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friday - august 2, 2013
Is anyone sick?
Safe passage
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THINK
hink a minute…Have you noticed the different kinds A Minute of gravestones in cemeteries? By Jhan Tiafau Hurst In certain Pacific Island countries, they even have the gravestones of their family members right in front of their house. There are all styles and sizes of gravestones: from simple, small piles of stone to huge, majestic tombs with ornate headstones and decorations. Do you know what the largest gravestones in the world are? They are the pyramids of Egypt, built over 4,000 years ago. The gravestone and pyramid of one King is almost 500 feet tall and has over 2 million huge stones. Each stone weighs 4,000 pounds or more. The kings of Egypt spent most of their life using thousands of men to build their gravestones! They were so afraid and desperate to do everything they could to prepare and make sure they lived a safe and happy life after death. They had most of their money and treasures buried with them. They even had their wives and servants killed and buried with them so they wouldn’t be alone in their life after death. But we can work all our life like those Egyptian kings to get as much money as possible, or positions of power and respect, education, even becoming religious and good; yet in the end, all these things just crumble like gravestones and pyramids. The moment we die, all of our works and achievements are totally useless to us. Just like our gravestone cannot help us in our life after death. Jesus Christ said that’s why He came: to become our only safe passage and way through death. Then He proved it to us by being the only one in history who could die and be buried for 3 days and still bring Himself back to life. The Creator of life Himself is the only one who can get hurst/PAGE 7
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IFE’S INSPIRATIONS: “…`Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock’…” (Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, in Matthew 7:24-25, the Holy Bible). -ooo IS ANYONE SICK? Here are at least three set of verses from the Holy Bible that teach us what to do so we can triumph over illnesses, sicknesses and ailments, over and above the cure, or relief, that pharmaceutical medicines and doctors’ advices can give. The first set comes from James 5:13-15 and it says: “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up… “If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective…” -ooo WHY ARE MANY SICK AND “HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP”? The second set comes from Isaiah 40:29-31, which says: “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will
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walk and not be faint.” akampi Then, the third set of verses Mo A ng Batas come from 1 Corinthians By Atty. Batas Mauricio 11:27-30, which says: “So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord… “Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep…” -ooo FAITH IN GOD AND HEALTH AND WELLNESS: All of these verses are actually self-explanatory and need no further elaboration. They are simple directions as to what we should do when we are already sick, and what we should do to avoid being sick. Take note that all of these verses invoke our faith in God---the stronger our faith, the stronger are our chances of staying healthy and being free from sickness. Consequently, these verses can be summarized as follows: when we eat and drink at any time, we should all remember the body and blood of Jesus Christ, our God batas/PAGE 7
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BSP and other central banks
ith the economy performing very well, the upcoming anniversary of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on July 3 will definitely be sweeter. It is a great feat for one of the youngest monetary authorities in the world. Established in 1993, the BSP (www.bsp.gov.ph) replaced the old “Central Bank of the Philippines,” which was founded in 1949. It was created by virtue of the Philippine Constitution of 1987 and the New Central Bank Act, which gave the bank fiscal and administrative autonomy from the Philippine government. The BSP is just one of the 186 central banks around the world. The banks differ in name – some are called “reserve bank,” “monetary authority,” or “national bank.” They, however, share common tasks such as setting monetary policy, issuing of national currency, acting as the bank of bankers, supervising and regulating banks, and lending to ailing banks. All of them also serve as the banks of their respective governments. The central banks also manage their nation’s foreign exchange reserves. These are deposits in foreign currencies that can be used to deal, trade, or make payments internationally. For example, Asian countries have deposits which are in US dollars or Euro. According to the International Monetary Fund, the combined foreign exchange reserves of the world’s central banks are now worth $11 trillion.
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Central banks have existed a very long time. In fact, the O ut BSP is 325 years younger than By Ignacio Bunye the oldest operating central bank in the world – the Bank of Sweden (www.riksbank. com), which started in 1668. The Bank of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, founded in 1609, actually preceded the “Riksbank,” but it closed for good in 1819. United Kingdom’s Bank of England (BOE), however, is the one widely considered as the pioneer of the modern central banking system. Journalist Jason Rodrigues gave a brief history of the BOE (www. bankofengland.co.uk) in his 2009 article for the British newspaper The Guardian. He said the Bank emerged in 1694 to serve as the government’s banker and debt-manager. Eventually, it became a “lender of last resort” to smaller banks and the issuer of the country’s national currency. Both are now common functions of central banks today, including BSP. Since every country has its own history and laws, bunye/PAGE 7
The challenge of bioethics
HILE it’s true that our current age of intense information technology can give us information overload, leading us to get saturated and blasé, it’s also true that the profusion of information can lead us to a greater sensitivity to the increasing complexity of our life. That’s the irony of our times. That was the first impression I got as I started to attend a course on bioethics recently. It struck me as a novel way of having an interdisciplinary effort to blend the best findings of medicine and the sciences with the best conclusions and indications of philosophy, theology and pastoral care. I consider this development as progress. Too often we can be accused of leaning too much on one side at the expense of the other sides that also need to be considered. Thus, we can be too scientific or empirical that focuses more on the material, while being deficient on the spiritual and moral that goes beyond the material and temporal aspects of our life. This is a common phenomenon these days. Or, we can go the other extreme—being too spiritual and moralistic while neglecting the material and biological foundations of our human concerns. As a consequence, we are prone to be narrow-minded, simplistic, rigid, and to easily fall to rash judgments. With our complicated times, we have to try our best to avoid these predicaments. We need to strike a healthy balance, because the resulting blend would actually bring us to a richer appreciation of reality. It would lead us to serve all of us better. In short, it would help us to live truth in charity better, a goal that we should all pursue in earnest.
HINTS
And so, there I was with a few others in class, having and Traces to grapple with the mindBy Fr. Roy Cimagala boggling names of hormones, their sources, mechanisms a nd ef fec t s , t hei r u su a l manifestations, etc. I suddenly felt like a high schooler again having to cram for an exam the following day. Besides, we need to assess the ethics and morality of the different cases brought about by our biological life and medical conditions. This aspect was kind of bloody, since we discovered we had divergent views. It became clear to me that bioethics is a relatively new science that would need more inputs, polishing and systematization. And to think that we were talking more about the reproductive system. I wonder how it is going to be when we start talking about the nervous system and the psycho-emotional aspect it has. I suspect that area would be bloodier. One thing that I clearly saw during the classes was that while learning those biological and medical terms is certainly helpful, we should realize that knowing the nature of things just simply cannot be achieved simply through the naturalistic ways. That is, by simply observing cimagala/PAGE 7