BAGUIA
Today is the second day of the triduum of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving to which Catholic bishops have called their flock following the national day of prayer and penance for blasphemies, slander, and murder last July 16, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
I think of Bladen Skyler Abatayo, 4, a boy from Ermita, Cebu City who had just learned how to write his name.
A bullet hit him and ended his life last week in the middle of a police-led anti-drug operation.
I had inadvertently written that a girl had perished in the crackdown. I apologize for the error.
Every Filipino has a hand in Bladen’s death. The context of his passing is our desensitization to blasphemies, slander, and murder.
Offending God is only one consequence of blasphemy. Scripture teaches us that the Name of God refers not only to the proper noun by which we identify him.
His Name, more importantly signifies his very self, his presence. Our Lord bears his Name, Jesus — a Name that means “God saves” because He is the God who saves.
Scripture also teaches us that the Name of God, the very presence of God, is in the people He has claimed as his own.
Those who pray Compline, the Church’s liturgical nightly prayer, are familiar with the reading: “You are in our midst, O Lord, your name we bear: do not forsake us, O Lord, our God!”
Every human being is a bearer of the presence of the Almighty.
Consequently, an insult to God is not only an act of irreverence to the the Most High in the heavens, it is also a movement of spite against people in whom his presence rests.
So the nation that makes light of irreverence for the Divine makes light of the lives of its own sons and daughters, like Bladen and so many others, whose dignity sprang from the Name of God, the presence of God in him.
Slander is synonymous with what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “calumny”. One commits it “who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.”
The victims of the campaign against drugs as well as the victims of crime are also victims of a national slander.
The slander is that anyone without power and guns is likely not really fit for survival, and since anyone can be brought under the rule of power-wielders and the armed, since they are so powerless they can be killed, it really is nothing serious if they are maligned in a thousand different ways though fake news and other forms of lies on and offline.
This is a false prophecy on our brother and sister Filipinos. This contradicts our patriotic pledge that grasps something of the truth of who we are, the truth of the relationship between country and people.
In the pledge, we recognize a country that “protects me and helps me to be strong, happy and useful”.
Where is this nation today?
Where is the nation that strengthens the weak, comforts the mourning, and empowers the less fortunate?
May we remember who each of us truly is. Our heavenly Father still calls: “Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall.. I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily” (God, in Hosea, 14:1,4-5).
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