God's country
AT 3 A.M. By James B. Reuter | MANILA, Philstar, 5/17/08 -- This is a story that has been going around for a long, long time. it is pure fiction, but I think it presents a beautiful truth. Here it is.
A man in Topeka, Kansas decided to write a book about churches around the world. He started by flying to San Francisco and working east from there. Going to a very large church, he began taking photographs and making notes.
He found a golden telephone on the vestibule wall and was intrigued with a sign, which read “Calls: $10,000 a minute.” Seeking out the pastor he asked about the phone and the sign. The pastor answered that this golden phone is, in fact, a direct line to heaven, and if he pays the price he can talk directly to God.
The man thanked the pastor and continued on his way. As he continued to visit churches in Paris, France; in Cairo, Egypt; Hong Kong in China, and around the world, he found more phones, with the same sign, and the same answer from each pastor.
Finally, he arrived in the Philippines. Upon entering a church in Manila, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Catholic church, behold ‑ he saw the usual golden telephone. But this time the sign read “Calls: 35 centavos.”
Fascinated, he asked to talk to the priest. “Father Ricardo, I have been in cities all across the world and in each church I have found this golden telephone, and have been told it is a direct line to Heaven and that I could talk to God. But in the other churches the cost was $10,000 a minute. Your sign reads only 35 centavos a call. Why?”
The priest, smiling, replied: “Son, you’re in the Philippines now. . . . You’re in God’s Country. . . . . It’s a local call.”
The Philippines is the only Christian country in Asia. No one can explain that…… Most of the jeeps that fill our streets have signs on their rear entrance steps: “God bless our trip”……Whenever a Filipino passes a church, he makes the sign of the cross.
Our people pray. In every squatters’ shack, even under our bridges and alongside every estero, you find a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a statue of the Santo Niño, and a crucifix. Many of the children in those shacks have never gone to school. They can not read or write. But they learn religion at their mother’s knee.
Strangers sometimes say that the Filipinos are not really Catholic, because we have so many faults, failures, and sins. But when was religion supposed to make a man sinless? All of scripture is filled with stories of the rise and fall of man.
Adam, the first man, created by God, ate the apple. . . .David was a man after God’s own heart, but he stole another man’s wife and then, to cover his crime, he had her husband killed….. Simon Peter, the head of the Apostles, denied his God before a serving maid.
True, the Filipino falls, often. But on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday ‑ which are legal holidays in our country ‑ we kneel before God, confessing our sins, and telling Him that we are sorry!
For us, this month, May, belongs to the Virgin Mary. Our children walk reverently down the aisle, in every church, in the Flores de Mayo. They kneel before her image, and offer her their flowers. And with the flowers they are offering her themselves.
In the month of June our streets are filled with processions….. In November we flock to the cemeteries, to pray for those we love…. For nine days before Christmas we answer the church bells at four in the morning to honor Our Lord, born for us as a baby…. In every home you find a Belen.
And Father Patrick Peyton said: “The Family Rosary Crusade circled the globe. But the most touching experience that I had myself, personally, was in the Philippines. There we had extraordinary cooperation from the Hierarchy, from the pastors of all the parishes, from the press, radio, motion pictures, theaters and schools.”
“The final rally was scheduled for 4:30 in the afternoon. At three o’clock a torrential downpour rained down on a million people gathered in the Luneta. They did not move. They stood there, patiently, in the driving rain, reciting the Rosary. By 4:30 the sun was shining, and a million and a half people were standing shoulder to shoulder in that vast Luneta Park.”
“I feel that the Family Rosary Crusade has reached the highest peak, that never again in any country in the world will it be duplicated…… In the years that followed I came to the conviction that the Philippines ‑ the only Christian country in Asia ‑ has been touched by the hand of God.”
Our people are the only ones who feel so close to the Blessed Virgin that we call her: “Mama Mary.”
This is really God’s country!