‘Building the Promised Land is everyone’s task’

MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino led the nation in offering prayers for his late father, former senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., whose sacrifice to restore the country’s democracy was remembered during a mass to commemorate his 32nd death anniversary yesterday.

The President visited the tomb of his parents at the Manila Memorial Park in Parañaque City before attending the mass at La Salle Greenhills.

Celebrating the mass, Fr. Manoling Francisco shared a prayer attributed to the late Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and the letter of Ninoy to his wife Corazon that stressed the need for everyone to be ready to sacrifice for the country and the people.

“The work of building the Promised Land is everyone’s task,” Francisco said.

“Ninoy denounced oppression. Ninoy galvanized our people, inspired our countrymen and women, but, like Moses, was not given the privilege of ushering our people into a Promised Land of a restored democracy,” he noted, citing the story of Moses in the Bible who, after freeing the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, did not make it to the Promised Land.

And like the prayer of Romero that says, “we plant the seeds that one day will grow,” Francisco stressed that all Filipinos had been “called and destined and tasked to create our Promised Land.”

“We lay the foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well,” the prayer read.

“It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own,” it added.

Francisco also shared the Aug. 26, 1973 letter of Ninoy to Cory about the Bible passage that said: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

“Then he goes on to write Tita Cory, what does this mean? Is it an invitation to suicide? I think it simply means that there is more than earthly comfort joy and carnal pleasure in this world. The message of Jesus as I understand it is that we must be ready to sacrifice for our fellowmen and women at all times. And if need be, even offer our lives for them,” Francisco quoted Ninoy’s letter as saying.

Ninoy further wrote that unless the people were willing to suffer and share their love with neighbors, “then we are like the grain that does not fall in the ground and will always remain only a grain of wheat,” Francisco said.

“If we pick up our cross and live the spirit of self-sacrifice and self-abdication, suffer for our neighbors, then like the grain that falls into the earth and dies, we will grow and bear much fruit,” the priest further quoted Ninoy as saying.

Francisco said that Cory had asked Ninoy what could befall him if he would come home in 1983, and her husband told her he would have to convince then dictator Ferdinand Marcos to restore democracy.

Ninoy was assassinated upon his return on Aug. 21, 1983 from self-exile in the United States.

And like Cory and now the President,

Francisco said Ninoy’s younger brother Agapito or Butz must also be remembered for continuing the fight for democracy.

“It was the destiny of Tito Butz to pick up where Ninoy left off,”

Francisco said, recalling how Butz led the people power revolution and many organizations to restore the country’s democracy.

Before the mass at 1 p.m., the President and his family and friends gathered before the tomb of their parents and offered prayers before reciting the rosary in the morning. His celebrity sister Kris and her children were not around, both at the memorial park and the mass.

In Malacañang, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said it had been 32 years since Ninoy laid down his life for the country as he came home to try to convince the dictator to restore democracy to avoid plunging the country into a violent revolution.

“But he paid for this idealism with his life. His assassination inspired millions to fight against the dictatorship through peaceful means. Today, these sentiments remain strong even among those who were not yet around at the time, as history has seared this image of ultimate sacrifice into our collective memory,” Lacierda said.

Ninoy served as mayor, vice governor and governor of Tarlac before he

became a senator and freedom fighter.