Tonight, after all the news -- from COVID-19 to the signing of the Anti-Terrorism Law, from the hunger people experience to the emotional anxieties and deep pains they are suffering, from the violence of uniformed men who are supposed to protect us to the incompetence and impunity of those is power --- let me just invite us to implore God in lament.

Lamentation is the deepest prayer of an oppressed person in pain, like the prophets of old. Lamentation is a prophetic critique to abusive political power and to a complacent people who sits idly by.

It is not time for silence. Cry out to God. Protest against tyranny and oppression! Speak out. Do not fear!

"How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal.
She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers, she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies. (Lamentations 1: 1-2)

“All our enemies have opened their mouths wide against us.
We have suffered terror and pitfalls, ruin and destruction.
Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed.
My eyes will flow unceasingly, without relief,
until the Lord looks down from heaven and sees.
What I see brings grief to my soul because of all the women of my city.
Those who were my enemies without cause hunted me like a bird.
They tried to end my life in a pit and threw stones at me;
the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to perish.
I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit.
You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.”

You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.”
You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.
Lord, you have seen the wrong done to me.
Uphold my cause!
You have seen the depth of their vengeance, all their plots against me.
Lord, you have heard their insults, all their plots against me— 
what my enemies whisper and mutter against me all day long.
Look at them! Sitting or standing, they mock me in their songs.
Pay them back what they deserve, Lord, for what their hands have done.
Put a veil over their hearts, and may your curse be on them!
Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord." (Lam 3: 46-66)

Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, CM
St. Vincent School of Theology
Adamson University
07.03.2020