An unexpected Holy Week message from Du30

The Holy Week is upon us and we expect that a great majority of the Filipino faithful would go home to their respective provinces or cities and troop to their churches or parishes and renew their spiritual lives. Holy Week makes us ordinary Filipino unique because in reality, Christianity is on a retreat in many parts of the world. But not in the Philippines where the faith of the Filipino people remains strong and steadfast, which makes me proud of my Catholicism.

Over the weekend, as I read my Philippine Star, I was surprised to read that Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte issued an official statement calling upon the Filipino people to observe Holy Week meaningfully “through reflection and working for a better life.” He added, “This is the time to revitalize our faith and renew our relationship with God and our fellowmen. As we put our hands together in prayer, may we use this as an opportune time to rekindle our religious fervor and cherish our time-honored traditions as a pious people.”

Frankly speaking, this was one statement that I never expected to hear from Pres. Duterte. However, allow me to say that I will never forget the day that he won the Presidency because he went straight to the grave of his mother in the Davao cemetery to seek solace and prayer. That act of prayer gave us an insight that DU30 believes in life after death… that he often talks to his mother who was a very conservative Catholic.

This Holy Week message from the President is a very meaningful one because whether you like Pres. Duterte or not, he is the President of this nation and for the first time in his presidency, he sound more like Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma urging the faithful to participate in religious activities and to nourish their faith and spirituality.

Thus we earnestly hope that Filipinos from all over the country would use this Holy Week to renew their ties to the Lord. Here especially in Cebu, many people attend retreats or religious seminars as their way of spending their Holy Week. Sure, all the beach resorts in Cebu and in Bohol are filled to capacity but we do not take this away from people who also want to use the Holy Week as their short vacation. We do not take that away from them.

As Fr. Ernesto Javier told us during a sermon about Holy Week, God doesn’t expect us to turn around and become what we are not just because it is Holy Week. What is expected of us is a little this and a little that and even priests do not expect the Catholic faithful to turn 180 degrees because more often than not, these sudden turn around often fall back to what they used to be… huge sinners. So at the start of the Holy Week season, we have already witnessed a startling turnaround when we got an unexpected message from Pres. Duterte to rekindle our religious fervor and cherish our time-honored traditions as a pious people. Have a good Holy Week!

* * * Last Friday dawn, the streets of Cebu became an ambush zone (across the Ayala Shopping Center) when some 50 armed men, went to the Infinity KTV Bar and attacked Mr. Wellington “Willy” Lim, the younger brother of alleged Drug Lord Mr. Peter Lim. More than 56 empty Armalite rounds were found on the crime scene, but Mr. Willy Lim was not harmed because he was riding an armored Ford Expedition SUV, which was peppered with bullets. That was a blatant ambush early dawn last Friday as armed men in a pickup truck attacked the SUV of Willy Lim. Obviously, the gunmen did not know that his Ford Expedition was armored.

As of press time, the Philippine National Police (PNP) did not have any leads as to who may have conducted that ambush? For sure, it was no two-man assassination on a motorcycle, but a pickup load of armed men. As of today, we can only speculate that Willy Lim has most probably left the country… anyway there is no “Hold departure order” against his person. However his brother alleged Drug Lord Peter Lim blamed the police for the attempt on his brother’s life. Mind you, it’s not everyday that we would hear that the police is being blamed for an assassination attempt on someone. This is why I would like to hear it from Cebu City Police Director Senior Supt. Joel Doria whether this is true to not?

But while Willy Lim survived the attempt on his life, however William Bucay, a security guard working for the KTV bar was killed during the ambush while another security guard, George Lambating was wounded. Two German tourists, Pauline Bashbach and Manuel Goering were also slightly injured in the incident, but declared out of danger. Looking at all the angles of this attempt on the life of Willy Lim, whoever ordered the shooting did not study his target very well, otherwise, they would have known that Willy Lim drives around in an armored vehicle, where Armalite rounds merely bounced off the vehicle.