Are our leaders failing the test Abraham passed?

“I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing — all this because you obeyed my command.”

– God speaking to Abraham, Genesis 22:16–18

UNDOUBTEDLY, the hardest test humanity and even divinity ever face is the call to obedience against one’s own will and well-being. Adam and Eve failed it, and it took total obedience even against his own will, which Jesus, the divine Son of God, offered his Father from the Garden of Gethsemane all the way to Calvary to undo the damning damage to every human soul from that first act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden.

Also heeding God’s edict against what must have been his own wish was Abraham, who set forth to comply with His command to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. As countless believers espouse and Mass-goers shall hear in the first Mass reading on February 25, the Second Sunday of Lent, an angel stopped the divinely mandated sacrifice and delivered the heavenly message quoted above.

For sure, every soul undergoes this test, rarely in the life-anddeath circumstances Jesus and Abraham faced, but always demanding the selfless answer Christ gave at Gethsemane and Christians intone in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.”

When right is inconvenient

What often makes this Abrahamic trial most devious is often its seeming complexity. Take the hard choice Pontius Pilate had to make between freeing the innocent Jesus or yielding to the raucous mob crying, “Crucify him!”

Should he do what’s right and risk a riot or unjustly execute one innocent to spare the body politic and himself from potentially violent disorder? He chooses the convenient path, sacrificing one man for a peaceful Passover for Jerusalem, not to mention avoiding an incident that could reflect badly on him as a procurator (there’s always a self-serving angle).

If Abraham and Jesus had done the same, they would have avoided anguish and agony, but at the incalculable cost of disobeying God and derailing His salvation plan. Abraham would have proven unworthy, perhaps forcing Yahweh to find another patriarch of the Chosen People destined to bring forth the Redeemer. And, of course, Jesus skirting Calvary would no longer be the Christ bringing salvation and everlasting life to us all.

For most of us, the consequences of not choosing what’s righteous in God’s eyes are not as eternally fateful as they would have been for Abraham and Jesus. But choosing wrong and disobeying heaven remains wrong, whatever the results. And as the February 25 Mass readings convey, God shall not favor those who fail to serve Him, even though they may seem to prosper at first from their unrighteousness.

In the Responsorial Psalm 116 (Ps 116: 10, 15–19), the obedient believer is “greatly afflicted” at first but eventually declares: “I am your servant, the son of your handmaid; you have loosed my bonds. To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving, and I will call

upon the name of the Lord.”

In the second reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans (Rom 8:31–34), faith in divine vindication for the righteous is extolled: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?”

And in the Gospel reading from St. Mark (Mk 9:2–10) recounting the Transfiguration of Christ, in which his divine nature is shown in dazzling glory, the final admonition from God is again of obedience: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

It’s complicated

Sadly, as we saw with Pilate, the complexities of life and especially the decisions leaders face not only obscure what’s right and wrong but also often provide excuses for making the convenient but unjust choice.

One such complex situation our national leaders and even media have faced over the past year is whether to open bases of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to American forces, knowing that they would be subject to devastating attack in a war over Taiwan, of which there is a significant risk — precisely why the United States, Japan and Australia are beefing up their forces.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. knew well the grave risks of siding with Washington. During his January 2023 state visit to Beijing, he told the China Global Television Network (CGTN) that the region’s future “must be decided by the Asia-Pacific region, not anyone else.” He added that our national interest “dictates that we will not allow ourselves to be drawn back to the old Cold War formula where one has to take sides.”

He further recounted about 14 mins into the CGTN’s interview (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=UhWaaDCcwAA): “The Americans offered to be the third party between China and the Philippines, and I said that’s not going to succeed because you (US) are a party in interest.”

But US pressure not only led him to abandon neutrality but also jettison his loyal and patriotic first national security adviser Clarita Carlos, who was supposed to review the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) expiring in April unless renewed, the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement, and even the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty underpinning our US alliance.

Meanwhile, leading politicians and media have helped Washington’s push to boost forces and bases in the country by clamming up on the danger of devastation and even nuclear contamination facing EDCA sites and their surrounding communities, even if American generals, think tanks and media themselves agree that facilities used by US forces would be attacked.

Now, other consequences of heeding Uncle Sam instead of what is right and best for our country are now emerging, from the breakup of the Marcos-Duterte UniTeam, hit by US moves to prevent another Duterte presidency, to renewed rebel offensives, spurred by peace talks to keep leftists silent on the bases they used to lambast without fail.

In April, EDCA expires or renews. May our leaders follow the call to do what is right and just for our nation. Amen.