Somehow the word in Filipino sounds more intense than “penitence,” and while some people carry out their Holy Week mortifications with more passion than others, the truth is that the 40 days of Lent are no longer what they used to be. Just ask your grandparents.As Pope Francis teaches, what good is giving up a bar of chocolate every Friday if you’re a bad person all the other days of the week?Pious or not, Christians join non-Christians in the family tradition of spending the Holy Week break away from the madness of urban life. After all, the glory of Easter Sunday is sure to replace the gloom of the Passion of Christ.What kind of weather may we expect? We’re still in summer but already the typhoon season has begun, first with an LPA bringing rains and floods followed by Agaton’s deadly visit and Basyang hovering nearby.Climate change is here, it will get worse. Remember Ondoy in September 2009? As bad and horrific as Ondoy was, Yolanda in November 2013 was worse. The supertyphoon of the century made landfall six times. Super what? In December 2021 Odette made landfall nine times; the people along its path were one in saying Odette was more scary than Yolanda. Notice the pattern? In previous years, typhoons arrived between September and December. In 2022, Agaton and Basyang are summer events.Not that the consequences are any different. But with 20 or so typhoons striking with regularity every year, the vicious cycle of death-destruction-reconstruction has not been cut or tempered. Courtesy of Agaton, six landslides in one town. Family-size catastrophes, the anguished cries of survivors drowned out by the wind. Heroic rescuers weeping at the sight of children and adults buried in mud and soil. Must we repeat the same horrendous tragedies every time a typhoon sweeps our islands, in summer or at Christmas?“Penitensya,” the innocent paying for the sins of the tree killers, denuders of mountains and gougers of the earth, destroyers of nature’s living creations. Borrowing a few words from a speech maker wearing a red shirt with long detachable sleeves, “Nature has its rights that should be protected, allowed to flourish, reproduce, attain its abundance side by side with human civilization.” Timely synchronicity!
