AS social beings, we will always need leaders to
bring us
to our common good. We therefore need to choose leaders with the
proper qualities. And this means that they have the proper
understanding of what our common good is in all its aspects—from the
temporal to the eternal, from the material to the spiritual, from the
immediate to the ultimate, etc.
We should stay away from the way of choosing our leaders
simply on the basis of popularity, wealth or technical skills. While
these have their objective value and should be given their due
consideration, we have to understand that they cannot be the beginning
and end of leadership. We need to go beyond them.
We have to say this now since our current world culture
seems to be practically at the mercy of these criteria that at best
are only secondary and instrumental. We have to outgrow this kind of
mindset.
Leadership has God not only in its center and core, but
also, in a manner of speaking, in every pore of its being. Without
God, or ignoring him, or simply giving him token consideration would
make any idea of leadership hollow. It may manage to make a lot of
sound and fury, but it would be inherently infirm, certainly doomed to
failure sooner or later.
Its bravery would simply be bravado, its wisdom and
prudence cunning, its victories pyrrhic. Its vision can never be total
and with the right hierarchy of values. It will be biased, distorted,
deceitful. It will not be able to tell everything that we need to know
and do.
It will shun away from sacrifice or anything that would
need some amount of pain that would be necessary. And when the
unavoidable problems and troubles come due to our fragile human
condition, it hardly would have any resource to tackle them.
We need to explode the myth that giving God the primary
role in the pursuit of leadership would simply be a drag, an
unnecessary element, or that it is impractical, irrelevant, undoable.
Or that it would just confine us to the spiritual and supernatural and
desensitize us from the mundane, etc.
This kind of reasoning can only reflect a certain lack of
faith and a lazy thinking. These actually are the basic problems we
have at hand. We need to do something about this predicament by
showing that we as persons need some amount of faith and that we
should try our best to go all the way in our thinking and reasoning.
We should avoid being led simply by what our senses
perceive, nor even what our intelligence can discern. Again, while
these are always necessary, they are in need of a higher source of
knowledge and stimulus that can only come from faith.
Our act of faith, which we do one way or another, should
get engaged with an objective faith that comes from God himself, our
Creator and Father, who continues to govern us through his providence.
Our act of faith should not just be a matter of what is empirical,
convenient, intellectually stimulating and the like.
This objective faith is not a fantasy that can be made up
by anyone depending on how a person is. It’s something that can be
known because even if God is so supernatural that we he will always be
a mystery to us, he is also very close to us. In fact, he is in the
most intimate part of our existence as well as being all around us.
Besides, he has revealed himself to us in full by sending
his Son to us, Jesus Christ, who left us with his word, his
sacraments, his Church. He has left us with his real presence in the
Eucharist.
If we would just have the proper disposition of faith that
comes together with hope and charity, we can always connect ourselves
with him, and somehow get to know his will and ways not only in a
generic way, but also in a concrete and specific way.
Thus, leaders should be men and women of faith, of genuine
piety, who know how to cruise in the material and spiritual world, in
the temporal and the eternal, in the mundane and the sacred.
True leaders should be able to lead everyone ultimately to
God making use of our natural conditions. They should be able to go
beyond our many human conditionings, not by avoiding or nullifying
them which would be quixotic, but by making use of them by the power
of God.
God and leadership should be together!
to our common good. We therefore need to choose leaders with the
proper qualities. And this means that they have the proper
understanding of what our common good is in all its aspects—from the
temporal to the eternal, from the material to the spiritual, from the
immediate to the ultimate, etc.
We should stay away from the way of choosing our leaders
simply on the basis of popularity, wealth or technical skills. While
these have their objective value and should be given their due
consideration, we have to understand that they cannot be the beginning
and end of leadership. We need to go beyond them.
We have to say this now since our current world culture
seems to be practically at the mercy of these criteria that at best
are only secondary and instrumental. We have to outgrow this kind of
mindset.
Leadership has God not only in its center and core, but
also, in a manner of speaking, in every pore of its being. Without
God, or ignoring him, or simply giving him token consideration would
make any idea of leadership hollow. It may manage to make a lot of
sound and fury, but it would be inherently infirm, certainly doomed to
failure sooner or later.
Its bravery would simply be bravado, its wisdom and
prudence cunning, its victories pyrrhic. Its vision can never be total
and with the right hierarchy of values. It will be biased, distorted,
deceitful. It will not be able to tell everything that we need to know
and do.
It will shun away from sacrifice or anything that would
need some amount of pain that would be necessary. And when the
unavoidable problems and troubles come due to our fragile human
condition, it hardly would have any resource to tackle them.
We need to explode the myth that giving God the primary
role in the pursuit of leadership would simply be a drag, an
unnecessary element, or that it is impractical, irrelevant, undoable.
Or that it would just confine us to the spiritual and supernatural and
desensitize us from the mundane, etc.
This kind of reasoning can only reflect a certain lack of
faith and a lazy thinking. These actually are the basic problems we
have at hand. We need to do something about this predicament by
showing that we as persons need some amount of faith and that we
should try our best to go all the way in our thinking and reasoning.
We should avoid being led simply by what our senses
perceive, nor even what our intelligence can discern. Again, while
these are always necessary, they are in need of a higher source of
knowledge and stimulus that can only come from faith.
Our act of faith, which we do one way or another, should
get engaged with an objective faith that comes from God himself, our
Creator and Father, who continues to govern us through his providence.
Our act of faith should not just be a matter of what is empirical,
convenient, intellectually stimulating and the like.
This objective faith is not a fantasy that can be made up
by anyone depending on how a person is. It’s something that can be
known because even if God is so supernatural that we he will always be
a mystery to us, he is also very close to us. In fact, he is in the
most intimate part of our existence as well as being all around us.
Besides, he has revealed himself to us in full by sending
his Son to us, Jesus Christ, who left us with his word, his
sacraments, his Church. He has left us with his real presence in the
Eucharist.
If we would just have the proper disposition of faith that
comes together with hope and charity, we can always connect ourselves
with him, and somehow get to know his will and ways not only in a
generic way, but also in a concrete and specific way.
Thus, leaders should be men and women of faith, of genuine
piety, who know how to cruise in the material and spiritual world, in
the temporal and the eternal, in the mundane and the sacred.
True leaders should be able to lead everyone ultimately to
God making use of our natural conditions. They should be able to go
beyond our many human conditionings, not by avoiding or nullifying
them which would be quixotic, but by making use of them by the power
of God.
God and leadership should be together!
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