Filipinos are normally a grateful people. Yet do we forget to be grateful for the country we have? Do we take for granted our freedom; the peace we enjoy (in spite of some rebellions in the mountains and in Muslim areas); our present prosperity (in spite of the food poverty of a quarter of our people); and the political freedom we have; etc. We are still more fortunate than a host of other countries, easily better than half the other countries of the world. We need to be grateful for the country we have and we need to make that gratitude be translated into action for the good of the community.

Some of our problems are of our own making. We could have been economically well off but due to selfishness of some whom we failed to control, we are mired in poverty. We could only wish we had more discipline and more unity. We are not yet a nation where the citizens willingly make sacrifices for the good of the many.

Those who lived under Japanese occupation could wish for the unity and self-sacrifice everybody was ready to make at that time. One of our curses is that we have no enemies so we do not have unity.

Nothing makes us go out our way for the good of the whole. Trying to personify poverty as the enemy does not seem to work. We need a real enemy to unite us, like the Japanese occupation.

If we cannot have an enemy to unite us, can we substitute gratitude for the myriad blessings that we enjoy as a reason for uniting? In that case we have to trace our gifts back to the giver of all gifts. The Lord of Lords wants us to unite to help each other, to love in the sense that we prefer the good of our neighbor to our own good should they come into conflict. He wants us to love even our enemies therefore certainly love our families first, our communities, and our countrymen.

There are little things that define love. Most Filipinos feel a twitch of guilt when they are not able to give a coin to a beggar. But we have not yet been able to translate this concern for others to concern for the larger social groupings demanded by our times. We have not translated cheating or graft as the cause for beggars having to ask for alms. We have not translated our concern for the individual to the need to help people to buy enough insurance for their health needs. But in our times concern must not be only for persons in need but also for health insurance, for funds for schooling, for availability of jobs. We still do not make the connection between the unwarranted expenditures in luxury to lack of jobs. Concern for our lack of savings pools to exploit our natural resources, our lack of entrepreneurs to invest in productive endeavors; our lack of usable research, are all a stage away from the personal concern for the beggar. We need concern for social groupings in a more sophisticated society.

Social sin is as unjust or even more unjust than personal sin. But what obscures its depravity is the needed shift from the personal to the larger community level. Most Filipinos partake of the benefits of nationhood and the wealthy classes partake of it even more. Many wealthy Filipinos have social concern but not enough concern and not enough of them. Generosity is imperative for the needs of the country at present as we grow out of the cocoon to nationhood.

It is the daily gratitude and concern that must translate into the building of a united country grateful both to the Creator and to our forebears who made the sacrifices that made possible the benefits that we enjoy.

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