Happy birthday to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Today is the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While it may not be a holiday of obligation, however it is one of the feasts of the Catholic Calendar. How did the Catholic Church know the exact date of the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Don't ever forget that the Blessed Virgin Mary died in her old age, years after the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ to heaven. So she must have told the disciples of Jesus when she was conceived by the Holy Spirit during her Immaculate Conception.
Thus early Christians were able to calculate that September 8th is exactly nine-months after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. While the Catholic Church always celebrates the dates of the passing of the Saints into life eternal, however there are three feasts in the Catholic calendar that celebrates only the birthdays: Christmas Day on the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the birth of John the Baptist and the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, all of whom were conceived by the Holy Spirit.
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While we were having a retreat in Mt. Makiling since Thursday, we literally isolated from the rest of the world, with no television and no newspapers for four days. The main topic of discussion was really to nourish our souls and focus on our spirituality. After all man is made of both flesh and spirit but a great number of us only nourish our bodies but not our souls.
Since most of those who took the retreat were from Metro Manila, during our breaks or during our lunches or dinners, we get to talk to each other and I found out that there was a common concern by our friends who live in Manila about the impending earthquake that could hit the Marikina Valley fault, which runs in the heart of Metro Manila.
With traffic along EDSA nearly a standstill just imagine what a 7.9 earthquake can do to Metro Manila when some of the flyovers would collapse. There would be a gridlock where people just cannot go anywhere they want to. Worse, people there believe that there would be looting a hundred times more than what we saw in Tacloban during the height of super typhoon Yolanda. Let's hope that this won't be happening soon.
Call us lucky in Cebu that during the October 15, 2013 earthquake only three buildings were damaged severely in that 7.2 magnitude earthquake. In a way, that earthquake tested the ability of the men and women running the Office of the Building Official which was then under my good friend, Engr. Joy Ylanan who has since been replaced by Jojo Poblete. You can say that the October earthquake judged what the OBO has done for Cebu City that only one building collapsed while the others were only damaged. That's because the OBO was never perceived to be corrupt-ridden.
Somehow, this brings me back to the story that we already wrote before about the building of Mr. Adrian Lee in Don Jose Avila St. where it was given a locational permit by the Cebu City Zoning Board and a building permit was issued. Now why did Mayor Mike Rama order that the building permit of that building be revoked? Again let me reiterate that I warned Mayor Mike Rama not once, but twice that he could be in deep trouble here. We shall write more on this issue tomorrow.
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