In the next two weeks, students, pupils, and parents will have their hands full supervising end-of-the-school-year activities. Be they called moving-up ceremony, culminating activity, closing ceremony, commencement, graduation, or what have you, these are times that call for celebration of sorts. After all, for some schools, this may be only the second time that face-to-face ceremonies have been allowed.
For the tertiary members of the graduating class of 2024, your “journey to life” will start the moment you receive your diploma and other credentials, and set out into the professional world.
Whatever your plans may be or wherever fate and destiny may bring you, you will now experience first-hand what life really is – life in the real world, life in the asphalt jungle, life in a dog-eat-dog kind of existence, the kind of life that stares at you straight in the eye, and the real LIFE away from your “comfort zone.”
The eminent, highly esoteric former Education Secretary Prof. Leonor Briones, who until today, continues to churn out inspirational quotes whenever and wherever imparted her message in a recent visit to local schools in Dumaguete City.
As Prof. Briones said, “Life is a series of journeys from one stage of life to another.” All of us journey, she explained, even tracing our own journeys to the time of the apostles and the prophets in the Bible – from the time the Israelites journeyed to slavery and captivity in Babylon, and journeying back to freedom, to Jesus Christ himself Who journeyed around Galilee preaching the good news of salvation, to the apostles undertaking incredible missionary journeys.
“Peter reached as far as Rome; it is said Thomas reached India, and James reached Spain,” she expounded. Taking it further, she said that “modern man has journeyed to the moon, eminent mathematician and physicist Sir Stephen Hawking believes we can journey back to the future.”
She said that in today’s highly demanding times, gone are the days when children can simply tell their parents and supporters after graduation that they will do a “PMA” – which stands for “Pahinga Muna, Anak!” This year’s batch of graduates joins some 700,000 new graduates all over the country, many of whom will be looking for jobs. She said that the government itself has admitted that the “present inventory of jobless Filipinos is 2.96 million.” Going into specific figures, Prof. Briones spoke about the reality that “if we include the 700,000 new graduates this year, plus the 15-year-old students who drop out of school, we will have approximately 4 million jobless Filipinos.”
It has been widely recognized even by international organizations like the International Labor Organization and the World Bank that the Philippines has the highest level of unemployment in Asia. “We have a situation where our economy is growing, our credit rating is improving, but unemployment is rising to dangerous levels,” informed Prof. Briones.
Once reality sets in for the new graduate, they will come to realize that the real world is tough and dangerous. This has some biblical basis, too, in Paul’s second letter to Timothy when he wrote about “Godlessness in the last days” when “people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power.”
While schools and universities teach students good and proper values like competence, character, and faith, the world will teach the new professionals the exact opposite. It is now up to the individual to grapple with these challenges and hold on to the values he/she had been taught early on in life.
How does one “arm for the journey,” which is oftentimes punctuated with danger and temptation? Prof. Briones said that one does not need to equip himself/herself with the super powers of Superman, Supergirl, Batman, or the X-men, but only with the “armor of God.”
Similarly finding a biblical basis in St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 6: 10-18, she exhorted the graduates to take solace in the “armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of the dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil and heavenly realms.”
The Scriptures continues with us “putting on the armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand firm with the belt of truth buckled against your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
In addition to all these, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.”
These ring true most especially during these difficult, albeit not hopeless, times in our country’s history. | NWI
