This concern is valid given the misplaced devotion of a number of Catholics, who think saints have their own miraculous powers and choose to approach them in place of the seemingly unapproachable God.

To clarify the Catholic devotion to saints, 3 points therefore ought to be made:

1. The Catholic Church itself forbids the worship of saints. “(God) said, ‘I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Do not have other Gods before me” (Ex 20: 2-3). To worship saints, then, is to commit the sin of idolatry.

Saints should only serve as models and intercessors, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

2. Saints are part of God’s family. We are not the only members of the Body of Christ, the Church. In fact, those in heaven are closer to Christ than we can ever be on earth. They are the graduates of the school of life, the elders of our Christian community.

Referring to “heroes of faith” like Abraham and Noah in Hebrews 11, Paul says, “What a cloud of innumerable witnesses surround us! So let us be rid of every encumbrance, and especially of sin, to persevere in running the race marked out before us” (Hebrews 12: 1).

For Kimberly Hahn, a Protestant who later converted to Catholicism, this means that those in heaven remain in communion with those on earth. This point became clearer for her when Hahn, then struggling with Catholic beliefs, suffered miscarriages and was advised by her husband, then a recent Catholic convert, to read Hebrews 11 and 12.

“(Hebrews) 12 seemed to say that we (are) surrounded in our own race down here by all the brothers and sisters who had gone before us… It was as if we were in an Olympic stadium and the people in the stands were former medalists in the race in which I was now competing – they knew what it took to win, and they were surrounding me and cheering me on,” Hahn writes in Rome Sweet Home, a book she co-authored with her husband Scott, a former Protestant scholar.

3. Nothing’s wrong with asking saints to pray for us to God. In the first place, is there anything wrong with asking friends or even strangers to pray for us?

In the Bible, as in the book of Elijah, we see holy men and women praying in behalf of their community. “There will be healing if you confess your sins to one another and pray for each other. The prayer of the upright man has great power, provided he perseveres,” says the Letter of James (5: 16).

“If the prayers of the righteous man are very powerful, as James 5: 16 says, how much more those who are perfected?” Hahn points out.

When she asks saints to pray for her, Hahn says she is “not approaching them instead of Jesus but rather going with them to Jesus, just as I did on earth.” “This prayer for intercession (does) not detract from the glory of God; it (demonstrates) his glory, because we (are) living faithfully as brothers and sisters in him.”

We Catholics pray to saints for help – we do not worship them – because they have successfully “finished the race” (2 Timothy 4: 7) and can help us finish ours as well.

For that Buwan ng Wika story aired in August 2008, we went to a depressed community on the day of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address (SONA). How much did the public, especially the poor, understand her SONA that was delivered mostly in English?

The negative answers we got from the neighborhood didn’t surprise us.

An expert we consulted, education professor Dr. Andres Julio Santiago, confirmed their feedback. Based on his analysis, Arroyo’s SONA made use of second-year college English. Data from the National Statistics Office showed that only 12% of the country’s population had reached second-year college.

The question we wanted to pose was this: How can the public, most of whom are poorly educated, fully participate in democratic affairs if they can barely understand a thing? (Watch the Probe segment, “Ingglisan sa Pamahalaan,” through this link.)

National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario, whom we interviewed for the story, said it is not merely an issue of word usage but of empowerment. “Kapag ang batas o ang pahayag pampulitika ay ginawa sa Ingles o sa isang wika na hindi naiintindihan ng maraming tao, nananatili silang tanga. Nawawalan sila ng kapangyarihan.”

(If a law or a political pronouncement is delivered in English or any other language that people don’t understand, they remain ignorant. They become disempowered.)

The common argument against using Filipino during the impeachment trial is that some terms are technical and difficult to translate. But come on, who says the translation should be verbatim? And who says the trial is 100% technical?

In a process that purports to defend public interest, language and eventually knowledge could be the poor’s only source of power. Let’s begin somewhere.

I agree with them: We’ve lots of ugly places, absurd practices, and corruption in government — valid reasons to be sarcastic saying, “It’s more fun in the Philippines.” That is the ridiculous truth. I, as a journalist, should be one of the first to expose these. But there is a time and place for everything.

The Department of Tourism (DOT) wants Filipinos to own the slogan, personalize it, spread it online, and create a buzz about the Philippines worldwide. The DOT banks on our positive vibes.

Granted: We love to make fun of ourselves, and put ourselves and our country down in the process. But can we not hijack the new slogan, please?

The hashtag #1forfun is the number one trending topic in the Philippines and the sixth worldwide as of posting time.

The Department of Tourism (DOT) has not even formally launched its tourism campaign when #1forfun – a teaser that the DOT released a day earlier – became a trending topic in the Philippines on Friday.

The launch was scheduled at 10 a.m.

That this topic trended on Twitter could be an early sign of the outcome of the DOT’s new campaign, which Tourism Sec. Ramon Jimenez wants to mount on a base of social media and public support.

‘Game changers’

A former advertising executive, Jimenez is banking on the power of “game changing” media such as Facebook and Twitter in the government’s new tourism campaign.

In a speech before the Philippine Advertising Congress in Naga City last November, Jimenez said the Philippines should move away from “traditional” tourism campaigns, which largely involve paid advertisements.

He said the Philippines, which has less to spend on advertising than other countries, should bank on its strength in numbers online. The country has over 27 million Filipinos on Facebook and 10 million on Twitter, Jimenez noted.

“The game changer will be a campaign that will have a central strategy executed and propagated by millions of active, enthusiastic Filipinos who feel they have the power to persuade people to visit their country as tourists,” he explained.

‘We deserve a visit from the world’

In an interview on GMA News TV’s “State of the Nation” newscast, Jimenez said selling the Philippine brand should begin with Filipinos themselves.

“Believe in the beauty of your country. Sell it at every turn. Sell it on Facebook, on Twitter, on Multiply. Talk about your country because we deserve a visit from the world,” said Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez, whom the President expects to boost Philippines tourism using his expertise in advertising.

The new tourism campaign comes in a year after the DOT, under then Sec. Alberto Lim, launched the widely criticized slogan “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” that even led to the resignation of a top DOT official.

Do you think the new tourism slogan will show the Philippines is really “fun”?

Because to say that is to submit to the worldview that work comprises our entire reality, when in fact work is but a part of it. Are vacations – the time we spend with our family and friends – any less real than the time we spend in the office? Yes, vacations are temporary – but who ever said that work isn’t? Everything in life wears away. (Watch related music video: Gary Granada’s “Hangganan.”)

How we wish vacations like this would last forever – mirroring our desire to live and be happy for eternity. This is a state that we cannot enjoy, unfortunately, as long as we remain in this world.

Life on earth is not our final destination. We are all pilgrims on a journey, and as long as we are, we are bound for a series of hellos and goodbyes. The key to a happy life, therefore, is not to fixate on anything. It is to pass by each moment, relish the experience, then take another look, say thanks, and move on to the next.

The right attitude this week is not “back to reality,” but “life goes on.”

(I originally wrote this piece on January 3, 2010, the Sunday before returning to work after the holidays that year.)

In its reaction to Rappler’s recent story on Chief Justice Renato Corona’s questionable Ph.D., the University of Santo Tomas (UST) said it did not give its side to the author, Marites Dañguilan Vitug, due to its concerns regarding online journalism, among other things.

“UST said it did not reply to Marites Vitug’s query because it was at a loss on how to respond to ‘online journalism,’” said a story on the Philippine Daily Inquirer by UST professor and publications adviser Lito Zulueta.

“Does anyone claiming to be an online journalist (sic) given the same attention as one coming from the mainstream press?” said the statement from the 400-year-old UST.

Vitug’s story, “UST breaks rules to favor Corona,” says the Chief Justice finished his UST doctorate without the required dissertation. Her story is now the most read piece on Rappler, a trailblazing news website that now includes Newsbreak, the hard-hitting investigative magazine that Vitug co-founded.

“We understand that while Miss Vitug used to be a print journalist, she’s part of an online magazine, Newsbreak, which has reportedly been subsumed into ‘www.rappler.com.’ What’s that?” the UST statement said.

The page “About Rappler,” which should have answered UST’s questions about the site, was its third most read item when UST released this statement.

“Is that a legitimate news organization?” the university added. ”What individuals and entities fund Newsbreak and Rappler? Do these outfits have editors? Who challenged Miss Vitug’s article before it went online so as to establish its accuracy, objectivity and fairness? Why was there no prior disclosure made? What gate-keeping measures does online journalism practice?”

Yes, UST, I am proud to be an online journalist. Sorry, we don’t “deserve” your attention as much as our print counterparts do. But trust me: we also know how to write, we do have editors, and we try to reach all affected parties before we post our stories. We also pledge to be accurate, objective, and fair.

Rappler’s Vitug wasn’t able to include your explanation, unfortunately, because she is now an online journalist like our other insulted colleagues.

We also join the Pope in his mission intention: “That the dedication of Christians to peace may bear witness to the name of Christ before all men and women of good will.”

The Wide Shot will post the Pope’s prayer intentions in the coming months as well. Let us accompany the Catholic Church’s visible leader in prayer.

“May the Lord grant comfort to the peoples of Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand and the Philippines, who are still enduring grave hardships as a result of the recent floods,” Benedict said in his Christmas Urbi et Orbi, which literally means “To the City and to the World.”

(Continue reading on Rappler.com)

In my mid-40s, some 40 years ago, a priest-batchmate of mine said to me, in the evening of Christmas day, “Now that we are in our 40s, Christmas isn’t the same anymore, is it?” The delight of children, that golden glow of expectation and excitement, that Christmas eye isn’t there any longer… It’s prayer time, it’s boredom… What does Christmas mean now for us?

Maybe tonight, then, we can speak a little through this feeling or lack of it. For those in their 40s and over among you… if you will, our darkness of spirit. The saints tell us that it purifies faith for us, that it may lead us toward that deeper truth that our faith goes within itself.

Notice how the saints – for them, Christmas is never seen alone and by itself. For them, there are always the two poles to the Christian mystery – the two poles in the life and meaning of Jesus. One, the beginning – God’s Son becoming man, the Incarnation. Two, the ending – the Paschal Mystery, Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Two poles in the Jesus story, two poles in the one Christian mystery – crib and cross, but one Christ mystery, one indivisible mystery of our faith. To split them off, one from the other, is to miss their truest meaning. To separate them is to fail to see them true, full, and complete. We only understand them together – the one total mystery of Jesus Christ.

The Incarnation, Bethlehem, is at one end. Bethlehem breaks into history as start of the mystery, alive and shining. Bethlehem is the starlit, song-filled, angel-filled sign. God’s Son came to take up everything that we call human, all of human living. Everything that makes up our human existence – joys and sorrows, ups and downs, sickness and health, living and dying. God’s Son came to make them all His own – make all his own only except sin, Scriptures say. Yes, make them all his own and fill them with His presence – fill them with His healing and forgiving presence, His divinizing grace, His holiness and His love. That good spiritual writer John Shane put in in this way: “There are now no more unvisited places in our lives.” There are now no more unvisited places in our lives… It’s true. Everywhere now, God is with us. If we could only learn to see with the eyes of faith, God with us, Emmanuel.

But because there is so much brokenness in our lives – most of it brought about by us and our sins – because there is so much pain and suffering and weakness, fear, failure in our days, in a true sense, what God’s Son took up most on into Himself, what He took up first and foremost, was our suffering. He came to inhabit our vulnerability, our hurt, our woundedness, our weariness, our weakness, even our dying. He came to take up all of it… to bring with it His grace, His feelings, and His power, to bring within it the fullness of His divinity. But yes, first of all, He had to take everything into himself, in sharing and solidarity. And that night, the second sense of the mystery, the dying on the Cross, the dying, the pierced open side, the pierced open heart, that was God’s deepest response to our sin and our suffering. We cite Austin Farrer: “God did not give us explanations. He gave us His Son. He gave up His Son for us.”

Thus, never one without the other, the two great dimensions of the mystery of our faith – Crib and Cross, Bethlehem and Golgotha, birth and death and glory. Yes, glory at the end, but first the passion on the Cross before rising again. As we said, the saints who understood our faith, they never lost sight of this.

What I thought to be the best movie of the year I saw – I don’t know how many of you did… on DVDs – “Of Gods and Men,” that French film at Cannes about the Cistercian monks in Algiers who were victims of hate and mindless violence, not many years ago. There are two superb themes in the movie, linked with the liturgy of the monks. Christmas night, when the danger of their lives comes near to them, and they must choose to stay or to go. And the holy day, Holy Thursday, after all have all chosen, all of them, to stay, their (inaudible) suffer together, sharing bread and wine, and knowing that their passion was finally coming; their journey to their Calvary, the price of their fidelity to commitment and love, the total gift simply of their lives.

Crib and Cross – the saints kept the two together. (inaudible) great events in the life of St. Francis of Assisi… December 1223, at 41, already broken in body and in spirit, from so much labor and hardship, poverty and penance, indeed depression because the Rule that he had written for his brotherhood had just been approved, but no longer with the total radical poverty and starvation that he sought. The ideal that he wanted for himself and his brothers… “Naked to follow the naked Christ.” On the rocky hillside, he would create his belen for the Midnight Mass, with a real ox and a real ass, manger and straw, to show people how poor and powerless God made His Son, from birth to death. And there, the wooden figure of the Christchild came alive in his arms, and radiantly smiled up at him, responding to his love. And a few months later, in September… a seraph came down from heaven imprinting on his flesh, searing into his body, the stigmata: wounds and hands and feet and sides, so that his likeness to Jesus would be complete. “This is my body given up for you.”

Ignatius of Loyola, in his contemplation of the Nativity, in his Spiritual Exercises, he pictures Joseph and Mary – Mary on a donkey, on their hard journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem; their search for lodging that night; the birth of Jesus in a cave. Joseph and Mary labored… so that the Lord might be born in utter poverty, and after so many trials of hunger, of thirst, of heat and cold, of injuries and affronts, to die on the Cross… “And all of this, for me.”

In Greek Christian art, the two scenes of Mary holding the body of Jesus are Bethlehem, in the stable, the little baby cradled in her arms; and Calvary, at the foot of the Cross, the bleeding, bruised body and his head laid on her lap, as in Michelangelo’s Pieta. The broken body of her Son. And as we look on her, we hear the words that Jesus spoke in a vision to Blessed Julia of Norwich: “Wouldst thou know the meaning of this thing? Wit it well, wit it well. Love is its meaning.”

And so brothers and sisters, we see that Christmas is not just the breathless beauty, the glow and the glory of the “silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.” It is also the Cross and dying, pierced feet and hands, pierced open side.

When we are in our 40s or 50s or over, when the high feeling of Christmas goes, this childlike excitement and expectation, the faith can lead us through the darkness where crib and cross are one in the mystery of Jesus. Faith can lead us in silence and depth… We hear again, “Wouldst thou know the meaning of this thing? Wit it well. Love is its meaning.”

That is what Christmas really means for all of us who believe – for children, for the young in their teens or after, for those in their 40s or 50s and over, even for us who live to 80 or more – Christmas is—, love is its meaning. God’s love for each of us. God’s love for each of you. We kneel before the manger, all of us, you and me; yes, even those of you who even now cannot believe that it is really true. But it is true, you know. You are infinitely cherished…

Let me end tonight with a Christmas carol. The Gospel today centers on Mary, who is the woman of the Advent. This carol, I learned in our novitiate, 70 years ago. I loved it then, I love it more today. Its name is “Sleep, Sleep My Own.” Mary’s words by the manger to her Son.

1. Sleep, sleep, my own, Thy mother’s arms enfold Thee.
Lo, at Thy borning the winds of the morning grow still.
Sleep, sleep, my Child, bright angels behold Thee.
Now all is peace in the cave of the hill.

Ref. Sing, Holy Angels, your song from the skies.
Sleeping and dreaming, the King of heaven lies

2. Dream, O my own, Thy dreams be all of heaven.
Dream not of sorrow that waits on the morrow for Thee.
Dream of the hearts that to Thee will be given.
Feel not the pain of the nails on the tree.

Dream of the hearts that to Thee will be given. Brothers and sisters, what hearts, whose hearts? Our hearts. Shall we bring them tonight, tomorrow night, to the Child, so we go, too, and kneel by the manger, and give him, even when we are past 40s or 50s or 60s, whatever. Our hearts and the true seriousness are love.

Come, let us adore Him. Venite adoremus Dominum.

(Fr. Catalino Arevalo, SJ, professor emeritus at the Loyola School of Theology, delivered this homily during the Ateneo’s last Simbang Gabi at the Church of the Gesu this year. Transcript by The Wide Shot.)

The earthquake, which was tectonic in origin, struck the southern Luzon municipality at 1:26 a.m., Phivolcs said on its website.

Phivolcs said it expects no damage or aftershocks from the earthquake. The agency classified the earthquake as Intensity II, which means it was “slightly felt.”

Hours earlier, a magnitude 2.4 earthquake also struck Sta, Cruz, Laguna. The earthquake, which was also tectonic in origin, took place at 9:52 p.m. on Thursday, Phivolcs said.

Phivolcs likewise said it does not expect damage or aftershocks. It did not specify the earthquake’s intensity.