The Greatest Christmas Gift for Children

Christmas is the celebration of the wonder and great value we have in children. We celebrate their rights and dignity. Every family ought to protect and care for their children, not to pamper and spoil them as objects and even victims of crass commercialization and exaggerated gift-giving. No gift can ever buy the love of a child. No gift is more valuable than the genuine love and appreciation of parents for their children.

Great gifts that are much better than toys that will be thrown aside in time is to give to children gifts that will last a lifetime. They are the gifts of knowledge, truth, honesty, integrity and straight talk. They are priceless and spiritual. As they grow older, children will develop an awareness of the world and society around them and realize the gap between them and the poor. They will need the roots of social inequality to be explained to them one day as soon as they are intelligent enough to understand.

Children understand greed and selfishness from an early age in the kindergarten play room where children interact and some covet the toys of others and can be aggressive to get them. That is where they learn how the more aggressive can dominate and exploit the non-aggressive.

With the positive example of caring parents with social concern and action for the downtrodden, children will develop social awareness and deep, intelligent understanding and compassion at an early age. This will blossom into that greatest love of all: love of the poor children who do not have the benefits that they have. They will quickly learn to share with and help others in need once given the good example and the opportunity and encouragement to help and share with them. The greatest gift of all is perhaps the good example of parents who have concern that turns to action to help the poor children of this unjust and unequal world. Children will learn from their parents, the good and the bad.

What can children learn from the Christmas nativity story? There are some beautiful, traditional customs of Christmas that remind us of our childhood. The Christmas “Belen” or manger scene depicts the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and surrounded by the adoring parents Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and animals. However, the meaning and significance of that image of the most revered person in history being born into the world is not explained or widely understood. It has no message about who Jesus was and what his mission would be to the world. Sadly, it is a sanitized version of a harsh, unwelcome truth. It does not depict the reality of what historically happened or what the Gospel story is telling us.

The reality of the birth, if historically true, is that it was a painful dangerous birth of a child of impoverished parents that could not get a place in the Bethlehem Inn. There was no experienced midwife, clean cloths, hot water, light in the darkness or sanitary surroundings. Infection was likely in the dirty stable surrounded by animal dung, the air filled with the stench. It was the painful dangerous birth that about 1.1 billion impoverished children endure in the world today. A million newborn babies die annually on the day they are born. More than 11,000 newborns die on their first day in the USA, the highest of 68 countries. 

One message is clear from the Gospel- that this specially gifted person, who would describe himself as the Son of Man, was and is a representative of all impoverished humanity. He speaks for all men, women and children who are hungry, deprived of a decent life and suffered torture and an unjust death. But not only was it a day fraught  with danger from the weakness of his mother, the lack of clean surroundings, the effects of crude hardship and poverty but there was more- the death squads and murderous military, sent out by a manic ruler searching to kill all who opposed and criticized him, even impoverished children. They were, he believed, a threat to his power. (Matthew 2: 16)

The death squads and military slaughtered every newborn child up to the age of two years old in the district of Bethlehem. Thousands were slaughtered. If he had been found, Jesus of Nazareth would have been among them. Cruel and evil humans would have once again altered the destiny of the world and deprived humanity of infinite goodness and love personified. The parents of Jesus like millions of refugees and migrants fleeing hunger and poverty and death threats today fled into Egypt. There, they found a welcome and what a lesson it is for the world today.

It is a story by which parents can explain to the children the truth and realities of the world we live in. Yet the people of the rich world have closed their hearts and doors to them as they continue to flee Syria, Iraq, and Africa. If we see Christmas as a challenge for us to embrace the words and example of Jesus of Nazareth and teach it to our children, what a different world it would be. What a lasting Christmas gift for life if that spirit of giving and sharing and working for a more just, loving world came to be in the minds and hearts of our children? It would be heaven on earth as Jesus also intended.

The Happy Christmas of Jenny

I write to all our readers, our friends and supporters, defenders of children, to wish you a Christmas that is filled with meaning, purpose and spiritual blessings.

This is a time where we ought to renew our lives by looking back at the year that has passed and ask ourselves if we lived it well. Could we have done better, did we care for others, did we share with and give back to the needy from our surplus and abundance? Did we live with integrity and honesty and caring for others and if yes, then we are better people and the community is a better place because of that. We have lived out our faith and put our principles into action for good.

Many of you will have reached out and helped another person or a child in need whether it is emotional or material or you may have helped many. If you helped the children in the Preda Foundation homes for abused children, we thank you for that. They are having a happier life, free from their abusers, free from the cold steel bars of government jails that masquerade as children’s homes.

Everyday 43 girls are recovering from abuse at the Preda Home for Girls and finding peace and education and relief from the pain and sexual abuse they endured. There are 36 boys now freed from illegal detention where they suffered neglect and deprivation and abuse. They were treated as criminals for no crime at all.

The boys and girls are having a wonderful Christmas with parties and outings to the beach, the carnival and other fun houses. It is a real childhood experience which they never had before. They are receiving gifts and new clothes and visiting exciting places.

  

There are success stories also that will inspire us and give us encouragement that lives can and are being saved and children healed and empowered. You can be a better person by having the courage to report child abuse. You can text a help message to Preda helpline at +639175324453.

That is what one person did to help Jenny when they learned that human traffickers were exploiting her. Jenny, a 14 year old street child, ran away from home after being abused by the live-in partner of her mother and had nowhere to go. Tired and hungry, she was picked up by human traffickers and brought to a secured house in Metro Manila surrounded by a high wall where she was locked inside like a prisoner with other children.

They were told they had debts to pay for board and lodging and food and they had to work to pay it off. They were given drugs to make them docile for which they had to pay and had more debts. The frightened teenage children were held in “debt bondage.” Jenny and the others were forced to have sex with sex tourists. They were traumatized and distraught. 

Then, a tip off to Preda through the helpline. In turn Preda contacted the government social workers at the DSWD and they informed the police. The house where Jenny was being exploited was raided and the children were rescued including Jenny. It was close to Christmas.

In the Preda Home for Girls, Jenny was welcomed and treated like a princess. She was given all her personal needs, new clothes and affirmation, encouragement and reassured that she had no fault and was not to blame for what happened to her. No victim of abuse can be blamed and no consent can be given by a child to being sexually abused. She could choose to stay or leave the Preda home. She chose to stay, she made a human decision to help herself in the Preda family. She felt at home being part of a caring family of children and trained professional staff and she felt that she belonged.

She responded in a positive way and was finding meaning and purpose to her stay at Preda. She asked to join the Emotional Expression Therapy and in the padded therapy room poured out all her anger and hurt and cried and shouted her pain and punched the cushions as she railed at her abusers and parents. In time she recovered and changed, week after week, her self-confidence grew and she developed a strong personality.

That Christmas was a happy one for Jenny and the many children she had found herself with and she was ready to face the world and with the help of Preda filed her case against her abuser and she was able to testify in court. After a year she won her case against the live-in partner who first abused her and was jailed. The traffickers were also found guilty and jailed, too. Justice was done.

    

Eventually Jenny was reconciled and reintegrated with her family. She was able to get to college where she is at present and Preda is giving financial assistance to continue all the way to graduation. She will surely find a happier and better life of dignity free from the traffickers and happy in her family. She and many other children at the Preda homes are having a happy Christmas this year.

Christmas is a Time of Hope

Christmas is a time of year when we can hope for a real messiah, a moral leader to rise up and inspire us to live good, moral lives of integrity and mutually helping of each other and the poor- the great values brought into the world by the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that we love one another as we love ourselves. Some people think self-love is selfish love yet it is in fact a positive force.

It is having principles, spiritual values of honesty, compassion, caring for others and taking a stand with the poor and the oppressed and seeking justice for them by action that is risking oneself and serving others. It is being a washer of feet. It is having true convictions of our own dignity and recognizing that same dignity in everyone else whom we respect and are willing to help.

So loving others as ourselves is living out the great values that help to bring about a society that is based on good governance and social justice and working for equality and a decent life for all. Above all, it is having a profound respect for life itself, the rights of every person and every living creature and organism and the planet itself, which sustains our lives.  We need to have the courage to take a clear stand for the victims of oppression and injustice even if it means risking ourselves.

These are some of the great lasting values and ideals brought to us by Jesus of Nazareth. The most important values taught by him were recognizing children as the most important of all, having equality and deep respect for women and for the downtrodden.

The Christmas story is based on the promise of a leader who would enlighten the world and lead it along a moral path to a relationship with a loving, caring father. But it is a story that does not fail to tell us the painful truth of injustice and oppression in our society that we have to challenge, confront and overcome by non-violence. One way is by building a prophetic community that comes together as one to stand for human rights and the intrinsic value of each human person.

We read the gospel story of the birth of Jesus, born in poverty, one of the poor, rejected by the inn where there was no room for a pregnant woman about to give birth. Then when Mary, the mother of Jesus did give birth, they had to flee and escape the unmerciful and vengeful war-of-terror and killing of children by Herod, the corrupt leader himself. It is a story of how the parents fled into Egypt with the child Jesus, refugees seeking shelter and safety.

    

In today’s world, we see a similar war against the poor, killing without mercy, the rejection of refugees, the closing of doors and borders to keep them out and let them die of torture, violence and hunger in their own countries where famine is the scourge of the nation and where cruel tyrants rule with impunity.

   

Consider the plight of the Rohingya, the starving children in Yemen, the victims of war, mass killing in South Sudan and the Congo. They are just some of the most horrendous atrocities done in the most violent places on earth. Global justice is what is needed more than ever before. Nations need to put their national economic interests to one side and put the human needs of the suffering people first. These are the injustice and acts of inhumanity that Jesus came to challenge and so we must do likewise as such atrocities are an attack on humanity itself.

Christmas is about the respect that we have for children above all and those oppressed and persecuted as Jesus was and so we have to support the many abused and neglected children who have suffered and with faith, resilience and courage overcame the hardship. Ending the widespread abuse of children ought to be our commitment and goal and resolution for the New Year and ought to be our hope this Christmas and for the future.

Christmas Day is for Children

I am standing in the center of the spacious main hall, the atrium, of the new Preda children’s home for girls. The light from the transparent roof throws its soft and gentle light on the children playing nosily, shouting in glee. They are happy, running about, playing games, and laughing, cheerful and joyful. They had a sumptuous Christmas dinner and gifts and new clothes. They are the lucky ones to have found refuge and protection and a chance to start their childhood over. Soon they will go on trips to the zoo and then to the fun park and other Christmas treats will come their way. There will be Christmas Mass and joyful singing and some will have sad memories of childhood before coming to Preda.

Maggie is only 14 years old and I see her chasing Elizabeth, they are enjoying the fun. Later they will go to their sports and karate.  She is gaining weight in the recent weeks as she eats three times a day with snacks in between. She sleeps in a comfortable bed and has her personal things close to her, a doll to cuddle and friends to listen to her as she tells about her life. 

When she first came into the Preda home for girls, Maggie was quiet, withdrawn and fearful of what she would find. However the welcome and introduction to the other children and their embrace said they would be her friends. This gave her courage and a smile and her nervousness evaporated. Soon she felt at home, accepted and welcome.  This was a place where she was safe from her abusers and free from fear and the control of her human traffickers. This was a happy place where the girls choose on their own free will to stay and find education, affirmation and empowerment through therapy, counseling and education. 

Christmas has it joys but there are also the sorrows of life .The poverty and neglect suffered by the Holy Family is one of them. They were rejected at the Inn and Mary had to give birth in a dirty animal pen. In humiliating and poverty-stricken circumstances Jesus of Nazareth came into this world. Then we cannot forget the death threats and flight from the evil murderer King Herod who was committing genocide against the innocent children slaughtering hundreds. The impoverished life as a refugee in a foreign country was how Jesus spent the first years of his life.

Maggie was a slim, malnourished and undersized child when she first came into the Preda girls home a few months ago. She was traumatized and has had a terrible experience.  Her mother worked for a powerful man. During her employment and afterwards, it appears he sexually abused the child and brought her to various other men in hotels around San Fernando, Pampanga. These men sexually abused her also on twenty occasions. The Preda paralegal officer filed the formal complaint against the suspect. It is feared that the mother of Maggie was approving or allowed the abuse to happen. She may have received money to let it happen. 

And it’s only one of hundreds of thousands of children like Maggie in the world and especially in the Philippines where there is a massacre of the youth in a campaign against the use of illegal drugs.  The latest report by Unicef and the Philippine Council for the Welfare of Children in the report named, National Baseline Study on Violence against Children (NBS-VAC), tells us the horror and extent of the abuse: Eight of 10 Filipino youth suffer abuse:  verbal, physical or sexual. Young children and youth between 13-24 years of age, one in every five is a victim of sexual abuse, most of it happening in their homes. 

So while we campaign and work to bring Christ into Christmas and save the children, we are unheard because of the futility to persuade government to care for the children to protect them and heal them. We campaign to persuade the moral majority to demand the cancellation of mayor’s permits and close the sex bars and clubs. We appeal to Church people to speak out.

In these dens of iniquity where foreign sex tourists proliferate, youth and children are sexually abused daily. Many are subjected to forced drug use and abortions. Like Maggie, they are helpless victims of exploitation and the threats of powerful adults.   

Many corrupt government officials, senators and representatives are morally bankrupt and ignore the plight and suffering of the innocents. They want the death penalty and to make 9 year old children suffer as criminals. We need a strong outspoken and uncompromising leader to bring about a moral revolution in society. Yet none has the courage to emerge. 

Christmas is happy and joyful for those saved and healed but so much has to be done to save the thousands more. That moral revolution to protect children’s rights, bring compassion and care back again is just a dream. It was brought into this world by the birth of Jesus of Nazareth but it has long been forgotten. All we have left is jingle bells. 

We who still believe in the values that make us compassionate and decent loving humans must take our stand and work to bring about that spiritual revolution of mind and heart that will change the world.

The Astounding Child from Nazareth

For millions of Filipinos, Christmas is a celebration of the family. They come together from around the world, they delight in the togetherness and sharing of respect. They honor the aged, they bless the children, they feed the hungry. They fill the churches with light, song and festival and bring the children to be baptized and they have joyful celebrations.  They recall the story of that astounding child who became the greatest person to influence the history of mankind for the good.

Christmas is a time to celebrate the greatest values of human kind brought to us thousands of years ago by the Child from Nazareth. He survived the poverty and the dangers and grew up at the knee of his mother and the workbench of his father and was taught the Song of Mary, that most challenging of songs.

He learned well from his parents who had suffered poverty, rejection and who fled the massacre of the children by Herod and they crossed the border into Egypt as impoverished refugees. They knew the merciless anger of the fanatical tyrant King Herod and seen the intolerable injustice of his regime.

The child heard the stories and listened when his mother sang that song where the mighty power of love would scatter the proud elite and rubbish all their evil plots and plans, where the mighty elite would be put down from their positions of power and the poor would be lifted up.

The teenage youth from Nazareth learned how such love can change the world and fill the hungry with good things and how in justice the selfish rich are sent away empty to reflect, repent and ask forgiveness for their greed, arrogance and abuse. He grew to be that powerful personality who was and is a hero of the oppressed and became  a threat to their rulers. He was a great teacher, a servant leader and the example of self-sacrificing love where no greater love can be found but in giving one’s life for others. It was a loving message of compassion and care, helping and sacrifice.

But justice, equality and compassion for the poor, the refugees and the homeless had no place in the society into which he was born. The culture and religion of his time had become fanatical and cruel- stoning the women, crucifying the dissidents, beheading the reformers. He taught justice, compassion, mercy, and love of neighbor. It was a world where such great powerful values were salvation for the huddled masses ground underfoot by the religious intolerance and oppression and the military might that claimed to be always right.

Rebellion and wars were common in a world where foreign military occupation, oppression and exploitation of the poor by the rich, the control of the many by the few, the silencing of protest and opposition with the sword was the way of life.  In that violent culture, Jesus of Nazareth was a indeed a savior.

The poor and disposed realized the truth that they were not the dung, vomit and a curse on the earth as the rulers told them they were. The prophet from Nazareth told them that was untrue; that they are the children of eternal goodness and love that they are worthy of the dignity inherent in every person. He said they are called to a life of dignity, have inalienable human rights and equality and have a right to a happy prosperous life. Blessed are the poor for they have the right to inherit the earth, he said.

The knowledge of this powerful truth if lived out would awaken them and give them the courage to transform their society. This truth would set them free. The Child from Nazareth set out to change the world, to turn it on its head to cause a non-violent peaceful spiritual revolution with social justice. Before he could make it a reality he was arrested, jailed, tortured, and given the death penalty. The barbarism of the intolerant religious fanatics and Roman cruelty ended his mission and scattered his followers. Today it seems the powerful truth and dream of a just society where equality and love of neighbor reign does not escape the barbarism of modern conflict and corporate greed.

That great truth revealed by the Man from Nazareth would only be realized when his followers had shunned all exploitation, violence, and abuse and organized a community to live out the extraordinary values together. They would be helping each other as one family and making those values real. What emerged was a powerful social and spiritual movement based on personal dignity and social justice that was capable of redeeming humanity, changing society from being a cruel and brutal regime to one of compassion, forgiveness mercy and love of neighbor following the example of the Good Samaritan.

It was this force that came into the world at the first Christmas, had its roots in the Song of Mary, and had the possibility of saving suffering humanity from the garbage heap of rich man’s dominance. But sadly it seems to have failed, or has it?  When he was born so was this dream but can it ever be a reality in the modern world or remain a dream, an unattainable reality? It is up to each one of us to work together to make that dream come true.

The Injustice that Causes Poverty

Christmas is here already and we have to think what it means. It’s much more than Santa Claus and consumerism. It’s about compassion, love for the poor and seeking justice in an unjust world. Jesus was sent to help change it. We must carry on this mission. We have to understand what that challenge is.

The world economic trade system is constantly depriving the poor of land and livelihood, fairness is excluded and corruption and exploitation take over the world. This evil system of unjust trade policies and practices is growing and has caused great damage to families. No less than Pope Francis himself condemned this unfettered liberal runaway economic system that causes such social and economic injustice. He, quoting a fourth century bishop and making the fat cat capitalists cringe, called it the “dung of the devil.”

In the Philippines, it is said that 140 politically-powerful families control the Congress and consequently, the lives of 100 million Filipinos. Jose is representative of the many poor Filipinos who suffer from deprivation because of this unjust power system.

There was a great moment during the visit of Pope Francis to Bolivia when he spoke out and supported the rights of farmers and peasants. It was in the city of Santa Cruz where participants of the Second World Meeting of popular movements gathered. This is an international group of organizations, mostly victims of oppression, as well as globalization and multinational corporations.

Millions of poor are living outside the normal economy. They are mostly people on the peripheries of society, landless and disposed people. Poor and unemployed, they are the voiceless. But Pope Francis gave them a voice heard around the world. He told the leaders that he stood with them in the demands for justice and social and economic inclusion. This is his mission of lifting up the downtrodden and sending the rich away empty-handed as we read in the gospel song Magnificat.

“Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change,” Francis, referring to the unjust globalization of the economic system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature,” told the cheering crowds.

“This system is by now intolerable: farm workers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable. The earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as St. Francis would say – also finds it intolerable,” he said.

At one point, the Pope spoke against the unbridled capitalism that ran roughshod over the rights of the poor. This he called a new form of colonialism, which, like the Spanish empire, regrettably backed by the Church, damaged native peoples and culture in the name of kings, emperors, and big traders.

“The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor,” he said.

The gospel values of fairness and economic and social justice are very important today. We need to know how and why this is happening and what it means in the daily lives of the discarded and unwanted people. We need to wake up from apathy and fence-sitting and become involved in a mission to find and implement positive solutions.

Fair trade is one way to do this. It is a movement that creates an alternative way of doing business with fairness, honesty, profit-sharing and positive empowerment of the poor so that they can be educated and break the cycle of poverty.

In developed countries, as well as in developing countries, more people are producing goods and food under fair trade conditions, becoming avenues for fair earnings and social development projects. Fair trade brings together the producer and the consumer in a positive, respectful partnership; the buyer knows the producer and how the food or the products are produced.

The poor suffer depression of a kind that most citizens of developed countries and economies cannot understand. In developed countries, the poor and the jobless will have the social net of welfare and unemployment payment by the state. These benefits are unheard of in developing countries. In this ocean of unfair trading and economic activity, the rulers and the rich are the characters in the story of Jesus that contrasts the life of Dives, the filthy rich man in the palace at whose gates Lazarus begged for the crumbs that fell from the table.

The leftovers were all Lazarus wanted but Dives was so mean he would not give them from a loaded table that groaned from the weight of food. There, at gates of a heaven or hell-on-earth, depending on how one sees it, Lazarus died of his sores and ulcers. Only the dogs had pity and came to lick his sores. They had more compassion than the humans.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph had rejection, poverty and killers chasing them and they escaped as refugees to Egypt. Today, we see many refugees welcomed and others made unwelcome and rejected .

It’s an image of our world today.

The Story of the Christmas Lights

Hiking uphill through the hot, tropical afternoon to the Aeta village of Baliwet, San Marcelino carrying our loaded backpacks was a challenge in itself. The happy thought of bringing some Christmas cheer into the lives of the very poor indigenous people kept us going. Our mission was to bring Christmas lights into their lives. It was inspiring and encouraging.

The only reward for our days hiking would be the healthy exercise, fresh mountain air, the aroma of flowers and fauna wafting from the forest vegetation and at the end of our journey would be the simple mountain food of the native people. There we looked forward to the Christmas joy and smiles that would light up the people's faces when we opened our gifts. That would make it all worthwhile. Sharing with others is the joy of living.

These were the feelings and thoughts of Donard, Roger and Shawn- the dedicated community workers of the Preda organization who like the "Three Kings" were bringing gifts of Christmas lights to the remote mountain village. It was a mission to light up their lives and enlighten them about the rights and dignity of women and children.

In years past before electricity, candles and oil lamps helped dispel the dark and lessen the fears and imagined threats that it can bring. Children are most vulnerable to fear of the dark. They imagine menacing monsters and witches in the dancing shadows on the walls of their rooms or little house as they lay down to sleep. Life without a night light can be scary, dangerous and non-productive.

We take light and electricity for granted in our lives and most people in the modern world have never lived without it. With a majority of people in the world living in cities for the first time in human history, they hardly know what the sky looks like at night.

They cannot see the stars or the moon as they are too busy watching the screens of their television or smart phones or tablets. Many would be seriously disoriented and perhaps even traumatized if deprived of the electricity to run them.

Many people are alienated from the world around them and think nothing of the environmental destructive forces that are at work burning the fossil fuels that provide electricity. Power generation by burning coal and oil darkens the skies, damages our lungs, pumps carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that heats the planet and is changing the world's climate for the worst.

Modern humans have lost much contact to the natural world. They rarely experience the dusk and the creeping darkness as the end of a working day. Few wake up with the rising sun.

A Christmas star these days is a comet that does not herald the coming of a saviour and captivates awe struck ancient people as it had at the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Nowadays modern people land scientific instruments on its surface to determine its composition and ask how comets might have contributed to human life on Earth.

But we ought be asking how all the magnificent scientific theories, learning and discoveries are benefiting mankind to end poverty, human hardship and social injustice. They are not. The meaning of the Christmas story has been lost to the modern craze of self-indulgence, greed and an unreflective life overwhelmed by commercialization, triviality and nonsense.

Self-giving to help others is alien and incomprehensible to many these days. Gratifying personal urges, desires and wants is the paramount purpose of living and it is self destructive. The message of Jesus of Nazareth can change all that if believed and followed.

The poor wallowing in poverty and hunger are left to wallow. But the greatest values and unselfish human behavior so necessary to human kind are in the Christmas story and gospel message. They are the key of the survival of the species and the planet.

As the "Three Kings" arrived in the remote Aeta village, they were greeted with delight and smiles and a great welcome by these people of simple rural living. They have no electricity and have lived according to the natural cycle where the rotation of the earth and its journey around the sun determines their life and that of all living things. That was about to change.

After the welcome and a humble healthy meal, it was time for gift giving. They opened the backpacks and laid out the forty lights that are part of a bigger donation of solar lamps from the parishioners of churches in Melbourne in Australia. The people understood immediately what they were and clapped with glee and beaming smiles.

Each lamp is made as a hard plastic disk in the shape of a thick pancake with a dozen tiny LED bulbs on top. They are powered by rechargeable batteries. The bottom of the "Pancake Lamp" needs to be exposed to the sun to recharge the batteries. In the Philippines there is lots of sunshine. The lamps last up to 9 hours a charge. Technology had provided a way to save the sun into the night.

Now the children can do their home work, the adults can carve, do woodwork and basketry. Some adults who can read will enlighten themselves with the educational comics brought by the “Three Kings.” In other less safe villages where women and children have to go out at night to the communal toilet, they will be safer with the bright lamps. The fear of the dark has been banished.

This simple but effective and efficient lamp is bringing light to hundreds of people in remote places. But it reminds us that solar and wind power and geothermal electricity generation is the way of the future if we are to save our planet and ourselves. Christmas is about salvation, in this world and the next. 

Faith in Action Keeps it Strong and Alive

Christmas is the celebration of the family, the birth of Jesus and his great mission to lead the world from sin, vice and cruelty to a kingdom where people are free to live a life of virtue and goodness. Here we can be members of God's family and strive for friendship, justice, love and peace. What a great and beautiful ideal.

The family is under great pressure these days as the cellphone, the Internet and social media spread so much negative influences from child pornography, extortion, bullying and sexual grooming and abuse.

Evil has its tentacles wrapped around the minds and hearts of our youth and adults through these technological means of communication. The youth have to be helped to resist and throw off these influences and embrace a life of virtue. Adults too are under great temptation. There is even a website that encourages people to sign up to have an adulterous relationship, designed to destroy families and leave children without united parents.

Yet there are millions of families that are rooted in deep Christian values of love, faithfulness and compassionate concern that helps the abused, exploited people. But these too are under pressure as society is becoming more secular, frivolous and prone to vice, materialism, corruption and crime.

Love as a spiritual experience of unselfish friendship is hard to find these days. Today they are easily overwhelmed by the selfish satisfaction of personal desires, greed and lust. The great ideal of service of others through volunteering without asking payments, rewards, praise and entitlements is diminishing. The age when thousands of young people answered the call to dedicate their lives to the service for the poor and the downtrodden is coming to an end. The age of the cheater, swindler, manipulator, betrayer and unfaithful is here.

Those who strive to lead a good and virtuous life have to strengthen their belief in eternal goodness and the sanctity of life, love, family and true faithful friends. Goodness abounds but it is not organized into a strong movement that could overwhelm the march of evil and corrupt practices of injustice and torture and abuse. Silence of the good people has given a kind of consent to the triumph of evil in today's world. As Jesus said, we have to shout it from the roof tops and take a principled stand for what is right and just.

The enemy of the people is clearly seen in the corruption, graft, kickback and plunder of the people's taxes by the dynastic families. The bad example from leaders permeates society and corrupts all around it. Justice is tainted and criminals go free. The incompetence of corrupt governance is apparent everywhere.

The recent expose of the beaten and starving naked children lying on the cement ground like the victims of Auschwitz at the Manila children's detention center called RAC (Reception and Action Center) caused outrage but not enough. The children photographed looked like the skeletal victims of Auschwitz. I wrote about them recently and the horrors they endured. The social workers, managers and those sworn to help them allegedly betrayed the children and their profession. Allegations of pilfered money needed for the children's food abound but are denied. Unqualified, underpaid staff are part of the abuse. The case of Francisco is just one of many examples of starved and tortured children as revealed this week by Amnesty International in Manila. Several of the victims of torture mentioned in the report (see www.preda.org ) were interviewed in the safety of the Preda Foundation's children's home for rescued children in Olongapo City.

When I came as a Columban Missionary from Ireland to the Philippines forty five year ago, I saw this terrible hardship of the children in jail. I set up Preda Foundation to give them a new, happier life and try to end the torture and abuse. It seems we saved hundreds but failed, so far, to change the systematic abuse of jailed children, illegal as it is.

In the Preda homes, they are recovering from their traumatic abuse and told their stories of torture to researchers from Amnesty International. Most of the children were rescued by Preda social workers and myself from government detention jails. Readers can help save many more.

 

Social services and NGOs have not remained untouched. Some have fallen into the darkness of selfish gain, dishonesty, unfaithfulness and greed. They abandon too easily and too quickly the values they vowed loudly to uphold and defend. The malaise of the world of selfishness and greed has damaged and led astray even some of those that once worked for the higher causes of defending human rights, helping the poor and restoring the dignity of the abused.

It's no wonder the faithful, virtuous good men and women are treasures to society, the hope of the nation and the true defenders of human rights and abused children. We can oppose and defeat evil by being faithful, honest, generous, kind, respectful of all and put our faith into action and keep it strong by serving and helping the needy children this Christmas and always.

Jesus, the Failed Messiah?

The truly amazing thing about the birth of Jesus Christ, called the Messiah, Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God, Saviour, Teacher, Rabbi, Master, healer, as he is named throughout the gospels, is that he never claimed those titles for himself other than the simplest thing of all, "Son of Man" which means "ordinary human being". He used it 70 times of himself as written in all the four gospels.

He never claimed to be the Messiah, the gospel writers interpreted his mission as that. The Messiah was supposed to be a fiery warrior-leader come into the world to arouse the patriotic spirit of Israel and throw out the occupiers, bring back the kingdom of the ancient King David and right all wrongs. But Jesus was born as a non-violent peace-maker calling all to repent, of their own free choice and help create a spiritual and socially just way of life, where justice, fairness, and respect for all would be the rule. The other commandment of that spiritual kingdom is to love God and others as one's self.

He was born poor, in the humblest place imaginable – a smelly animal shelter his birth witnessed by animals. Let's respect them too and save them from cruelty and extinction.

What is it then that caught and held the world's attention for 2000 years? To the non-believer he was a homeless itinerant preacher that ran afoul of the authorities in a corner of the vast Roman Empire and was a dismal failure in his time.

He was a champion of the poor and questioned the unequal system and irresponsible rich that neglects the hungry and the sick and used money and power to exploit them. Today he would strongly reprimand the greedy bankers, politicians and medical merchants who treat the old and the sick as exploitable commodities. He had no forgiveness for child abusers and said a stone should be tied around their neck and they be thrown into the ocean. For exploiters of the poor he challenged them to repent and make restitution and do penance.

Christmas is also about Mary, the mother of Jesus and Joseph who guided them as they fled Herod's death squads. Mary's prayer "The Magnificat" is about trust and hope for freedom from hunger and oppression. God, Mary says, planned a world where justice, equality and truth would overcome evil and kings and tyrants would be thrown down from their thrones and the rich would be sent away empty, while the hungry would have their fill and the downtrodden would be lifted up. That powerful prophecy delivered by a woman became the mission of Jesus. It is a message that inspires millions from then until now.

Women were to have their rightful equal place in the Kingdom but sadly generations denied it to them and today women are still struggling to establish more and more their true position of dignity and equality. This is our mission too.

Jesus gave us an extraordinary example of unselfish sacrificial love. He inspired the poor and questioned and challenged the rulers of his time and their unfair ways. They judged him a heretic, a serious political threat, a subversive and blasphemer no less, and they executed him with the ironic mocking sign over his head "King of the Jews".

They feared they would lose their status, wealth and entitlements because of him. They were driven by the same materialistic madness loose in the world today and all people of good will are challenged to share and use money in a responsible way to build a more just world. A Christmas gift for the poor is great but what about the rest of the year?

As the wise say a shroud has no pockets, we can't take it with us. So we can donate money wisely to a trust fund to help the abused children, exploited women and all the victims of human rights violations for years to come. The Preda Foundation Trust Fund is doing this.

Working for justice and freedom of children and women from slavery can help change unjust and corrupt system and bring about a happier society based on the love and care of our neighbors. That's what Christmas is all about.

The Christmas That Has Yet To Come

Christmas is about birth, new beginnings, new life and it is a time to think about the dignity and value of our own life and others. It's a special time to honor and help needy children. The best Christmas story is like that of the Holy Family seeking shelter from the cruel weather and the closed doors of the inn keepers. It's the rescue of yet another abused child.

At the Preda Children's Home, a refuge always open for abused girls, the latest arrival is a small 12 year-old child named Maria. She was traumatized, nervous and silent when she was brought in, still in shock. Now a week later she is smiling and happy to be safe and protected having escaped from her cruel sex abuser, who, tragically, is her own biological father.

Maria found the courage after a year of abuse to finally overcome fear of the threats and finally told her mother who believed her and reported it to the authorities. The father was immediately arrested, charged and jailed. For her and 53 other children, it will be a very happy Christmas at the home and for those recovered and returned safely to their homes. In the surrounding villages, we give Christmas parties and gifts and games for over 300 children.

Our thanks to all those who have donated to help us save and support these children, those rescued from brothels and pimps during the past year. You are making the world a happier place.

The birth of Jesus Christ and his message of hope is the good news that the greatest happiness is to take a stand for others in dire need and fight for the poor and those whose rights are violated. That's a mission to protect and enhance life, to belong to a loving supportive family and community and contribute to building a way of life, based on equality, justice and dignity for all especially for the abused, oppressed and outcast.

This is why Jesus was born, lived and died. He came to rid the world of sin, not individual sin only but social sin, and to change the corrupt systems that enslave people in poverty and hardship. We are called to imitate and carry on his work.

His mission was for his time and for all time. It could have dramatically changed the world by upsetting the balance of power and ascendancy, it could have overturned the status quo and would have empowered communities to prevent the rise of tyrants and dictators or non-violently and peacefully remove them from power with prayer and fasting.

By blessing the poor, the outcasts, the landless and uplifting and declaring them rightful members of the Kingdom and by supporting those that hungered for food, justice, truth and equality, he was revolutionary. he was the messiah. When he was a baby, Herod saw him as a danger to his throne and massacred all the one year-old children just to kill him. Was not his mission to begin a spiritual and moral revolution? Perhaps it had political ramifications in the minds the authorities of the time and that's why they killed him. His message lives on; the values he brought are universal and inspire people of all cultures, religions and nationalities.

Do we not see these very values today in the hearts and minds of those people on the steps of St. Paul's in London, those occupying a park near Wall Street, others camping out in cities around the world? Those marching and chanting in mass protests in the Middle East and enduring torture and death do so for the same values, for freedom and justice; we are all brothers and sisters members of God's one family.

Christianity did transform the world dramatically for a while, but it fell away for a historical period, had it continued pure and untainted there would be less greed, injustice, oppression, and fewer money moguls dominating our lives.

But change is happening these days as hundreds of thousands work for human rights and justice and sacrifice themselves in building a more peaceful and honest way of life. Witness the three brave women winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. They live with greater simplicity and happiness and are creating a more peaceful, just and happier world. The challenge for all of us is to believe that it is possible and to help make it happen.

A blessed Christmas and New Year to all!

Christmas is Freedom

There is a lot about Christmas that the world doesn't know, doesn't want to know or conveniently forgets in its pursuit of pleasure, possessions and power. And that is, that the "Christ" in Christmas was a person, fully human and Son of God, demanding an end to greed and exploitation.

That sweet baby Jesus in the Christmas manger, born in poverty among peasants and while still in swaddling clothes faced death threats and assassins sent by the corrupt and lust-filled King Herod. Jesus and his parents were refugees and asylum-seekers in a foreign land fleeing certain death. Good his mother Mary and Joseph didn't apply to a nation with strict anti-immigration laws and racist attitudes, they would have been deported, expelled, kicked out and then caught and executed with the hundreds of innocents in Herod's slaughter, a horrific crime against children and humanity.

The baby from Bethlehem, became the man from Nazareth who grew up to be the fiery prophet, the calm peace-maker, the loving friend, the healer of the sick, the hope of the hopeless and the shepherd of the lost. He was the bane of the rich and powerful too. He is the young man that was kicked out of his home synagogue in Nazareth and was almost killed for quoting the Prophet Isaiah and taking on his mission as his own. He was a real trouble maker and rebel to some in his home town.

He read the lesson quoting Isaiah (Luke.4;4 -30) from the scripture and he made it his life's work to bring good news to the poor, telling them in effect that they, the poor, are blessed, precious and the kingdom of God is for them. As if saying: "You are the true children of the father, the inheritance of the land is yours". To the religious authorities this was heresy, subversion, and close to blasphemy, a crime that carried the death penalty.

In today's world defending the poor and the environment from the loggers, land-grabbers and the ruling elite also carries the unofficial death penalty. Human rights advocates, environmentalists, journalists, priests and pastors are branded as communists and subversives for speaking out for the poor and they are killed as was my friend Father Fausto Tentorio, last 17 October 2011, for standing with the poor. His friends and fellow priests are still threatened and harassed.

In the time of Jesus of Nazareth, the elite claimed they had the divine blessing and the right to the Kingdom. They constantly thanked God for their elite status, ascendancy, wealth and for being the chosen ones. They felt that the carpenter's son, born of a peasant girl, was challenging them and their system by taking the side of the poor and they were angry when he scolded them as hypocrites.

Yet, he didn't end there. He continued quoting Isaiah declaring an end to the captive status of the poor and the oppressed, an end to injustice, slavery of all kinds, freedom for the women and children, a new life for the exploited and those unjustly accused, imprisoned, persecuted and harassed. And he declared the freedom of Christmas so the poor can escape from the clutches of commercial consumerism.

Christmas is about transforming a materialistic world, not joining in the wasteful extravagance. It's a time for family togetherness and peace-making and making commitments to work for a more just society and continuing the work of Jesus, born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, but very much alive today.

It's a time to renew friendship and the values that keep us human and spiritual, united, sane and secure. It's not enough to admire the child in the manger; we have to imitate him as a man of action.

Jesus was an agent of change, a revolutionary of the spirit that loved as no man had so loved his friends, his people, the poor, the outcasts and downtrodden and died for them. That's what Christmas keeps alive in us, the living spirit of self-giving and caring for others. What we learn from the child in the manger, the man on the cross is that following Christ is to be a washer of feet and an advocate of human rights

Has Christmas Failed?

The big question that can be asked about Christmas is… has it failed? Two thousand years after the birth of the boy from Nazareth, who grew up as the son of a village carpenter, turned spiritual revolution, his heart turning message of universal rights, peace and justice has seemingly been rejected, ignored or compromised.

There is much evil in the world and we ask ourselves if we followers have done as he asked and tried to change the world? Have we been active and alive, lovingly helping our neighbors like the Good Samaritan? Have we done nothing, helped no one? “Faith without action is dead”, writes St. James in the New Testament.

In much of society materialistic pagan-like carnivals have replaced the spiritual revolution Jesus preached. Even the word Christmas has been replaced with "Season's Greetings". Keeping Christ out of Christmas is the norm. For many it is no longer a celebration of the birth of the greatest person the world has ever known but a hedonistic holiday, a time to party, eat to excess, get drunk and indulge in selfish pursuits.

This is a challenge for all followers who believe that justice and truth is more important than lies and exploitation; that love of neighbor is greater and more noble than hatred and oppression, that working for freedom for the innocent and to reduce hunger and disease is a great Christian virtue.

Christmas is the time when we renew our belief in these spiritual values and turn them into action by helping others without looking for a reward.

The child from Nazareth grew to be a prodigy of inspiration and wisdom. From his earliest years he saw in the temple the contradictions of established religion and its hypocritical compromises with the cruel despotic secular world.

Many years later he returned there as a prophet and teacher and chased away the money changers who had commercialized the house of God. He challenged the religious authorities to end abuse, to be compassionate to the poor, do justice and end oppression. They killed him for that.

Christmas is more than twinkling lights, rites and ritual hymns and Halleluiahs. Without a commitment to lasting values the Christmas celebration is no more than money making, jingle bells and a peacock in a pear tree.

Christmas is the celebration of the values that Jesus lived and died for. It's the time for us to renew our commitment to live them daily. To be one with Christ is to oppose violence, war, fear, child and women abuse, exploitation. It is planting and nurturing peace, unselfish love, kindness, justice and the dignity of the person. Many have done just that and have achieved remarkable results in the past fifty years.

These sublime Christian values, moral and spiritual, coming from the teaching and practice of Jesus of Nazareth have seeped into society. In developed countries greater recognition of the rights of poor, the hungry, sick, unemployed and homeless people is evident through welfare and social services. Despite ongoing roll backs and austerity, it's better than 100 years ago. There is much to be positive, optimistic and joyful about.

While much, much more has yet to be achieved especially in the developing world, women's and children rights and dignity are now highly recognized and protected. The conventions on human rights especially the rights of the child, women, workers and many more are big steps forward in our time and we have to continue working for their implementation around the world.

Unthinkable in the past we can now witness the International Criminal Court bringing tyrants and mass murderers to justice and convicting them for their crimes against humanity. Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo was arrested recently and flown to The Hague to stand trial. Arrest warrants are out for Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir for allegedly committing war crimes in Darfur. Many more accused are facing the court.

It was Jesus of Nazareth who brought these values into the world and it started that first Christmas. It was and is a lasting success. It is our task as followers and believers to further establish, prolong and extend them to all humanity and give to as many as possible a more just and happy life.