Tomorrow is Palm Sunday the start of Holy Week

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. That is when people have coconut palm leaves blessed in church to sacramentals that are displayed in their homes for the entire year. Some of these palm leaves will be burned to ashes next year. Their ashes will be used to mark the foreheads of the devout during the Ash Wednesday ceremony that marks the new Lenten season.

As we know, the military and the police went on full alert during our last commemoration of All Saints and All Souls days in all the cemeteries on the first two days of November. Now, they will again be on full alert for the entire Holy Week commemoration. This time the focal points will be the churches. Part of the Holy Week celebration is the Visita Iglesia. Do the police and the military have enough men to ensure that all churches will be safe? We know that terrorists chose Valentine’s Day to set-off three bomb explosions last Valentine’s Day. We hope and pray that this does not happen on Holy Week in any church in the country. We are sure that the administration will do everything to ensure peace during Holy Week. The people must do their share by also being on full alert.

Every priest in charge of a church must get his parishioners to take proper steps to ensure that no untoward incident takes place in their respective churches. First and foremost, this means vigilance. Parishioners must be told in advance that during Holy Week when they go to church, they should avoid taking anything that has to be checked because it may contain a bomb.

Terrorists may strike at any time. But we should be on full alert during Holy Week because terrorists always strike where and when they get maximum publicity. The authorities will go full alert during Holy Week, the churches and devotees should have their own full alert program. These are not normal times. To complicate matters, many terrorists are Muslims who are not even aware that the Koran condemns terrorism.

We are very glad that in Spain, the Muslim population was the very first to issue a fatwa declaring that bin Laden and other Muslim terrorists are acting "outside Islam." Here, responsible Muslim leaders like Gov. Parouk S. Hussin of the Autonomous Region of Mindanao and Anak ng Mindanao Rep. Mujiv Hataman did everything they could to resolve the Camp Bagong Diwa siege as peaceful as possible. Unfortunately, the Abu Sayyaf detainees did not heed their call for sobriety. We have a lot of world-wide and local problems. But none of them are religious in nature. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus are all part of the solution. We have no differences that cannot be solved peacefully. Terrorism can only aggravate problems. All men are brothers.