The Good News for today

MY FRIEND Mondoñedo in his articles wanted to “Spread the Good News” for his time. That is about 40 years ago. His articles have been idle because his wife, after Mondoñedo died, was not able to find a publisher.

The original Good News was preached for the first time by Jesus of Nazareth, 2000 years ago. Jesus preached his message to the people of his time. He not only preached it, He lived it and died for it. Thus He became the message and the messenger in the same time.

It is the challenge to us Christians today to preach the message of Jesus, to live it and be ready to die for it. That is the meaning of being the message and the messenger in the same time.

The purpose of the message of Jesus is to eradicate evil and to solve the problems of our world today. Our approach should not be purely materialistic, political and technical. It must be spiritual, it has to have a spirituality that man can experience and can acquire in his life in the world of today. We have to approach the problems of our world today with faith, in the belief that they can be solved only if we rely on God our Creator. “Without Me you cannot do anything.”

We experience time and again how true this statement is. We cannot do anything if we don’t get the helping hand of God, of his Son who taught us by example that we are evil in our very own existence and that we can overcome this by asking the Father to support us. We cannot do anything if we don’t get the inspiration of God’s Spirit through which we learn to see the positive side of our existence and not only the negative.

Again, if we look at the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Corona you wonder how we can survive in such a corrupt judicial system with such kind of judges and lawyers. But then we see that Corona still was convicted by a strong majority of the senators despite the foolish reasoning of three of them.

After Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as a corrupt president who stole the elections from the people, we now have a President who is absolutely incorruptible and really means business when it comes to justice and democratic rights, despite the fact that not all political prisoners have been released yet and some criminals are still out on bail.

We should support our own Senator Koko Pimentel when he takes a principled stand against his opponent Zubiri who stole the elections from him. We can support him when he wants to join the liberal party and says that forgiveness here does not mean absolving Zubiri from the crime that he has committed.

It is a virtue to forgive but it is a vice to absolve and deny a crime.

Our Mayor Emano may be forgiven for stealing the last elections but that does not mean that we should absolve him from that crime and forget it. We must remember that, especially in the coming elections of 2013 and 2016. To forgive is humane and Christian but to forget is stupid.

(For your comments, email nolvanvugt@gmail.com)