A high-ranking Church official said 2010 is a crucial year for the nation as people will choose leaders who will govern the country in the upcoming elections.
In a Christmas Message, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales said the real solution to election problems does not depend on automation but on the electorates’ responsible and much prayed for choice of candidates.
“The coming year 2010 is the nation’s year of choice for honest, selfless and God-fearing leaders who will serve with honesty, simplicity and humility,” he declared.
Rosales said the people had enough of “arrogant leaders” who think of themselves as the solution to the country’s woes.
These politicians who “thought that the nation could not go forward without them, had always been failures; and they had, unfortunately, brought the country down with them”, he added.
Highlighting the significance of peace in his Christmas message, the Cardinal said it is a consequence of a good choice, “whether the choice is to have enough to eat or to select a man who will honestly lead others to progress.”
“Any person, who performs real good, no matter how imperceptible that good act is, will inevitably bring in peace,” he added.
But he admitted that with the current practice in Philippine politics, what he said seemed too difficult to achieve.
“This is the reason why we need the reminders of the Lord, who came teaching people the need for discipline and sacrifice (under the expression of the cross) in order to attain the path to peace and success,” he said.
But peace cannot be attained even with all the best efforts of government to stop wars and violence, if the action is obscured by “greed and dishonest behavior”.
“When someone desires what is good for everyone including self, peace can become an accepted reality,” the Cardinal said, adding: “Peace is not within the grasp of a person whose only interest is self.”
“To make His disciples men of peace, the Lord Jesus trained them to love beyond selfish interest, even to the point of offering the sacrifice of one’s life,” he continued.
The world’s path to peace has remained elusive even after two thousand years since Jesus came to earth as the Prince of peace.
This is so because “people had put their selfish ambitions and greed first before the possession of the common good of all”, the Cardinal said.
“If we survey our surroundings and see the poverty around us—the selfish ambitions and the pride, including the degenerate ways of governance bereft of inspiration and good example from leaders, the inhumanity in today’s crimes and the shamelessness in many a crime among irresponsible leaders—the question remains the same as before, “Is peace a possibility?” he said.
But peace becomes an option, he said, when people have “a sufficiency to own and consume what a noble life needs and what human dignity requires”.
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