BY ROMMEL YNION
IF we examine our history, we can discern how God worked in mysterious ways, knocking hard on the doors of our mind that opened to a whole new world of life-changing ideas, leading us to moments of serendipity that stood us face to face with our image in the mirror of reality, and orchestrating events that led to the materialization of our prayers.
Living in the dark days of Martial Law, we heard those hard knocks on our doors from God himself Who worked through the leaders of the Liberal Party at that time, bombarding us with ideas that the destiny of our nation belonged not to the calaboose of dictatorship but to the liberating spirit of democracy.
Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., who was not only the most dominant figure of the Liberal Party at that time but also the only voice of reason in that Dark Age, helped us concoct the antithesis of that authoritarian regime, smoking out misconceptions of the Marcosian rule out of the caves of our mind, dissecting them before us their pros and cons, and guiding us through the minefield of propaganda from the New Society.
Ninoy was Moses, John The Baptist and Jesus all rolled into one at the juncture of our history where blinded by lack of knowledge, feeling of uncertainty and the spirit of lukewarmness, we didn’t give a tinker’s damn about the state of our nation, inured to the dark forebodings of self-proclaimed prophets of doom whizzing around us like mosquitoes in a Jolo jungle.
But Ninoy soldiered on against all odds, facing trumped-up charges from Malacañang, accepting the judgment of that Kangaroo Court that sentenced him to death, enduring seven years and seven months in solitary confinement in Laur, living a life in exile in the United States for three and half years, and eventually returning to Manila on that fateful day in August 1983. And the rest, as they say, was history.
History is nothing but His story, a story that God alone can tell us. As the author of the Book of Life, God had already written that Ninoy Aquino saga and the cataclysmic events that followed thereafter: the funeral of a fallen hero inundated by over two million mourners that scared the bejesus out of the dictator; the snap elections borne out of Marcosian hubris; the mass uprising at EDSA; and the fleeing of Marcos as the mob, aided by the putschists, knocked at the gates of Malacañang.
No doubt, it was a handiwork of God that rearranged the face of the Filipino nation, putting atop the pedestal of Malacañang the housewife of Ninoy Aquino who was the complete antithesis of Marcos, installing a democratic government patterned after that of the United States, formulating a brand-new constitution designed to ensure the survival of freedom in this tiny corner of the globe.
If there is a lesson we can learn from that particular chapter in our history, it is the power of faith that moved mountains even when things already spiralled out of our control, when events seemed to be heading inexorably to the abyss of darkness, and when hope seemed to be just a word in our dictionary bereft of any meaning or relevance to human existence.
With faith, we only do our best and let God do the rest. The malady that afflicts us today is not only the Ebola virus but also our lack of faith. We do everything as if the ultimate answer to our prayers lies in our hands, forgetting that in the final analysis, nothing is possible without divine intervention.
God works for us if we have faith in Him. And this principle was at work there at EDSA which was the culmination of events propelled by our collective faith that sprang from our hearts yearning for freedom after being mired in that dictatorship for over two decades.
Let us backtrack to that period in our journey to freedom, thinking how we reposed our faith in God to whom we entrusted our prayers for a new political order and who, later on, in moments of serendipity, little by little, answered them, reminding us that we are not alone, and that He was always there for us not only to comfort us but to make our dreams come true.
Indeed, there was something at that time that we can extract and perhaps, apply on current events raging before us. No doubt something burst after Ninoy’s assassination on the tarmac of that airport that now bears his name, awakening us to the power within us that could make the impossible possible, the hopeless just a mere bend on the road to freedom.
And make no mistake about it. That power still resides in us, waiting only to be activated by faith which manifests not from the strength of our character but from the hand of God, carving for us our destiny that encapsulizes the dreams of our nation./PN
