Nothing's changed

It has become an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure for the uninitiated) for teachers to require their students to write their New Year’s resolutions when they’re back to school. Even college students are not exempted. Putting another twist, my college teacher required us to write not a New Year’s resolution but our vision for the New Year. I grudgingly obliged. Now we are about to end 2008 and welcome yet another year, I re-read the piece I wrote. I was surprised to know that nothing’s really changed since then. Below is the full text of that piece I wrote as my vision for 2008:

After a long time of not sitting on a pew to receive the Holy Eucharist because partly of my prohibitive class schedule, it was a respite to sit again on one to listen, reflect, and pray. On New Year’s Day, I had had a taste of this respite when I attended the second mass scheduled for that day. It was also a more welcome respite to hear it from Fr. Dondon whose homily was as hefty as his weight. The attendance was relatively scarce, which made me wonder, considering that Catholics, in name and in fact, should be profusely thankful for that day, nay, everyday, for having survived and lived the bliss and the curse; the grace and disgrace of the previous year. Moreover, not only should that day be for devout Catholics to thank God, but also that day should be for Catholics—who profess to be one but seldom or never had practiced it—to contemplate. The attendance’s scarcity was due perhaps to the tired bones from the previous night’s celebration or the hangover from the previous night’s inebriation, or both.

Back to the mass, the priest’s homily was pregnant with insights on how to start the year right. To start the year right, said Fr. Dondon, is to start with a right disposition in life, like Mary, Mother of God who is full of grace, whose disposition in life is crystal clear. I agree with him because, drawing from my own experience, there was never a person who arrived to where he wanted to arrive without an exact destination of where he wanted to go. In the same vein, there was never a person who accomplished something without a sure knowledge of what he wanted to accomplish.

For the previous year, we had seen reforms of every kind, not because of, but despite the socio-politico-economic maladies that bedeviled. That is exactly what I want—an untrammeled search for reforms, for hope, despite the circumstances that might sometimes lead us to loose hope in hoping.

I don’t, however, mean that I want a repeat of 2007 where reforms found their way, not because of, but despite the socio-politico-economic maladies. Nor do I mean to try the same ways of seeking reforms when distressed with another maladies. For, as the timeworn cliché goes, we can’t step twice into the same river.

What I certainly mean is to search for reforms, not from without but from within; or as the Bishops put it, a "Cha-Cha"—Character Change. If in the previous year/s, we tried to push for amendments/revisions in our Constitution in order to solve our problems, maybe it’s time to put into practice the wisdom enshrined in it. Rather than change its basic principles so that they may suit our actions or correct our vices, maybe it’s time to change our actions and correct our vices so that they may be in accordance with the Constitution’s principles. There simply are things we can’t legislate nor impose. If we were disappointed in the previous year/s to find no alternatives because we were looking for reform from without, maybe it’s time to try looking for reform from within. We might be surprised to see how many alternatives we have from within. But when, in our lifetime, everything else fails and every step of the way is blocked, and neither reform from without nor reform from within is effective, have faith, be hopeful; faith is hope. And in hope we were saved. “SPE SALVI facti sumus.” (Mindanao Times, 12/21/08)