It’s All Saints and All Souls Day again, but this time it has a political twist, as it is already election season. So if there’s any political candidate who will be campaigning today in our seaports, bus terminals or airports or worse in the cemeteries, this should warn you not to vote for that unscrupulous candidate who would use this day for their selfish political ends.
I hope that the millions of people who will troop to the country’s cemeteries today will use this celebration of All Saints Day and All Souls Day as a time for reflection especially in this Year of Faith that Pope Benedict XVI declared a few weeks ago in the month of October, we Filipinos should be proud that we have held on to this wonderful Christian tradition handed down to us by our Spanish colonizers to remember the numerous Saints that Christianity produced through the centuries and above all our very own loved ones who have passed on to a better life.
Today Christianity is under siege against a tsunami of relativism, modernism, secularism and liberalism. One question often asked is, “Whether Christianity will survive the modern age?” My immediate response to this question is, “For as long as we Filipinos refuse to accept the anti-Christian culture being demanded upon us, like the UN sponsored Reproductive Health (RH) bill designed to reduce our population, then Christianity will survive. Ask yourselves who are the main sponsors of the RH bill? Aren’t they allies of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) who represent a godless ideology?
Allow me to take a quote from one of my favorite Catholic writers, Mike Aquilina who wrote in MercatorNet about the question whether Christianity will bounce back in secular Europe? Mike says, “It is a tough job. It’s not an impossible job. If you look at the odds against Christianity in the first, second and third centuries, there was really no chance that the church would have survived.
Rome had brute power. And it controlled everything — the jobs you wanted, the media and entertainment, travel. And even if Rome had somehow managed to lose its grip, its enemies were no warmer toward Christianity. It’s not like the Church could have played the Persians against Rome. The first evangelization took place at a time when Christians really had no advantages. They were outcast by everyone. Their religion was a capital crime. They were denied a voice in the public square.
Yet Christianity prevailed, and the empires died. I suppose you could say it took just shy of 300 years, if you’re counting from Pentecost to the Edict of Milan, the decree that made Christianity legal. But even then a large portion of the population still worshipped the old gods. The thorough evangelization of Europe probably took about a thousand years. And some, like Sigmund Freud, said it never really took in the barbarian lands. So maybe this new evangelization is simply a renewal of those long-ago efforts.
Fresh from our trip from Rome and in Tuscany, we saw those beautiful huge, but empty churches. In Florence, churches were just across each other and were equally as opulent inside if not outside. But take a peak inside and you will see more tourists awed by the splendor and the magnificence of the Catholic Church, but totally devoid of any sense of spirituality.
Honestly, we had difficulty finding out the schedules for masses, despite the huge number of churches that we’ve seen. This is why I believe that Pope Benedict XVI’s call for the Year of Faith is quite timely in the hope that it would spur a re-evangelization of Europe. Even here at home, millions may flock to our cemeteries today because it’s the tradition and perhaps more importantly, there are no people inside the shopping malls as their friends are also in the cemeteries. But where’s our spirituality?
All Saints Day is also a day to reflect on our favorite Saints. Most towns in this country have their own Patron Saint that they ask to intercede favors from. Just a couple of weeks ago, Pope Benedict XVI canonized San Pedro Calungsod in St. Peter’s Square together with six other new Saints. It was indeed a proud time to be a Catholic in Rome, seeing the thousands of Filipinos waving Philippine flags clapping at that nobody called San Pedro Calungsod who is fast gaining devotees, not just from Overseas Filipinos Workers (OFW) but also right here at home.
Now the Philippines has two Saints that we are proud of. San Lorenzo Ruiz of Binondo and San Pedro Calungsod. Today we should look into their respective stories and ask ourselves, “Why did God allow for these two people whom we’ve never heard of become our Saints? None of them are priests, but they are mere Catechists. Yet, they were not afraid to die in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. What about us? How strong is our faith? Are we ready to die for our Lord Jesus Christ? I certainly hope you have that faith.
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mo-pzcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.