Let's not trivialize heroes and saints

It’s not so much for the press as the core of the fourth estate, as it doesn’t easily get carried away by bombast, but it’s the overblown TV ratings-craze or promo fad that is the problem.

As recently exemplified by the controversial suicide of a tv personality’s wife that spawned doubtful police theories and boners, it ended up with many PNP figures getting canned. It was the boob tube that stoked the smarting police and the public in frenzy.

But the most tv-covered event was over the death of President Cory Aquino, with one network throwing away exposure-scrimping to the winds. It had started when the ailment was first diagnosed as the big C, and any privacy had been thereafter violated with impunity. Exploiting the Filipinos’ penchant for tear-jerkers, the actress-daughter rode on the sentimental crest with her crying binge, figuratively wetting the boob tubes of living rooms nationwide with her tears.

The public backlash that fired up the emotions of the empathizing nation for the bereaved family was indescribably ginormous, and almost spontaneous. Thus, came the clamor for Cory to be honored as a national hero and a saint.

Observance of national heroes’ day meant memories of wars or battles involving courage, strength, ability, etc. which qualify a soldier as an illustrious warrior. It could be mythical or legendary, the likes of Zeus, Hercules, Perseus, etc. and some native epic heroes, say, Lam-ang among the Ilocanos, or Balagtas of the Tagalogs.

There are real-life heroes, like, Sgt. Alvin York of WW I reprised by Gary Cooper in cinema, or Lt. Audie Murphy of WW II who also relived himself in Hollywood films, or that of Sgt. John Rambo of the Vietnam War popularized by Sylvester Stallone. There are other wartime heroes in Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower. Mactan chief Lapu-Lapu who defied then mighty Spaniards led by Magellan is also a hero; so as Jose P. Rizal and Apolinario Mabini in writings and civil advocacy; Andres Bonifacio and Gregorio del Pilar, in battle.

Heroism is also attained in extraordinary feats by other civil figures, not combatants, but with worthy cause or advocacy. George Washington as first American president led the pioneers against the British rule; Abraham Lincoln as the 16th US President championed slave emancipation and preservation of the Union; Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt saw through the Great Depression and WW II in his wheelchair; and, all are recognized as heroes.

The eminent Winston Churchill among civic heroes can’t be left out. It was Churchill who held London and all of Great Britain together at the height of Hitler’s relentless bombings in World War II… Of course, there have been so many heroes in many countries and climes.

In sainthood, the qualities and criteria are of higher level, touching on the spiritual or ethereal, or at least the surreal and abstract. While saints may have been ordinary humans who attained sainthood by canonization, yet saints are more than a cut or two above quotidian human beings by their religious or holy beatification. One factor is the matter of miracles done, like, sick healing, visions, revelations, religious apparitions, phenomenal spiritual manifestations, et seq., beyond ordinary human sensibility and experience, or empirical truth.

What comes to mind are the steeply holy icons who disdain ostentation, and live strictly on humility, poverty, self-abnegation, chastity, service, and humanism, among others. If Mahatma Gandhi of India were a Catholic, and Mother Teresa, the Albanian who spent her life in India serving the poor and the sick, are two likely to get canonized.

Heroes and saints are not just a rash windfall of overblown media hype. Neither is heroism and sainthood mere impulsive knee-jerk, nor the harried drama of tv tear-jerkers. They come with time, spontaneously evolving as history unravels slowly and surely, not sneaking in like a thief in the night, else they be trivialized either or both cheaply.

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