Storefronts are going dark in city after city, from small retailers to export-driven firms, as rising costs linked to the Middle East conflict squeeze them out. This is not a passing inconvenience; it is a serious economic wound that demands urgent attention.

I have been watching the trend with growing unease. Oil prices spike whenever tensions in the region escalate, and that single variable—fuel—quietly dictates the fate of thousands of businesses. Transport costs rise, electricity follows, and before long, even the most careful balance sheets begin to bleed. In a country like ours, where so many enterprises operate on thin margins, it does not take much to push them over the edge.

What’s troubling is how quickly the effects spread beyond boardrooms and into ordinary lives. A closed shop is not just a failed venture; it is a set of wages that no longer arrive on time, a family that tightens its meals, a worker who begins to count coins instead of plans. The economy does not collapse in one loud crash—it weakens in these quiet, repeated withdrawals of livelihood.

I find it difficult to ignore the pattern: when global conflict intensifies, local vulnerability is exposed. The Philippines imports most of its fuel, leaving businesses at the mercy of events unfolding thousands of kilometers away. There is a kind of helplessness in this arrangement, as if entire sectors are being made to pay for decisions and hostilities they have no hand in shaping.

Yet what unsettles me most is not the inevitability of external shocks, but the lack of sufficient cushioning from within. Businesses are left to absorb the blows largely on their own. Some try to adjust—shorter hours, fewer staff, smaller inventories—but these are stopgap measures, not solutions. Without meaningful intervention, these closures will continue, and each one will take a small but irreversible piece of the economy with it.

There is also a deeper, more unsettling shift happening beneath the surface. Confidence—quiet, invisible, but essential—is being shaken. Investors hesitate, entrepreneurs delay, and even consumers begin to hold back. The rhythm of economic life slows, not because people want it to, but because uncertainty begins to dictate behavior. That is how a distant war starts to rewrite local futures.

I cannot help but feel a mix of frustration and urgency. The situation calls for more than passive observation or routine responses. It requires decisive steps that recognize how interconnected everything has become—how a conflict in one region can empty shelves and close doors in another. Ignoring that reality only ensures that the damage will deepen.
What’s necessary now is a steady hand—policies that ease fuel costs where possible, support systems that keep small businesses afloat, and long-term plans that reduce dependence on volatile external sources. These are not quick fixes, but they are practical directions. Without them, the darkened storefronts seen today may become a familiar and lasting sight, and that is a future that should not be accepted lightly.

THAT’S the responsorial psalm of the Mass of the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year A. It’s taken from Psalm 16,11. It’s again another reassurance from God that despite the complexities of our life today that offers us all sorts of pathways that can be both alluring and deceptive, in the end it is the Lord who will show us the true path of life, the path that leads us to our eternal life.

We should not be too worried with what we have to contend these days. As long as we stick with Christ through the many instrumentalities made available to us, we can feel sure that we would be on the right track. Obviously, this would involve a lot of effort and sacrifice, and nothing less than the cross of Christ itself, but the final victory is guaranteed for us.
The challenge for us is how we can closely follow Christ who not only shows the way but also leads and accompanies us along the way. This, in essence, is what holiness is all about, holiness lived in our day-to-day routine.

This can mean that we should try our best to imitate Christ in our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds. If we manage to do that, it would surely have the effect of us loving God and everybody else, irrespective of how they are to us. It would involve a love that would lead us to develop other virtues and to grow in them, like the virtues of humility, justice, integrity, solidarity, charity, etc. It’s a love that would keep us going and growing.

If we follow Christ closely, we would know how to do our daily work well, honestly and fairly. As a consequence, we would be sanctifying our work itself and the world in general from the inside. In a sense, we would be making the Gospel present in all our temporal affairs, be they brilliant or humble and hidden. What truly matters here is the love we put into our work, and not so much the success of our work in terms of money, fame, etc.

But we might ask: can we really deal with Christ directly? The answer is: of course, we can always talk with Christ. It should be the most normal thing to do, since in the first place Christ who is God is always with us. While we cannot always have anybody to talk to, and sometimes we can even forget to talk with our own selves, God on the other hand is always with us and is always willing to listen and talk to us too.

That’s his nature. That’s his desire. God is the very support of our own existence, and that of everybody and everything else. And he, mind you, does not support our life only in a passive way. He’s full of love, of solicitude, of attention and concern. He’s actually hot with us.

St. Augustine said, “to know where God is may be difficult, but to know where God is not, that is even more difficult!” Christ himself reassured his apostles, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Mt 28,20)

We just have to learn how to acknowledge this reality. Our problem is that we restrict our grasp of reality to what is observable only to the senses, and captured by our feelings. Our thinking is often so dominated by these human faculties alone that it fails to enter into the spiritual and supernatural realities. We need to do something about this problem.