Happy Easter!! Today the Catholic Faith teaches us that we are celebrating our redemption from the original sin. Jesus Christ laid down His life on the cross in Calvary to bring salvation to mankind. It was God fulfilling a promise to man when he disobeyed and sinned against God in paradise. After a week of commemorating the passion and death of Jesus on the cross we can finally say Alleluia, Christ is risen. Such celebration and jubilation however is meaningless unless we ourselves have not suffered with him from our own crosses and died by renouncing our sins in confession so that we could rise with the Lord today. The redemption that He gave us by dying on the cross was only a generic prescription of how mankind can join Him in paradise. It was not redemption from our individual transgressions or sins that we must atone for. It is by taking the pill that we are cured from physical illness. And so it is by taking the spiritual pill that he has prescribed for us that we can avail of our individual redemption or salvation. And the pill that he prescribed for us is to love one another.

Unless we love one another in the context that He wanted us to understand this new commandment, we will continue to sin and His dying on the cross will not mean anything at all. God does not need our love. It is us who need to love Him because by loving Him we necessarily have to love one another. By truly loving one another, even our enemies – a specific instruction of that commandment, we can avoid the occasions of sin and therefore sin no more. How we should take the pill that He prescribed will depend upon our calling in life. Those who are in the calling of service to the people like the officials and employees in government, it is by using those powers and authority to bring good to the people, not use those power to impoverish the people by their culture of corruption. No matter what government officials and employees say, the practice of corruption is never and can never mean loving one another. For those in business, giving low wages to employees – anyway they don't complain – can never be an exercise of the commandment to love one another.

For those who are in the practice of their profession, it is never loving one another to tell the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) that they only earn this or that income for the yearbecause they can never be certain how much they earn in income unless they issue receipts to their clients. The week that was afforded everyone a time for examination of conscience. It was therefor also a time for repairing what went wrong or what was broken. It was a time for knowing and willingly accepting what needed to be done in order to renew the heart and start life anew, much better to commit to stick to that renewal. Now that is only looking inside. We may not have done something that is not pleasing to God. But have we done something that will please Him? Like sharing with the people or even just our neighbour what blessings we have? Have we done an extra mile to look for the people who might need our services? Have we been eager to report to work in the morning and reluctant to leave in the afternoon? Have we tried to see Jesus Christ in every person that we meet? If we did we can truly celebrate this day. These are just my thoughts on Easter Sunday that I am sharing with the readers of The Agora. I thank Rev. Fr. LitoGeangan, parish priest of Baclayon, for the Lenten Recollection he gave us last Wednesday. Because of him I found so much to be repaired in me.

HAPPY EASTER TO EVERYONE!!!!