President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos, Jr. popularly known as PBBM, instead, announced to the Filipino people the launching of the “Parol-making” contest in collaboration with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG). A timely project to rekindle once again the Christianity that runs in the blood of every Filipino – the Philippines is the only Roman Catholic nation in Asia.

We Filipinos should recognize PBBM and Office of the President (OP), for reminding us to the message that a simple lantern (parol) imparts especially as the birth of Our Savior approaches. By tradition, Filipino parols, designed like star, is simply made of bamboo splits and covered with ‘papel de hapon’ – thin paper coming in different colors. A short bamboo tube fixed inside the parol with a candle lighted at night, completes the cheap, simple Filipino lantern.

During my younger years, I make parols (of different designs and sizes) as decors with the approach of the Holiday Season, for our ancestral house in Brgy. San Diego, Burauen, Leyte. My playmates would do the same, hang parols in houses

MY COMMENT:

Sadly, though that the Filipino Christian tradition of hanging, displaying parols of varied designs and colors have disappeared with time especially in the rural areas. What we see are products of innovation, lanterns made of non-bamboo and papel de hapon, but metal housing and glossy plastic cover materials. I still prefer the traditionally made parols of old – let’s revive it!
ooo000ooo
NEXT TOPIC : “USDA forecast Higher Local Dairy Products in 2022”
SHARE S & T THOUGHTS through E-mail: drpacjr@yahoo.com.

CHRIST warned us about what to expect in life if we are to take our Christianity seriously. “They will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name,” he said. (Lk 21,12)

But not to worry, because Christ will take care of everything. “Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,” he said, “for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute…By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” (Lk 21,13-14.19)

Let’s remember that we can only manage to persevere in the trials and challenges of our earthly life when we are always with Christ. We have to be wary of our tendency to rely solely on our human resources, especially when we happen to be quite gifted in that department, because such attitude cannot go the distance. Sooner or later, we would give up.

In this regard, we have to be very careful with the most subtle trick of the devil who can lead us to think that we would just be ok by relying on our own powers only, especially if so far we have been quite successful in dealing with our human drama.

While it’s true that we have to make full use of our human powers, we should never forget that such powers come from God and can be used properly only with God as the motive and the purpose. Otherwise, they can provide us with a sweet poison whose harm to us may only be observed when things would already be too late to resolve.

We definitely need to be humble to realize this basic truth about ourselves and our capacity to persevere in our Christian life. It’s only when we are humble that we can become ‘capax Dei,’ an expression coined by St. Augustine that means that we are capable of becoming like God or that we are capable for God.

Humility is the virtue that makes us acknowledge that we are nothing without God. It sort of opens our soul for the grace of God to enter. And it is this grace that transforms us, irrespective of our human impotencies, mistakes and errors, into becoming children of God, capable of speaking in the Spirit and of persevering despite whatever tests we can encounter in life.

It is humility that would enable us to be like Christ, to be ‘alter Christus,’ who is the pattern of our humanity and the redeemer of our damaged humanity. It is when we are humble that we can manage to bear and to suffer all things, and to love even our enemies, offering forgiveness to our offenders, just like what Christ did and continues to do. With it we can handle whatever challenges, trials and persecutions we may face in life.

Pride, the opposite of humility, is what blocks God’s grace from entering into our soul. It restricts us to our own powers alone, which in the first place are given by God but which we consider simply to be our own. It gives us a false light, quite convincing in its effect on us, but is really deceptive. It cannot go the distance insofar as the demands and requirements of our authentic human dignity are concerned.

For more than two decades, I had contemplated the supposed wisdom of the advice given to me by my graduate professor in Creative Writing, Dr. Resil Mojares of the University of San Carlos, Cebu City. His suggestion was for me to put certain events into writing. But the contents of what I am to narrate, particularly the villains, have been affording me with second thoughts, hence the long delay.

His encouragement stemmed from our class interactions regarding the need for authentic materials that could reinforce and document our extant regional oralities, either as realistic fiction or folkloric fantasy. Since I happened to have had those materials in memory, I shared them with the group. At hearing these, Dr. Mojares excitedly urged me to pen them, stressing that this first-hand series of experiences that our family went through in dealing with unseen beings and supernatural occurrences are, indeed, authentic.

But inwardly, having become a Bible-believing Christian years after those ‘encounters’, I’ve been questioning its wisdom. I find such a project akin to the act of glorifying those demons and evil spirits that had harassed us on several occasions before. Imagine documenting their bullying and the display of their powers! This could cause readers to continually fear them in worshipful regard, knowing that what they did to our family, they could do the same to others.

I then decided to just keep it to myself instead of spreading it far and wide. My siblings and I find it enough that we recall those experiences via storytelling during our occasional get-togethers, with our children, nephews, and nieces as our audience.

But lately, I realized that keeping it to ourselves is one of selfishness. The stories are worth-sharing and, for sure, readers may find them worthwhile. While I used to think of divulging them as a glorification of evil, I now look at it as a form of exposé that could warn people against the cunning of demons and evil spirits. It could also caution them with the fact that these unseen beings exist, manifesting their presence and powers in many ways.

Once penned, the book would then comprise episodes of our family’s actual experiences with numerous balu, or paranormal activities, way back when we were still young, and living in a certain remote place in Samar. It would tentatively assume the title: Beyond Superstitions, to underscore the fact that, while people’s traditional beliefs in supernatural beings and occurrences are considered superstitions, our experiences, being first-hand and authentic, far exceed those unfounded beliefs.

Those experiences further confirm, as far as we know, that such beings are not just products of imagination. No wonder for even the Bible itself can attest to their existence. They could be fearsome and troublesome, yes, but only if we allow them to be such to us, if we do not draw nigh to the omnipotent one, God himself, for help. Apart from him, we could be their objects of attack, almost singled out at certain times. Like they did to us, hence my renewed desire to write them down.