THE news about one court's bail grant a few days ago unleashed a tidal wave of relief of the highest, most epic kind. Like torrential rain on parched land. Like a lifesaver tossed to a man drowning in midsea. Like a pickaxe and a sturdy rope appearing before a flailing mountain climber on a precipitous drop to the craggy abyss. After seven years that, for a jailed innocent, was the equivalent of eternity, former senator Leila de Lima finally posted bail and breathed the air of freedom.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas, whose duty is to counsel and comfort his flock and be the steadying, unemotional force at the archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan, let his guard down for once, overwhelmed by the good news. 'Mangiyak-iyak ako,' Villegas said. I was out of the farm when the news came. I told the young man helping me to unlock the gate to the fenced area that holds the reserve hay for the dead grass months and let the goats and the cattle consume it all. Never mind that there would be no reserve hay this coming dry season. We had to celebrate, one way or another, what will be marked as the most remarkable judicial decision in the two decades of this new century, archbishops and farmers alike.