#06 A System of Common Needs

"We are all defined by our lack and this lack define our common needs such as hunger, thirst, clothing, shelter, personal security, basic literacy, just society, authentic human freedom, and meaningful existence.

If we allow each ourselves to be defined by our lack, then we shall begin to understand that to accept our common humanity, we must first accept the common needs that make us completely human as well as completely responsible to each other.

From these common needs begin our common hope and to this common hope, we must respond with common alms."

Sequence #6 of the Pax Pilipinas Series

PEACE AS A WHOLE and Pax Pilipinas as a doctrine may never be transmitted from positions of authority but is a work that must begin right down at the very roots of our nation; a service to be embraced at the very soil of our sovereignty.

For the Providence of God has bestowed us with an abundance of means to attain to this doctrine manifest in the many distressing personages of the poor, our Lord's poor, who are truly our masters in all things save for sin.

For if any of us is to uplift ourselves and prosper from the labor of Country that leads our nation to the rich harvest of peace, it is requisite by Justice and Charity that the poor of our nation be uplifted first for their hopes are as our hopes bound to one sacred trust and we may not leave their hopes behind and hope to continue forward. The continuity of our common hope must be safeguarded lest the lineage of our sacred trust be broken and our people scattered to the four winds. War will not permit the downtrodden to be lifted from the dust of the earth but our peace obliges us each to serve the very least of our brethren.

In view of this, we are now in need of clear guidance as to who is poor and who is not, hence, we shall exactly define our Lord's poor as any one in common need of common alms.

We shall further define the concept of common need as hunger, thirst, clothing, shelter, personal security (security of person and property), basic literacy, just society, authentic human freedom, and meaningful existence. Our common alms (these common alms are to be given apart and distinct from the precept that obliges us to physically and materially support our particular Church and our local clergy whose service unites us to our one Universal or "Catholic" Church, our Holy Mother Church - the Roman Catholic Church - Added 20080809) is meant to meet these common needs as individual or collective acts of mercy that save from despair the hope of the poorest of the poor with Christian charity that covers a multitude of sins.

Indeed, our Lord's poor do not ask for much for there is no greed in them, the furnace of affliction have refined in them what many fail to see. What they ask is exactly what will open the soul of the giver that the heart of the man may see in the giving of the self what true things there are worth seeing in the beautiful for being by Beauty beheld.

These common needs hold true from individuals to whole nations and if we are uncommonly generous in our obligation to meet these common needs with common alms, the quicker shall we restore the balance in our society that will enable us to progress in the way of establishing our one peace.

We will learn once again to value and respect those perennial trades of ancient descent, respect them enough never to defraud them of their humble means to make an honest living; farmers, fishermen, tradesmen, craftsmen, free-born servants, teachers, basic civil servants, the rank and file of our noble profession of arms, our nation's finest who serve and protect the public peace in the field of community law enforcement, our nation's bravest who serve and preserve the public safety in the field of fire and rescue services, public and private security personnel who safeguard our systems, institutes, and habitations of life, our small to medium mercantile classes, low wage earners, the self-employed, the self-made and those from among us who eke out an honest living by means good and necessary to carry themselves and their families into the hope of the next day. We will safeguard their hopes, along with the hopes of the least of the least of our citizenry, making sure that our laws as well as our national attitude serve to uplift them and to provide for them the means to reach the middle classes of our national community. In the event that doors need to be closed for the sake of the common good, their lives and their rights must neither be forgotten nor forsaken but must be accommodated for by our one whole nation-state.

For we may, as a social democracy, only prosper according to our least common denominator. If we allow our middle class to dwindle and do nothing to address the widening gap between those who have and those who have not manifest in the lower and upper classes of our national community, then we allow ourselves to become vulnerable and ripe for militant dissension from various interest groups all of them belonging to those aforementioned segment of our citizenry who represent the very soil of our sovereignty. Militant dissent is a symptom of the state that if not acted upon by the good will of our people and the government that represents us in our Republic citizen-state will eventually mature into armed revolutions and widespread internal instability.

Because from these common citizenry are founded the deepest roots of our nation without which no living tree of Country may grow strong and mature enough to claim back into living memory those undying hopes of our past, shelter the peace of our present time, and prosper in ourselves today the eternal fruits of God and Country that shall bear our present good will deep into the future of our nation.

From the very lowest of our roots, the benefits of our peace shall be as water naturally and most certainly be drawn upwards to quench the thirst of those greater and greater wholes of sacred life that enable the social democracy of our Filipino nation to exist. In our giving and ministering to the common needs of others, we define the new nature of our citizenry as a common community of peers that as one nation share in the one sacred trust born of the one lineage of our common hope that keep alive the fire of the Republic that was merited for us by so much tears, toil and sacred heroes' blood by those whose undying hopes we now indeed hold in our own heart of hearts. For truly, it is their immortal virtue and not ours that have sustained us this far in the darkness of the desolation of war.

It might be asked why out of sheer curiosity have I written all of this in English when clearly this particular subject concerns my fellow Filipinos, it is because we, as a nation, belong also to the hopes of the nations in our immediate region, in the ASEAN, in formal treaty with other nations, to our Mother Asia herself in relation to the other continental wholes of the one family of the nations of mankind, and indeed, to our one planetary whole itself.

Once one gets into the thinking of wholes and system of wholes, one will quickly realize that to all of these wholes upon greater wholes of our one planetary whole apply equally and consistently our simple rule of common alms with common needs.

The secret of our freedom is found in the giving, for it is only in the giving that we become free.

---<--@ For the Filipino poor, who are our Lord's own, a blessed people, may the will of God be more perfectly reflected on earth by your most gracious presence in our midst...

Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

Sancta Sanctis!

Father Wilhelm Finnemann, Servant of God, pray for us.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

Next: Sequence #07: In Defense of Minorities

For further reference -
Please refer to entry: Common Needs: On Meaningful Existence
Please refer to entry: Common Needs: On the First Eight