Reflections on this year‘s Ramadan
Islam does not ask the ill to prove devotion by harming themselves. The faith makes room for illness, weakness and human limitation.
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Islam does not ask the ill to prove devotion by harming themselves. The faith makes room for illness, weakness and human limitation.
As this goes online, many Filipino Muslims will likely already be celebrating Eid’l Fitr, marked by cherished festivities, visits to family and relatives and the special prayers that close the holy month of Ramadan.
For many, Eid arrives with relief, gratitude and joy after a month of fasting, prayer, restraint and quiet recalibration. It is a return not only to food and festivity, but to one another. It reminds us that faith is lived not in isolation, but in community, memory and mercy.
This year, however, Ramadan confronted me differently.
For the first time in my life, I had to miss an entire week of fasting and then some. Early in the month, a medical condition forced me to pause. My physician advised me to refrain from fasting for the time being and prescribed medication as part of my treatment.
In my younger years, I might have received such an interruption with less resistance. But in midlife, it felt different. It came with disappointment, not only in the circumstance itself, but in myself. It felt, at first, like a failure of a physical kind.
But over time, another thought began to take shape.
What if the interruption was not only a setback, but also a mercy?
Islam does not ask the ill to prove devotion by harming themselves. The faith makes room for illness, weakness and human limitation. What I first experienced as frustration, I slowly came to see as a reminder that the body, too, is part of our trust. It is not something to be ignored until it breaks. It is one of the means through which we worship, serve, endure and continue.
In that sense, this Ramadan may have given me something I did not know I needed.
This was not the kind of miracle that makes headlines. But this change in my physical condition may itself have been a divine gift. It has made me more cautious in how I treat my body. It has made me pay attention in ways I may have neglected before. Not every mercy arrives dramatically. Not every miracle announces itself loudly. Some come quietly, in the form of caution, interruption, restraint and renewed awareness.
Ramadan has a way of sharpening perception. Hunger teaches. Thirst teaches. Delay teaches. So does limitation. Sometimes what is revealed is not only our capacity to endure, but our need to be humbled, corrected and reminded that life itself remains fragile, and that it was never something we earned.
That may be why this year’s Ramadan lingers with me differently.
It taught me that devotion is not always proven by pushing through. Sometimes it is shown by knowing when to stop, when to recover and when to receive the mercy that faith itself allows.
There is no shame in being reminded that one is human. There is, perhaps, wisdom in finally learning to live accordingly.
Even now, I remain certain, Inshaallah, that somewhere out there a miracle is unfolding. Perhaps not always the kind the world pauses to notice, but the kind that quietly changes a life from within. Perhaps the miracle is healing. Perhaps it is clarity. Perhaps it is simply the return of gratitude for the time we had begun to take for granted.
Every extra minute in this world is a blessing.
And every chance to live more carefully, more gratefully and more truthfully within the limits God has given us is grace. For those still holding on, and for those praying beside them, that grace means more than words can fully say.
So while Eid is rightly celebrated with prayer, family, food and reunions, it may also be worth carrying forward one of Ramadan’s gentler lessons: that mercy is not only something we ask from God, but something we are sometimes made to accept for ourselves.
Eid Mubarak to us all.
