‘A good friend joked that, if the President can’t think straight, at least he could shoot straight as evidenced by the forced closure of ABS-CBN and the enactment of the Anti-Terror Law.’
ONE of the most depressed persons in the country may be President Duterte, no less, as he joins the legions of his countrymen going through their most stressful life ever. The least stressed out have never felt better and gave him a 91% satisfaction rating in the latest Pulse Asia survey.
Wartime presidents such as Jose Laurel and Manuel Quezon had to undergo unbearable ordeals in leading the country. This virus war has created an enormous dilemma for the President occasionally stumped by his low emotions that couldn’t cope with the current miserable but highly-charged conditions of the country.
A good friend joked that, if the President can’t think straight, at least he could shoot straight as evidenced by the forced closure of ABS-CBN and the enactment of the Anti-Terror Law.
A SWS survey from May 4 to 10 found that 55% of Pinoys endured “great stress” while 34% “much stress;” an independent survey taken during the first week of July showed 55% mostly made up of the jobless work force has since gone down to 51% but not the “much- stressed” that remained at 34%. Online psychiatric counseling has become common and lucrative but many Pinoys still can’t get over their inner distresses.
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Hiram Pangilinan, senior pastor of Church So Blessed in Quezon City, provides a short list of church leaders to give us an idea of how the healing ministry continued to prosper, even well into our time. He “dispels the fallacy that healings stopped after the last of the original disciples had died.”
The following is culled from his best-selling book, “Healing Is Yours,” “About Irenaeus (AD 140-203), the Bishop of Lyons.” “Some believers indeed most certainly and truly cast out demons, so that frequently those persons themselves that were cleansed from wicked spirits believed and were received into the Church. And, moreover, as we said before, even the dead have been raised and continue with us for many years.”
Augustine (AD 354-430) is arguably the most famous of all the early church leaders. On healings, he said, “it is sometimes objected that the miracles which Christians claimed to have occurred, no longer happen. The truth is even today miracles are being wrought in the name of Christ, sometimes through the sacraments and sometimes through the prayers of believers.”
Augustine gives some instances of miracles, such as blind eyes that opened, a bishop healed of rectal fistula, Inocencia of Carthage delivered from breast cancer; Augustine’s friend’s son raised from the dead. He ended this narrative of miracles by telling his readers “there are too many miracles to list. Of Collete of Corbi (D.1447), “the Duchess of Bourbon says, ‘I am dying of curiosity to see this wonderful Collete who resuscitates the dead.’ She said this because the ministry of Collete with all its miracles was the talk in every place.”
