March 31, 1986

''This year the verities of this great Christian feast have come to life in a way we never dreamed possible and in a manner which leaves us gasping and incredulous.'' - Jaime Cardinal Sin, Roman Catholic Primate of the Philippines. [ A1:1. ]

The glass palace on the Hudson has been hit by fire, flood, hurricane and Rudolph W. Giuliani. ''What else can go wrong?'' said Thomas F. Galvin, the optimist who is president of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Development Corporation. Serenaded by a down-to-the-wire symphony of hammering, sawing and scraping, Mr. Galvin was sitting still for a rare coffee break in his office. Oddly enough, in a building with 16,100 glass panels, 100,000 square feet of skylights and half a mile of glass handrails, the office is windowless.

New orders for machine tools continued their decline in February, dropping 11.1 percent from the same month the year before, the National Machine Tool Builders Association reported yesterday. The trade group said that February was the eighth consecutive month that new orders have declined, compared with the same month the year before.

Paul Girolami, the avuncular 60-year-old chairman of Glaxo Holdings P.L.C., is facing the sort of problem most executives long for. His company, analysts generally agree, is the fastest-growing major drug producer in the world today. After jumping more than 50 percent last year, Glaxo's profits are expected to grow about 25 percent annually over the next couple of years. Thanks to the company's robust performance recently, Mr. Girolami is perched on a cash mountain of about $700 million. Much of Glaxo's prosperity is attributable to one stellar product, Zantac, an anti-ulcer drug that accounts for 40 percent of the company's sales and about half its profits.

Spurred by widespread difficulties in obtaining liability insurance, many states are modifying their civil justice systems to make it more difficult for victims of accidents to recover large sums in personal injury cases. The aim is to reduce the burdens of litigation and soaring insurance premiums faced by cities, bus companies, doctors and others who are frequently sued. Advocates say that only drastic changes can alleviate the situation, which has made it virtually impossible for many ice rink operators, obstetricians, company directors and others to obtain insurance against huge jury awards in liability lawsuits. Nearly every state legislature that has met in 1986 considered bills to change its civil liability system, and many took significant action. In many other states, bills are pending and the outcome is uncertain. Curbing of Rights Seen Critics, including lawyers and some labor and consumer groups, contend that changes in the laws of liability, or torts, will deprive innocent victims of their rights to damages when they are injured.