This is a week for Christians to review their lives and ask if they practice the values they say they live by. 

A photograph of the who’s who of Philippine commerce is in itself a kind of pornography, as they represent the 0.0001 per cent of the population that determine how much can be spared for the support of the other 103 million people in the country.

The Philippines has 21 billionaires, according to Forbes Magazine, with 2016 creating a record for that number And the daddy of them all, retail and property mogul, Henry Sy, can boast a net worth of US$13.7 billion ($106.18 billion).

Bennie had a thin, hollow face. A picture of malnutrition at 22-years-of-age, he had never been to school for more than a few months, could not read or write and was a one-meal a day man.

He was dressed in shorts and a dirty T-Shirt. His flip-flops, his only possession, were worn thin. He pushed a small wooden cart along the back streets of Manila picking up discarded plastic bottles and bits of metal that fell off jeepneys or trucks. He was a discarded piece of humanity.

Hiking uphill through the hot tropical afternoon to the Aeta village of Baliwit, San Marcelino, carrying our loaded backpacks was a challenge in itself. But the happy thought of bringing some Christmas cheer into the lives of the extremely poor indigenous people kept us going.

Our mission was to bring Christmas lights into their lives. For us, we discovered it to be inspiring and encouraging.

What is it that makes Christmas so beautiful, so cheerful and such a happy time, especially for children? It has to be the gift-giving, the time when children can look forward to receiving signs of love and care, as well as share a bit.

Children in some well-off families receive so many gifts through the year that getting more has no special impact on them. But there are the children in poor families to whom a gift at Christmas is a joy they never forget, because they have so little in this world.

There was Jonathan, a 16-year-old teenager from a broken home where love no longer held a family together. Poverty that kept food from the table and from the mouths of his brother and sisters.

Jonathan saw the last of his father as he stormed out of their shanty by a river in the Philippine capital, drunk on cheap liquor to numb the pain of failure. He was a jobless man, fired by a corrupt boss. He was a useless, broken man, his dignity taken from him.

In the world today where violence and the violation of human rights are marked with a reluctance to take a stand against evil, not to report child abuse, not to oppose torture and not to oppose murder is a failure to confront criminal behaviour.

It is an indication of a culture of silence that could well be considered complicit in heinous crimes.