Hope and Faith

Hope and Faith

Few weeks ago, Former President Corazon Aquino passed away. Her death brought back to life the memories of the death of her husband and martyr, Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, the 1986 EDSA People Power and the ouster of the dictator. Filipinos relived the joy of freedom and celebrated the life filled with passion for God, country and for the Filipinos. For me, more than anything else, what brought down the dictator and what made Cory Aquino the president and the 1983 ESDA People Power is not merely the hunger for freedom or the reinstitution of the democratic process, but it is the power of HOPE and FAITH in each Filipino that rallied to regain that pride as a nation.

Emily Dickinson in her poem “Hope is the thing with feathers” probably is the best exemplification if not definition of hope.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Hope provides the inner light and strength in the midst of struggles, pains and hardships. According to Philip Pettit in his published article entitled “ Hope and Its Place in Mind” (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 592, Mar., 2004, pp. 152-165), hope is “not only capable of giving us self-direction and control, distancing us from the effects of turbulent fact and appearance of fact, it may also offer us the best way of coping with those harsh realities and of finding our way through… people can cope better with illness, and even show remarkable resistance, so far as they keep their hopes up…And it is certainly common experience that when people do not despair under bad news or in evil times, when they manage to keep their hearts up and press on in positive ways, they often succeed in overcoming obstacles that might otherwise have brought them down”. This tends to summarize Wikipedia’s definition of hope. According to its definition, hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. However, based on Benjamin Defensor’s column in the Manila Times published on March 27, 2008, hope is of two kinds, the Christian hope and the human hope. “The object of Christian hope is to possess God and enjoy eternal life with him. Human hope, on the other hand, is simply a disposition or attitude anchored on a desire to be happy through good fortune and one’s own will, power and effort. Christian hope is based on a firm trust in God’s love, mercy, providence and fidelity to his promises”.

                   What is faith? Faith comes from the Latin word fidem, or fidēs, or fidere which all means “to trust”. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines faith in variety of context such as belief and trust in God, belief in the doctrines of a religion, or fidelity, allegiance and loyalty to a person. Common to these three definitions is the presence of “trust”. Moreover, according to www.newadvent.org, faith can be viewed objectively and subjectively. “Objectively, it stands for the sum of truths revealed by God in Scripture and tradition and which the Church presents to us in a brief form in her creeds, subjectively, faith stands for the habit or virtue by which we assent to those truths.” This truth, the same source suggest, is formed through knowledge which is of two sources, one is by natural reason and the second is through Divine faith. Thus, in summary, they define faith as the act of the intellect assenting to a Divine truth owing to the movement of the will, which is itself moved by the grace of God".

Though hope and faith moves people to do things and forms part of their belief system, hope and faith are distinct to each other. Hope is an emotional state of a person; it drives a person to keep going. It is founded on some belief and anticipation of what is and what will be. While faith is founded on a certain truth, either by reason or divine providence and is reinforces by religion and institutions. However, hope and faith are intertwined. It is unified by God. Pope Benedict says, “faith is hope, Christians hope to be saved because they have faith”.

Is there hope for the Philippines? As I was writing this essay, I am in the province with my family. Despite all the hardship in life, they keep on going. My more than 90 year old grandmother still believes that she will survive some more years, my parents still involve in very tasking job despite their age, my siblings are working hard for their families and I keep on seeking for knowledge and a job that would require me to share and apply my knowledge. I believe my family is not alone in this struggle. All Filipino families are in this kind of state of hope.

Hope is the light and the inner strength of all Filipinos as shown when they elected Cory Aquino into presidency and ousted Marcos out of Malacanang. I believe we need that same heroism to put our country into the right direction. Our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) are the new exemplar of this heroism, fighting the tide in the absence of their families. My parents are once OFWs, by putting first what is good for us, in their little ways, they made this country survive.

The late Senator Raul Roco once said “the people are our wealth”. This put in more active terms what Rizal has enunciated more than a hundred years ago when he said: ‘youth is the hope of our motherland’. We don’t need to wait for another Rizal or Ninoy to make us realize that we need to move. What this country needs are conscientious hardworking people who are ready to make sacrifices like the OFWs, people who are ready to set aside their personal wishes. Filipinos need not rely on politicians or businessmen or the church to make the change, but like the prayer, may all Filipinos be “the change they want to see… or be the spark” to start the light of change. That too is my prayer.