Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Taming death

THANKS be to God, our country is still so largely infused with Christian piety that together with the Holy Week, the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of All Souls on the first days of November draw great crowds of the faithful to cemeteries to pay homage to the dead.

Such wonderful phenomenon may be dismissed as a show of a contrived Deus-ex-machina show of faith, reinforced by a mounting evidence of inconsistencies in the life of the believers.

That’s how non-believers see it. The most they can concede to participating in this yearly activity is for sentimental reasons or for social and political correctness. Nothing more or beyond these.

In short, they consider the phenomenon as a superstition, a gratuitous nonsense built up through years of ignorance and blind obedience to Church teaching. It’s supposed to thrive in a chicken-run kind of locality, still removed from the liberating light of reason and science.

But that is not so. Contrary to what non-believers may say, we have within ourselves, whether strongly or faintly felt, an urge to communicate with our dearly departed.

Such urge springs from the belief that we continue to live in another form after our death here on earth. We believe that there is in us something that refuses to die, in spite of our death here on earth. We just continue to live on.

We can’t explain it thoroughly because it’s a belief that exceeds the powers of empirical verification. But it is not completely unreasonable.

If we think and reason, if we will and love, then we must have something spiritual in us, since spiritual activities presume a spiritual subject. “Operare sequitur esse” (operation follows being) goes a philosophical principle that applies here.

Anyway, without being aware of this principle, we somehow hold on to the truth of our spiritual nature and our supernatural calling. We refuse to be held captive by the limits of a rationality that is hooked to the merely empirical.

And thus we believe that even if we die here on earth, there is something in us that does not die. It is our soul, the spirit that animates us, that is above the wear and tear of earthly life and thus enjoys immortality.

If not destroyed by some factors, this natural tendency to believe focuses our attention to the spiritual world, and then to the possibility at least to a supernatural reality. This will require the gift of faith.

That’s the problem with our brothers and friends who reject the faith. They make their own reason the ultimate guide in their life. But it is a reason that refuses to admit its limits, and refuses to be open to anything smelling of faith and mystery. It refuses to accept what it could not understand.

As a consequence, they can not figure out the objective reality of the spiritual world, let alone, the supernatural realm. These are Greek to them. These just don’t make sense. They prefer to stick to what could be touched, seen and comprehended.

The ways of the simple people who honor the dead on these November days may reek of sentimentality and may be accompanied by imperfections and exaggeration, but they objectively leap from an objective truth about us.

I pray that they be left in that belief even as I encourage them also to go deep into the full meaning as well as the consequences and implications of our death. We have to mature in our attitude towards death.

Death should not be a cause of fear. That would be useless, since we can not escape it. It’s part of our continuing life, a crucial event that brings us from time to eternity.

Something in it should attract us to it, since it is the doorway to our definitive life. But to cross it, we need to be fully ready and live our earthly life the way it should be.

What can help us is to study the dispositions the saints, and especially the martyrs, had towards death. They will give us concrete ideas of how we can welcome and embrace death.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Fraternal correction

WE have to be familiar with this practice which I think is increasingly needed these days.

I know it’s an unpleasant thing, both for the giver and the recipient. But the matter involved can be crucial and silence about it can be fatal or at least can give rise to dangerous potentials.

It’s a practice recommended by our Lord himself in the gospel. “If your brother shall offend against you, go and rebuke him between you and him alone. If he shall hear you, you shall gain your brother,” he said. (Mt 18,15)

All of us need correction, if not always then at least at one time or another. No matter how good, smart and clever we may be, we certainly have defects and we commit mistakes that need to be corrected.

With the present pace of development where we are drawn to more and more new things and unfamiliar situations, the chances of us committing mistakes and getting stuck with our weakness are multiplied.

And given our human condition that blinds us to most of our frailties, we cannot rely solely on ourselves for these corrections to take place. We need others, as brothers and sisters who truly care for us, to point them out to us.

If done and received with the proper dispositions and ways, then these corrections can truly be considered not only as coming from our brothers and sisters, but from God himself.

The fraternal correction can become a genuine manifestation of charity, deepening our friendship and fraternity with the others. It enables us to fulfill an important part of the gospel message of being a Good Shepherd to the others.

We also relive what is said in the Letter to the Hebrews: “For whom the Lord loves, he chastises, and he scourges every son whom he receives…For what son is there whom the father does not correct.” (12,6-7)

We have to understand that God’s love for us, which is the pattern of our love for one another, blends maximum patience and affection with maximum rigor and strictness.

This is more because of our human condition. If God alone would have his way, so to speak, he surely would shower us with all sweetness. This, I imagine, is what heavenly bliss is all about.

But here on earth, God has to contend with the way we use or misuse our freedom. With our limitations, not to mention our mistakes and sins, God has to use both soft and hard means, gentle and harsh ways to guide and govern us.

Since we are his children, created in his image and likeness, we are asked to participate in his divine providence over us. Thus, we too cannot avoid having to use both soft and hard means to govern ourselves.

The fraternal correction should be widely used especially in the family. Children grow mightily when corrections are made on them. But it should also be done generously in other areas, especially among peers and colleagues.

Among priests, for example, the practice of fraternal correction is highly recommended. Bishops should take the lead. This is what the document “Pastores gregis” says about the matter:

“In cases of grave lapses, and even more of crimes which do damage to the very witness of the Gospel, especially when these involve the Church’s ministers, the Bishop must be firm and decisive, just and impartial.

“He is bound to intervene in a timely manner, according to the established canonical norms, for the correction and spiritual good of the sacred minister, for the reparation of scandal and the restoration of justice, and for all that is required for the protection and assistance of victims.” (21)

But even before things become very serious, fraternal corrections should already be given generously. Usually they can be in the areas of prudence, as in the priest’s relations with women and in his public actuations.

Or in the way a priest carries out his duties. First would be his own life of prayer and the sacraments, then in his preaching, in his availability and manner of serving the people. Suggestions and corrections can abound here.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Chastity education vs. sex education

THESE two types of education have to be clearly distinguished. Of course, between the two, I strongly recommend chastity education. Sex education? The most charitable thing I can say about it is, be very suspicious of it!

There’s no doubt that we, in general, feel the great need to educate everyone, especially the young ones, on the nature, meaning and purpose of our human sexuality.

Current developments in the world, driven by the wonders of information technology, infuse this need with urgency. These have not served to dull people’s sexual appetites. Rather they tend to stimulate them, or at least to stir them.

As usual many feel they are at the mercy of their sexual urges, with hardly any effective means to dominate them. Their wills have been weakened and perverted, their passions constantly abused, their bodies debased.

And a corresponding culture of distorted sexuality is emerging worldwide. We cannot simply dismiss this sad phenomenon as an unavoidable part of development. That’s a myth. It’s a great responsibility to do something about this.

Things are so bad that the cover of decency is thinning rapidly. Aberrations in this area are now being flaunted even by our celebrities. Many young people enter adulthood with this aspect of their life already compromised.

In the face of all this, it’s puzzling why sex education, touted to be “highly informative” but notoriously morally blind, is promoted. As a solution, it does not go deep enough.

On the contrary, it tends to aggravate things, as evidenced in many countries. In these places, safe sex techniques have not diminished but rather increased the cases of infidelity, promiscuity, pre- and extra-marital sex.

Sex education misses the crux of the matter. It’s merely cosmetic, merely
prophylactic. It is keyed to the sensible aspect of our sexuality, and aimed at the practical, not moral, management of it. It treats men and women as objects, not as persons.

Without the spiritual and moral grounding, sex education tends to make our sexuality a very fertile breeding ground for other irregularities to develop, as deceit, hypocrisy, etc., thrive in it.

What is needed is an honest to goodness training in chastity!

Chastity education is more about virtues rather than about techniques. It focuses more on the maturation of the person himself rather than on data and info meant to help us derive the most practical benefits of our sexuality.

It goes beyond the merely physical, biological or hormonal. It goes much further than making psychological or sociological considerations. It enters the world of one’s heart and soul, and purifies them.

Chastity education is more about love, about self-giving and making sacrifices, rather than just “self-pleasuring.” In the language of Pope Benedict’s “Deus caritas est,” this type of education brings sex as “eros” to its perfect form of “agape.”

Chastity education links human sexuality to right reason, then to our faith. It integrates our sexuality to our true dignity not only as persons but also as children of God. It involves a certain spirituality, more than just a life style.

Chastity education is done more at homes rather than in schools, more between fathers and sons, or mothers and daughters, than between teachers and students. It’s more a personalized conversation rather than indiscriminate classroom lecture.

We have to help everyone, especially the parents, to be properly equipped to handle this kind of education. Where the parents are wanting, then by the law of subsidiarity, higher institutions like schools, governments, Church, etc., have to help.

We certainly need to explode many myths related to chastity education. Like, some irregular sexual practices are allowable since they are part of growing up. Or that we can expose teeners to things like pornography, etc., so as to immunize them.

We have to be clear that chastity is a matter of love for God with the corresponding love for others. The objective content of this kind of love has to be known. But more important is the formation of solid attitudes, practices and virtues.

Chastity is a matter of how ardent one’s love for God and others is.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Sweet poison

WE have to be more aware of this. And more importantly, we have to learn how to tackle this problem. It’s actually now a hairy epidemic worldwide, but no one seems to be bothered.

I’m referring to an attitude that is so pervasive it looks like it’s the normal thing to have. This is the virus of pride, of selfishness, greed and vanity. It’s considering what puffs the ego as the ultimate fulfillment of one’s life.

This is the me-first attitude of the I-me-mine generation, a growing sector in the world, whose outlook is notoriously individualistic and blatantly self-interested, self-indulgent and intemperate.

You sadly see the syndrome at every turn now: in homes, among friends, in
malls, internet cafes, in sports, fashion and entertainment, in the media. Read the papers, listen to the radio, watch TV, see a movie, and this poison is there corroding hearts and minds with impunity.

What a painful thing to see people, especially the young, rotting away in laziness, disorder, aimless meandering especially during weekends, spoiled by modern gadgets, excess time and money, and, worst, parental neglect!

How jarring to hear people hopelessly gossiping away, indulging in empty talk, and engaging in activities that from any angle are clearly a waste of time! Everyone seems to want only what is good for him here and now, never mind if it is not truly good for him.

The objective reason to seek rest and recreation, to pursue knowledge, power, influence, popularity, etc., their ticket to social acceptability, is so abused that these human activities now become pathological.

There’s also that phenomenon where those who do many important things so fail to appreciate the true value of these things and thus fall to a sickly build-up of psychological repression that once they have leisure, they become prone to harmful and sinful compensations.

This runs in direct conflict to what we are supposed to be and behave. We
are meant to love, we are wired to give ourselves to others, to share. What goes against this law works against us.

Let’s always remember what our Lord said when asked what the greatest commandment was. It was to love God with all our heart and might, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We always have to be keenly aware of this natural law that governs our life. Once we realize we are deviating from this law, we have to rectify immediately. We have to help one another to be able to follow this law always.

When we sense we don’t have God and the others in our minds and hearts, when they do not motivate us to do something for them, we should realize that we are heading for trouble, and therefore should react properly.

What is unfortunately being fostered is the opposite. We are lured and hooked to egoism, good time and easy life, to comfort and pleasure seeking. And there seems to be hardly any serious effort to counter this trend.

Instead of being thoughtful, anticipative of others’ needs, eager to work and serve, we now see so much self-seeking, wasting of time, and fuss and ado only to satisfy one’s urges and passions.

The value of virtues, like order, industry, prudence, is disintegrated. The need for sacrifice, mortification and forms of self-denials is completely ignored if not ridiculed. The link between these virtues and our true joy is missed.

The families should see to it that the children are taught as early as they are able to understand very deeply this fundamental law of our life and to develop the corresponding attitudes and practices.

Parents in particular, since they know their children’s strengths and weaknesses, should come up with the appropriate plans and strategies to impart the proper attitudes and develop the proper habits.

They have to know how to use both the gentle and hard methods, how to be
patient and impatient, tolerant and strict. They have to use the full range of possibilities to help their children grow to maturity.

That’s why they have to spend quality time with their children. Away with remote or surrogate parenting!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Families must form consciences

THAT’S what the Pope suggests to the head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, indicating the theme of the 2009 World Meeting of Families in Mexico.

To be more precise, the Pope calls on parents to dutifully discharge the indispensable and delicate responsibility of forming their children’s consciences.

“In these times,” he said, “in which it is notable that there is a frequent contradiction between what is professed as belief and concrete ways of living and acting, the next World Meeting of Families proposes to encourage Christian households in the formation of a right moral conscience.”

I consider this papal concern very relevant. Sadly, the awareness of our duty to take care of forming our consciences is vanishing.

Many parents seem afraid to form the consciences of their children, taking care only of their physical and other immediate needs, and leaving them practically out in the cold.

Many parents fail to realize that forming their children’s consciences constitutes the noblest part of their duty to educate their children. It perfects their parenthood.

At best, any awareness of such duty now often comes with a lot of distortions. Like, conscience is just a matter of how one feels or understands things at the moment. One’s feelings and frame of mind become the ultimate guide for his actions.

Aggravating this is the fact that there’s hardly anything done to counter the bad effects of the mainly materialistic and sensual approaches to today’s questions and issues, prevalent everywhere and especially in the media.

Even the news have spins that highlight these values at the expense of the spiritual and supernatural values. You can just imagine what happens in the lifestyle and entertainment sections!

As a consequence, the difference between good and evil, between freedom and licentiousness gets blurred. The sense of sin evaporates.

Children and the young are the most vulnerable, since they are still without the proper criteria to guide them, nor the proper skills and virtues that should accompany them in their growth and development.

We have to understand that our conscience is the most critical aspect of our life. It’s our judgment, like a voice within, enabling us to recognize the moral quality of a concrete act, past, present or future.

It links our actions to our dignity as persons and ultimately as children of God. It integrates the workings of all our faculties to make sure our actions conform to our innate sense of goodness. In short, it conforms our actions to God.

The Christian understanding of man teaches that God is our last end, our supreme good who reveals himself to us in many ways and in his fullness in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man.

The complete and ultimate truth of man is known through Christ who entrusted it to the Church. Our conscience has to apply what it finds in our heart, checking it with the Church’s teaching, before it makes its judgments.

This is because God’s law for us in our actions, the natural moral law, is both written in our hearts and revealed by Christ and now taught by the Church.

Given our natural limitations, plus the effects of our sins, the formation of conscience has to be undertaken continuously by everyone in all levels and aspects of our life.

We need to study the moral law to be on the offensive against ignorance, confusion and error. We also need to develop the virtues to facilitate our inclination to our true good.

These virtues, like humility and prudence, help us to navigate through the antipodes of indifference and rashness, to which we are prone.

The family, the basic unit of society and our first school, should be the first to fulfill this duty. When it is found wanting, higher entities like schools, government, community, Church, etc., should directly pitch in.

Very fundamental in forming consciences within the family is to teach children to use their reason, guiding their emotions and passions. Then children should be taught to reason with faith, so their consciences could make judgments that relate their actions to God.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Sports

WE just went gaga over the latest win of Manny Pacquiao. Then our excitement reaches another level with the opening of the latest season of the PBA (Philippine Basketball Association). And there are more to come.

Sports understandably gets our instant attention. It strongly invites us to play it out. And so we see a growing number of people, young and not so young, doing some sports. That’s good!

Sports can do a lot of wonders to us, because it corresponds to an objective human need. Not only does it develop our body. It also occasions growth in the many virtues we require, both personal and social, like a good sense of discipline and team work.

With proper management, sports can be expected to strengthen our moral and spiritual life. In fact, we have to see to it that the effects of our sports reach that point. Otherwise, it would not be worthwhile.

As a form of rest, sports is meant to give us a healthy diversion from our work routine. But it is not supposed to make us forget our work, but rather to recover our strength to return to our work and main concerns with greater vigor.

It is precisely because of this inherent goodness of sports that everything has to be done to protect it from deteriorating into something harmful to us. It’s part of our human condition that good things come always with some spoilers.

It might sound trite, but that Gospel story of the cockles growing with the
wheat because of some evil men, remains applicable now, and especially in relation to sports. Given its nature, sports is quite susceptible to viruses.

This concern is not meant to be a wet blanket, but rather to insure that our sports be always consistent to our dignity. We should not be naïve and complacent.

Many more things happen than just having some excitement when we play
sports. Sports is not just a purely physical thing. By necessity, it affects our whole being. Thus, it affects not only the body but also our soul.

We have to be mindful of this basic truth about sports. Especially when it
is played big time, every effort has to be made to foster and reinforce this truth. We have to realize that sports has a tremendous social impact.

We just cannot play out our sports activities in any level in a purely random and designless way, guided only by what is most convenient at the moment, what is practical, popular or pleasurable.

We have to have a certain plan, a certain purpose and strategy. Competition
in sports is not just about winning a game, because winning has many other forms including a certain sense of victory even when one loses a game.

We have to see to it that sports competitions are infused with a healthy spirit of friendship and mutual help so that everybody reaches our common good. We defeat the purpose of competition when it leaves in its wake the remains of envy, hatred and bitterness.

We have to be wary when sports becomes an obsession, dominating our life
such that it ostracizes other more important activities, like our prayers, family duties, and even our professional work.

We have to see to it that sports should not deaden our proper sense of the value of time, our sense of priorities, the awareness of our duties and responsibilities, whether personal, family, social, or religious, professional, etc.

We have to be careful when sports becomes too commercialized that it fosters all sorts of aberrations: vanity, pride, arrogance, body worship. There’s also its proneness to succumb to selfishness, greed and deceit.

We need to help one another in fostering the proper dispositions towards sports. The leading men in the sports industry should give more attention to the ethical and spiritual aspects.

Sportsmen should be the first to show the proper conduct in which the different sports are played. They truly become champions when they manage to relate their sports to our ultimate end, converting sports into a prototype of our ascetical struggle and scoring the right points.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Lay spirituality

THERE are yet many obstacles to be hurdled, yet many things to be done before we in general can have a good understanding, let alone live the very important role the laity plays in the Church and in the world.

At the moment, we don’t have to look far to see how gravely misunderstood the lay people are. They are largely seen as second-rate citizens if not pariahs in the Church, unavoidably immersed in the dirty mundane things of the world.

They are also regarded as some kind of accessories to the clergy. It would seem that their status only acquires a whiff of dignity when they act as assistants and servers to bishops and priests.

For them to have some semblance of goodness and holiness, they are expected to keep distance from the world as much as possible, if not to hate it. They are pressured to fit into a certain religious mentality, doing churchy chores, that tends to suffocate their true lay and secular character.

Whatever may be the causes of this sad phenomenon, the fact is crystal clear that we are still light-years away from the ideal insofar as the role of the laity in the Church and in the world is concerned.

The laity is supposed to be an integral and essential part of the Church. As such, they, like the bishops, priests, religious men and women, have the same calling to sanctity and to the apostolate in ways proper to their condition.

They should not feel nor should they be treated as if they are just a baggage in the Church, or merely a resource to be taken advantage of, as in being used as source for money, or treated as the clergy’s long arm.

They are as much the Church as bishops, priests and the religious are. They
are not merely in the Church, but the Church herself together with the clergy and the religious, lifted to her supernatural nature and intrinsically involved in her mission.

Another thing that should be made clear is that the Church is not just some human social structure. The Church is the people of God, the mystical body of Christ, communion with Christ and everybody else in Christ.

This sublime nature of the Church has to be understood and consciously and freely lived by all of us, depending on what role we play, whether as clergy, religious or lay.

In this tricky matter, we with God’s grace have to help one another. We should not reduce the Church as a social phenomenon, though it certainly has social manifestations. Its supernatural character should always be upheld and defended.

Though everyone has different duties, everyone should also realize, whether clergy, religious or lay, that he forms an indivisibly organic unity with everybody else with Christ as head in the Holy Spirit.

We just have to learn to relate with one another properly, knowing how to keep the mutual need for one another, while avoiding confusion as in clericalizing the laity or laicizing the clergy.

There unfortunately are indications these irregularities are taking place in some areas. The Popes and the Vatican in general have issued guidelines in this regard. These should be religiously followed to avoid perverting the Church.

But what is most important is to vigorously promote what may be called as lay spirituality. This is the authentic lay empowerment many people are talking about. This equips lay people with the correct knowledge and appropriate ways to live their role in the Church and the world properly.

This lay spirituality can mean many things. For one it can mean having a right theology about the world in general, a right understanding of freedom and respect for the autonomy of temporal affairs, etc.

The link from the earthly to the sublime, the material to the spiritual, the temporal to the eternal, should be shown to be very practicable. Everyone, especially the lay people, should be assured of this reality.

The Church’s social doctrine and the more basic Christian anthropology are
indispensable in developing a true lay spirituality. There has to be massive and continuing catechesis about these truths.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Detachment

WE have to understand this virtue very well. It’s actually part of both the human and Christian virtues of temperance and poverty. We need to consciously develop it not only in ourselves. We need to help everybody else to mature in it.

Even from the human point of view, we cannot help but live it, at least partly. This often disregarded truth can easily be seen when we realize that everyday we make choices that unavoidably involve detachment from certain things, and even from certain persons.

For example, one with some medical condition has to detach himself from certain food, good in themselves but bad to him. One who is married surely has to see to it that his heart just does not fly off getting attached randomly to any other woman.

One, who trains for some competition, has to submit to a regimen that includes a special diet and a list of restrictions. An adherence to a certain discipline marks his life.

That’s the law that governs us. It should come to us quite naturally that if only for this reason we should take the appropriate effort to cultivate this attitude. We’ve been taught about this virtue since we were kids. It’s for our own good.

In developing and living this virtue of detachment, one experiences a certain lightness of feeling, a certain purification and liberation of the senses from unnecessary and even toxic things. It fosters self-mastery.

There’s a certain focus of attention involved in it, an aiming at a specific goal. It is a sure sign that one is progressing, since growth involves not only acquiring certain elements, but also discarding things.

But for those of us who adhere to Christian faith, we know that this virtue
is even more necessary because, firstly, our Lord said so. “What does it a profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?” (Mt 16,26)

Or if you want to be more radical, hear this from our Lord: “If any man comes to me, and does not hate his father, mother, wife, and children, and brothers and sister, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14,26)

Detachment in this moral and spiritual level makes sure that our heart is directed to its ultimate goal, which is nothing less than supernatural. And this is union with God. We should not forget this very important dimension in our life. We are meant for this.

Detachment purifies our body, and preps and conforms it to our spiritual needs. If we want to meet the requirements of our spiritual nature and supernatural calling, we can not avoid having to live detachment.

Our Lord said: “My son, give me your heart.” (Prov 23,26) Besides, Jesus
himself said that the first commandment is “to love the Lord your God your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.” (Mt 22,37)

There is a certain exclusivity in this kind of love that necessarily entails detaching oneself from other things. But it is an exclusivity that gives us a universal heart, allowing us to love everything else properly, that is, in truth, in their proper order.

To attain this goal in our life, one that is spiritual and supernatural, we will always realize that a continuing process of self-denial and of detachment from the material and temporal elements of the world is necessary.

To those with the Christian view of life, this process is never considered
a loss but rather a gain, not a stunting of one’s growth but rather enhancing it. It does not make one sad but rather happy. It makes sacrifice a touchstone of love.

This is what is meant by the gospel term of circumcision of the heart.

The saints and all who try to pursue holiness look forward to every occasion to practice detachment in whatever form it comes, whether physical, economic and social, then moral, and even spiritual.

We have to outgrow the mentality that consists of thinking there can be a
time or stage in our life when we can freed from having to live detachment.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The saint of the ordinary

WE have just celebrated the 5th anniversary of the canonization of Opus Dei founder, St. Josemaria Escriva (1902-1975).

October 6, 2002 saw St. Peter’s Square overflowing with people who came
from all over the world to witness the late Pope John Paul II raise St. Josemaria to the altars. They were all happy to take part in that historical event.

The aging Pope, thoroughly acquainted with the life and works of the saint,
described him as the “saint of the ordinary.”

This obviously was in reference to St. Josemaria’s constant preaching that
all ordinary activities in one’s life, be it at home or in work, can be a way to heaven if done with love for God and for souls.

In other words, if one stays focused on God and does everything to keep that focus, in season or out of season, in the mood or out of it, he is likely to have the proper focus on everything and on everybody else as well.

In the mind of St. Josemaria, love for God does not take one away from the
world, but rather deepens his concern for the world and for all men.

An iconic statement of the saint was one he preached in a homily in 1967:
“There is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”

Such words hit the nail on the head in moving people from all over to try
to be consistent to their faith not only during extraordinary events, but most especially in the ordinary flow of their daily life.

With such preaching, certainly divinely inspired, St. Josemaria captured
the deepest longing of people’s hearts. In spite of our limitations and mistakes, we cannot deny the primal truth of such assertion.

It also answered the Church call for all to blend our faith with our life itself, bridging the all-too-familiar gap between the two. It was a very ambitious preaching, prone to be interpreted as exaggerated and gratuitous.

St. Josemaria’s words were not just theoretical, theological or abstract. They were all lived words, derived from actual experience, strong, vital and forceful, capable of stirring people to action.

They were a result of his constant efforts to fulfill the will of God no matter what it took. Not his failing health, nor the tremendous difficulties material, spiritual, juridical, etc., let alone the nasty campaigns to bash him, Opus Dei and the Church stopped him from generously giving himself to God’s designs.

He was accused of being a heretic, a fanatic, of trying to control Spanish
if not world politics and business, and even the Vatican itself. Now, all these look very funny. But at that time, it was real, red-hot drama.

He faced all these with serenity, defending himself with prayers and mortifications, and simply working away quietly. He was a dynamo of endless working.

He hardly spoke. He understood why he was misunderstood. Quick to forgive, he was magnanimous to those who wronged him. In the end, he proved to
all he was only doing God’s will, not his. He personified how good would sooner or later overcome evil.

With such character, it was not difficult for him to inspire others to be generous also with our Lord and with everybody else. His presence, his example, his teaching exuded such splendor of charity as to draw others to be generous as well.

He provoked conversions even among those who usually are considered as
hard cases. He motivated others to make all sorts of initiatives meant to help people materially and spiritually.

But he always insisted on sanctifying the ordinary things of life. He cautioned others of the lure for the extraordinary that could dilute their self-giving with subtle traces of self-love. Though imbued with an immense sense of peace and confidence, he stayed away from any show of triumphalism.

His main weapon, which he recommended to everyone, was prayer. It was
through prayer that he managed to be both in heaven and on earth. He told all to convert everything to prayer.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Needed: villains and rebels

I DON’T know whether it’s a mark of the so-called post-modernism that we now seem to have a reversal of roles and values. Those considered before as heroes are now regarded as villains or aliens from space.

Topics considered before as taboos can now be talked about quite openly.
While those routinely brought up before to keep the atmosphere of goodness are now seen to be politically incorrect, or a social blunder.

Thus, it would appear that it is not good nowadays to talk about prayer, holiness, discipline and things of that sort. Even the most educated and most open-minded among us today refuse to talk about these matters.

You’re being conservative if you talk that way, rigid, narrow-minded; a traditionalist still trapped in the Stone Age when you’re supposed to flow with the times; a passé, a has-been, an anachronism.

Worse, you’re an absolutist when now what is politically correct is to be open to anything and not to consider anything as intrinsically good or bad. No such thing, they claim.

If you ask me, what we have here is a society sinking in the quicksands of
relativism. That’s the mentality that considers everything to be relative. Nothing is absolute, including this statement, which is already a contradiction.

Someone mentioned that post-modernism, a.k.a. relativism, is precisely just
having any opinion in the present, cut off from the past and from the future, orphaned from any other consideration than what one understands as practical here and now.

Post-modernism or relativism wants to live and work alone, not accountable to anyone nor to anything. It’s simply unique, unrepeatable, unclassifiable. It’s quite homeless and rootless. It has no higher principle than what is useful or popular now.

It just flies with any wind, and rides on any fashion. It’s quite capricious and promiscuous. It hardly knows anything about fidelity and loyalty. It doesn’t want to be disciplined, nor to be burdened by having to obey any authority. It’s its own authority. Everything starts and ends with it.

Sorry if I sound going a bit ballistic here. But talking recently to some teenaged children and parents strongly leads me to tell them to be villains and rebels in their present circumstances, filled with elements of relativism and post-modernism.

Teenaged children need to be liberated from their proneness to laziness, frivolity, disorder, spur-of-the-moment and inconsiderate decisions, unchastity, changing moods, inconsistent behavior, and a long etcetera of objectively dangerous if not irregular conduct.

They have to be helped to discipline themselves, acting as villains and rebels to themselves first, and to anything and anybody in their environment that keeps them in their unstable adolescent ways.

In this regard, parents play an important role. As primary educators of their children, they have to be active in forming their children properly. In this regard, I call on fathers especially to exercise their fatherhood decisively.

The problem we often have is that fathers now seem to be increasingly averse to exert forcefulness in bringing up their children precisely in the latter’s most tricky stage of growing up.

Many times I get the impression that there are two mothers, instead of a father and a mother. Fathers fail to play their role properly of leading and managing the family, of seeing to it that children follow rules, keep certain standards, pursue clearly set-out goals.

They are afraid to play villains to their children. Sometimes, many times, this is a necessity. We have to understand that fatherly forcefulness is always a function of real love to children.

“What son is there whom the father does not correct,” the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us. (12,7)

We have to remember that everyone needs both hard and gentle elements to
mature. The mothers usually supply the soft elements, always accommodating, full of understanding and affection, finding excuses, etc.

But the fathers have to be the source of discipline. And for this they should be villains to their children at crucial times. And they have to talk about God, the commandments and what are truly good for the children. Otherwise, we’ll have a mess.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Dark Night of the Soul

THAT’S the title of a lyrical poem by the old Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross. There he describes a soul’s progress toward union with God through Christ’s cross.

The expression now largely means any spiritual dryness and ascetical difficulty, to the point that one may feel abandoned by God. It has resurrected lately because of some writings of Mother Teresa, who confessed she did not feel God’s presence for a long time in spite of her efforts.

People are asking how someone close to God can fail to feel God’s presence? Some others have used this development to discredit Mother Teresa, the
Church, if not the whole Christian faith.

This phenomenon is actually quite common among saints and holy men and women. It can happen to anyone of us. The quintessence of this experience is Christ himself on the cross.

In spite of his permanent union with his Father—there is no greater union than that between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—he said: “Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani? Which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” (Mk 15,34)

Christ is both God and man, one divine person with two natures, human and divine. It is the inadequacy of the human nature to fully correspond to the divine that this tension and conflict can be felt. And man, called to a supernatural end, is not exempt from this.

But God actually never abandons anyone. In spite of our wretchedness, we cannot be totally separated from Him. Only in hell can we have that “definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed,” as the Catechism teaches us. (1033)

That is the objective reality about the matter. The problem arises when we consider its subjective aspect, or how one person feels in his spiritual life.

In essence God is present in everything, and especially in every person who is created in his image and likeness. He is actually everywhere. Of course, his presence in us takes place in different ways.

On our part, we have something that enables us to have God in us in a way most proper to us as his creatures, as persons and as his children. It is our heart in grace. The Catechism teaches:

“The heart is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.” (2563)

In the “dark night of the soul,” in spite of the objective presence of God in us as well as our objective capacity to have him in our heart, we get the sensation, even the conviction, that we don’t have him.

This is due to many reasons. First, there are the limitations and the weaknesses of our human nature to cope with the “requirements,” so to speak, of the supernatural life to which we are called.

If we do not know how to handle these natural limitations because of pride or vanity, we will get the sensation that we are without God.

This is made worse by our sins, defects and mistakes, which can become stable vices, blinding us further to God’s presence in us. When we do not seek divine mercy, not only do we feel lost and separated. We can even hate God.

Besides, God allows this experience to happen for many reasons—to test if we really believe and love him, to purify and strengthen us, to conform us increasingly to him by way of spiritualizing and supernaturalizing our faculties.

Our tendency is to tie our faith with material and sensible factors, with the initial thrill of novelty. One way of maturing our faith and of detaching it from mainly human and natural considerations is to experience the “dark night of the soul.”

Many saints who experienced this had to do things with greater faith and love for God, often going against the grain of their personal preferences, immersed in all sorts of suffering, that become the touchstones of faith and love.

The “dark night of the soul”? We should not be afraid of it. We should welcome it.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Lay spirituality

THERE are yet many obstacles to be hurdled, yet many things to be done before we in general can have a good understanding, let alone live the very important role the laity plays in the Church and in the world.

At the moment, we don’t have to look far to see how gravely misunderstood the lay people are. They are largely seen as second-rate citizens if
not pariahs in the Church, unavoidably immersed in the dirty mundane things of
the world.

They are also regarded as some kind of accessories to the clergy. It would
seem that their status only acquires a whiff of dignity when they act as assistants and servers to bishops and priests.

For them to have some semblance of goodness and holiness, they are expected to keep distance from the world as much as possible, if not to hate it. They are pressured to fit into a certain religious mentality, doing churchy chores, that tends to suffocate their true lay and secular character.

Whatever may be the causes of this sad phenomenon, the fact is crystal clear that we are still light-years away from the ideal insofar as the role of the laity in the Church and in the world is concerned.

The laity is supposed to be an integral and essential part of the Church. As such, they, like the bishops, priests, religious men and women, have the same calling to sanctity and to the apostolate in ways proper to their condition.

They should not feel nor should they be treated as if they are just a baggage in the Church, or merely a resource to be taken advantage of, as in being used as source for money, or treated as the clergy’s long arm.

They are as much the Church as bishops, priests and the religious are. They
are not merely in the Church, but the Church herself together with the clergy and the religious, lifted to her supernatural nature and intrinsically involved in her mission.

Another thing that should be made clear is that the Church is not just some
human social structure. The Church is the people of God, the mystical body of Christ, communion with Christ and everybody else in Christ.

This sublime nature of the Church has to be understood and consciously and freely lived by all of us, depending on what role we play, whether as clergy, religious or lay.

In this tricky matter, we with God’s grace have to help one another. We should not reduce the Church as a social phenomenon, though it certainly has social manifestations. Its supernatural character should always be upheld and defended.

Though everyone has different duties, everyone should also realize, whether clergy, religious or lay, that he forms an indivisibly organic unity with everybody else with Christ as head in the Holy Spirit.

We just have to learn to relate with one another properly, knowing how to
keep the mutual need for one another, while avoiding confusion as in clericalizing the laity or laicizing the clergy.

There unfortunately are indications these irregularities are taking place in some areas. The Popes and the Vatican in general have issued guidelines in this regard. These should be religiously followed to avoid perverting the Church.

But what is most important is to vigorously promote what may be called as
lay spirituality. This is the authentic lay empowerment many people are talking about. This equips lay people with the correct knowledge and appropriate ways to live their role in the Church and the world properly.

This lay spirituality can mean many things. For one it can mean having a
right theology about the world in general, a right understanding of freedom and respect for the autonomy of temporal affairs, etc.

The link from the earthly to the sublime, the material to the spiritual, the temporal to the eternal, should be shown to be very practicable. Everyone, especially the lay people, should be assured of this reality.

The Church’s social doctrine and the more basic Christian anthropology are
indispensable in developing a true lay spirituality. There has to be massive and continuing catechesis about these truths.