Today is the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mama Mary who holds a special place in the Catholic Church as she is the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ (Theotokos). To celebrate this special day, Straight from the Sky brings you a very dramatic but heart-warming story of Diane Bacasmas, a member of the Bukas Loob sa Diyos (BLD), a covenanted community. Last July 27 she was subjected to an unspeakable horror, a rape attempt which went bad as she fought back against her attacker and was stabbed 19 times all over her body, with the knife piercing her lungs and heart.
We wrote about her story last Aug.22 after we heard her speak before the BLD Community on Aug.19 23 days after suffering a near-death experience. She had to be operated on for her grievous wounds. That she would be up and about 23 days later is miraculous to say the least. But what I consider truly the hand of God was when we heard her speak at the Redemptorist Church and say that she has already forgiven her attacker. Right away I saw our own version of St. Maria Goretti who during her rape attempt by Alessandro Serenelli who stabbed her. She died a day later. But before she expired, she forgave Alessandro and now she is a Saint.
While St. Maria Goretti died, Diane Bacasmas was allowed by the Lord to live so she could tell us her story… a story of prayer, hope and forgiveness. This is why Diane is with us on Straight from the Sky together with her father Ging and mother Jane so we can hear the Lord speak to us through them. So watch this show tonight on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00 pm.
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There is no question that the Philippine government, especially our political system is riddled with a very corrupt bureaucracy. Today Filipinos are fast losing hope because our politicians refuse to implement political reforms for the improvement of our country. There is strong resistance from Imperial Manila to push for charter changes (cha-cha). Our politicians are just too comfy while the rest of the Filipinos have to go abroad to look for jobs.
Because of the clamor to have the Cory Constitution amended and with the issue of Federalism growing ever louder because of the recent brouhaha of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), the United Opposition (UNO) plants to conduct a public consultation on charter changes. But which region would they consult? There is no UNO here. That means, our concerns would not be taken up by UNO.
But whether they like it or not, rebuilding the Philippines starts from rebuilding our basic law and that’s the Constitution. If we want progress this is the bullet we must bite, otherwise, we shall see more of the same stagflation year after year.
Last Saturday morning I was at the Rizal Library and Museum to attend the Young Minds Academy (YMA) program supported by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI) and City Savings Bank. The rationale for this program starts with “Success without a successor is failure.” How true! Our parents’ generation has failed us, simply because we were not taught the basic requirements on how we the youth of our day would handle our future. Well, we’ve already lost our youth and the future is already here and it’s worse than we ever expected. So where do we go from here?
Firstly we must learn from the lessons of the past. I cannot forget that once upon a time, the first billionaire was the debonair Mr. Howard Hughes, who owned then Trans World Airways (TWA) the RKO Productions that competed with Warner Brothers, Paramount and MGM and a host of other companies. Mr. Hughes died a miserable and lonely man. Because he had no heirs, many lawyers got rich by getting most of his companies.
If we do not have successors, then there is nothing to look forward to. Enter the Young Minds Academy of RAFI who are being taught responsible citizenship, accountability and leadership. I salute RAFI for doing what none of our educational institutions ever cared to do. Sure our schools have helped educate our youth, but YMA is focused on creating citizens of the future through the ten pillars of Respect, Responsibility, Citizenship, Caring, Leadership, God-Centeredness, Trustworthiness, Humility, Fairness and Integrity.
I took the opportunity to sit down and talk with these young students and share a little bit of knowledge to them. I urged them to come up with Reading Clubs because this is one of the weaknesses of the Filipino youth today. Obviously, none of these students read newspapers. They are missing a lot. But in YMA, there is hope!