Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas disclosed on 6 October 2010, during his 25th year anniversary Mass as a priest, that his teenage idol was kung fu master Bruce Lee, not Jesus Christ. Villegas celebrated the Mass at the newly refurbished St. John the Evangelist Cathedral in Dagupan.
In his homily, Archbishop Villegas said, "God called me to follow Him and He called me through Bruce Lee. I was too sickly to engage in martial arts but I was an avid reader of Bruce Lee's philosophy especially these words, 'Be yourself and learn the art of dying.'"
Villegas said Bruce Lee's philosophy touched him deeply. Quoting the late master, the archbishop said, "Be flexible. Be formless. Be fluid. Be shapeless like water. You put water unto a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. Water can flow or it can crash or creep. Be water, my friend. Water has the continuity of movement. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying. The cup realizes itself only by being empty. Be yourself."
These words disturbed his sleep and distracted him from his studies. “It left me desiring passionately to learn the art of dying. I wanted to be empty like the cup. I wanted to be formless like water. I wanted to find myself. This search brought me to the gates of San Carlos Seminary in Makati because our high school principal said that was where I could learn the art of dying, like my idol Bruce Lee,” he recalled.
On 5 October 1985, the late Manila Archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin ordained him a priest. But his classmates in the seminary never discovered his passion for Bruce Lee as his spiritual directed him not to disclose it then. The priest felt that his classmates might misunderstand him.
His spiritual director taught him though about a wiser man who lived 2,000 years before Bruce Lee, and who said, "If the seed dies, it bears fruits."
“I fell in love with this man wiser than my teenage idol. I laid aside my Bruce Lee album and magazine collection and answered the call of Jesus. ‘Come follow me,’ he said.” [Based on the report by Yolanda Sotelo of Inquirer Northern Luzon]
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