Cory's Passage to Glory

At noon today, former president Corazon C. Aquino will be laid to rest beside the tomb of her husband Ninoy Aquino, himself a national hero. The overflow of affection and sympathy for her passing is simply amazing. Not since Ninoy’s funeral, and perhaps that of labor lawyer Rolando Olalia, has a funeral parade gathered such an emotionally involved crowd. But Cory’s has a different emotional undertone. While Ninoy’s and Rolly Olalia’s crowds brimmed with a mixture of sympathy and indignation, Cory’s crowd showed pure affection – love, admiration, adoration verging on devotion to a saint. Under four centuries of Catholic nurturing, Filipino piety is susceptible to the belief of a human being crossing over to the threshold of divinity.

What is the inner dynamic at work in the lives of saints that generate so much spiritual force? First, they must possess such an extraordinary reserve of goodness that is not exhausted by the demands of their surroundings. Genuine and pure goodness in a world filled with evil is a spiritual balm that soothes and heals its hapless victims. They can draw strength and comfort from the overflowing deposit of virtues that saintly individuals have.

Second, saintly persons must have gone through the crucible of personal sufferings that have rent their hearts and so carry to their death a life of sorrows. Yet, they bear this burden with fortitude and serenity even as they continue to do their life’s duties. For this, they serve as shining stars to a world blanketed with confusion and despair.

Third, they have shown concrete acts of kindness to others that enable them to achieve wholeness and restoration to community. These simple acts are perceived to be miraculous owing to their transforming effects on people.

For many Filipinos, Cory may not be close to sainthood but she has chosen to follow the path of saintliness. The whole nation knows her as a suffering widow of a martyred husband. In her capacity as a plain citizen, she stood up for what is honest, right and true against the powers of government. Anecdotal evidences of her simplicity, humility, generosity and natural goodness have started to come out. She stood out as an exemplar of a leader without ambitions and totally free from lust for power but only has the well-being of the Filipino people in her heart.

Without trying to, Cory has judged others who seek to win positions of leadership in the country. She is not like anyone of them. When the Roman Catholic hierarchy declared that not one among the presidential aspirants deserves the position, perhaps they were thinking of Cory as the standard-setter. Another woman has chosen the path of power and is seemingly drunk of it although she appears to be asking for more. She is anything but Cory. In the minds of Cory’s admirers she is antonymous to every word that describes Cory. Doing her state duties at Cory’s wake at dawn today must have been the most embarrassing and helpless moment in her life – as the whole nation watches.

Mourning Cory gives the Filipino people a moment to reflect on the state of the nation under the Arroyo administration. Ninoy’s death was a sacrifice. It released the people’s anger into a torrent of a passion for justice not only for him but also for them and the whole nation. It drove away their fears and their mistrust for one another and did the one thing right – bring down the dictator.

Cory didn’t die a martyr’s death, but it makes us think of the kind of leaders that have governed us for so long a time. Don’t we deserve better leaders – leaders who have Cory’s qualities of simplicity, humility, selflessness as well as of the best of our qualities as a people? Isn’t it time to rid ourselves of our weaknesses and vices that traditional politicians prey on in order to perpetuate themselves in power? Is it too much of a sacrifice to resist the lure of patronage politics in order to give real democracy a chance? It is not enough that we honor Cory for what she has done for her country and people; we, her countrymen that she loved, ought to strive to be deserving of her legacy to us.