The Sto. Niño in my life

I consider my family as an average Catholic family when I was growing up as a child. We go to mass every Sunday together as a family and we pray the rosary everyday together as a family. On our family altar, there were images of Christ the King, Mary Help of Christians, Our Lady of Fatima and the Sto. Niño. My mother used to tell me that the image of the Sto. Niño was for me and that I should always pray to the infant Jesus and take care of its image on our altar. It was a small image of the Sto. Niño de Cebu, a dark skinned image of the infant Jesus.

I would usually clean the image of my Sto. Niño by wiping the dust from it. It was made of plaster of Paris and painted with glossy paint. Over the years, the image of the infant Jesus had become shiny, because of my frequent cleaning of it with the use of a rag.

Now I remembered that January is the month of the Sto. Niño and it is also the month of my birthday. Probably that was why my mother gave me an image of the Sto. Niño, because its feast day and my birthday fall on the same month.

One time, a friend of my parents who was a doctor, lent their image of the Sto. Niño to us. They said that it was a miraculous image of the infant Jesus. We placed the image of the infant Jesus in the middle of our altar, together with the other religious images that we have. It was about two and a half feet in height and was wearing a garment and robe made out of fabric. It had embroidery with floral design using gold thread. It was holding a golden globe on its left hand and was wearing a pair of golden boots. It was not dark skinned like my Sto. Niño, but it was a Caucasian looking little boy with a smile that was life like.

One day, early in the morning, my mother was surprised when she saw the image of the Sto. Niño that was lent to us. Its boots had mud on it as if it walked around some muddy place. There were scratches on its dress, and one can tell that some of the embroidery in gold thread was torn. There was even some dirt on its face, just like a child who played around and got himself dirty. When we looked at the image of the infant Jesus, it was as if it had gone to some place outside of the house during the night. There were neither cats nor dogs in our house that may have caused the damage and dirt on its dress.

When we told the owners about it, they simply smiled and told us that it was really like that ever since. They have had several similar experiences with the image of the infant Jesus in the past. They said that probably, this Sto. Niño likes going out at night, when everybody else in the house is asleep. They said it’s a “Sto. Niñong Lakwatsero” (or a wandering Sto. Niño).