ENDEAVOR Sonny Coloma A group of long-time friends, all members of a civic organization, resumed their monthly breakfast club and – heaving a collective sigh of relief – shared their experiences from the coronavirus pandemic. It’s barely a month before the third anniversary of the onset of Covid-19. On March 13, 2020, President Duterte imposed a Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ). Citizens were locked down in their homes. Factories and offices were closed. Checkpoints were established by the Philippine National Police, augmented by military units in some areas. Only supermarkets, grocery stores, food outlets, and drugstores remained operational. And of course, hospitals and clinics were swamped by wave upon wave of persons who were infected by the then “novel” coronavirus, later tagged as Covid-19 to denote that it had been discovered in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The first Covid-19 fatality in the Philippines, a male Chinese national, was reported on Jan. 31, 2020. At that time, RT-PCR, was the only recognized test for validating the presence of the disease. It was shorthand for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, and the principal testing center was the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Alabang, Muntinlupa City. According to World Health Organization (WHO) data, there were 4,073,504 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the Philippines from January 2020 to Feb. 6, 2023, with 65,810 deaths. Dante (not his real name), one of the breakfast club members, was hospitalized for more than four months and intubated twice during the first wave of infections; his wife did not survive. As he had not been vaccinated at the time, he caught the disease. He is one of the sufferers of “long Covid” that is generally characterized by “tiredness or fatigue that interferes with daily life” and “symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort, also known as ‘post-exertional malaise.’” He has gamely tried to resume playing golf; interaction with long-time friends has done a lot to help him regain his sense of equanimity. Members of the breakfast club are mostly in their mid-70s, and mid-80s, but their informal leader, a public health practitioner, is 96 years old. They are collectively grateful to have survived the deadly contagion, even as they lamented the loss of not a few steadfast friends. I recall vividly how, two weeks into the Covid-19 lockdown in our land, on  March 27, 2020, Pope Francis cut a solitary figure in St. Peter’s Square as he delivered an Urbi et Orbi (To the city and to the world) message to all the faithful and shared his reflections on the contagion: “The storm exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities. It shows us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities. The tempest lays bare all our prepackaged ideas and forgetfulness of what nourishes our people’s souls; all those attempts that anesthetize us with ways of thinking and acting that supposedly “save” us, but instead prove incapable of putting us in touch with our roots and keeping alive the memory of those who have gone before us. We deprive ourselves of the antibodies we need to confront adversity.” Reflecting the turnaround to normalcy is the new Litany of Gratitude that is now being recited in all churches, “for all the blessings and graces we received during the Covid pandemic.” The list of things to be thankful for tug at the wellsprings of the heart of every believer: “For reminding us of the fragility of life, shielding us when no one else dared to shelter us and opening our minds to what is really essential…For allowing us to connect with one another with faith and love, despite the isolation that sickness had imposed on us…For the heroic kindness of those who provided us with scientific, social and spiritual help when doing so was both risky and life threatening for them…For the gift of newly discovered medicines and vaccines to combat the virus and the wonder of natural immunity…For the gift of assuring presence, when we were anxious and distressed, depressed and lonely and impatient during the pandemic.” Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic was a massive test of faith and will that prodded each of us to exercise utmost discernment and endeavor to be resilient at a time of great peril. As it recedes to the background, we are given a fresh opportunity to renew ourselves and our lives – and to reaffirm our compassion for and solidarity with our fellow human beings.