Hugot

Hugot, in Filipino, literally means “to pull out”; “to unsheathe” or “to draw out something from within”. In the Philippine setting nowadays, hugot (or pick-up lines) is a slang word used to refer to quotable statements that draw out emotions and convey them to others oftentimes in a clever or witty manner. Often tinged with emotions, they also make one reflect in various ways!

Urbandictionary.com describes this phenomenon: “Usually words with potentially and personally deep sentimental or emotional undertones. Because feelings come from ‘deep within’ so you have had to ‘hugot’ your emotions first ‘from deep within’ before you would’ve actually blurted them out in somehow emotionally undertoned (sic) words — subconsciously or otherwise”.

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Very entertaining were the pick-lines of the late Senator Miriam Santiago: “Ang love, parang bayad sa jeep: minsan ‘di nasusuklian!” Or, the question-and-answer style of some stand-up comedians: “Pagod ka siguro? Kasi buong araw, tumatakbo ka sa isip ko.” (You must be tired, because you’ve been running through my mind all day.)

Or, more serious quotes that filled the Facebook walls of your friends. Lines like:

“The only people who deserve to be in your life are the ones who treat you with love, kindness and respect.”

“Sometimes we need some storms in our life in order to appreciate the calm”.

“If you can’t be a pencil to write someone’s happiness, then try to be a nice eraser to remove their sadness”.

Oftentimes, these lines are written on beautiful pictures of sceneries and people or even entertaining cartoons. But what makes them call our attention is the wit or ingenuity with which they are presented.

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When your friend posts on Facebook a certain hugot line, your immediate tendency is to interpret it to be your friend’s actual experience. May pinagdaanan! And more often than not, you could be right. But that is not the only interpretation.

At times, hugot lines are used also either to entertain certain persons you have in mind, or simply to make other people (those whom you think such lines could inspire) reflect on thoughts that have made you stop and think for a while.

For me, hugot lines are just there to stimulate our thoughts. Thanks to hugot, cogito! (I think!).

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But thanks to this hugot phenomenon, I am reminded of St. Josemaría Escrivá’s jaculatorias.

A jaculatoria is a short prayer, oftentimes taken from Biblical passages, that is used to expressed one’s affection or petition. Jaculatorias are also called aspirations of the heart expressed in short phrases or statements and are addressed to a saint or God.

When we are near someone who loves us and whom we love, we naturally express our affection in various ways. Words are the most common. The saints discovered that this could effectively be applied to our relationship with God.

St. Josemaría once said: “We’ve got to be convinced that God is always near us. We live as though he were far away, in the heavens high above, and we forget that he is also continually by our side.”

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Biblical passages like “Lord, if you will you can cure me” (Lk 5: 12); “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you” (Jn 21: 17); “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20: 28), can be effective ways to express the aspirations of our heart — they can be the best hugot we address to God especially when prayer time becomes so dry we do not know what to say to the Lord!

Kathleen N. Hattrup noticed that “In the long tradition of the Church, various names have been given to these short prayers — our little hellos — that we speak to Our Lord throughout the day. They are called aspirations, or ejaculatory prayers (from the Latin for bursting forth), or as well, ‘arrow’ prayers” (https://aleteia.org/author/kathleen-hattrup/).

Hattrup said St. Padre Pio would affirm that these prayers, which the saint used to call “arrows that wound God’s heart”, “have a special power in bringing down God’s grace upon us” (Ibid.). Quoting the saint’s December 1914 writing, she noted how the Italian saint would urge people to recite these prayers.

“I urge you continually to renew the right intention you had at the beginning and to recite ejaculatory prayers from time to time. Those prayers are like arrows that wound God’s heart and oblige him — and this word is not at all exaggerated in this case — oblige him, I tell you, to grant you his graces and his help in everything” (Ibid.).

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Our hugot may always be drawn from a heart that aspires affections. But when addressed to God or to Our Lady, they are like arrows that touch God’s (or Mary’s) heart and oblige them to grant us what our hearts desire.

If we have been used to our hugots, why not begin acquiring the habit of jaculatorias?