Looks like rain
A week after Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the Archbishop of Manila, called on the clergy in his archdiocese to pray for rain, and a mere three days after the Sunday Masses in the area resounded with the “oratio imperata ad petendam pluviam” (literally, obligatory prayer to request for rain) that he had ordered read in all churches and shrines, the heavens obliged and the rains fell.It’s almost enough, one could be forgiven for thinking, to make an unbeliever question his unbelief.
But we will leave the catechism business to the catechists. Our interest is in understanding how the cardinal’s appeal sheds light on present-day society. Not the sweet irony of seemingly answered prayers -- what does that say about the times we live in? But the cardinal’s appeal, his characteristic return to nature.
Here’s the thing. In our responses to the drought and the looming power shortage, our true character stands revealed. Faced with a natural calamity, the “arzobispado” called on the God of all nature. “We implore the master of all creation, God, our father, at whose command the winds and the seas obey, to send us rain,” Rosales wrote in the letter to his priests.
Faced with the exact same crisis, Malacañang called ... for emergency powers. “As the situation warrants, I’m very sure that there’s nothing that would prevent us from asking Congress for emergency powers,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said, on the same day Rosales circulated his letter.
There is, of course, a great difference between the roles of a religious leader and a government official; we certainly do not mean to say that it would have been better if Malacañang had issued the call for prayers. That would have been an admission of incompetence, or perhaps of panic. We also do not mean to suggest that the Executive has done nothing regarding the crisis. Yes, certainly, the red carpet was pulled from under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s feet a week after her State of the Nation Address, after it became clear that the worst crisis of the year had not even figured in her speech. But mitigation measures are in place, and various agencies of the Executive are dusting off contingency plans.
But while some mocked the cardinal’s almost naive faith in “the master of all creation,” many more attacked the executive secretary’s almost indecent faith in more power.
Of course, any talk of emergency powers has now dissipated, in the wake of this week’s rains.
To be sure, the dry spell is far from over. The rains the two storms brought in the last couple of days raised the water level in Angat Dam by only a fraction. And people have died and thousands have been displaced as a result of the weather.
Forgotten amid the collective sighing in relief, however, is another, equally vital part of the cardinal’s message, the appeal to all the faithful to make conservation possible by “sharing” one’s resources. In his letter, Rosales prayed that God “move us to share more, to serve more and to love more,” and that the Creator “inspire us in this time of crisis to share … what we have and to take responsibility for one another and for the environment and resources you have generously provided us.”
This is the true sacrifice: to do the counter-instinctive thing, and share already scarce resources with one another.
How is that even possible? Catechists will have a ready answer. They will point to the famous miracle of the Multiplication of Loaves, the one where Christ’s disciples scrounge around for food to feed a multitude, and manage to gather five loaves and two fish. And the catechists will point out the real miracle: that exhausted and hungry men and women were moved to share their meager rations with everyone else.
That Malacañang could not issue a similar call, even if it wanted to, says much about our life and times.
