20080202: O Beloved Philippines!

My salutations of peace and goodwill to you, O my beloved Country:

How time has passed me by, O beloved Philippines! I am now entering into my 36th summer and I am perhaps, half-way through my life.

But you, my faithful Mother Protectress, have yet to mature. Indeed, under the eternal vigilance of Almighty God, you are slowly but surely increasing in stature and grace but you are yet a very young nation, O Mother Republic of the one Filipino people.

This year on June 12, we shall see you celebrate your 110th year. I am most certainly looking forward, with the whole of the Filipino nation, I'm sure, not just to greet you on that day but also to meet with you in our hearts and minds on that day. But may we all find you, O precious Country, with hearts renewed and minds zealous to see you through this twilight that have mired you in doubt and shadow as to your true potential as our Mother Protectress.

Toward this end I will write to you from time to time about yourself and how I see you through the eyes of my faith and hold you in the arms of my love, rigth here in my heart of hearts. I do this because I believe in you, O my Mother Republic. I steadfastly believe there is none else Country but you for me because only you can contain the promise of all our tomorrows, us being your own protectorate orphan children in this world. You are Country to us and our Mother Protectess, O beloved and one Republic of the Philippines! Indeed, this is but God's will which He has dictated from eternity and must be obeyed lest we forget, lest God takes away from us what we have attained under Him at such a great cost.

I would like to write you about you, O native Mother Country, so that I may freely share what I truly think and sincerely feel about you in my heart so that my heart may then speak to other hearts about you that your own children may begin to know you again - hopefully, and with God's most generous blessing, in my own generation. So that we, a new generation of faithful sons and daughters on this earth, may see again your lovely face, O Pearl of the Orient Seas, even here in this gray twilight of our awakening present time.

June 12 is also the temporal birthday of one of my most favorite star of heaven, my darlingest Annelies Marie - our Miyang.

Saint Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila, please pray for us, your people.

AMEN.

Always to always,

- EJ San Miguel