GOOD FRIDAY REFLECTIONS

REFLECTION
It mustn’t be long enough for Jesus to suffer the shameful crucifixion at Mount Golgotha and he finally died of exhaustion and loss of blood. While hanging on the cross in between the two other convicts he uttered at least seven sentences or words that described fully his humanity and relationship with the God whom he called “Father”. In John’s Gospel the narrative of the minutes after his death is detailed in this manner:
Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out (Jn 19:32-24).

The Roman soldiers in order to make sure that the execution is total they had to break the legs and piercing of the side of the body with a spear. The very act of piercing on the side would make a fatal wound on the stomach, liver and the heart. Death becomes inescapable. They made sure he was killed. Gintipok gid nila sya in Ilonggo language while gitiwasan gyud nila siya in Cebuano. Tagalog expression would use sya ay pinatay/pinaslang nila. In the three Filipino languages the act of killing is intention of killing somebody, which we may say premeditation. What is uglier in the act of killing or murder in the Filipino mind is that first the victim has been fatally wounded but without mercy has been killed- gitiwasan or gintipok gid sya.

The more than 800 persons who were killed extrajudicially by government security operatives and the hundreds who have been desaparacedos during the incumbency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in connivance with the fascist police and military commanders are fiercest than that of the Roman imperial soldiers. The grim reality in Philippine society is always as it had been a Good Friday and not so much of Easter Sunday. The poor and struggling masses of people are kept hanging on the cross and the soldiers continually use their brute means of killing those who resist or may want to escape death.

Good Friday can only be good for the more than 60 million poor Filipinos when the government would allow Easter Day to come. However, the moral bankruptcy of the government will never allow Easter Day to come. The Church especially the Catholic Church in the Philippines as the harbinger of Christian hope for salvation especially social emancipation must do beyond what it is doing right now to proclaim the coming of Easter Day, the historical era when the majority of the Filipino people have a government that institutes social justice and punish those who have squandered the resources of the nation, those who have commandeered the extrajudicial killings and arrested those who raised dissent to the monumental human rights violations. Only then that the nation can truly live in Easter Day.