“Christmas is a time for solidarity and peace-building. Christmas is not a drug to make us forget for few moments our aches and woes,” former Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines president Socrates Villegas said in his Christmas message to the Filipino people on Monday.
“The Filipino people must stand up for life and purity and to choose the Lord,” he said.
Villegas, archbishop of Lingayen and Dagupan, said Christmas means God has become like us in all things except sin. Christmas is about the courage of God to defeat evil by the power of love.
“The greater enemy to fight is cowardice and timidity. Tolerance is not a virtue. Tolerance of evil makes us accomplices. It is vulgar to laugh at vulgarity.”
The outspoken Villegas also took a swipe at the Duterte administration, saying there is violence against political opponents while unsolved murders continue to rise and there are more drugs to buy. “There are more criminals set free and the opponents are threatened with imprisonment. Everything is turned into a bad joke.
“The poor are poorer and the rich are getting poor. We scold children who bully their fellow children but we laugh at elderly bullies who flaunt vulgar humor.
“We, your bishops, are called ‘useless,’ and you have been encouraged to kill us. You are admonished to stay home and not go to Church because you will just see hypocrites at Mass who worship a stupid God.”
Still, Villegas expressed hope for the Filipino people this Christmas because God has embraced the people’s hunger and poverty.
“God has joined us in our aches and adversities. God is not far. He is near. He has emptied himself of glory and wrapped himself with our human dirt and ugliness so that we may be wrapped by his robe of mercy.
“It is Christmas. We are happy and we have hope in spite of the darkness we see. This darkness is not godly. This is the same darkness that rejected Christ when he was born two thousand years ago.”
