“An tawo nga ginugutom, diri interesado hin mga diskurso!.”
(A person without food cannot listen to rhetorics.)
A country burdened with poverty, inequality, and social challenges must not allow itself to be distracted by the noise of high-profile trials. While justice is essential, governance and service to the people cannot be placed on pause. The International Criminal Court is tasked to handle the legal process; our nation’s leaders and citizens must continue the work of building livelihoods, strengthening social welfare, and ensuring progress.
In Waray, there is a saying: An Tawon ga ginugutom, diri interesado hin mga diskurso! (A person without food cannot listen to justice.) This reminds us that while accountability is important, hunger and poverty demand immediate attention. The courts will deliberate on the case, but the government must feed its people, educate its youth, and protect its workers.
Similarly, in Tagalog we say: “Habang may buhay, may pag-asa.” (As long as there is life, there is hope.) This hope is nurtured not in courtrooms but in farms, factories, schools, and communities. The trial must not paralyze the nation’s resolve to provide opportunities and dignity to its citizens.
The noise of politics and trials can easily drown out the cries of the poor. Yet, the true measure of a nation is not only in how it pursues justice but also in how it sustains its people. “An bista han kaso, para han korte; an panginabuhi, para han katawhan.” (Justice belongs to the court; life belongs to the people.) This balance is crucial: let the judges weigh evidence, while the nation continues to sow seeds of progress.
In the end, the path forward is clear. The trial will run its course, but the country must not falter in its duty to serve. Justice and livelihood are not enemies; they are parallel pursuits. By allowing the court to handle the case and focusing our collective energy on welfare and development, we honor both the rule of law and the dignity of life, in Waray it also declares may mga bout naman ini hira!.
We are meant for a sublime and supernatural life
THAT wonderful event of the Transfiguration of the Lord (cfr. Mt 17,1-9) should make us understand that like Christ we too are meant to be transfigured into the supernatural life with God. That is what God wants for us. Toward that end, God has given us everything, Christ himself, so we can be what he wants us to be.
We therefore should try our best to develop a sense of the sublime and the supernatural while still immersed here in the things of this world. We are meant for a supernatural life. Our human nature, with our spiritual soul that enables us to know and to love, and therefore to enter into the lives not only of others but also and most importantly, of God, urges us to develop a supernatural life.
Our life is a life with God always. It just cannot be exclusively our own life, taken personally or collectively. It’s a life that depends mainly on God who gives us the grace that purifies and elevates our life to his life. But it also depends on us, on our freedom to correspond to this loving will of God for us.
We have to develop a taste and even an appetite for the supernatural life with God and of things supernatural in general. In this we have to help one another, because in the end, this is our common ultimate end in life—how to live our life with God, how we can be immersed in God even as we are immersed also in the things of the world.
To be sure, developing the sense of the supernatural and the sublime is not a baseless and gratuitous exercise. It is what God wants us to have, since we truly are children of his. It is not our invention. It is, first of all, his will for us to which we have to correspond.
We should not feel uneasy about this truth, because on the part of God, he will do everything to make what he wants of us to be fully realized. All we have to do is simply to go along with his will and ways as far as we can.
This sense of the supernatural and the sublime will do us a lot of good. Even psychologically speaking, it is a tremendous help. Imagine the calm, serenity and confidence it can give us! Imagine the joy it provides us even as we go through the drama of our earthly life that is often described as a vale of tears.
But the good that it gives us far exceeds what it does to our psychological self. It is what shapes us into God’s children, sharers of his life and nature. It is a clear mark that our faith, hope and charity are strong and working. In short, that our spiritual life is healthy despite, and also because of, all the trials and challenges we will be facing in this life.
We should develop this sense of the supernatural and the sublime by often reminding ourselves of who we really are. That way, we would somehow be in a state of awe and amazement. We would somehow feel reassured that despite our limitations, weaknesses, failures and even sins, there is always hope to attain our original and ultimate dignity because God will always be on our side. We just have to put ourselves in his side too.
Perhaps as a concrete way of developing and keeping this sense of the sublime and the supernatural, we should cultivate the practice of thinking that we are entering heaven to be with God when we end the day and have our rest.