The eve of true sight

It’s New Year’s Eve, and we close the doors on a 2025 of too many events and too little resolution.

Storms. Earthquakes. Violent incursions into our territorial waters. A corruption scandal in which the big fish still swim free. Elected officials still keep their positions despite the evidence piling up against them and their nonexistent minions named after crunchy snacks.

Some have called this a year of disasters. What we have, however, are hazards that should not have turned into, descended, or exploded into disasters.

A disaster is something built over years of badly crafted social safety nets or infrastructure constructed for the purpose of campaigning for a government official rather than responding to the needs of local contexts. A disaster is the sum of leaders kowtowing to a world power, in the name of some absurd “independent” foreign policy.

A disaster is when we should have known better but elected people into positions of power that allowed them to exploit us. And the greater disaster? When we complain about how poorly we have voted.

Another disaster: crucifying those who work behind the scenes to make good governance happen. Mayor Vico Sotto and his efficient work in Pasig. Naga City Mayor Leni Robredo and the once-honorable office of the Vice President under her leadership. Sen. Risa Hontiveros and her efforts at protecting those left behind by systems that favor the powerful.

There are many more who work tirelessly at prosecuting those who must be answerable for the murderous drug war. There are many more who question government spending and activities—with easily verifiable documents as evidence, mind you—and who do so without having to raise their voices, preen themselves, or broadcast themselves online.

There are groups that raise funds for those whose lives, livelihoods, and education have been disrupted by storms and earthquakes.

There are many good people who work in silence, while the few noisy ones claim that the only way for us to reach the level of Singapore—as though that were the only gold standard—is to continue the path of murder.

There are good people—and they are largely ignored in favor of the performers, the clowns, the grandstanding few with their useless statements, their overpriced bags, their overbearing mustaches.

I remembered this great contrast as I read Cardinal Pablo Virgilio “Ambo” David’s homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, which he posted online. The Gospel, he said, is not only a story of the Christ child in danger. It is a tale of two families.

Herod’s family is part of a powerful dynasty clinging to power to the point of violence, even violence against itself. Joseph’s family is on the run, with no warm place to sleep or army to protect them. The Gospel, Cardinal David said, “is about which kind of family becomes the seed of hope for the world.”

Joseph would have had the background to claim privilege as a descendant of the great King David. Instead, he chose to protect his child. He went to Nazareth, a place so infamously obscure that someone once asked: Can anything good come from there?

Oh, something did. Someone did. There, God’s plan unfolded in the ordinary, in the quiet, in the everyday, and unnoticed. It happened because a father chose to protect a vulnerable family rather than a dynastic name.

The contrast is so stark when one looks at Herod and his riches, and how he uses his family the way that politicians today try to cling to immortality through their children. The contrast is so glaring when one sees today’s so-called leaders shout over each other, try to win people over as their family quarrels are aired publicly, and lie, cheat, and steal in broad daylight.

The contrast is painful when we see the many good people who speak against the tide of opinions and harassment, who are generous even when they are neither rewarded nor recognized, who “widen their tents” when they welcome those in need, and who “choose compassion over resentment, forgiveness over revenge,” as Cardinal David put it.

Maybe that’s what 2026’s prayer should be. We always ask to be protected from the heavy hand of nature, but maybe we also need to beg people to open their eyes.

So that they ignore what is touted as public opinion and thereby act on their values and principles. So that they recognize that their votes are not just ballots cast for the person who gives away the best relief goods, who makes the best town parties for quick, vapid entertainment, or who has the last name with the best recall.

So that they vote as citizens, not spectators.

Maybe 2026 is where we pray that people will vote for government officials who can work through larger, long-term solutions, and who are role models for that which is ideal—and not simply be a reflection of the most base, most disgusting among us.

Maybe 2026 is the year we ask for people to recognize the humble, the principled, and the striving, rather than idolize the so-called empire builders who seek only to glorify their names.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Open your eyes.

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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu