Praying with Jun Lozada

I admire Jun Lozada not only for his courage and honesty but more so for being a prayerful soul. He is to be emulated for his rectitude of intention and his supernatural outlook.

In the Truth and Accountability Mass held yesterday at the Church of Gesu in the Ateneo Loyola campus, Jun Lozada came straight from the Senate hearing to be with Cory Aquino, Bishops Bacani and Yniguez, Jesuit priests, La Salle brothers, nuns from several congregations and a church full of ordinary laymen who all came to pray for him and the truth.

I did this not to get public adulation but to save my soul.

I am not a saint. I too am a sinner. I continue to struggle, my life is a struggle to become a good Christian.

Jun Lozada reminds all of us of our purpose here on earth, something we all learned by rote in our grade school catechism classes.

Life indeed is a struggle. It is a struggle that we must all go through. It is the Cross that we must all help to carry, lovingly and without calling attention to ourselves.

Appropriately, yesterday's Gospel was the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:1-42).

Again it is a reminder to all of us who may be angry and even harbor hatred towards people in government to be calm and to pray and to sacrifice. Especially in this season of Lent.

"Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you."

It is right for us to be outraged. It is right for us to seek the truth and demand justice. But let us not let anger and hatred overcome us. We might just end up as bad as those we accuse of lying and being unjust.

It is hard, I admit. But as Jun Lozada himself says, life indeed is a struggle. Truth and justice begins with each one of us. In the ordinary circumstances of our life.

While we protest the brazen lies, the corruption and the injustice in government, let's make sure that we at least try to live truth, honesty and justice in our own ordinary lives.

Let's pay our taxes. Let's obey traffic rules. Let's not make "lagay." Let's not use fixers. Let's treat our household helpers with respect. (Yikes! Mea culpa! :( )

Like Jun Lozada, let's all try to be the "change we want to see." Let's all be the little sparks of change in our own lives.