LET´S look into this unpleasant side
of our life. I can
assure you that it is not going to be a completely depressing
experience. The sadness or disappointment such effort can bring cannot
erase the fact that it will also occasion in us, if we put ourselves
in the proper disposition, a gush of divine grace, a way of our own
redemption.
Remember St. Paul´s ¨It´s when I am weak, that I am
strong.¨ That´s the attitude to take here. May we know the practical
consequences of such Pauline wisdom, and the requirements it asks of
us!
We need to extricate ourselves from the stranglehold of
our poorly-lit human reactions to our mistakes, failures and
omissions, to our miseries, our fragility and fickleness, that tend to
plunge us into desperation and helplessness.
Let´s allow our faith to flower into hope and then into
charity where we can share the triumph of Christ, and where there can
only be true and lasting joy and peace. Yes, God, and we with him, can
spring victory from defeat, light from darkness, life from death.
First, we need to acknowledge our weaknesses and problems.
These days, many of us often fail in this basic requirement. Like
ostriches, we hide from them, deny their existence, and even act out
an elaborate act of pretension and hypocrisy to cover them.
Worse scenarios follow, as we undertake a shameless effort
of rationalizing our negative side, and with a mere act of our
personal will, and sometimes with the collaboration of some consensus
of like-minded people, we now say what is actually wrong as right,
what is sinful as virtue.
St. Paul´s lament, expressed in the Letter to the Romans,
gives us a glimpse of the reasons behind: ¨Though they knew God they
did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile
in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.
¨Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or
animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among
themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a
lie...”(1,21-25)
This latter ugly turn of things is now even supported by a
vast complex of ideologies with a worldwide network of financial and
propaganda machinery. Now we see vanity, pride, arrogance, greed,
deception in person, in the flesh, not anymore as ideas or
possibilities.
The idols of the ancient times that had eyes but could not
see, had ears but could not hear, now seem transformed into articulate
and glib salesmen of their treacherous doctrine and products. They now
seem to be active and effective agents most able to contrive a
lifestyle of their own making. They are now the gorgeous models for
everyone else to follow.
Standards and criteria have been altered not only in
things peripheral but right down there in the roots. There´s no more
God. We are just on our own. We don´t depend on absolute truths, but
merely on personal ideas and consensual positions. Morality in all its
levels, from the personal to the social and global, is now unhinged
and is drifting aimlessly...
We need to be converted from this horrible state that can
appear to us as sweet and nice, most reasonable and practical. For
this to happen, we need to be humble, since humility is the way to the
truth, to objectivity. It´s what enables us to go beyond the confines
of the many conditionings working on us. It´s what prepares the ground
for grace to take root in us.
Humility is a necessity for us. We are supposed to live it
to the full since it has been meant for us since our creation, and
more so, in our re-creation or our self-redemption with Christ.
We should not be deceived by its apparent debasement and
its requirement of self-emptying, since these can only mean we are
preparing ourselves to be filled up by nothing other than God himself,
his wisdom and power, his everything.
That´s the most wonderful deal we can ever have, as
expressed in that beautiful hymn of the Easter Exsultet: ¨Father, how
wonderful your care for us! / How boundless your merciful love! / To
ransom a slave, you gave away your Son. / O happy fault, O necessary
sin of Adam, / which gained for us so great a Redeemer!¨
Yes, our weakness indeed can attract God´s love and power!
assure you that it is not going to be a completely depressing
experience. The sadness or disappointment such effort can bring cannot
erase the fact that it will also occasion in us, if we put ourselves
in the proper disposition, a gush of divine grace, a way of our own
redemption.
Remember St. Paul´s ¨It´s when I am weak, that I am
strong.¨ That´s the attitude to take here. May we know the practical
consequences of such Pauline wisdom, and the requirements it asks of
us!
We need to extricate ourselves from the stranglehold of
our poorly-lit human reactions to our mistakes, failures and
omissions, to our miseries, our fragility and fickleness, that tend to
plunge us into desperation and helplessness.
Let´s allow our faith to flower into hope and then into
charity where we can share the triumph of Christ, and where there can
only be true and lasting joy and peace. Yes, God, and we with him, can
spring victory from defeat, light from darkness, life from death.
First, we need to acknowledge our weaknesses and problems.
These days, many of us often fail in this basic requirement. Like
ostriches, we hide from them, deny their existence, and even act out
an elaborate act of pretension and hypocrisy to cover them.
Worse scenarios follow, as we undertake a shameless effort
of rationalizing our negative side, and with a mere act of our
personal will, and sometimes with the collaboration of some consensus
of like-minded people, we now say what is actually wrong as right,
what is sinful as virtue.
St. Paul´s lament, expressed in the Letter to the Romans,
gives us a glimpse of the reasons behind: ¨Though they knew God they
did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile
in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.
¨Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or
animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among
themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a
lie...”(1,21-25)
This latter ugly turn of things is now even supported by a
vast complex of ideologies with a worldwide network of financial and
propaganda machinery. Now we see vanity, pride, arrogance, greed,
deception in person, in the flesh, not anymore as ideas or
possibilities.
The idols of the ancient times that had eyes but could not
see, had ears but could not hear, now seem transformed into articulate
and glib salesmen of their treacherous doctrine and products. They now
seem to be active and effective agents most able to contrive a
lifestyle of their own making. They are now the gorgeous models for
everyone else to follow.
Standards and criteria have been altered not only in
things peripheral but right down there in the roots. There´s no more
God. We are just on our own. We don´t depend on absolute truths, but
merely on personal ideas and consensual positions. Morality in all its
levels, from the personal to the social and global, is now unhinged
and is drifting aimlessly...
We need to be converted from this horrible state that can
appear to us as sweet and nice, most reasonable and practical. For
this to happen, we need to be humble, since humility is the way to the
truth, to objectivity. It´s what enables us to go beyond the confines
of the many conditionings working on us. It´s what prepares the ground
for grace to take root in us.
Humility is a necessity for us. We are supposed to live it
to the full since it has been meant for us since our creation, and
more so, in our re-creation or our self-redemption with Christ.
We should not be deceived by its apparent debasement and
its requirement of self-emptying, since these can only mean we are
preparing ourselves to be filled up by nothing other than God himself,
his wisdom and power, his everything.
That´s the most wonderful deal we can ever have, as
expressed in that beautiful hymn of the Easter Exsultet: ¨Father, how
wonderful your care for us! / How boundless your merciful love! / To
ransom a slave, you gave away your Son. / O happy fault, O necessary
sin of Adam, / which gained for us so great a Redeemer!¨
Yes, our weakness indeed can attract God´s love and power!
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