PRESIDENT Arroyo and her Cabinet members were advised yesterday on the values of individual and collective sacrifice.

Arroyo and the Cabinet attended a one-day recollection at the San Miguel parish with Fr. Godwin Tatlonghari as retreat master. The retreat started at 10 a.m. and lasted until about 5 p.m.

In her prayer for moral reformation, Arroyo asked for "unity of purpose" to "set aside differences and undertake reforms" but took a jab at the opposition and her critics.

"In our struggle against immorality, injustice and indifference, lead us not into the temptation of self-serving politics foisted by those who seek power as the main route to wealth and greater power, trampling the common good for individual or group interests," she said.

"May these corruptions never distort our national institutions into serving selfish agenda and influential factions," she also said.

She said the country's leaders and citizens confess to their "many failings as a nation over the decades which have contributed to suffering, immorality and conflict in our land."

She asked for grace to encourage and forgive, "pay our debts to the justice we have all violated, and start anew beyond the streets of Edsa toward the moral rebuilding of our motherland."

"In our quest for truth, justice and reform, may believers and lovers of God, like true Christians, not hate and destroy one another even as we seek to correct the mistakes of the past or the present and of one another," she said.

She asked God to open the eyes, hearts and hands of officials to see the agonies and deprivations of the people.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said the President would be serving the needy in the provinces in Northern Luzon.

Today, Arroyo will inaugurate the 93.77-kilometer Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway and visit depressed areas in Malasique town in Pangasinan before attending the graduation rites of the Philippine Military Academy.