Usher in the Holy Week
'Whosoever you are, even if you are the loftiest of tower, death will surely overtake you'-quote from the Koran.
Dear readers, you might not have noticed it but the semana santa already started yesterday. Fyi. April 1 and 2 will be Maundy Thursday and the day after is Good Friday. Catholic faithfuls who attended the mass yesterday were marked in their foreheads with ash. ‘From dust you came, to dust you return’. Lahat mamatay, una una lang yan. It is the gospel truth. It is said when you are born, there is only direction, and that is death. From womb to tomb. But never fear death said my favorite priest. ‘The greatest gift God has given to mankind is death.’I am trying to imagine people who would be in advance age, bed ridden, immobile and only under assisted living. I have friend from our Monday Club whose father was in that state for more than ten years and under the care of nurses.
I always remember these two situations and keep repeating them inorder to remind people the fragility of human lives. A friend of mine told this story to me. According to him, each time he visited his father he would just take pity on his old man who kept asking who is he.
I have an auntie from Porac who was an ICU patient at the Angeles University Foundation Hospital for more than three years. She made a lot of money from several businesses, but spent all the profits for hospital bills. She was at some point asked God to end her misery and pleaded death.
There
are
so
many other true to life situations wherein people begged God for mercy to end their sufferings.
'Father why thou hast forsaken me'. Even our Lord Jesus Christ uttered this word towards heaven when his human body can no longer endure the pain. What more for ordinary mortals.
During this Holy Week I hope each one of us will try to contemplate our own life existence. That it may focus on the fragility of human life, that one day you will breathe your last, and that at the end you can make good accounting of what you have done for others.
Shakespeare once wrote, 'all the evil in men will be interred with their bones'. I beg to disagree on the thoughts of the greatest writer of all time. Possible he didn't realize when he was writing that particular line that there is the last judgment that will come.
A blindfolded lady symbolizes human justice, meaning she cares not if you are rich or poor, good looking or ugly, educated or unlettered, but her ears can still hear and be tempted of a whispered promise. Not in the Divine Justice, husticia divino. It will be right minus wrong since in my belief God is all just. If you have done thousands of good deeds and committed few infractions and felt really sorry for your sins, God may in the last judgment may reserve a seat for you in heaven.
So, please be nice, kind, gentle and generous. ' Today's life is only for today. Enjoy every moment because even today's newspaper will become tomorrow's waste paper'.
The Commission on Population recently announced that the distressing incidents of adolescent or teenage pregnancy is now a national emergency. With the two incidents of ten-year old girls giving birth in NCR and Calabarzon, this issue must be given the immediate and appropriate solution.
In Region 3, he Philippine Statistics Authority cited that based on the 2019 civil registry statistics,
"births among adolescent girls remained high in Central Luzon." The occurrence of teenage pregnancy in the region totals to 20,974 or 31.27% of the total adolescent