WE need to revive our spirit of
penance. This important
aspect of our spiritual life is in crisis at present.
Yes, our sense of penance is in crisis, mainly because
people are turning away from God who in the end is the one who sets
what is right and wrong, what is good and evil.
Our sense of penance is in crisis because our idea of what
is good and evil is now reduced to our personal preferences or, at
best, to what can be termed as our social, political, cultural or even
ideological consensus.
In short, we are not anymore referring things to God but
to ourselves. This is what is called the post-modern thinking which
views “realities as plural and subjective and dependent on the
individual’s worldview.”
It proclaims that there can be diverse interpretations of
truth. It rejects sharp distinctions and global, absolute and
universal truths. It sees truth as highly individualistic and
subjective, as absolutely bound by culture, time, place and all sorts
of conditionings.
Truth is we are pushed to get disengaged from God and from
others, and to plunge headlong into self-love. In fact, we need
special efforts to keep ourselves on course, on the right track in our
relationship with God and with others.
The media abet this situation. More mindful with ratings
and profitability, they practically leave behind the finer demands of
morality and spirituality. In fact, they deftly make use of legitimate
values to inject effects toxic to us.
We now have, for example, the celebrity syndrome where
physical beauty, talents, and accomplishments in the fields of sports,
arts and theater, etc., are exploited to market frivolity, vanity,
greed, sensuality, envy, etc.
Today’s movies and TV shows now seem to aim at riveting
and nailing our senses to the here and now, to the shallow and the
pleasurable, to our untamed subliminal instincts, while starving our
intelligence and our faith.
We need to know how to deal with these conditions. We need
to find a way to derive some good from them, since if we have hope,
some good can always be achieved from them.
It's good that we never forget this reality. Precisely,
the virtue of penance starts when we acknowledge these conditions
about ourselves. We should be humble enough to accept this reality.
But the virtue of penance goes farther than that. It grows
when we put up the necessary defenses against these enemies of our
soul and wage a lifelong ascetical struggle.
And for this penance to be a true virtue, it has to
include an indomitable hope that can survive even in the worst of
scenarios. In fact, this hope gets stronger the uglier also the
warfare gets. It's a hope based on God's constant mercy.
The virtue of penance also includes the desire and
practice of frequent recourse to the sacrament of penance. This
sacrament not only reconciles us with God, but also repairs whatever
damage our sin would cause on others and the Church in general.
aspect of our spiritual life is in crisis at present.
Yes, our sense of penance is in crisis, mainly because
people are turning away from God who in the end is the one who sets
what is right and wrong, what is good and evil.
Our sense of penance is in crisis because our idea of what
is good and evil is now reduced to our personal preferences or, at
best, to what can be termed as our social, political, cultural or even
ideological consensus.
In short, we are not anymore referring things to God but
to ourselves. This is what is called the post-modern thinking which
views “realities as plural and subjective and dependent on the
individual’s worldview.”
It proclaims that there can be diverse interpretations of
truth. It rejects sharp distinctions and global, absolute and
universal truths. It sees truth as highly individualistic and
subjective, as absolutely bound by culture, time, place and all sorts
of conditionings.
Truth is we are pushed to get disengaged from God and from
others, and to plunge headlong into self-love. In fact, we need
special efforts to keep ourselves on course, on the right track in our
relationship with God and with others.
The media abet this situation. More mindful with ratings
and profitability, they practically leave behind the finer demands of
morality and spirituality. In fact, they deftly make use of legitimate
values to inject effects toxic to us.
We now have, for example, the celebrity syndrome where
physical beauty, talents, and accomplishments in the fields of sports,
arts and theater, etc., are exploited to market frivolity, vanity,
greed, sensuality, envy, etc.
Today’s movies and TV shows now seem to aim at riveting
and nailing our senses to the here and now, to the shallow and the
pleasurable, to our untamed subliminal instincts, while starving our
intelligence and our faith.
We need to know how to deal with these conditions. We need
to find a way to derive some good from them, since if we have hope,
some good can always be achieved from them.
It's good that we never forget this reality. Precisely,
the virtue of penance starts when we acknowledge these conditions
about ourselves. We should be humble enough to accept this reality.
But the virtue of penance goes farther than that. It grows
when we put up the necessary defenses against these enemies of our
soul and wage a lifelong ascetical struggle.
And for this penance to be a true virtue, it has to
include an indomitable hope that can survive even in the worst of
scenarios. In fact, this hope gets stronger the uglier also the
warfare gets. It's a hope based on God's constant mercy.
The virtue of penance also includes the desire and
practice of frequent recourse to the sacrament of penance. This
sacrament not only reconciles us with God, but also repairs whatever
damage our sin would cause on others and the Church in general.
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