Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 19 August 2026

Of all the months in the year, August has the most beautiful name of all but sadly most maligned as a “ghost month”: from the Latin augustus that signifies reverence or to hold someone in high regard, august as an adjective means “respected and impressive” like when we say “in this august hall of men and women” of science or faith.

Yes, it was also taken from the name of the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar but like the rest of the months and days of each year, it is always a blessed one.

No day nor date nor time is malas because these each day is a gift from God who is all good. Nothing bad can come from God.

Moreover, when God became human like us in the coming of Jesus Christ, life has become holy, filled with God, debunking those ancient beliefs of the Divine being seen in various cosmic forces. Pope Benedict explained this so well in his second encyclical:

In this regard a text by Saint Gregory Nazianzen is enlightening. He says that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ the new king, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ[2]. This scene, in fact, overturns the world-view of that time, which in a different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free. In ancient times, honest enquiring minds were aware of this. Heaven is not empty. Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love[3]. (#5, Spe Salvi by Pope Benedict XVI, 30 November 2007)

That’s quite a volume but so lucid, so true, so beautiful. Especially this part: “It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person.”

This is the whole meaning of the recent Sunday gospel of Jesus walking on water: God in total control of this world.

It is this Person of Jesus Christ why so many great men and women then and now have abandoned their previous ways of life to lead holy lives even in the face of death.

Very interesting in this modern time are two great saints we celebrate on this month of August, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (August 09) and St. Maximilian Kolbe (August 14) who died at the gas chambers of Auschwitz during the Second World War.

St. Teresa Benedicta is the German philosopher Edith Stein. She came from a prosperous Jewish family gifted with a great mind becoming one of the first female university student and later professor in Germany.

An associate of the famed Edmund Husserl of the philosophical method of phenomenology, St. Teresa Benedicta became an atheist during her teenage years; but, upon further studies and prayer, converted into Catholicism, becoming a Carmelite nun where she adopted her new name. She wrote that “Those who seek truth seek God, whether they realize it or not“.

She actually had all the chances to leave for South America and then to Switzerland to escape the Nazis but opted to stay in their monastery in the Netherlands with her younger sister Rosa who had also converted as Catholic and joined the Third Order Carmelite. When they were arrested on August 2, 1942, she told her, “Come, Rosa… we go for our people.”

St. Teresa Benedicta honored her Jewish roots by dying among them as a martyr of Christ, one who had “learned to live in God’s hands” according to Sr. Josephine Koeppel, OCD, a translator of much of her works.

According to various accounts, St. Teresa Benedicta showed great inner strength by encouraging her fellow prisoners to have faith in God while helping in looking after the small children when their mothers were so distressed to do so. One woman who survived the war wrote: “Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.”

Dying ahead of her in Auschwitz on August 14, 1941 was St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest who was arrested for his writings against the evil Nazis. It was actually his second time to be arrested.

When a prisoner had escaped from the camp, authorities rounded up ten men to die in exchange of the lone escapee. Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a married man with children. They were all tortured and starved in order to die slowly in pain.

A devotee of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Maximilian was injected with carbolic acid on the eve of the Assumption after guards found him along with three other prisoners still alive, without any signs of fear like screaming but silently praying.

We no longer have gas chambers but atrocities against human life continue in our time, hiding in the pretext of science and laws with some like the wokes exaggerating the truth they believe or follow in the name of inclusivity and various rights.

And yet, there are men and women, young and old alike including those not yet born in their mother’s womb are hunted and killed both for profits and for convenience to correct what many perceived as excesses and wrongs in the society like the grim drug war of the past administration.

Or those corrupt government officials and despicable politicians, from the highest offices down to the barangay behind the flood control scam that are all ghost projects that have submerged vast areas and communities into floods.

The Nazi officers and soldiers of Auschwitz of the past and those involved in the flood control scam as well as the tokhang drug war remind us the true “ghosts” and evil spirits of our time sowing hatred and deaths are people who may be well-dressed, even educated in the best schools, and come from devout or “normal” families. They sow evil every day without choosing any particular month, blindly following orders without much thinking and reflections or introspection. These people entrusted with positions and power are mostly the ones who bring ghosts into our lives causing so much miseries among our people especially the poor ones. Many times, they insist on following or speaking the truth – a truth so empty of the person of Jesus Christ who is “the way and the truth and the life” (Jn.14:6).

I have always believed that the opposite of love is not hatred but hopelessness – without hope, people will just destroy everything for the sake of wealth and power.

Saints have shown us that with much love in our hearts in Jesus Christ, we are also filled with his hopes for better, holier days and months.

By the lives of the many great saints of August, or of any other month for that matter, we are reminded that holiness is not being sinless but being filled with God, being converted daily to the truth of Jesus Christ by allowing that holiness to spill over and flow onto others with our lives of authenticity expressed in charity and mercy, kindness and justice, humility and openness with one another. As St. Paul had written, “Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect” (Rom.12:2).

And so, discard those thoughts of a ghost month and let us keep every month an august time and space for our good deeds to make Christ’s loving presence felt among us. A blessed week to everyone!