IN lieu of my column, I am yielding to the Pastoral Letter of Archbishop Socrates Villegas.* * *It is almost Christmas, and we start our Simbang Gabi with mixed feelings of expectant joy and hope but with trouble and distress.Our people are indeed troubled. They are rightly distressed. They have a right to be, having listened to a sordid tale of crime unraveled through the testimonies of witnesses summoned by the committees of Congress conducting investigations on POGOs, the criminal activities perpetrated in their precincts, drug-dealing and drug dealers, murder and torture.I am the Lord, your God. You shall have no strange gods before me.The first three commandments of the Decalogue bind God's people to worship God alone — and to worship him, as Jesus teaches — in spirit and in truth.We ask our Legislators who have conducted these investigations and are presumably finalizing their reports and recommendations to make of their initiatives and activities an act of worship of the One, true God. This way, they may guard against pursuing personal and parochial interests. They may decide, free of the influence and importuning of the powerful. They may courageously, convinced that God is on their side, speak the truth and do the truth. Anything less is worship of a graven image! And the Lord's day is not only the Sabbath or Sunday but whenever truth is boldly proclaimed and justice fearlessly pursued!Honor your father and your mother.It is shocking how fake identities were forged, how persons claim to be other than who they are — assuming identities not theirs, making the identities of others disappear, and, in so doing, claiming parentage that is fraudulent and deceitful.It is particularly distressing to note how the National Statistics Authority, the civil registrars and the Bureau of Immigration have lent their offices to fraudulent schemes that involve deliberately falsified entries about parentage, origin and nationality.Those who allowed their offices to be conscripted into fraudulent schemes and criminal falsehood should now be prosecuted and held to account for this betrayal.You shall not kill.Persons were tortured and killed in POGO sites. We know that now. But we also know what persons were rewarded to kill others for reasons that now appear to be criminal — competition in the nefarious drug trade. We heard, with horror, how a lawyer connected with PAGCOR was murdered — how his assassination was planned and carried out by people he thought were his office-mates and superiors.No murder is ever justified, and one may take another's life only when one's own life or that of another is mortally threatened. And it is even worse when one orders the elimination of others so that no one else may share in the drug market!You shall not commit adultery. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.To engage in adultery is sinful, and to flaunt one's extra-marital dalliances is outrageous. A shocked and scandalized nation listened in disbelief as adulterous relations were bared, and parties to this egregious transgression of the institution of marriage made use of their immoral and unlawful links to commit crimes and to act with impunity.You shall not steal. You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.When one is entrusted with public funds, we must render an accounting to the people who were taxed in order to provide the funds. Intelligence funds are public funds — and the claim that they were used for 'confidential' purposes does not justify wanton expenditure that does not benefit the people. The preposterous claim that hundreds of thousands were used to maintain 'safe houses' is merely one chapter in this shameful narrative of public trust betrayed!The refusal to explain is not only regrettable. It is condemnable because it is tantamount to claiming that one can freely use public funds according to one's will and pleasure — and thus appropriating for one's purposes when one does not really own. This is stealing! And to ask for even more public funds for another round of reckless spending is to be covetous!You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.Former secretary of justice and senator Leila de Lima was incarcerated for seven long and lonely years because of false witnesses, perjured statements and conjured crimes. But she was not the only victim of false witness, for many were placed on what was, in effect, a hit list — a list of those targeted for elimination — because of false witness: the often unfounded or ill-founded claim of being drug peddlers, drug-dealers, drug-users.I am the Alpha and the OmegaWe have been warned by the Lord about distressing signs — and while he talked about cosmic events, the scandals, crimes and failings bared to the nation by the investigations conducted by the chambers of Congress — for which we must be grateful — are no less troubling, apocalyptic even.But in the 22nd Chapter of the Book of Revelation, the very last book of Sacred Scripture, Jesus the Lord proclaims:'Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to reward each one as his work deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.'It will not be evil, and sin and crime that will prevail, but the Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus, the Lord whose return we all await.And confident that Jesus, the Lord, is the Beginning and the End, we must side with justice, champion truth, right wrongs even at the cost of personal peril. And our constant prayer will be that from the same chapter of the Book of Revelation: 'Maranatha...Come, Lord'! Our hope is in the Lord!From the Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Dagupan City, Dec. 16, 2024, First Day of Simbang Gabi.+ SOCRATES B. VILLEGASArchbishop ofLingayen-Dagupanrannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.phrannie_aquino@csu.edu.phrannie_aquino@outlook.com
