Islands Of The Sun

Lord, have mercy on and bless your people in these islands of the sun called the Philippines where, just like the rest of world, “one generation departs and another generation comes, but the world forever stays” (Ecclesiastes1:4) even as “all rivers flow to the sea, yet never does the sea become full” (Ecclesiastes 1:7). We weary in our strivings to make our lives better – to make at least a majority of us economically self-sufficient and free from the compulsions of desperation and poverty that make so many of us bitterly act in a kapit sa patalim (grasp the blade) manner. We weary because we, especially the ruling classes, have been blinded by covetousness and concupiscence such that “the eye is not satisfied by seeing nor has the ear enough of hearing” (Ecclesiastes 1:8). We have come to want to control, hold, possess, exploit, use, and abuse.

But we are nothing but mists, here now and gone later. “You turn humanity back into dust, saying, ‘Return, you children of Adam!’ A thousand years in your eyes are merely a day gone by. Before a watch passes in the night, you wash them away; they sleep, and in the morning they sprout again like an herb. In the morning it blooms only to pass away; in the evening it is wilted and withered.” (Psalms 90:3-6)

Yet nothing that we are, so fleeting in physical manifestation, given to disregard of You in our material tendencies, You came to be among us, that we may have the chance to become awake and peel off the layers of ego-self lies that becloud, conceal, cover, darken, and hide from us our True Self who is everything as you are, made in Your Image…

Grant, Almighty God, that when we hear about You and Your marvelous Love, Mercy and Grace, yet entertain doubts like Herod asking “Who then is this about whom I hear such things?” (Luke 9:9), that we be suffused with the Light of Your Holy Spirit and be allowed to see and appreciate Your Glory as the risen Lord, with Whom we aspire to be one: to be at-one-ment with You, the Supreme Atonement for all our sins...

Grant, O Lord, that as we repent of our sins, accept You as our Savior, and keep on renewing our minds, hearts, and souls - in, with, through, and for You - we truly obey and manifest your prime command of loving our neighbors as ourselves (regardless of color, creed, gender, origin, politico-economic persuasion, or whatever judgmental category might be in fashion); to love them so as to accept, appreciate, understand, respect and set free, so that here in these islands, in the ephemeral yet eternal moments you allow us to live through continuing generations, we may realize Dr. Jose Rizal’s magnificent obsession as laid out in his last farewell:

“My dreams when scarcely a lad adolescent,

My dreams when a young man all filled with vigor,

Were to see you one day, jewel of the sea of the orient

The dark eyes dry, the smooth forehead held high unbent:

Without frown, without wrinkles, without stains of high color.

“Dream of my life, my ardent, living, passion and rallying cry,

Health, shouts to you the soul that soon shall go and depart!

Health! O, how beautiful it is to fall to give you power to fly,

To die to give you vigor to live, beneath your heaven to die,

And in your enchanted land, the eternity to sleep never apart.”