Fertility and productivity

I just attended a forum of farmers the other day. It was organized by some Church people, with some public officials in attendance. The theme was on soil fertility and productivity as key to food security.

The farmers looked on the whole hopeful. Some managed to smile and to show a face of serenity. Others looked a bit concerned and apprehensive. Well, the world is big enough to accommodate all sorts of people, I thought.

That it was organized by some Church people should not come as a surprise. Farming is a basic human concern and need. The Church is very much interested in it. It was done well, so there should not be any accusation the Church was interfering and engaging in purely social action.

The Bible is full of images about farms and agriculture. Our Lord conveyed important lessons through parables that made use of agricultural terms: seed, sowing, plants, trees, sheep, weeds, shepherds, goats, rocky ground and good soil, etc.

In short, farming is very much in the heart of the Church. Obviously, the forum I mentioned was more on the technical side of farming. They were talking about the virtues of organic farming as well as the need for basic infrastructure and investments to support the farmers, etc. All very good!

But then again, the technical side of farming, so basic and indispensable, should not be detached from the religious side of farming. It has to be understood that farming is never just a human activity. It is one that has deep and immense spiritual and moral repercussions.

Consider Christ's indication that before a seed sprouts into a plant, grows, matures and bears fruit, it has to be sown and die first.

That should remind us that farming, just like any human enterprise, requires some dying to oneself, some sacrifice and pain. Without this ingredient, we should not expect that endeavor to succeed and prosper.

There is need for conversion always. That's how we give impulse to our proper growth as persons and children of God. We need to continuing conversions, otherwise, we stop growing and get stunted.

Consider the parable of the sower and the seed. This reminds us that we should try to be a good, well-plowed and prepared ground, so that the seed, God's word, can take root, grow and bear fruit a hundredfold.

We just cannot be hearers of God's word alone, and flaunt it with the rich foliage of our clever, deceptive ways, which unfortunately we can be very good at. We have to be doers of God's word, assimilating it such that it becomes flesh of our flesh, the substance and form of our thoughts and actions.

Consider also that part about the Bread of Life. That's the end result of Christ's work of redemption, with Christ himself being both the sower and the seed. That work produces ultimately the Bread of Life, which is our food that will bring us to eternal life.

We need to connect every human activity to our spiritual and supernatural goal. We should not just stop in the technical level, for that gives us only a short-sighted and very narrow view of life and of our dignity.

Which brings me to wonder why, if we are so interested in achieving fertility and productivity in our farming and agriculture, we are so eager to cut fertility and productivity insofar as human life is concerned.

Now that the Reproductive Health Bill is widely analyzed in the public, it seems that its fallacies and stupidity are getting exposed. A little boy has just declared the king who claims to wear gold apparels is actually naked.

That it's for reproductive health is false, because it neither reproductive since it is for population control, nor is it for health since it considers the reproductive capacity of man mainly as a disease.

That it's for informed choice or freedom of choice is also false. It nothing more than a euphemism to go immoral, and to use what is convenient, what is a weakness, a failure, a sin as standard of our behavior.

That it will solve our poverty problem, telll that to the marines. Unless there is inner conversion, even there are few people in this world, there will always be inhuman poverty.

It's time for the proponents of this pro-death bill to reconsider their points and regroup themselves.