A Word from PRI President Steven Mosher:
A few months ago, our friend and long-time PRI colleague, Sergio Burga, was called home to the Lord. My wife, Vera, and I first got to know Sergio on a visit to his native country of Peru 15 years ago. He was a young man of deep faith, already engaged to his beloved Marisela, whom he married the following year. I recall giving them a rosary, saying that I knew they would pray it together. They did, until his untimely death from liver cancer late last year. All pro-lifers are loving, kind, and decent people, engaged as they are in livesaving work for which they will receive little thanks in this world. But some of our number are living saints. Our beloved Sergio was one.
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“I like to see holiness in the patient people of God: in the parents who raise their children with so much love, in those men and women who work to bring home the bread, in the sick (…) In this constancy to go on day by day, I see the holiness of the Church militant. This is often the holiness next door, of those who live close to us and are a reflection of God’s presence.” So wrote Pope Francis in Gaudete et exultate not long ago.
With each passing day, I am more and more convinced that Sergio Burga Alvarez was that saint whom God placed “next door.” Many of us had not recognized this before his early and unexpected departure to the Father’s House last November 30, but at his funeral with his wife Marisela and his countless friends, our eyes were opened.
In those moments when we were allowed to see Sergio’s life from a truly spiritual perspective, we saw a reality that transcended the human affection that Sergio awakened in each one of us. As we mourners shared the many gifts he had given us, we perceived that his life had been a consistent and uplifting testimony of love, full of everyday acts done in an extraordinary way.
We became convinced that we had met, lived with, worked with, played with, laughed with, and shared grief with a saint in our midst, without realizing it. God had bestowed upon us a rare opportunity.
To be a saint is to live heroically and in an exemplary spirit through the three theological virtues. Faith: to be completely convinced that God can fulfill his promises. Hope: the gift of total certainty that God is faithful. And charity: the courageous commitment to authentically love God and neighbor.
I am a witness that Sergio lived these virtues in an exemplary way, each and every day for 15 years, as we worked together at PRI defending life and family.
With God’s grace, Sergio rose to live those virtues in a truly heroic way as well, when he received the diagnosis that it probably wouldn’t be long before liver cancer ended his earthly life, leaving his wife and three small children behind.
To put it in more familiar terms, a saint is a friend in Christ who also invites those around him to experience that same friendship. To be a saint is to be someone who is simply seeking to be like Christ and who encourages you to be like Him. It is someone who builds your heart to be a better Christian and child of God.
Sergio was for me, and for many, that friend in Christ.
A saint is humble. Sergio was not one for big speeches. And although he sometimes gave them in the Peruvian Congress, at the OAS, and to many other audiences, he was much more eloquent in his life. Sergio did not write a book. His life was a book, brimming with “good news” that made the Gospel transparent.
He had a kind and empathetic style. Everyone loved him. His presence embraced you, convinced you, and mobilized you. Yes, Sergio was a man of action devoted to activating others.
What a desire to be like him!
A saint is joyful. And Sergio never lost his humor. I laughed with Sergio all the time. Working, chatting, watching soccer, or enjoying a meal. From the day I met him until our last day together. In his achievements and in his defeats. In his plenitude and when he was sick, ready to go to his Lord.
But, in addition, a saint carries his cross. He receives it with love because it comes from the Lord. And without doubt, the almost 6 months during which Sergio fought against cancer were a heavy cross. The possibility of offering his young life and leaving his beloved family must have made him say, “Lord, take this cup away from me, but not my will but Yours be done.”
Those of us who were close to Sergio in those days lived a Way of the Cross with him. And Sergio not only kept his faith, hope, and charity, but his courage gave the necessary courage to his people. Like the Lord, Sergio walked with his cross, purifying himself and consoling those who were in his path.
To be a saint is to collaborate with grace through the sacraments. Sergio was a Christian conscious of the gift of his Baptism, Confirmation, and his married life, devoted to the grace of Confession and the Eucharist. Not only did he leave prepared with the Anointing of the Sick, but in his last days he participated in the preparation of his eldest son who would receive his First Holy Communion only days after his departure. He wrote a letter that his son received the day he went to Confession for the first time: “My son, I wanted to share that one of the most important moments of my life was making my First Communion… To receive Communion it is very important that you have made a good Confession so that you are clean of heart and can receive Jesus. Confession is like taking a weight off your shoulders. It is telling Jesus through the priest all your sins, all those things that make you sad…”
A few days later, when Sergio had already departed, the papal blessing for his son’s first Communion, which he had requested weeks before, arrived in the mail from the Vatican.
Sergio’s life shone with those acts of human love, enhanced with divine grace.
I believe I had a saint as a friend and as a co-worker. A son of God, a son of Mary and St. Joseph. A friend in Christ who today encourages me to be better every day in order to join him in Heaven.
Sergio, my friend, pray to the Lord for us.
