Banico13

Column: Moving Forward

By Albert Banico

Title: Grace for the dead and the living

If heaven is true, perhaps equality between the sinners and the saints will always come for salvation is due to the good that we do; the merits that heaven affirmed and the acceptance of a savior as the basis of divine credits.

However, truth is relatively determined in our earthly life. Remembering the souls and the saints for the believers cannot escape the realities of grief, the dead and the living. Grieving persons for example may belong to the dying sick person, the living dead and the living individuals.

The dying sick person needs assurance in his place in the Kingdom of God. In this case, the support of the community may help. In fact, it helps to unburden the family on how God loves them through the presence of those who empathized. It assured not only the temporal worldly tomorrow but also it can bring through the group effort and prayers that peace and the power of grace and salvation is with us. Psychologically it works as a support system both for the living and the dying.

The living dead refers to the isolated, abandoned, desperate and alienated individuals who are not necessarily sick but also suffering from their complicated social helplessness. These are people who are often forgotten by society and unnoticed by ministers and pastoral care. They may be children without parents or with parents begging, working or playing innocently or deliberately in the streets, the unemployed or the aged, the unfortunate, the exploited, the weak, the confused and the taken for granted soul insiders, outsiders or visitors of every churches.

They too are invited to salvation and supposedly welcome to any church community regardless of their dress and ethnicity as part of our duty. If we believed that we belong to the people of God. Their circumstances make their life difficult if not killing them and must hear the Good News and the hope of a better life.

The living refers to the grieving persons but not necessarily sick, weak or abandoned but equally need help spiritual inspiration and social motivations in the Church and society. In 1987, Joel Charon said that the poor in all societies are powerless to control their economic destiny, they are dependent on others for survival, and they have almost no impact on the direction of the economic and political order. Observation agreed that social structure for people is simply an inevitable pattern and their characteristics are almost always unequal.

Likewise, society cannot be equal due to many factors such as personal attributes and social connections. Indeed, we need less or if possible not corrupt and incompetent political and religious institutions. They should provide and create an environment where inequality and wider gaps between social stratification can be lessen or ideally eradicated in the case of death or hopefully while people are still living.

For our society cannot remain unjust forever.


Mr. Banico is one of the Founding Board Members and Advocacy Directors of GREEN RESEARCH Environmental Research Group. He is also a founding board member of the Asian Research Center on Climate Change.