Sto. Nino or Batang Hesus on it’s humble cradle.
Sto. Niño festival is celebrated by Filipino catholics today as a form of veneration to the religious relic icon given by the explorer Ferdinand Magellan to Rajah Humabon.
It represents the child Jesus and is believed to have commenced the spread of Christianity all through out the country.
This celebration gives highlight to the youth of today or the future innovators of our countrymen but there are things that are overshadowed by the joys of commemorating the festival. We forget the children that goes through hard times unlike most of the others normally do.
They are the one that lives on orphanages that aren’t that lucky to have their parents for them and see their journey through growth. The street children who may possibly have different reasons of being unsheltered that suffers the coldness of the night and tormented daily by hunger. And even the juveniles who are currently in rehab centers who are emotionally and mentally distressed or lost.
They are too young to have experienced and battled these issues but for us who lives a more comfortable life than them even takes everything for granted.
We fail to realize that we are luckier enough not to experience great hardships at such a young age and express gratitude to God. With living a better situation, we have a social responsibility to ease the pain they are suffering from no matter how old we are so why not try to celebrate the feast by sharing to charities that aims to give light to the young ones?
Being a student is not even an excuse to express sympathy to the street children we pass through on everyday’s commute, since even just a single biscuit from our ‘baon’ may already suffice their empty stomachs which may possibly have not yet eaten anything for a day.
In today’s reflection, it is hoped that all of us spend a little time to pray for the youth who are currently being tortured by the difficulties of life to continue battling and trusting the Lord for them no to be like lambs on the hunt from the wolves or evil since they are the hope of our world’s future.
Mariele Aquino
Junior Writer, Website Team, Media Ministry
Mariele R. Aquino is a member and website writer of the NSDA’s Media and Public Information Ministry, an aspiring future medical specialist and currently a STEM senior high school student in the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas. Her principle in life is that genuine success is something achieved through a path and battlefield of dodging a thousand bullets without the course of self-centered desires and conducts for temporary existential accomplishment. As a form of simple youthful religious fervor, Mariele used her skills, talent and dedication in writing to serve her Lord but also to grow not only intellectually but more on spiritually.
