Still another way is to look at the crimes committed every day in our midst. We see a "multitude of sins." And in the face of many crimes, some would still opt out and flee. Others, however, would choose to stay in order to help repair the damage that has been done and to rebuild as well as strengthen the structures that have been destroyed. It is this latter mind-set that responsible citizenship calls for. That mind set leads us to think this way: "If the many sins of Mary Magdalene were forgiven because she loved greatly, many more have been forgiven us. What a great debt of love still remains for us to pay." Yes, we have a debt to pay, and we should be prepared to pay it, even if in the process we have to suffer a great deal.

But the focus should not be on suffering. Rather, it should be on love. We do love our country and our people. We have to be prepared, then, "to go to the point of madness and heroism, even to die" for our country and never to abandon it. But long before we reach this point of having to die for our country, there is a very long distance we have to cover of having to live for it. In living for our country, all we need to do is to carry out with love all the duties we discharge every day in the ordinary circumstances of life. Few of us would be given an opportunity to die for our country as heroes. But we – all of us – can be heroic if we seize every opportunity given us every day to live for our country by merely doing very well the things we have to do in the course of ordinary life.

To seize that opportunity, we have to "want to move," i.e. to make this "sincere resolution: To have faith in God always; to hope in God always; to love God always." In other words, love of God can lead us to love our country, too. On this secure anchor – our love for God – we could then move and swim, often against the current, confident that we would never be tossed away because God would "never abandon us." We would never lose hope, therefore. And spurred by that hope, we would be more inspired to do more things much more generously and heroically for our country and our people.

That same hope would push each one of us to get up after every fall. By the very effort of trying to get up, with heads unbowed, never feeling defeated, and ever ready to fight again, we could lessen our falls. With fewer falls, our confidence gets an added boost, and we would have greater energy to do even more positive things, such as those that help build our nation even further. And what used to be a vicious cycle of falling and despairing would in time be turned into a virtuous cycle of rising, hoping, gaining even more confidence, and moving ever more positively for the Philippines and the Filipino.