Evil dragons still live within our midst

Last Sunday morning, my wife Jessica, my daughter Katrina and I went to the Ayala Center to watch the movie premier of “There be Dragons” which is a fictional movie on the historic times of the Spanish Civil war, which is also about the real life story of St. Josemaria Escriva. We’ve already seen a lot of made-in-Hollywood movies of historic events like “Pearl Harbor” where a fictional love story is inserted to spice up history.

But in the movie “There be Dragons”, Director Roland Joffe (he did the famous movies, Killing Fields and The Mission) inserts the universal values of love, heroism and most important of all, forgiveness in a most turbulent setting of the Spanish Civil War. The premier of this movie was sponsored by the EduChild Foundation and its president Manolo Escueta says, “There be Dragons” is also a film that portrays the life of St. Josemaria Escriva, a Spanish priest canonized by Blessed Pope John Paul II. He is the Patron Saint of Ordinary Life.” Yes, it is the beginnings of Opus Dei.

Indeed, in the past, the clergy taught the idea that we can only find Jesus Christ inside the church. But St. Josemaria Escriva preached the idea that we are all called to a life of holiness even in our most ordinary work. Didn’t our Lord Jesus Christ preach “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”? Indeed, God made all of us in his image; hence we can achieve a state of holiness if we really strive for it. But it can only come from prayer, sacrifice and above all forgiveness of our heart. After all, the Lord always listens to a contrite heart and his sins are forgiven.

Mind you, St. Escriva did not invent this idea, rather it was also the thoughts of Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a 17th century priest whose thoughts became a best selling book, “The Sacrament of the Present Moment” which came from his original manuscript “Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence” translated by Kitty Muggeridge… that if God wants to speak with us, he will speak with us even if we’re not inside the church.

Being a history buff, I have read much about the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and its complexity which started from July 17, 1936 and ended four years later in April 1, 1939 where half a million Spaniards mostly civilians were killed and families split between the Monarchist, which later became the Republicans (supported by the Soviet Union) who supported the rebel insurgents against Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Fascist gov’t that had full support of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler used the Spanish Civil War to test his new weapons of war… that Franco used to destroy his enemies.

In the midst of this anarchy, the Catholic Church was caught in-between. Hated by the Communist Republicans and the Fascists who were anti-clerics, they burned many churches and executed many priests. Yes all this happened to Spain, where we got our Christian Faith. This movie depicts the many dragons that exist around us or those that burn within us.

While the evil dragons of war ended when Generalissimo Franco was victorious over the Communists, however the defeat of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany after World War II only forced the evil dragons to change tactics. Today, Spain is in financial trouble, like most of Europe and I can only reckon that this has something to do with Spain’s Communist leadership allowing for a Reproductive Health Bill that was the doorway for allowing abortion and divorce into this most Catholic of Catholic nations.

In the Philippines we too have to live with the evil dragons in our midst. When politicians openly attack the Catholic Church, I look at them as one of those dragons, after all evil comes in different forms or faces, so cleverly disguised… even as famous Senators who support the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. These people unabashedly defend the women’s right to do whatever she wants with her body… even use contraceptives that we all know can kill the unborn. These people are the new Herods of our time who sought to kill the first born in order to destroy the Messiah.

One of the evil dragons that have dragged the Philippines into the road to perdition is the existence of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the New People’s Army (NPA). Yet a weak Presidency under President Aquino would sit down with the Communists lured by that unreachable Peace Accord with them, because the communists do not really want peace to reign.

P-Noy’s government is akin to the weak Weimar Republic that fell under the boots of Nazism or the equally weak Second Spanish Republic that fought the left and the right and the Catholic Church during the Spanish Civil War. Today we have many anti-clerics attacking the Catholic Church. Apostasy among priests can be discerned in the open support of some clergymen for the RH bill. These are the evil dragons that still live within our midst and we need to exorcise this evil.

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