Let´s go radical

NOW that we are often bombarded with things that offer us a lot of conveniences but also blunt our sensitivity toward God, we really need to go radical so as not to get lost in the non-essentials in life and get a firm grip on what is absolutely necessary for us.

I remember the late Pope Paul VI saying: ¨Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the occasions of pleasure, but finds great difficulty in giving birth to happiness. For happiness has its origin elsewhere. It is a spiritual thing.

¨Money, comfort, hygiene, material security, etc. may often not be lacking but, nevertheless, despite these advantages, boredom, suffering and sadness are frequently to be found supervening in the lives of many people.¨

We should not be naïve regarding the subtle spiritual manipulations taking place in our march to development these days. It´s not that we should throw a blanket condemnation on the material advantages we are reaping now. It´s just that we have to be wary of their spiritual cost and know how to handle it.

That´s because our constituent elements of body and soul, after losing their original integrity with our sin, react not only differently but also conflictingly toward any good presented to us. Our task is to integrate them together toward the attainment of what is objectively good for us. And that is ultimately God.

We need to sit down long to assimilate this truth about ourselves. We are usually at the mercy of our bodily faculties that, while giving us tremendous powers, often distort the workings of our spiritual faculties. In the end, we find ourselves enriched in material values, but impoverished in the spiritual ones. That deal is unfair and, in fact, inhuman.

For this purpose, we need to develop our skill for praying, for reflecting and meditating, in the hope that even while immersed in earthly affairs, we still manage to be properly recollected, our heart still with God and not dislodged from him. For that is how we ought to live.

Besides, we need to go through a lifelong program of ascetical struggle, developing virtues and realizing the necessity for sacrifice and mortification, since our spiritual life cannot prosper without the appropriate check we need to give to our bodily organism.

This is the great challenge we are facing these days. And many of us do not realize it. Around us—whether in the media, malls and other places—there´s hardly any serious and sustained effort to remind us of this challenge, let alone, the appropriate means to meet it.

There´s still that prevailing sense of fear and shame to tackle this issue head-on. This is actually the core problem we have at hand. Many of us still feel that being spiritual and getting deep into the supernatural realities of our life is unnatural, is not politically or socially correct.

Or that such concern belongs only to some people, but not to all. It affects only those with so-called special vocations or who just happen to want that kind of lifestyle. This is obviously a misconception of long standing that now needs drastic correction.

Especially now that we seem to be charmed and mesmerized by modern technologies, let´s remember what the Book of Ecclesiastes says about them. Let´s take time to savor what divine wisdom is telling us:

¨Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. / What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? / A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever. /

¨The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. / The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north, round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. /

¨All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. / All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; / the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing./

¨What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun...¨

Let´s also remember Job´s ¨Naked came I out of my mother´s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away...¨

Let´s go radical and ask ourselves: Do we spend time to pray, to develop a feel for divine mysteries that should shape our thoughts, words and deeds?