Keeping the foundation

WE should never let go of our true and ultimate foundation in life. While we have different aspects in life, and each one more or less has its proper foundation, we should remember that in the final analysis our real foundation is nothing less than God himself, our Creator, Father and the abiding principle that keeps and directs our earthly existence.

    An immediate corollary to this is that we therefore are brothers and sisters to one another. We should polish this sense of being God’s children and our fraternity among ourselves, since many are now the factors that seek to undermine this.

    We need to remind ourselves of this obvious and fundamental truth because nowadays we seem to be slowly and unconsciously detaching ourselves from him, as we get more and more immersed, and also confused, in our earthly and temporal affairs—business, politics, pursuit of knowledge in the sciences, technology, arts, etc.

    As a consequence, we are getting swallowed up by a certain logic and dynamics that is purely worldly, material-found, or at best social, political or economic that, given our human condition, cannot help befall into different and conflicting positions and views.

    Besides it’s a dynamics that also deadens our spiritual aspirations that always, by its very nature, tend to enter into the supernatural reality, the world of faith and religion. It’s a dynamics that in its desire to keep us realistic, confine us always to the here and now, to what is practical, popular, convenient. It hardly goes beyond this.

    In fact, it’s a dynamics that sooner or later will develop an intense hatred against anything spiritual and supernatural, anything that has to do with faith and religion. It becomes aggressively, even violently, intolerant to these considerations, shutting Christ out of our public discourses and restricting him to purely private quarters, if it still does care a little about religious freedom.

    It’s also a dynamics that will eventually put division among ourselves, since it will certainly erode the principle of our unity and fraternity. Instead of being brothers and sisters, we would become enemies to one another.

    Christ has warned us about this very likely possibility, one is that is actually happening in many places today. Referring directly to his usual critics, the scribes and the Pharisees, he said: “Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (Mt 23,24)

    This happens when we replace God’s wisdom with our own worldly wisdom, propped up merely by our sciences and technologies, and our political, social or cultural consensus. These are things that, whileproducing wonderful benefits, cannot bring us to our transcendent ultimate goal.

    Let’s remember what St. Paul said about human knowledge, especially the kind that is bereft of charity. “Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies.” (1 Cor 8,1) The pursuit of knowledge that is not inspired by love of God and others is a dangerous exercise, is toxic to our true human dignity, harmful to human unity.

    This is something we have to resolve. We have to learn how to relate our earthly affairs to our supernatural goal. That’s why we need to pray a lot, meditate on the words and life of Christ, who is thefullness of divine revelation and the very pattern of our humanity.

    We need to master the doctrine of our faith, ever pursuing to have a greater grasp of the whole doctrinal body, so we can have a truly integral, complete vision of things, approximating God’s vision for us. This provides us with the proper perspectives through which to see the world and to relate our temporal affairs to God.

    We should never forget that to closely follow Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life for us, we need to follow what he said: to deny ourselves and to carry the cross. There is no other formula, since our worst enemy is actually our own selves, our pride and tendency to make ourselves our own God.

    We need radical humility that can only be achieved through the cross. That is why we need to appreciate the wisdom of Christ’s cross. St. Paul reminds us of this:

    “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness. But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Cor 1,23)

    In our politics, the social, economic or purely political options only have relative value. But when an option goes against God, his commandments, the teaching of his Church, then we know it is really wrong.