Healing phenomenon

Is the Philippines now gearing up to be a Christian spiritual pilgrimage site in Asia? Are the Filipinos spiritually ready for this? Or could we still be described as practicing split-level Christianity? The media coverage of Fr. Fernando Suarez’s healing activities in many places in Metro Manila and the provinces has been quite sustained since he arrived last December. The number of people that flock to the healing Masses has grown exponentially because of the media coverage and one could see from the news reports that working the crowd has become...

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Ordinary Filipinos, extraordinary difference

A plug: Tomorrow, if you have the chance, go to the launching of the book “Profiles Encourage: Ordinary Filipinos Making an Extraordinary Difference” at 5 p.m. at the PowerBooks in Greenbelt 4 in Makati. It’s a small book with a big heart and it features 11 “ordinary” Filipinos (nine individuals and a couple) who made a difference in their little corner of the world and tells about how this difference created ripples that reached and touched the lives of many. It is also about quiet heroism and courage, doing what needed to be done despite the...

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Time to set them free

In Aug. 2003, weeks before the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, I spent days at the New Bilibid Prisons interviewing the men who were convicted in the Aquino-Galman double murder case. I had hoped then that after 20 years, one or several of the convicts would finally own up or make a revelation as to who ordered them to do what they did and lead us to the mastermind. I got none of that for my three-part series. What I got was the men’s recollection of that fateful day in August, what they were doing when the shots rang...

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A cleaner year

The Christmas season ended last Sunday on the Feast of the Epiphany which is about manifestations of the divine kind. Don’t’ we hope to also see manifestations of the human kind, the kind that would ease the burden on the environment and us critters? The garbage and the pollution that Christmas and the New Year had wrought should have eased up by now. (The holy season has become a dirty season.) It’s time to clean up. Clean up our surroundings and our insides. And let our singing of “and heaven and nature sing” become a reality. There is hope...

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‘The Peace of Wild Things’

One of the profound greetings I received for the New Year was the poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry, who is known as the prophet of rural America. Based in his Kentucky farm, Wendell, 74, is a well-known conservationist, poet, novelist, essayist, professor, lecturer, philosopher, Christian writer, farmer and defender of agrarian values and small-scale farming. Feel and listen to the poem’s soothing message. You can’t go wrong with this. “When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear...

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Healing priest does so ‘many miracles like in the Bible’

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURE/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo Filed Under: Mysteries, Diseases, Personalities, Belief (Faith), Good news MANILA, Philippines -- He could not believe his healing power. He wanted to run away from it. A Canadian woman declared dead eight hours earlier, her organs ready to be harvested and donated, suddenly opened her eyes after Filipino priest Fr. Fernando Suarez prayed over her. Suarez, who was then a seminarian, was stunned....

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