By Fr. Leo C. Pabayo, SJ
I think it is significant that President Noynoy Aquino passed away on June 24, the feast day of St. John the Baptist. St. John the Baptist is one of the more famous saints of the Church and well known for preaching to the people the words: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths…. Reform your lives! The kingdom of God is at hand.”
These words are read in the Catholic Churches at Mass during the Advent Season, days before Christmas. President P-Noy culled these into two words in Pilipino, namely, “tuwid na daan”, (“straight path”) to make it the theme or motto of his presidency. It was for him just the right theme for a government that is mired in corruption.
The call for reform in the government was done by some officials in the past like Joe de Venecia and Leticia Shahani but their call never really never took off the ground, perhaps because they did not have a mooring in the word of God in the Bible as that of P-Noy.
The call for reform was a frequent theme in the words of the prophets in the Bible. John the Baptist, the greatest and the least among the prophets Bible preached God’s word to announce the coming of the kingdom of God in Christ. He preached this first to the Jews who expected the coming of Christ to happen soon. These then would become part of the Good News of the Gospel that Christians would preach to the world.
President P-Noy himself was a kind of a prophet who was in tune with the word of God in the way he served as a public official. Because he was a man of prayer, he discerned rightly that what we need most at this time in the history of our nation is reform according to the way of the Bible as preached by the prophets like John the Baptist. We can believe that P-Noy was blessed with, or had a share of the gift of prophecy which is part of what the Church calls “the grace of office” that is given to those who serve in the Church.
Not many presidents come up with a saying that is deeply meaningful and resonate with the words in the Bible.
The other presidents who had it were the following:
Magsaysay said that “the poor who have less in life should have more in laws” (to help them to rise from poverty). When Christ in the Gospel said, “Blessed are the poor for there is the kingdom of God” he was not only talking about the kingdom of God in the next life but also the kingdom of God as it has begun now in the Church that would have leaders like Magsaysay who have a heart for the poor.
President Cory Aquino her presidency resonated with the word of God by saying that: “By God’s grace we are free again”. Freedom from oppression and tyranny have always been a theme of the preaching of the prophets beginning with Moses.
For President Fidel Ramos, his words are reminiscent of the teaching of the Bible when he said: “We must regard poverty as another form of tyranny”.
For President Manuel Roxas in 1946, “Charity and understanding must replace bitterness and anger (in politics)”. This has always been badly needed in our kind of politics that often leads to bloodshed.
The best saying that resonates with the word of God was that of Ninoy Aquino if only he had become president, namely: “The Filipino is worth dying for”.
It was reported by the sisters of President Noynoy that he died at 6:30 A.M. on this feast day of St. John the Baptist. It might have also been another happy coincidence that Noynoy died in his sleep at this time for it is usually the time when Catholic priests in the Philippines pray their early morning Mass. The Mass always includes a prayer for the dead: ”Remember Lord our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the Resurrection and all who have died in your mercy. Welcome them into the light of your face”.
We usually think of death as an occasion for recalling the good that the beloved dead has done in this life. There has been much of this on behalf of Noynoy these days. But there is another side to death that we usually do not avert to except in the wake and funeral service are done by the priest. Yet this is the most important of all because as one saint said, “We do not have here a lasting city.” Ultimately, it is our service to the City of God that is the ultimate future of our life because it is then that we will hand the final judgment on how we have lived our present life.
Whatever accomplishments we have done in this world are temporal. As P-Noy himself said in his 2014 SONA. “After everything we have achieved, I can say that I am content. I am content because I am sure that when I am gone, many will take my place to continue what we have started.”
The good that leaders in the government do will be judged by honest-to-goodness historians. But most of all they will be finally judged by God.
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