Marcos is now God's judgment call

All people die. People who die have no business arguing about where the dead Ferdinand Marcos should eventually lie. They should be more concerned about their own inescapable demise. If they cannot even be sure how they will go, why bother about those who have gone?

 Marcos is already in the hands of God. It no longer makes any difference whether he is buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani or stays where he presently is, in his native Batac, Ilocos Norte. It does not even matter if he is belatedly cremated, the ashes strewn all over Edsa.

The living should not be so presumptuous as to think anything they can do at this point to Marcos -- be it an act of courtesy or a show of disdain -- can change the judgment God himself has already ordained.

To those who hate Marcos so much they would rather die with a thorn in their hearts than forgive, I have this question to ask: Would it make any difference to God if in your anger you place the body of the dictator in a shoebox?

How sad that those who cannot even guarantee for their own selves a slot in heaven would be so harsh on someone who, in God's infinite wisdom and divine justice, has been dispensed with in a manner we will never know or understand.

It is easy to presume God consigned Marcos to hell because we have looked at him with our own eyes. It is easy to insist someone we presume to be burning in hell does not deserve a hero's burial because we are passing judgment on him with our own hearts.

But it is not our eyes and our hearts that now see and weigh Marcos. Everything that could have been said and done against him should have been said and done while he was still alive and within the ambit of all that we can say or do.

Now he is beyond us, beyond our judgment, and beyond our capacity to do anything. If in the infinite kindness and love of God Marcos found his forgiveness and is now cavorting with the angels in heaven, who is the man --- Marcos victim or not --- who can stand up to complain?

The best thing is for us to move on and entrust everything that Marcos ever stood for and meant to people unto the unquestioned appreciation of God. Let us not presume to know any better than our Maker.

If God wills it for Marcos to stay in his Ilocos mausoleum, there he will remain, and no amount of cajolery and wheeling-dealing can move him an inch from there. But if God wills it for him to be removed elsewhere, neither coup nor civil war can prevent it from happening.

Many Marcos victims are now grownups. In fact many are now well advanced in years. Maybe instead of constantly looking back in agony and anger, they should start looking forward to a meeting with God with a clear conscience and a lightness of heart.

   As Christians we have been taught from the very beginning that, on the Judgment Day, it is not the greatness of our achievements or the value of our conquests that matters but how, in our most trying moments, we have treated our fellowmen.

I am for cleaning the slate of Marcos. Neither am I saying that we forget. But as Christians who will eventually have to ask for forgiveness, shouldn't we at least try to show we are also capable of being forgiven?

To forgive is not simply to say it. One has to show it, often in a manner that is painful and far from normal. It is not easy. But neither is asking for forgiveness. Both require an emptying of the self. One has to stand naked before God.