Vocation story of
SISTER M. SOLEDAD HILADO, OSB
The day was ending and twilight was approaching. The Japanese had taken over the Philippines. My family, with about 15 other families – all close relatives – were in an evacuation place – an uncle’s farm strategically sitting on an island surrounded by a river, at the foot of the mountain where guerillas were bivouac-ed. It was a “safe” place enough to enjoy enforced vacation from school. I sat on our bed (a wide, wide one I shared with three sisters), gazing out the window, feeling extra fresh after an afternoon swim in an idyllic lagoon complete with a waterfall and tree. The scene before me was serene and breathtaking in its beauty: a river bank, lush with vegetation and tall trees, rising above a rushing river, its water clear as crystal. God’s wonder-creation!
Then I knew. Not with my mind but with my heart. I had not second thoughts at all! With a certainty, I knew I would enter the convent. Where? That I didn’t know. It was wartime, and I was up in the mountains, away form Manila (where I instinctively presumed novitiates would be), without any known means of travel or communication. But the “certainty” was there and I was elated by it.
Later on, I think God worked it out for me: the where, when, how, and all that. My state of interior happiness continued ever as the war waged on. Then, in September, a bomb that blasted an oil depot signaled the return of the Americans – or at least the promise of it. And in April of the following year, the island where we were was liberated. Then, too, started another phase in my life. The path to the convent took another turn – obstacles this time. Parental opposition (and I loved my parents very much, which made opposition all the more painful); illness which laid me down with special treatments and rest for a couple of years, and which meant “no clearance” from the doctor.
When the air cleaned and the convent seemed attainable, I still did not know exactly where God wanted me to be. Then that feeling of certainty came to me once again. I was walking in the campus of St. Scholastica’s College on September 1, Sisters’ Day and alumnae homecoming as well (as it was then observed), and again I knew I would seek to enter the novitiate there. The parental opposition was still there, but the feeling of anticipation was not unadulterated. My love for my parents had always been very strong and my mother was ill. But there was inside me a “push” telling me I must go and enter then.
This moment came with a tap on my shoulder after the Angelus that ended the celebration of the fest of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception at the school grounds in 1947, and Sister Liguori saying, “I think it is time.” I turned and followed her – into the convent vis the backdoor, the door near the kitchen. The community was at supper, but she led me straight upstairs to the Novitiate where Sister Galla, the novice mistress, was waiting for me. With a kind and quiet but hearty welcome, she told me to change my dress, put on a candidate’s habit (extra large!) over a petticoat that went almost twice around my waist. I had high-heeled shoes, and she had no low ones ready. She opened her drawer, drew out a new pair of abaca slippers and said, “These are new. If they fit you, you may have them.” They fit! Then she said we would go down to supper, at the Sisters and novitiate members were coming for recreation. Thus, I had my first meal in the convent in borrowed clothes and a pair of abaca slippers! What did I eat? Heaven help me, I don’t even recall if anything went down my throat that evening.
A postlude. This I don’t recall either, but Sister Silvana recounted this more than once lovingly and joyfully. She said the morning after, she saw me on the bridge connecting St. Scholastica to what we now call St. Gertrud. I looked around to see no one was around, and gave a leap of joy!
