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.

I shiver in my shingles

Not only because I've been forced to stay away from Patty and Gabi. Not only because of the excruciating physical pain that comes with the shingles. But also because of the unbelievable cost of medication! Now that's truly painful.

As it is, I already spend close to P10,000 a month for my diabetes maintenance. This includes my insulin, oral medication (glucophage, minidiab, januvia, lipitor, etc.) as well as the necessary paraphernalia (gluco-meter strips and needles, insulin injection pen and needles, etc.).

For the shingles, I was given a prescription for Valtrex (Valaciclovir), 500 mg. I was told to take 2 tablets 3 times a day for 7 days or a total of 42 tablets. I sent the driver to Mercury Drug with P3,000 and my Suki card to buy the anti-viral medicine and one banig of Ponstan to manage the pain.

To my horror he came back 30 minutes later with just 17 Valtrex tablets. Each tablet was P171! He didn't even have enough to buy me one Ponstan 500mg tablet! And I was now in excruciating agony!

I took my last pair of Valtrex last night. My wallet can now breathe.

In all, I spent P7,182 in Valtrex alone. That's more than P1,000 a day for 7 days.

Now I feel sick.

And sad.

Whatever happened to the Cheaper Medicine Bill?! It's still pending with the bi-conference committee. It was not passed in the last Congress and by the way things look, it might not even be passed in this Congress.

What in heaven's name is our Congress doing to help the people who foolishly voted them into power?

Is the House of Representatives too busy inserting individual pork projects into the 2008 budget and ousting speakers who refuse to be puppets? Is the Senate too busy interrogating and humiliating common folk heroes like Jun Lozada?


I am better off than most. I have an insurance policy that takes care of even my medicine bills. But still. I pay my taxes. I fulfill my duties as a citizen. And yet I don't seem to get anything in return.

It is this system of government, this culture of unabated corruption and "moderated" greed that truly makes me and many others sick.