Loyalty that Preserves

I spoke to a mother whose son recently passed basic training, there was a sense of a mother's pride in her voice but also, a hesitation, a need...

I congratulated her and blessed her for raising up before God, a solider in the service of others... but I also felt her need and her hesitation.

Because when you bless, you only invite life. And when you congratulate, you only invoke happiness in life... So I said a quiet prayer for her, her son, and for our world... so much in need of peace.



The truth is
the more soldiers we have, in principle,
in a world awoken from the last great age of war,
the more peace we should enjoy.

- selah -

There are established limits in the defense -
the minimum is safeguarded by the virtue of arms
and the maximum is guaranteed by the peace of the nations
so that in our nation's conduct of the common defense,
to fall short (of the minimum limit) is to find defeat
and to exceed it (i.e. the maximum limit) is to become
the enemy (of our peace) that we claim to fight.

Therefore,
what is required to maintain the balance of peace
in our family of nations is not more and more arms
but less and less - a balance of peace -
until the Last Day, when the purpose of arms
will have utterly and completely extinguished itself.

And so
if today we remember -
what was before those times,
spirit and energy wasted in the quest
to annihilate the life and promise of our nations
- in the name of "peace" -
shall then be brought to genuinely serve it
to prosper our needful world
and bless all our nations as one family
to the hundreth generation.

- selah -

Why is it - during these evil days -
that the more soldiers we have,
the more war we suffer?
---<--@


War is the monster! Do not look into it's eyes - or thy spirit will be lost. 
Rather, understand peace - that you may also understand why we fight.


The Fate of Arms

Guns and Colonial Mentality

"Ang baril ay mabuting alipin ngunit masamang panginoon. (The gun is a faithful servant but an evil master.)" - Fernando Poe, Jr.



This quote encapsulates a liberating view of arms, one that releases our spirit from the colonial mentality that inclines us to believe - through the common experience of our people - that the prime utility of arms is to gain power over others, especially others weaker than we are.

If during past times the strength of arms were indiscriminately used to subdue the strength of our spirit, then the same truth that lives in the virtue of arms shall be the necessary remedy that shall awaken our nation from the error of past ways - so let us together reflect upon this...

Guns mean goons only if the virtue of arms is forgot dahil ang baril ay masamang panginoon.

But if we remember what FPJ said and make use of arms as our arms were intended - for the defense of our nation and in faithful service of all that we love - we serve ourselves well, my brothers and sisters of the Promise.

We serve ourselves well because we have - together - mastered the gun and by this throw off - more and more - of the lingering yoke of dark spirits past dahil ang baril ay mabuting alipin.

- selah -

People who fear the gun, in truth, fear other people.

But it is a work of Justice to instill good will and solidarity among men and peace and brotherhood among the nations of man that this fear may eventually turn into fellowship.

Arms do not serve individuals, arms always serve a community that looms greater than the self.

(Can we realistically conceive our local defense industry prospering in the absence of this truth in our culture? No, because colonial mentality holds us back in many places and through many diverse ways.)

To do justice to the gun, we must first do justice to ourselves - as ourselves - and re-discover ourselves as a nation - together this time.

In this context, the utility of arms find their original purpose and scope.

Through the reality of nationhood, the virtue of arms find strength and meaning and the ends for which it's knowledge and grace has been by God ordered and intended - in and among - our kindred nations of our one family of nations - the safety and peace of humankind.

This is the virtue of arms.
---<--@



So let us remember what FPJ said - to us - and - for us - about guns and the knowledge and virtue of arms - and say to him in return - "mabuhay ka, FPJ!"