Pollution of the spirit

WHAT a beautiful message Pope Benedict gave on the occasion of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception last December 8! It was truly prophetic because it hit bull´s eye one of the nagging problems we are facing these days.

He talked about what he called the ¨pollution of the spirit.¨ We need to be aware of it, and learn how to deal with it effectively. We need to develop the appropriate attitudes, virtues and discipline. These were his pertinent words:

¨We often lament the pollution of the air, which in certain places of the city is unbreathable...And yet, there is nother pollution, less perceptible to the senses, but just as dangerous.

¨It is the pollution of the spirit. It is what renders our faces less smiling, more gloomy, what leads us not to greet one another, to not look at one another in the face.¨

This is the immediate description of this pollution of the spirit. But it has graver implications. Again the Pope´s words:

¨The city is made up of faces, but unfortunately the collective dynamics can make the perception of their depth disappear. We see everything on the surface. Persons become bodies, and these bodies lose the soul, become things, objects without a face, to be exchanged and consumed.¨

The Pope tried to explain how this pollution of the spirit came about. A good deal of the blame, according to him, would fall on the media. These were his words:

¨Every day, in fact, through newspapers, the television and the radio, evil is recounted, repeated, amplified, accustoming us to the most horrible things, making us become insensitive and, in some way, intoxicating us, because the negative is not fully disposed of and accumulated day after day. The heart hardens and thoughts become dark.¨

How true! Sometimes I wonder if the media are truly serving the common good, since many times they just seem to focus on the negative side of life, without giving due attention to the positive and redeeming side. We seem to be educated into a new normal in our life. The Pope had this to say about this point:

¨In the city live -- or survive -- invisible persons, who every now and then leap onto the front page or on television screens, and are exploited to the end, so that the news and the image attract attention.

¨It is a perverse mechanism, to which unfortunately one finds it hard to resist. The city first hides and then exhibits to the public, without pity, or with false pity.¨

Think of the present predicament of Tiger Woods or our very own Manny Pacquiao. Their sins or ¨trangressions,¨ the word favored more by Tiger, are feasted by the press, now behaving like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

Scandals now appear to be normal fare in the press. The more scandalous the item is, the better for the media. Imagine if the protagonists were clerics!

Another interesting observation of the Holy Father is that the media tend to ¨make us feel always as spectators, as if evil refers only to others, and certain things could never happen to us.¨ He said that in reality, we are all ´actors´ and, both in evil and in good, our behavior can influence others.

We need to be more sensitive to the fact that our actions, no matter hidden and unknown to the public, will always have an effect on others. This is precisely because of what our Christian faith terms as ¨communion of saints.¨ Our humanity binds us together with many invisible ties into one living organism. What happens to one, what one does, will have an effect on others.

To this predicament, the Holy Father offers the image and message of Mary. To him, our Lady highlights that Pauline insight that ¨where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.¨ He wants us not to get entangled with the sin side, but to focus more on the grace side. This is, in fact, the more challenging and exciting part of life in general and of media´s work in particular.

¨Her presence speaks to us of God, reminds us of the victory of grace over sin, and induces us to hope,¨ he said. In the Philippine setting, we are very lucky because the devotion to Mary is quite widespread. What´s needed perhaps is to make it deeper and more abiding. It should leap from the field of the simple people to that of the more sophisticated ones.

Let´s see if we can grow some more in our Marian devotion.