Forgive us

By +Oscar V. Cruz D. D.

Do forgive us please, young people of the today. Our national hero said with hope and pride that you were the hope of the Country. One very distinguished and much loved Pope also affirmed that the young people of the world were the strength and hope of the universal Church. This truth has acquired special relevance during these times when we your elders have failed in teaching you by the lives we live, by the examples we give. We have wronged you in so many ways, for so many years.

We have made lying, cheating and stealing as standard actuations of supposedly educated individuals. You see us making graft and corruption, bribery and callousness as our daily bread. We teach you that might is right, that wealth and power are all that count, that money buys not only values and principles but persons as well. And in addition to all these, you behold how human lives have become cheap, how human rights are only true for those who can afford to pay for them.

As the youth of the country, you have all the reasons to look down upon us, your elders, to hold us in disdain and contempt. You are well aware of how we sell your natural patrimony, how we successfully divide the people and impoverish your families. Many of you have even no means even to go school, to have sufficient meals, to look forward to your future. In fact, some of the members of your families even sell their organs in exchange for some food, clothing and shelter. Our greed has impoverished them and made their lives really miserable.

In your goodness, please do not be afraid of us as we are not worth your fear. Do not tolerate us much less allow us to exploit the people much longer, to pocket more of their hard earned money paid as taxes. We are prepared not to expect much less demand your respect when we are downright disrespectable, for you to honor us when we have become so dishonorable and even despicable.

Would that once fallen from our self-made glorious pedestals and brought down from our empty and deceiving visionary projections, we your corrupt and corrupting elders would find the opportunity to return what we stole, to tell the truth as it is, and to make amends for our practically countless misdeeds against you, your beloved families, you dear Country. Would that you continue to hold on to the saying that, “Hope springs eternal.”

You cannot and should not indulge in despair. This is bad for your present and fatal for your future and that of the country. Otherwise, you would prove our national hero as well as the saintly Pope all wrong if you lose hope—you who are precisely the hope of the country and of the Church as well. No matter how evil and odious we your elders are, no matter how powerful and wealthy we have become through vicious means, we go by the wayside and eventually die sooner or later, converted from our sins or precisely condemned in them. And then you take over.

Meantime, forgive us!

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/viewpoints/ )

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