An anti-dengue oracion

There’s now an “oracion imperata” after every holy mass in the Archdiocese of Cebu. Dengue, or control of it, is its target, for this dreaded disease has afflicted more than a thousand children and adults in the cities and municipalities of this province as well as in other areas. What has alarmed church authorities is not the disease itself, after all this disease is a fairly common one. But the alarming number of cases, which in some areas have reached epidemic proportion, is certainly reason enough to be anxiously concerned.

The oracion is a plea to God, particularly to our very own Señor Santo Niño, to save us from this scourge. Like the rage of El Niño, which destroyed crops and brought the wolf of hunger before many a poor man’s door, this disease debilitates not just the body but an entire family and of course the community. So we must pray, say our religious leaders.

Early this year, our church leaders led us to pray also an “oracion”. Rain was our obsession then for wells was drying up and the sun had baked our rice farms and cornfields. And the rains came. More rains in fact came such that floods and landslides became a threat to life and limb. The same rains created pools of stagnant water and filled empty cans and containers for mosquitoes to breed in. And so dengue came.

So now we tell the Lord of our predicament. Like the frogs in the fable who prayed for a king and got eaten up by the hornbill “king” that showed up – how like those frogs we are!

But frogs don’t get dengue, do they? In fact, they help us get rid of dengue by feasting on the infant harbingers of dengue. Trouble is, there are no more frogs. We have dirtied so much our rivers and esteros that these helpful croakers have abandoned us. Now we ask the Lord not to abandon us.

Now we know. Our wanton ways have killed frogs and fish, plants and living things, and are killing us in various ways, dengue or no dengue. Our hardened hearts have made us heretic to the dogma of brotherhood. That’s why we don’t care who gets smothered by our garbage. That’s why we have no qualms against bringing down a tree or destroying our coral reefs.

These happen because there’s dirt in our hearts and mind. When talking about a person’s uncleanness Jesus said that what comes out of a person are what makes him unclean. These, he added, are theft, murder, adultery, jealousy, maliciousness, deceit, indecency, slander, pride and folly. Sounds familiar? Indeed they do because most of these are happening in our society. Despite our Christian orientation, many of us have been stigmatized by some of these weaknesses and are soiled all over.

And when we are, how can the grace of God come into our lives? Perhaps this dengue outbreak is the Lord’s way of opening our eyes to the need to check ourselves before the cup overflows. Dengue is not his handwork, of course, for our loving Father is compassionate and only goodness comes from him. It’s we ourselves who have brought this problem, like other problems, to ourselves.

That’s why we pray the oracion, and as always invoke the intercession of Mother Mary. Will the oracion work?

Catholics believe in miracles. That’s why they flock to shrines known for miraculous healings. For example, there’s the grotto of our Lady at Lourdes, France, and the Guadalupe church in Mexico, to name a few, where unexplained cures have been reported.

Catholics also believe in divine intervention to control an epidemic. In early Spanish Cebu when cholera threatened the lives of people, religious authorities held daily processions with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and this, it was believed, brought the disease under control.

Prayer by itself, however, is not as effective as when it is accompanied by action. In the current move to invoke divine intervention, a massive effort to clean our surroundings is called for. More important, we have to do some spiritual cleansing for ourselves. For a clean heart cannot tolerate uncleanness anywhere – in our backyard or in the community. From such heart will come out not theft but honesty, not murder but life-giving service, not adultery but purity. Instead of jealousy, maliciousness, deceit, indecency, slander, pride and folly there will manifest goodwill and love, openness and uprightness, humility and good sense.

So we must pray the oracion and heartily so to allow the inflow of God’s spirit into ourselves and strengthen us against our enemies, including dengue fever. For if God is with us, who can be against us?

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