Christians all over the world, especially in predominantly Catholic countries like the Philippines, will observe Holy Week in various traditional ways. As in previous years, there will be visits to the Blessed Sacrament and seven churches (Visita Iglesia), Seven Last Words rituals, Good Friday processions and recollections. For cabinet members there is the traditional retreat in Baguio with the President. Others will go to Puerto Galera, Boracay or Panglao in Bohol while the more affluent will check in at 5-star hotels in Metro Manila to relax for three days.
But it appears that our Holy Week religious fervor has not raised our moral values as a people, with our country known as one of the most corrupt countries in the world with the present administration ranked as more corrupt than the Marcos and Estrada administrations. There is no public institution, the Supreme Court included, that remains credible and respected.
Perhaps, instead of the ritualistic traditional Holy Week practices for seven days, we should deeply reflect on what Thomas Gray (1716-1771) an English poet and Cambridge scholar; St Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, the founder of the Redemptorist Order; and Carmelite nun Lucia dos Santos, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared six times in Fatima, said.
In his masterpiece poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” believed to have been written in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1750, Gray wrote: “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, and all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, awaits alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
Do those who misgovern us, realize that sooner or later their destination, like all of us, is the grave whether at Heritage, Libingan ng mga Bayani, or Loyola Memorial Park?
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori in his work “Considerations on Death, Heaven and Hell” used for meditations over many years said: “Among worldlings, those only are esteemed happy who enjoy the goods, the pleasures, the riches and the pomp of the world; but death puts an end to all these joys of the earth. Death in fine, deprives man of all the goods of this world. Ah, what a spectacle to behold, a prince expelled from his palace, never more to enter it, and others take possession of his money, his furniture and all his other goods. There is no longer any one to esteem or flatter him; neither are his last commands heeded. Saladin, who had acquired many kingdoms in Asia gave orders as he expired, that when his body is carried to the grave, a man should precede it with his shirt suspended to a pole crying: This is all that Saladin carries to the grave.”
St. Alphonsus wrote what happens when the body of a king is laid in his grave: “ the flesh fall off and rots with worms, the body’s covering — his skeleton can no longer be distinguished from other skeletons, and cannot be determined who has been master and who was servant. In fine, when death comes, the end comes – and all ends and we have to leave all; of all the things of the world, we carry nothing to the grave.”
The powerful and avaricious whose greed is limitless should reflect on St. Alphonsus’ words. The millions of US dollars and Euros stashed away in foreign banks, the real properties and mansions abroad and other undisclosed investments acquired through graft and corruption will be left behind – to be fought over and squandered by heirs.
And what awaits the unrepentant corrupt and greedy who betrayed public trust? In the third apparition on July 13, 1917 to the three Fatima visionaries, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, the Blessed Virgin Mary showed the three children a vision of hell. Lucia in her Third Memoir for the Bishop of Leira – Fatima on August 31, 1941 described the vision as: “A great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent embers, all blackened or burnished bronzed, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and make us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent.”
I pray that it will not be too late for us to realize that money and power is not everything. What is important is what we have made of our lives. We should remember that we are all living on borrowed time. Everything we have – money, power, talent, material things and most of all, our LIFE – is not our own. We were given this life for a purpose and a reason. If we lose sight of what that purpose and reason really is, then we become EVIL. And when the time comes to return all these to our Creator – what shall we say?
For the unrepentant who refuse to desist from their plundering ways, plunging our country to misery and despair – hell is forever, it is endless pain and despair. This Holy Week, it may be good for us to meditate on what Thomas Gray, St. Alphonsus Ligouri and Sister Lucia dos Santos counseled.