Rekindling the faith to face the struggle
By Kat Ulrike
It's been few years passed as everyone tries to recover after the pandemic. As people from all walks of life working hard for their every lives, so is their effort in rekindling their faith to support their still fragile lives.
Especially in this last day of yuletide season in Quiapo, Manila when devotees of the most holy Black Nazarene converged together to pray, seek forgiveness, and plead for spiritual assistance for their everyday lives. At first would say most of them are driven by material wants as they encounter, pray, and seek help; but as time goes by this note would say that in every devotee they're trying their outmost bests to transcend from their material wants and into spiritual needs- as Jesus Christ himself, through the image of the Black Nazarene instill in everyone, not just the devotees, the need for love, courage, and hope in facing everyday struggles.
But, will these hardships prevail and people be contented? No! These devotees, in walking barefoot from their homes and into Quiapo Church for the Black Nazarene wanted more than seeking, luck, miracles, or redemption as they touch or wanting to wipe their towel in the image; but a desire for liberation. Call it radical this hell of a kind message, but in this current unjust order it becomes justifiable to be enlight and to fight. True that everyday is a Panata, every action is a Traslacion, and in every month is a Kwaresma, but the goal of these is to "cultivate moral and social virtues in themselves and spread them in society." (Compedium).
And as Christians would say that in cultivating moral and social values includes that of proclaiming the good news of liberation and national and class freedom, and of denouncing oppression and repression as ever more relevant and imperative today in the light of prevailing systemic injustice- for the fact that is the revolutionary legacy of Jesus Christ who stood up against the oppressive Roman Empire and its vassal King Herod while proclaimed the good news of liberation to the poor and oppressed that made the faithful adhere to its liberatative character. For sure everyone recalls the Magnificat, the Beatitudes, and the Acts of the Apostles as basis for this liberatative task.
In witnessing the entire event would say that the desire for redemption itself becomes a need for liberation. Is Christianity all about "spiritual redemption" alone just to justify the existence of a repressive order as what the late Thatcher justified? Not surprising that there are those who once professed to have a just moral social order end capitulated to the whims of society's unjustness, citing "free will" to justify "free market ideas of consumer choice" to that of ambivalence towards democracy. No wonder why Basil Carinal Hume remaked Thatcher as "the lewder who thinks they're infallible."
In the case of Philippines, justifying an existing oppressive order using faith makes the belief becoming bullshit the way some clergymen trying to reduce the liberatative task of the church as a mere spiritual one if not supported by some piecemeal "act of kindness". Okay then that act of kindness, but is charity alone enough to suffice the social problems people encounter with? Why not fraternise, solidarise with the poor and the oppressed as to set the foundations of the kingdom on earth? Why not as well expose and oppose the injustices, corription, and oppression that prevailed in this earth for the world to come? The Devotees, mostly poor and downtrodden desired to see Christ and wanting to be cured and absolved, why should they be condemned still in a cycle instead of helping them break the chains that hinder their existence?
To cut this thought short, in seeing the events shows that there's a need to rekindle the faith in facing the struggle, what more to support it. And it is the duty of the faithful to guide to the just and right direction- that is a part of building a just and righteous kingdom on earth.