In observing the Holy Week, we take time to reflect on our lives as Christian emissaries in this world. Three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) allow us to share in God’s nature. These virtues allow us to live as God’s children and to merit eternal life.
Allow me to rephrase the literature on these three virtues from CatholiCity.com. I hope that this will help guide each and every Christian towards a more meaningful reflection during the next few days.
“Faith allows us to believe in God, all that he has revealed, and all that the Church proposes for our belief. Faith leads to a total committal. When faith is deprived of hope and love, it does not unite the believer to Christ nor make him a living member of the body.
“Christ’s disciple must spread the faith to others, even if this brings about persecution.
“By hope, we seek heaven, place our trust in Christ’s promises, and rely on the Holy Spirit. Into everyone’s heart, God has placed a search for happiness. Hope responds to this desire. It sustains man, frees him from discouragement, preserves him from selfishness, and leads to happiness on earth and in heaven.
“By charity, we love God for his own sake and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.
“Christ demands that we love everyone, especially our enemies, our neighbors and the poor. St. Paul says that love is patient and kind, believing, helping, and enduring all things. Love is not jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, irritable, or resentful.”
Earth hour
Last Saturday, environment advocates celebrated Earth Hour, a global warming awareness campaign that started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when the lights in 2.2 million homes and business establishments were turned off for one hour.
Now on its fourth year, Earth Hour has become a global movement with people from more than 135 countries participating. It is a testimony, more than anything else, to the fast-growing solidarity of the humankind to the issue of global climate change.
Earth Hour is a simple gesture that need not really be dissected for its actual face value, i.e., savings on electricity consumption vs the amount of heat generated by candles that replaced the light bulbs. It’s the thought that counts.
To those who actually bothered to turn off their lights, let’s do it again next year. And let’s convince more people to show their support in the fight to set up more stringent measures to halt the destruction of the world’s environment.
Earth day
This month, on April 22 to be exact, another movement started in 1970 will celebrate its 40th year. Earth Day, a movement founded by Gaylord Nelson, a US senator from Wisconsin, aimed at bringing the environment issue to national consciousness.
At that time, health was the main consideration. It was a campaign by Americans against lead in gasoline, smoke emission from factories, toxic sludge in water ways that found its way in agricultural lands and drinking sources, even oil spills that killed marine life.
Twenty years later, in 1990, the Earth Day movement went global. More than 200 million people in 141 countries participated in support of environmental issues. One of its biggest roles was to pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
In year 2000, the Earth Day campaign announced its war on global warming and its support for clean energy. More than 5,000 environmental groups around the world rallied during ED 2000 activities, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. It was by far the strongest advocacy campaign on a global scope.
Readers’ views on population
We would like to continue to give way to our readers who have taken so much of their precious time to comment on this column. The latest is by Ajaxman in The Star Online’s version of my most recent piece on population. He writes:
“Our current root cause of the perceived ‘population’ problem is the government corruption and greediness of some of our countrymen. If we see crowded hospitals, why not build more. When we see infrastructure as aid in economic recovery, why not build more without the graft and corruption.
“In this way, more growth activity is happening, and population is dispersed across various provinces and cities linked by efficient infrastructure, thereby delivery cheaper goods for the countrymen (provided businessmen are not too greedy). This I believe should be the long term solution, which the new president should be addressing.
“”There is indeed no over-population problem.
“An increasing population makes us think, makes us more efficient, and makes us find ways to be more productive in order to produce more food and goods. This is the challenge that we take as man on earth, and not cowards just to shoot (reduce) down the number of people on earth (or this nation). It is just a matter of outlook in life, and that is pro-life I would say (as men of God).
Abvegaille posted as follows this view on the column’s population article: “As long as we cannot control our population, whoever the president of this republic, the same situation will truly prevail. Forget the promises of sweet platforms and lip services after they are voted.
“Let’s put it in reality .... Bolivia is more than twice as large and with less than 10 million people. Yet majority is on a coping strategy. The Philippines can only have a healthy population of less than 25 million people. So the long-term approach should begin on population control. Zero growth for a five-year period is impossible but the voted president must bring down population growth to nil-near-miss.”
From Desperate_pinoy: “Noynoy is the only presidential candidate who actively supports the Reproductive Health Bill.”
More readers’ comments in our next column. We are all taking a break this coming Good Friday. Till next week, Happy Easter to all.
Should you wish to share any insights, write me at Link Edge, 25th Floor, 139 Corporate Center, Valero Street, Salcedo Village, 1227 Makati City. Or e-mail me at reydgamboa@yahoo.com. For a compilation of previous articles, visit www.BizlinksPhilippines.net.