LAST SUNDAY’S gospel taken from Luke 13:22-30 said Jesus, while making his way to Jerusalem, was asked by someone from the crowd, “Lord, is it true that few people will be saved?”
And his answer was, “Do your best to enter by the narrow road; for many, I tell you, will try to enter but will not be able…”
We were amazed at the way Fr. Arnel Tadeo, Parish Priest of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish of Calinan, in his reflection of the said gospel. We were immediately able to relate it to certain things that are prevailing in today’s socio-political situation in the country.
The Rev. Tadeo gave an easily understandable analogy to the above introductory statement of the gospel by making this statement: “Make Him increase as you make yourself decrease.” By HIM the reverend prelate referred to God with whom we need to further INCREASE our faith and obedience to His commandments.
And by saying that we need to “decrease” ourselves it should be taken to mean that we can only INCREASE Him by doing away with our sinfulness, our greed, out hatred and we have to show our readiness to forgive.
This is the only way, according to Fr. Arnel, that we can enter the “narrow” road that God has set as our way towards him. For as long as we refuse to discard our sinful baggage we will never fit into the “narrow” road to his Kingdom.
This reflection by Fr. Arnel has led us to ponder why so many Filipinos still refuse to allow the burial of former President Ferdinand Marcos’ body at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. Ironically, among those who lead the obstruction efforts are men and women who claim to be the epitome of morality in Philippine society. Some come from the academe and from the religious groups. The latter should have led initiatives to give forgiveness as expounded in God’s teachings; not sowing divisiveness by arguing that the Marcoses must have to publicly admit the crimes attributed to them and thereafter ask forgiveness to the Filipinos people.
Yes, from the looks of it these people are openly refusing to cast away their unforgiving. In other words, they’d rather not care about “entering by the narrow road” designated by God by not forgiving those who they think have sinned against them not necessarily the entire Filipino nation.
How then can this country move forward undeterred when some of its supposed leaders and well-meaning citizens are themselves forming the major stumbling block of unity and reconciliation?
They are the ones effectively constricting further the “narrow road” that last Sunday’s gospel evangelizes.
********************
Yes, we agree fully with President Rodrigo Duterte when he said during a midnight-to-wee hours of dawn press conference in Davao City last Saturday night and early Sunday that the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Agnes Callamard was the one who violated protocols in dealing with a sovereign government.
She has no right, not even the United Nations, to interfere in the affairs of an independent government even if it is a member of the UN. For Ms. Callamard to sort of demand an explanation from the Philippine government or to make known her intention to conduct investigations on alleged extrajudicial killings as a consequence of the anti-illegal drugs campaign of the Duterte administration, is clearly intruding into the affairs of the Philippine government.
The best that she should have done is to show some degree of courtesy to the President by writing him a letter coursed through the Foreign Affairs Department requesting for an audience with the President so she can be briefed on allegations that human rights are violated in the ongoing anti-illegal drugs campaign.
But no, she did not. Instead she issued statements to the media slamming the government of Duterte for what she heard and saw on television or read in the newspaper as extrajudicial killings.
Is the UN official thinking that she is still working during the 20s and thirty’s when the Philippines was still under the United States as colony? We are tempted to think along this line because Ms. Callamard’s trend of thought seems to be that of a master towards his servant; that she can do whatever she wishes because the servant is her “possession.”
Had she communicated officially to the government and sought the side of the President, then she would have been given information direct from the horse mouth. If she would not be satisfied with the explanation, then that would have been the best time for her to request authority from the President for the UN to conduct its investigation subject to the parameters that the Philippine government may set.
We wonder if after all she has done Ms. Callamard would still be comfortable coming to the Philippines to see the President after her unilateral condemnation of some of the deaths in the anti-illegal drugs campaign as extrajudicial killings that are being unreasonably attributed to the government.
-30-