With the celebration of Holy Week, we are yielding the Editorial space to the Easter Message of Archbishop Angel N. Lagdameo, President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP):
Every year on Easter, we proclaim that Jesus Christ has triumphed over suffering and death. Alleluia! Every year we so proclaim, as if, or is it because, nothing has happened with us in the past.
Is it because we fail to rise from our “tombs” and help others to “easter” in their life? We need to do something to celebrate the dream of a better Philippines in our lives and in the lives of fellow countrymen around us. To celebrate that dream of a better Philippines is to make changes for the better in our own lives, and to see or help that change also happen in others. Consider what change that might be all about.
We can only build a better nation if all of us will do all we can all the time. We alone can build a better nation, but no one can build it alone. No one group can build a better country in contraposition with other groups, neither the executive alone, nor congressmen alone, nor senators alone, nor supreme court alone, nor any group of civil society alone, nor church people alone. They need to affirm and confirm the potential of one another.
Together we can proclaim that Easter is being realized. We can do this by commemorating the good that others have done in support of truth versus lies; by consecrating our present in the works of justice and peace; and by celebrating the small acts of victory in the campaign to build a better nation.
And so it can be said that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead alone, but that our country is on the path of a gentle revolution that leads to Easter. The is the change of heart for the common good.