The Israelites groaning, cried out for help, and from the depths of their slavery, their cry came up to God. God heard their groaning and he called to his mind his covenant. (Exodus 2:23)
The workers demand:
Jobs and Just Wages!
The farmers demand:
Yes to Genuine Agrarian Reform!
No to the extension of the fake Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program!
The people cry out:
Bring down prices! Stop oil price hikes!
Scrap the Expanded Value Added Tax!
The people’s lamentations and protests echo throughout the land. The cries of the poor resonate everywhere. The ruling powers oppress the poor like the Pharaoh in the Exodus story. The ruling powers of our time collaborate with foreign rule in enslaving the people. Enslavement in the form of feudal bondage, foreign control, indebtedness and land abuse daily manifests in the lives of workers surviving on low wages, peasants and indigenous peoples displaced by multinational projects, urban poor families demolished without guarantee of relocation, and countless victims of human trafficking, forced migration and chain of social injustice. While majority of our people are chained in escalating poverty, the government launched Oplan Bantay Laya, a counter-insurgency campaign to smash the
revolutionary movement by 2010. In reality, civilians are paying the highest toll. To date there are more than 900 victims of extra judicial killings and enforced disappearances. The lives of ordinary farmers, workers and community activists, human rights defenders, justice and peace advocates including church people have been snuffed out in the name of the counter-insurgency operations that actually targeted anyone critical of the corrupt administration.
In the midst of intensifying repression and brazen attacks on human lives, the faithful are being challenged as to how our faith can be of service for the people’s liberation. The life of Jesus is a powerful reminder for all of us – being contemplative in the midst of the people. Jesus find time to gather strength from his deep contemplation in order to strengthen himself for an active service to the people.
The late Fr Simon, a Carmelite priest, once said,” Our dreams for the future are the aspirations of the struggling masses. That’s why, we the religious, will only achieve our vows if we work in solidarity with the struggles of the sectors in the society.”
Sr. Nanette of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), one of the casualties of the Cassandra tragedy articulated, “If our talent or ability as priest or a nun revolves only and progresses inside the convent or the institution
where we belong while keeping aside other issues, like the sufferings of the masses whom we vowed to serve- that mission is full of emptiness.”
Our Journey to and beyond the Red Sea
In this challenging time, some religious say that they are tired and need to rest from active involvement for social change. But there are those who resolve to keep on believing and acting for our own exodus. Others offered their lives for the sake of our dreams…
The religious sisters, pastors, deaconesses and deacons of the church are living the true essence of sacraments in their day to day struggle. The fulfillment of becoming church of the poor is already taking shape…There in the city and the countryside. They are doing collective works or task reflections that are the fruit of their immersion and exposure. Like the discipleship
strategy of Jesus, more than 72 disciples are engaged in multi-faceted ministry: curing the sick, casting away corruption and social ills, supporting the poor in their aspirations and struggles.
They are the new disciples who are ready to lay down their lives in the face of ravenous wolves along the way.
We are leaving Egypt and not far from the Red Sea. In the spirit of unity and solidarity, the road to freedom is near. And again, we will see the life of the followers of Jesus. There in the factories and picket lines, in the street demonstrations, beyond the farm lands, seas and mountainside of the Mangyan, lumad, in the communities of the urban poor and the migrant workers everywhere. The Red Sea is near. Let us feel the spirit it brings, we will face tomorrow, a future that is free, just and abundant as we commune with the struggling masses.
But of course, after the Red Sea exodus another challenge is in the offing…let us then continue the journey for justice and peace… ##
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