You’ve just survived the storm—five arteries bypassed, and your heart stitched back to life. You lie tethered to tubes, dreaming of home, when a voice pierces the quiet:
“You have cancer.”
And suddenly, the valley deepens.
Time doesn’t stop. It splinters.
The sterile white walls blur. The rhythmic beeping of machines—once a lullaby of survival—now sounds like a countdown. Having just endured a surgery that rerouted the very rivers of your heart, you were supposed to be healing. You were supposed to be getting home.
But now, your blood itself had betrayed you.
Leukemia. A word that tastes metallic. A diagnosis that feels like a second fall—just as you were learning to stand again.
You lie there—not as a public servant, not as a father, not as a man of titles—but as a soul stripped bare. The body is weary. The spirit is cracked.
And yet, somewhere in the silence, a whisper rises:
Just live by the day.
It is not resignation. It is revelation.
Each morning becomes a sacrament. Each breath, a borrowed grace. Chemotherapy follows. Radiation scorches.
And then, the miracle—your own son offers his marrow, his lifeblood, to save yours. You wake one day with his blood flowing through your veins.
You are no longer just yourself.
You are a living testament to love, to lineage, to something deeper than medicine.
There are stories that do not shout their holiness, but whisper it—gently, steadily—until the soul cannot help but listen.
Ombudsman Crispin Remulla’s recent testimony is one such story. Not because it was dramatic—though it was. Not because it was miraculous—though it may well be.
But because it bore the unmistakable scent of grace: unearned, unexplained, and quietly transformative.
“Just live by the day,” he said.
A phrase so simple it might be missed—unless one has walked through the valley of the shadow. Unless one has lain on the edge of breath, tethered to tubes and prayers, and awakened not to certainty, but to surrender.
It echoes Matthew 6:34— “Do not worry about tomorrow…”—not as a verse to be quoted, but as a truth to be lived.
One heartbeat at a time.
And then, the confession:
“Maybe I still have something more to do.”
Not a boast. Not even a declaration. Just a wondering—a holy hesitation. The kind that often precedes a calling.
In the language of faith, we call this a second wind, a second chance, a divine assignment.
But perhaps it is even more elemental than that, to be given back to the world, not as we were, but as we are now—humbled, emptied, and strangely filled.
Not with ambition, but with availability that whispers,
Here I am, Lord.
Remulla’s recovery—marked by a quintuple bypass, leukemia, and a bone marrow transplant from his own son—is not just a medical marvel.
It is a parable.
A man receives new blood, literally, from his child.
He rises, not with the strength of his own body, but with the life of another flowing through him.
If that is not a picture of grace—of Christ—of the Gospel itself—what is?
He did not say: God gave me a mission.
But he did say, “Maybe I still have something more to do.”
And in that maybe, we hear the stirring of vocation.
Not the loud kind that comes with titles and applause, but the quiet kind that comes with breath and burden.
The kind that wakes you in the morning and says:
You’re still here. So, love. So, serve. So, speak.
There are still problems, he admits. Still challenges. But he will keep going—not because the path is easy, but because the call is real.
Picture this: Remulla’s family, relatives, and friends read his miraculous story. They rejoice—not just for his survival, but for the strange, sacred arc of it all.
The father who received the blood of his son now walks with a quieter strength, a deeper resolve.
In their eyes, he is no longer merely a public figure.
He is a living parable.
A man who descended into the valley of death and rose—not with vengeance, but with vision.
They gather around him, not just in celebration, but in consecration. For what he carries now is not just a second chance, but a second wind.
And they know: this time, he is not just returning to office.
He is returning with fire.
Now picture this: his enemies read the same story.
They could be cowering—not at the man, but at the mystery.
How does one fight a man who has already died once?
How does one silence a voice that speaks from the other side of suffering?
Remulla’s recovery is not just medical—it is mystical.
His enemies may scoff, but they cannot ignore the timing.
The man they thought was politically buried has emerged with a shovel—and he’s digging.
To rewind: Ombudsman Remulla now stands as the protagonist in a civic drama that could reshape the contours of the country’s political landscape.
He reopens the Pharmally case.
He orders the release of long-withheld SALNs.
He pokes at cases others tiptoe around—Vice President Sara Duterte, Senator Bong Go.
He clashes with former Ombudsman Martires over a “secret decision” reversing the dismissal of Senator Joel Villanueva.
He pries open the Pandora’s box of extrajudicial killings.
The Ombudman’s office, once quiet, now rumbles with battle cries.
The whole shebang takes aim at the Duterte brand.
And so, the irony sharpens.
The former President once mocked the divine with a chilling line:
“Who is this stupid God?”
But now, the man leading the charge bears the name Jesus—not in jest, not in blasphemy, but in eerie, poetic symmetry.
Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla—reborn, yet still bearing the marks of affliction—may appear to the Dutertes as weak
But in that weakness lies a mystery they may fail to discern:
“My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
What they see as fragility may, in time, shake them to the core.
For what rises before them is not a preacher in sandals, but a prosecutor with summons.
Not a sermon, but a reckoning.
Not wrath, but righteousness.
What a serendipity that his first name happens to be Jesus.
And what a journey it has been—marked by blood not his own, breath hard-won, and a burden no longer resisted but embraced.
Here stands a man who does not merely count his days, but consecrates them.
He walks not just in recovery, but in response—to a summon greater than survival.
Not simply to return, but to restore.
Not merely to endure, but to embody redemption.
Content & editing put together in collaboration with Bing Microsoft AI-powered Co-pilot
Head collage photos courtesy of Historiador and Time; design by Canva
Still photos courtesy of Adobe Stock, Dreamstime.com, Stock cake, Shutterstock, iStock, Pond5, Freepik, Peakpx, & GMA News
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