To the Filipino Worker

SALUTATIONS OF CHRISTIAN PEACE and common good will to all Filipino workers.

During my time away from our one Republic, I have had the opportunity to ask a number of our fellow Filipinos who live and work in Australia and in the United States what they personally think about the future of our Country. None of them expressed any optimism as to our future, half were bitter and the other half just didn't care.

My fellow citizens, granted that the above sampling does not represent an adequate number enough of our population for me to present the above conclusion as reliable, it shocks me to realize that I am drawing my own hopes for our Country from something as flimsy and as circumstantial as a lack of statistical requirement.

It leads me to ask, "where have our patriots gone?" O Mother Protectress, have all thy sons and daughters abandoned thee? What happened to our Pearl of the Orient, the nation our beloved Jose Rizal penned his shining testament of his undying love for us in his Mi Ultimo Adios, the nation that the Saint and Martyr of God, Lorenzo Ruiz, the Blessed Pedro Calungsod and other Venerables and Servants of God calls their home? Does no one remember anymore the love of our heroes and martyrs, past and present, known and known only to God, that have merited from us the privilege of this particular endeavor of Country? Does no one value anymore the noble suffering and sacred blood shed by our honorable military, police, fire, rescue and government service personnel who everyday fight not only to preserve what promise this one Republic holds for us in the present but also to feed and sustain their own families and loved ones? Most important of all, does no one care enough to even invest the smallest flicker of hope in this particular endeavor of Country and it's great Republic promise on behalf of our everyday suffering citizens, many of whom live in degrading and humiliating degrees of poverty?

Listen, O my dear Filipino, listen to the deep of your own silence. Listen and hear our Blessed Lord calling out to you in the night and say, "here I am, Lord". Our salvation, one with another, is intertwined, O Land of the Morning. For we are the sons and daughters of the new morning, the one from on high. Being called to His light, let us advance the cause of God's peace to break the long spell of this midnight darkness that engulf our lands and bring relief to our people that by resurrecting patient hope in our own promise of Country, we may also one day shine with hopes for peace for other nations of the one family of the suffering nations of mankind. But how can we do this unless we ourselves are at peace; at peace in our hearts that lead to peace in our times?

I believe in the Filipino worker. Because I am a Filipino worker. There is a certain dignity in honest labor and we must recognize this dignity in each and every one of us, from the least laborer to the office of the President of the Philippines. Let us recognize, my dear Filipino, that this dignity though not equal in significance is more importantly equal in it's importance to our particular endeavor of Country. We are all our nation's hope. We are all in this together. Let us try and have this basic respect for one another. Let us be willing to care, let us be willing to love, let us be willing to work as citizens, one with another. For how can any one sector of our society stand without the other? More importantly, how can our one nation advance the cause of our common hopes without all the seemingly faceless, nameless, common Filipino workers who each and everyday exert both body and soul to move those heavy gears that build and sustain for us our Pearl of the Orient?

May 1 is when we recognize this dignity - that all workers are of equal importance in the context of nation building. It is also the day we reaffirm in our hearts our belief in the promise of our common endeavor of Country and to make sure that all our particular efforts in each field of social and human development eventually lead us all toward this one great labor. For this labor, my precious Filipino, this endeavor of Country, is the labor that makes us free as a people.

My people, I believe that corruption will exist for as long as sin exists in our world but corruption will never flourish in our societies as far as we are united in our common hopes and we must define this hope of Country as a particular people knowing that every Republic hope in general is a hope for liberation from fear and suffering, the hope for the genuine freedom to be truly happy, the hope for peace and good things. Now, my precious friend, hope is by nature something good that is given, one can not have hope without having received and embraced something that is good and therefore, true that did not exist before, for hope will not exist without a Giver. This is why this Filipino Republic must never be separated from it's belief in God, in the one God of our common creation, the one common Creator of the one common parental lineage of all mankind, a God of life, peace, good, virtue and truth, the reality of the one God Who is not a product of any honorable religious traditions, the One Who embraces all in all.

I am not espousing a theocracy, far from that, my fellow Filipino, I do not believe that religion should enter into the political realm of the statesmen. I am espousing the reality that God is above religion, that the reality of God does not depend on any religious tradition no matter how honorable or wicked. For any religion being the virtue that enables us to give true worship to our God according to the revelations of God that is entrusted to our own particular faith traditions is inherently divisive because not only is each faith tradition particular in its application, the deeper degrees of personal, particular faith is also specific to each particular person.

But the hope that is derived from faith and its honorable religion is common and common enough to speak a language that can be understood by all which is the language of truth, the common tongue of the peace. This is why I am a firm believer in the separation of Church and state, my precious friend, but never the separation of God and state. A godless state is nothing more than a cage. It hopes not because it believes only in itself and therefore, receives no real hope. And because it receives no real hope, it is like a ship in the desert, it knows not the right path to any particular future. Trapped in its own limitations, it will soon find itself empty of promise and without any real ability to fulfill its potential for sacred life and life's freedom to be happy.

The Republic I speak of here is what I present to you, my fellow Filipino, as the one, faithful Republic; one people informed by universal and absolute truths, ascendant truths revealed by the light of a universal faith in a universal Creator and Source of all life and truth, the pillar of an authentic monotheistic faith. And this is not incompatible with my Roman Catholic Christian faith, for I am deeply Catholic - however, because I am deeply religious, I have respect as well for the dignity of other people, including their religious belief.

What is good is also what is true. Evil is ephemeral. Republic governments in free societies exists because the people have given it a right to exist and these governments derive their authority from Divine Providence. Therefore, governments who are true to their mandate have no right to believe in evil and false hopes, hopes that are selfish in nature, hopes other than that entrusted to them by their constituent populations whose sacred trust they are bound by electoral oath to serve and defend nor does government have any right to force any particular faith on any particular person.

The seal of all our elected offices of state as well as the seals of our particular communities are more significant than the person occupying those seats of office. This fact must receive the right proportion of truth in our awareness because those seals are the unchanging symbols that represent its particular authority and the necessary continuation of that authority which is derived from God, and that authority which shall only cease when our nation itself ceases to be. When we have as one people fallen into the maw of the beast of war or at the consummation of the age of mankind at the close of this temporal dispensation, at the General Judgement of God. This awareness of an unbroken lineage of Republic office is vital if our hopes as a nation are to be carried forward and refined by electoral succession because it preserves in government what is enduring even as we shed as a nation those false things that are inconsistent with our passage into maturity as one Filipino people.

My beloved Countrymen, if we believed in the person more than the seal of his or her office, then we will have also put our complete trust in that person's human limitations and are bound to be severely disappointed. For the order of Republic authority that flow from God Himself is undermined because we will not see that person as a fellow citizen holding elected office but as a person holding power. And if this falsity perseveres in our social consciousness, we will become witness to a backslide into medieval feudalism in our present times. For power is that which corrupts and absolute power that corrupts absolutely. Power in a Republic is never held because the authority to govern the people does not belong to any one person. Power in a Republic is an authority given by God through the people. It is a good to be handed down to the people, to empower the people and to enable us to live decent, useful lives, even as our hope of Country is handed up to God by our elected leadership, for the benefit of the people, and this shall be so for all the generations of the people. For a Republic must trust in Almighty God or it is not a free Republic. In a faithful Republic, power is held by no man, for the power to govern is an authority derived from God and is an integral part of Divine Providence; it is a part of God's whole government of the universe. Because of this, God is correctly known to the people of all free, faithful Republic as the first and foremost defender of the state.

A faithful Republic is like a vision of a fertile land of growing, fruitful things, a home under the sun to all the wandering children of faded Eden, there is patient truth in every life, there is verdant life in every citizen, and there is real happiness to be had for all, for there is peace that lengthen the days, and days strong enough to stay the darkness of the beast of war, the civilizing light of our honorable religions shine brightly, a light that illuminates this great realm of hope that surround us, embraces us as one people and reaches as high as the sky, a sky that shine with the numberless kindly lights of our every hearts, upon a great nation where all citizens can share in the warmth of our one, true God that save against hopelessness and final despair.

But equally true is the fact that citizens and not governments make good societies which is why the right to the free practice of all honorable religions is vital in today's quickening, integrating, globalizing environment. Peace can not be transmitted to the population by our leaders, we must as individual citizens embrace the peace offered to us by Country on our own free accord and allow this peace to grow by prayer and the grace of God as a good in our hearts and by extension, as truth applied into our quite needful present times. Peace, the same with all good things as virtue and sacred life, ascends, cleaving from truth to truth, strength to strength, grace to grace, from the inward self, to our family and friends, to our local community (barangay), to our town or city, to our province or state, to our national region, to our nation, to our local regional community, to our continental region, to our greater continental region, to our world, to our God. In the Solidarity, this is the ascendant order of the peace.

Far from any honorable religion becoming obsolete, now more than ever does mankind need the civilizing strength of all true and honorable religions. Peace is a requirement for our world to advance and move forward away from this midnight desolation that mire our poor, suffering nations in the descendant pull of war and darkness. Atheism and secularism can never rise high enough to break through the darkness and the gravity of war that keeps our young Countries poor and keeps our mature Countries from evolving into those necessary Elder states.

Apart from the strength of our one, faithful Republic, peace is a promise I know in my heart of hearts that our Holy Mother Church, the Roman Catholic Church, united with all of blessed Christendom can deliver for sacred life and faithful Country. Peace is a foundation strength of my Roman Catholic faith and of all of blessed Christendom, a hope from among other shining hopes such as life, freedom, love, mercy, social harmony etc. that we, as Christians, can really and truly share with each and every nation of the one family of nations of mankind, most especially those nations we call our home whose hopes we shall work to sanctify.

There is so much hope in Country, O my Filipino nation, let us despair not, but come together and believe, let us be renewed again in God and one another, O land of the morning, let thy promise dawn in our hearts as we labor together towards peace in our times, prosperity in our lands and true freedom for our people!

Mabuhay ang mga mangagawang Pilipino!
Mabuhay ang pag-asa ng ating bayang Pilipinas!
Pax Pilipinas, Mabuhay!

Glory to God in our native Republic.
Adoration to Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Peace to our precious Filipino workers.

O Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, pray for us.