As part of our Christmas Season on Straight from the Sky, we continue with our Holy Land Pilgrimage Tour dubbed "Foot-steps of Jesus" with Delmar Travel & Tours. But this is a special Nativity presentation as we are piecing together most of the Joyful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary starting with the Annunciation in Nazareth where we were so blessed to have prayed the Angelus exactly during high noon when all bells in the churches of Nazareth were clanging aloud while we prayed at the very spot that the Angel Gabriel announced the coming birth of our Lord Jesus Christ to his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. What a great blessing from our Lord.
After the visit to the Church of the Annunciation in Naza-reth, we traveled the 80 miles from Nazareth to Ein Karem in the traditional house where Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of St. John the Baptist used to live. Being in the Holy Land gave us a true picture of the difficulty of travel in those ancient times when there were no real roads or highways.
Then from Ein Karem, we proceeded to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem; at the very spot that St. Helena found (with the help of the early Christians) the very grotto or cave, which our Lord Jesus Christ was born, into this world surrounded by poverty. Such is the humility of God, who did not allow his only begotten son, our Lord Jesus Christ to be born to royalty, but rather, he chose the most humble woman in the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary who herself was conceived without sin so that her womb would become God's tabernacle. He also chose St. Joseph to accompany the Blessed Virgin Mary in this most difficult task to raise the Son of God.
Finally, we end up having a Holy Mass just outside of Bethlehem in a place known as the Shepherd's Field. That the very first people who were given the honor and privilege to first witness God becoming man as announced by the choir of angels, this distinction goes to the poor shepherds. There is a special meaning why God allowed the shepherds to see his only begotten son, because as our Lord Jesus Christ began his public ministry, he would be known far and wide as the Good Shepherd.
So watch this special Straight from the Sky Christmas and New Year's presentation when we toured the Nativity scene when we went on a Pilgrimage Tour to the Holy Land. You can watch it on SkyCable's channel 61 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturdays at the same time and replays on MyTV channel 30 on M-W-F.
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Last Dec. 20 we wrote an article in this corner titled "There is no Government Presence in our Streets" and apparently a lot of friends here have read the article and totally agree with my observations. In the United States, you can see the presence of the government through their police squad cars or patrol vehicles. I dare you, drive you car with a busted taillight and chances are, you'd have a police car with lights blinking behind you, asking you to stop your vehicle and issue you a ticket. Why a ticket for a damn busted light? Because your vehicle has become a menace on the road.
Here in Metro Cebu, tricycles or jeepneys go about their way to pick up passengers at night without any lights, not even reflectors. If this is rampant in Metro Cebu I really don't blame those idiotic drivers. I put the blame squarely in the hands of our traffic authorities in Metro Cebu and I mean everyone, including the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board, which today have to do something about this.
Just inspect our jeepneys and you will see many of them with tires so bald, you could see its threads hanging out. But the jeepney driver doesn't care simply because he can get away with it. As we already know, jeepney drivers use their poverty as their excuse why they cannot properly maintain their public utility vehicles. Did you see the Banilad Road at night along that nightspot called Bar Code? Its customers park on both sides of the road and they can do it because no one apprehends them. See what I mean when I said we don't see the presence of government in our streets?
It is for this reason, why I strongly believe that unless we change our system of governance, the Philippines will always be a third world country because of the third world mentality of our political leaders. So will we forever be stuck with the same as usual until the next generation?
I suppose the answer to that is a resounding Yes! For as long as we Cebuanos are happy with the status quo, we're better off getting out of here and living in a foreign country. Mind you, most Filipinos have already done that. Of course we could force this systems change if we changed the Constitution, but clearly people are blocking any such plan, which means that our backs are against the wall. So where do we go from here? Pray tell me!
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