King, we ended another liturgical year. We are now beginning a new one
with the season of Advent, the proximate preparation for the birth of
Christ at Christmas.
The immediate thought that comes to mind in this
transition of the old and new liturgical years is that while we should
have the mind of ending well and also beginning well, we should
neither forget that this cycle of life is meant to catapult us to the
eternal life where there will be no more changes of seasons and shifts
of days and nights.
For this, a prayer that we need to retrieve from the
recesses of our memory can be very helpful. It’s the Glory Be, where
we find the words, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be
forever.”
Let’s put our mind and heart into these words if only to
remind ourselves strongly that we need to have a good sense of
continuity and consistency between our beginning and end, between the
past, present and future, and between time and eternity.
The words come after a previous part of the prayer where
we say, “Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” which
reminds us that the Triune God is the foundation of this continuity
and consistency. Otherwise, we would simply be dependent on our
estimation of things and our own powers, and would most likely get
confused, mistaken and lost.
We need to develop a strong and correct sense of
beginning. At the moment, many of us seem oblivious to this need. We
appear to live only for the present. The past and the future are
merely given a lick and a promise, that is, a shallow and fleeting
consideration.
It could be because our contemporary conditions often lead
us to act only for the moment. The problems and pressures of modern
life badger us to mind only what is at hand at present. They tend to
erode our sense of time. They seem to keep us narrow-minded,
short-sighted and Pavlovian in our reactions.
It’s one of the urgent challenges nowadays to develop this
abiding sense of beginning. It’s what gives us a greater perspective
and depth in life, a guide to help us assess things properly as we go
on and encounter all sorts of situations.
In fact, I would say that this sense of beginning should
be a crucial element in everyone’s character. All of us should have a
permanent, abiding sense of where we came from, for that would tell us
who and what we are, what our proper end is, how we ought to behave.
In short, it’s important that we always have an
accompanying sense of the ideal goals we need to pursue. We just can’t
have an anything-goes, free-for-all attitude in life. Peculiar to our
human condition is the effort to conform our life to an ideal, no
matter how puzzling and difficult to get that ideal may be.
We are not just what we are at the moment, as-is-where-is.
While there is something permanent in us, we also have something
dynamic that needs to be always worked out, defended, renewed, etc.
The sense of beginning imbues our life with meaning and direction.
We have to exert no insignificant effort to develop this
sense of beginning, continuity and consistency since with our growing
power to dominate the world in all its aspects, we always have the
tendency to convert our legitimate autonomy due to our freedom into
total independence and separation from God, our Father and Creator.
For this, we need to exert no insignificant effort to grow
deep and strong in humility, because pride can easily grip us and can
even trick us blind by appearing to us under the guise of
humility—false humility, of course. Without humility, the gift of
faith which we need cannot take root and function in us.
It’s important that whatever we do here on earth, starting
with our thoughts and desires all the way to our big enterprises and
projects, should be developed and pursued always in the context of the
beginning of things, during the creation of the universe, with God as
the source and creator of everything.
It’s there where we can find the pristine state of things
in general or the integrity of creation in its original state still
unspoiled by us with our sins. It’s there where we get to know the
nature of things and their purpose, where all the laws—physical,
natural and moral—can be gleaned.
with the season of Advent, the proximate preparation for the birth of
Christ at Christmas.
The immediate thought that comes to mind in this
transition of the old and new liturgical years is that while we should
have the mind of ending well and also beginning well, we should
neither forget that this cycle of life is meant to catapult us to the
eternal life where there will be no more changes of seasons and shifts
of days and nights.
For this, a prayer that we need to retrieve from the
recesses of our memory can be very helpful. It’s the Glory Be, where
we find the words, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be
forever.”
Let’s put our mind and heart into these words if only to
remind ourselves strongly that we need to have a good sense of
continuity and consistency between our beginning and end, between the
past, present and future, and between time and eternity.
The words come after a previous part of the prayer where
we say, “Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” which
reminds us that the Triune God is the foundation of this continuity
and consistency. Otherwise, we would simply be dependent on our
estimation of things and our own powers, and would most likely get
confused, mistaken and lost.
We need to develop a strong and correct sense of
beginning. At the moment, many of us seem oblivious to this need. We
appear to live only for the present. The past and the future are
merely given a lick and a promise, that is, a shallow and fleeting
consideration.
It could be because our contemporary conditions often lead
us to act only for the moment. The problems and pressures of modern
life badger us to mind only what is at hand at present. They tend to
erode our sense of time. They seem to keep us narrow-minded,
short-sighted and Pavlovian in our reactions.
It’s one of the urgent challenges nowadays to develop this
abiding sense of beginning. It’s what gives us a greater perspective
and depth in life, a guide to help us assess things properly as we go
on and encounter all sorts of situations.
In fact, I would say that this sense of beginning should
be a crucial element in everyone’s character. All of us should have a
permanent, abiding sense of where we came from, for that would tell us
who and what we are, what our proper end is, how we ought to behave.
In short, it’s important that we always have an
accompanying sense of the ideal goals we need to pursue. We just can’t
have an anything-goes, free-for-all attitude in life. Peculiar to our
human condition is the effort to conform our life to an ideal, no
matter how puzzling and difficult to get that ideal may be.
We are not just what we are at the moment, as-is-where-is.
While there is something permanent in us, we also have something
dynamic that needs to be always worked out, defended, renewed, etc.
The sense of beginning imbues our life with meaning and direction.
We have to exert no insignificant effort to develop this
sense of beginning, continuity and consistency since with our growing
power to dominate the world in all its aspects, we always have the
tendency to convert our legitimate autonomy due to our freedom into
total independence and separation from God, our Father and Creator.
For this, we need to exert no insignificant effort to grow
deep and strong in humility, because pride can easily grip us and can
even trick us blind by appearing to us under the guise of
humility—false humility, of course. Without humility, the gift of
faith which we need cannot take root and function in us.
It’s important that whatever we do here on earth, starting
with our thoughts and desires all the way to our big enterprises and
projects, should be developed and pursued always in the context of the
beginning of things, during the creation of the universe, with God as
the source and creator of everything.
It’s there where we can find the pristine state of things
in general or the integrity of creation in its original state still
unspoiled by us with our sins. It’s there where we get to know the
nature of things and their purpose, where all the laws—physical,
natural and moral—can be gleaned.
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