his normal mode of behaviour by detailing what he would do as a numerary member of Opus Dei. You can read about that on the Internet. I recall seeing him in the chapel of the center on more than one occasion, seated and deep in sleep. But that was when he was undergoing treatment for his ulcers. And I would recall St Josemaría’s remark about someone else that the person wishing to pray who falls asleep sleeps in the arms of God. Well, that’s where he is now.

Last Thursday, a colleague of Ray’s said that we should pray to him rather than for him: I have already started doing that. I reminded him of our deal that I pray for his mother and he pray for mine. If we do pray to him, let that prayer be to teach us the art of being thoroughly of the world, while being thoroughly of God. Ray, teach us to love God by loving our work as you did, loving our country and our people with deeds and not just words, while all the time loving a well-made aparador, a good chocolate cake, and a good smoke.


Blogger's Note: Ray Santiago was posthumously given the Gawad Mabini Award by the President of the Philippines. It is "conferred on Filipinos who have rendered distinguished foreign service, or helped promote the interests and prestige of the Philippines abroad. It was established in honor of Apolinario Mabini, the first Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the First Republic of the Philippines." Ray died in Cairo, Egypt at the height of the political turmoil in that country, heroically serving his countrymen in that country. He was 49 years old.


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Ambassador Zaide wrote another eulogy for Ray Santiago in his column in Manila Bulletin entitled Because the Good Die Young.

Another article on an Opus Dei member who was a diplomat, Ana Gonzalo, is found here.

Another eulogy for a Filipino numerary, Obay Rojales: Obayism, delivered by Dr. Raul Nidoy.