We are the sheepfold of Christ

IN his effort to convey very important truths of faith about us, Christ used literary devices, figures and images that we can easily identify and relate. It’s something that we should also do in our effort to carry out our Christian duty of evangelization. We need to see to it that we are effective in connecting with the people, in putting ourselves in the same wavelength and on the same page as they are when we preach or catechize. 

 One such image is that of the sheep and sheepfold. This was used in that gospel parable where Christ said that we are his sheep and that he is the door to the sheepfold. (cfr. Jn 10,1-10) The lesson of the parable is quite clear. We need to be always with Christ if we indeed would like to belong to Christ’s sheepfold and to God’s people and family as we should. 

 We have to be wary when we would just let ourselves be guided and led by our different human ways. While it is unavoidable that we always have to resort to some human means, we should never forget that everything should be done under the guidance of Christ. 

 For this, we always have to remember that Christ is always with us. He is actually intervening in our life in an abiding way. He is never indifferent to us. In fact, he always looks at us with great love and concern, and is ever ready to give us the help we need in any situation, especially when we find ourselves in great difficulties or, worse, when we get confused and lost through sin. 

 We just should train ourselves to be constantly aware of this truth of our faith to such an extent that whatever we do, we should do it always with Christ and for Christ. That is the ideal condition of our life, given our dignity as God’s image and likeness, children of his, sharers of his divine life and nature even while we are still here on earth. Let’s remember that the only thing we can do outside of Christ is to fall into sin sooner or later. 

 We need to learn as early as possible to come up with some effective plan of life which would always put us in an abiding and intimate relationship with Christ. And this, done the earlier the better, since with all the rapid developments in the world today, the possibility of us forgetting, ignoring and taking Christ for granted is very high. 

 We cannot deny that we are easily seduced by the many worldly, if not sinful, things around, desensitizing us from our need for Christ and spoiling our carnal selves while impoverishing our more important spiritual and supernatural dimensions of our life. 

 In this regard, the different levels of the Church should be very active, sparing no effort to evangelize the people. Hopefully the families and other institutions of our society can better respond to their duty to evangelize those under them or in the sphere of their influence. 

 It’s important, for example, that the families get better equipped to carry out this responsibility because it’s there where children are formed. The schools too should give due attention to this grave duty, always highlighting the spiritual and religious dimension of whatever knowledge and skills they are imparting. In fact, it’s the spiritual and religious dimensions that should always be given emphasis no matter how technical the education given in schools may be.

We should be Christ in the flesh

THIS is again an incredible thing we have to learn to handle. Christ wants us to have him in our flesh! He should be the flesh of our flesh. 

 We are reminded of this truth of our faith in that gospel episode where Christ told the crowd, “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.” (Jn 6,56) 

 Obviously, the Jewish crowd was astounded by these words. “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” they asked. Still, Christ stuck to these words, and told them that “unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” 

 Again, we just have to receive these words with faith. What Christ is telling us here is definitely something supernatural, and therefore mysterious. It’s a truth that can only be received in faith, something that God actually gives us in abundance through his grace. Let’s not waste time trying to analyze how these words can be true. As the Book of Proverbs puts it, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding.” (3,5) 

 All that we have to do is to say, Amen, and then start to develop the proper dispositions to convert this truth into a reality in our life. Christ wants to be flesh of our flesh precisely because we in the first place are patterned after him. All of us are meant to be ‘another Christ,’ irrespective of whether we are male or female, rich or poor, etc. 

 Of course, Christ can be flesh of our flesh only if in the first place we adapt and make as our own the very spirit of Christ. That’s because as Christ reminded us, “the Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” (Jn 6,63) 

 We need to spend time to process this truth of our faith, so that it would sink deep into our mind and heart and would start to show its effects on our whole life. What we can also gather from these words of Christ is that not only should we be ‘another Christ’ in spirit. We should also be ‘another Christ’ in the flesh! 

 Thus, if we are keenly and constantly aware of this truth, what we can conclude is that we truly have to take care of our body, making it pure and tough the way Christ’s body was pure and tough, able to absorb all the sufferings that he underwent for our salvation. 

 Yes, our body also plays an important, even crucial, role in our ultimate concern for human redemption. Given the way we have been created, we are always a unity of body and soul. We are neither just body alone, nor spiritual soul alone. Even if in our death, there is a separation of body and soul, that separation is only temporary. At the end of time, our body will be reunited with our soul, such that whether we would be in heaven or hell, we would be body and soul still. 

 We have to try our best that in our earthly and moral life, we can achieve this unity and consistency between the body and soul. Thus, Christ has to be both in our body and soul.

If we only believe in God

YES, indeed! If we only believe in God, we would be assured of our salvation, of the fullness of our dignity as persons and children of God. Yes, we would be saints, sharers in the very life and nature of God himself, as we are meant to be, since that is what God wants us to be. 

 We are reminded of this wonderful truth of our Christian faith in that gospel episode where Christ talked about the promise of eternal life for us as long as we believe in him as sent by God to give us “the way, the truth and the life.” In fact, he gives his own self as the Bread of Life. (cfr. Jn 6,44-51) 

 Whatever difficulty, problem, challenge we can have to pursue this ultimate goal of ours in our earthy journey can always be taken care of as long as we believe in God and correspond to the consequences of such belief. 

 It’s really up to us if we want to achieve our ultimate perfection. Insofar as God is concerned, he already has given us everything so we can be as he wants us to be—his image and likeness, his children. 

 We need to humble ourselves to enable us to believe in God even if what is promised us appears to be impossible, given the way we are, always hounded with all kinds of weaknesses, temptations and sins. 

 Let’s repeat those words spoken by a father importuning Christ to cure his dying child: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk 9,24) Let’s remember that while we always have to try our best to understand God’s will for us, making full use, in fact, of our God-given human powers, we actually are not expected to understand everything. 

 Given the spiritual and supernatural nature of God’s will and ways, we can only say that we will try our best to obey and follow God’s will and ways. We cannot deny that even if God has given us everything that we need to know, love and do God’s will and ways, the fact is that we often fail to make good use of all these means. Besides, we are always prone to go our own ways, rather than God’s ways. 

 We therefore have to familiarize ourselves with the dynamics of faith where a certain ‘leap in the dark’ would always be involved. As long as we have faith, even if we commit mistakes, things would just turn out right. God’s providence is so powerful and merciful that it can derive good from evil. There’s no need to over-think and over-react when things don’t come out as we expect. 

 St. Paul already assured us that if we do things in good faith, that is, when we do them with God and for God, everything, including our mistakes, will work out for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28) What is important is that we should always do things with God and for God. 

 In this regard, it is important that we study well the doctrine of our faith, enliven our life of piety, make many acts of faith during the day, have recourse to the sacraments, etc., so that we do everything with God and for God. 

 It also helps that we develop a certain healthy fear of God which is that holy fear of committing sin, of going against the will of God. That would assure us, especially when the unavoidable temptations come, that we would stick with God rather than with our own will alone.

God’s will and our will

THE ideal condition for us with regard to our own will is that it should unite itself with God’s will. It should identify itself with God’s will and channel it as faithfully as possible all throughout our earthly sojourn. 

 This should come as a no-brainer if we consider the basic truth of faith that we have been made the image and likeness of God. How God is should also be how we should be. We are meant to share in God’s own life and nature! 

 That’s, of course, an incredible piece of truth that we just have to learn to live by. If we are guided by our Christian faith as we should, since it in the end is what defines how we and everything else should be, then we can have no other conclusion to make than that one! 

 We are reminded of this aspect of our life in that gospel episode where Christ told the crowd that he came down from heaven not to do his own will but rather the will of the one who sent him. And that the will of the one who sent him was that he should not lose anything and anyone who was given to him, but that he would rather raise those who believe in him to eternal life. (cfr. Jn 6,38-40) 

 That episode in effect tells us that just as Christ, who is the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity, would only do the will of his Father, the one who sent him to save us, so should we also do nothing other than to do the will of God, our Father, who as our Creator, defines who we really are and how we should live our life. 

 This, in the end, is what is most important to us. It’s not just following our will which is, of course, indispensable to us. Otherwise, we would be undermining our very own freedom and our humanity itself. Whatever we do is done because we want it. It should be a fruit of our freedom. 

 But what is even more important is to conform our will to God’s will, which is most indispensable to us. Otherwise, we sooner or later would destroy our freedom and our humanity itself, since God is the very author and the very lawgiver of our freedom and our humanity. 

 This is a basic truth that we need to spread around more widely and abidingly, since it is steadily and even systematically forgotten and, nowadays, even contradicted in many instances. These days, we seem to be redefining and distorting the truth about ourselves as God made and defined it. We need to inculcate this truth to children as early as when they can understand and appreciate it. Then let’s give them the example of how it is lived. 

 God’s will is the source of everything in the universe. The whole of creation in all its existence, unity, truth, goodness and beauty starts from God’s will and is maintained by it. The entire range and scope of reality—be it material or spiritual, natural or supernatural, temporal or eternal—is “contained” there, not only theoretically but ‘in vivo.’ 

 It would be absurd to believe that the whole reality can be captured by our senses and feelings alone, or by our intelligence that is working on its own and producing the arts and the sciences that we now have and that we continue to discover.

We are all involved in evangelization

ON the Feast of St. Mark, the Evangelist, we are reminded that all of us, like St. Mark, are asked by Christ to also “go into the whole world and to proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” (Mk 16,15) 

 That is simply the effect and consequence of being a Christian who is supposed to be like Christ and to share his mission of evangelizing and redeeming everyone. We also have to apply to ourselves those words Christ told his apostles: “As the Father has sent me, so also I am sending you.” (Jn 20,21) 

 Evangelization is an integral and indispensable part of the whole mission of Christ—the redemption of mankind. While it may immediately concern itself in the transmission of the doctrine of our faith, it cannot go alone without being vitally and organically connected to the other aspects of human redemption. 

 It should not be understood simply as a matter of giving talks, classes, homilies and the like. It should not be understood simply as a matter of transmitting the doctrines and truths of our faith. We have to understand that truth is not simply a matter of doctrine. It has to involve the whole of human life. It just cannot be ideas. It has to be life itself. 

 We need to understand that evangelization is the transmission of Christian life that obviously involves doctrines that affect all our life. It should not just affect us intellectually or emotionally. It has to affect our whole life, our whole being, to such an extent that we get transformed into another Christ as we are meant to be. 

 As a consequence, for us to evangelize, we should feel the seriousness of Christ’s words commissioning us to go to the whole world and to preach the gospel. We should not just do evangelization purely as a human initiative. It is Christ who commands us to do so. We have to spend time to process this truth about evangelization in our mind and heart. 

 Then we obviously need the grace of God who actually gives it to us abundantly. The challenge is how we are corresponding to that grace. Do we study the gospel and the doctrines contained in it? Do we internalize them, making them flesh of our flesh and the spirit that animates our soul? 

 As an effect, a certain zeal to evangelize should develop in us. Do we feel the urge to really go out, meet people and talk with them, eager to edify them with our words and example? For this, we should be willing to make all kinds of sacrifices. And to carry out this duty, do we find ways that are adapted to how the people are? 

 We need to see to it that when we talk with the people, we manage to be in the same wavelength. We have to know how to be intellectual with the intellectuals, practical with the practical-minded, etc. In other words, we should try our best to be all things to all men, as St. Paul said, (cfr. 1 Cor 9,22) and as Christ himself personified. With God’s grace and our effort, we can hack it. 

 Again, we have to remember that the effectiveness of our evangelization can only come from our true identification with Christ. Effective evangelization can only be an overflow of our own sanctification, our own effort to be like Christ.

Feeding our desire for God

By Fr. Roy Cimagala Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) Talamban, Cebu City Email: roycimagala@gmail.com GIVEN our fickle and fragile human condition here on earth, we have to feel the need to feed our desire for God. We know all too well that such desire, when we have it, would not last long unless we do something to keep it burning. We are notorious for being easily carried away by merely worldly and temporal interests. 

 We are reminded of this need in that gospel episode where a crowd, after Christ fed them with loaves of bread and then left, felt the need to look for Christ. (cfr. Jn 6,22-29) They were surprised that they met Christ in the other side of the sea when they did not see him take a boat. They did not know, of course, that Christ walked on the water to be with his apostles on the boat to cross the sea. 

 When they asked how Christ got there, Christ replied: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” 

 This reply of Christ is crucial for us to understand. It gives us the way of how we can keep our desire for God burning as it should. It is when we properly receive Christ himself through the Bread of Life that he gives us. This Bread of Life is now freely and abundantly given to us through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. 

 It’s important that we receive Christ properly. That means that when we receive him in Holy Communion, we should not just do it out of a sense of mere compliance and formality. We should receive him with a living faith, and not just professed faith. 

 In that gospel episode cited above, the crowd asked how they, as a consequence of receiving Christ as the Bread of Life, can do the works of God. Christ simply told them: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” 

 In other words, we really should have a strong, deep and abiding faith in Christ. Thus, we need to avail of certain relevant means to keep that faith and the life of piety going, whatever the situation of our life. 

 We should avail of certain spiritual exercises, like prayer, sacrifices and mortifications, recourse to the sacraments, continuing spiritual and doctrinal formation, etc., to develop in us a true and deep devotion, sharpening our attraction always to Christ. 

 It’s important to realize that the net effect of all these should be a strong and abiding feeling of intimacy with God, a strong attraction to him. We should not allow our attractions to stop at the level of some earthly and temporal goods only. It should be God and his will and ways that should attract us most. 

 Let’s always remember that if it is not God who attracts us, then it is something else. And that something else can be none other than what is opposed to God. Remember Christ saying, “Whoever is not with me is against me…” (Mt 12,30) 

 We should be always mindful of our need to have the proper focus in our life. We should do everything to be able to have that focus, given the fact that in our earthly life, we cannot help but get immersed in so many earthly and temporal things.

When discouragement threatens us

THE story of the 2 disciples on their Emmaus (cfr. Lk 24,13-35) tells us that we can always count on God to help us, intervening in our lives in a most crucial way, whenever for one reason or another we find ourselves depressed and demoralized. We should never forget this truth of our faith, especially because in our life we will always have many occasions that can cause us frustration and sadness. 

 We need to trust in God’s providence and mercy. We have to learn to live a spirit of abandonment in the hands of God. Yes, if we have faith in God, in his wisdom and mercy, in his unfailing love for us, we know that everything will always work out for the good. If we are with God, we can always dominate whatever suffering can come our way in the same manner that Christ absorbed all his passion and death on the cross. 

 Let’s always remember that God, in his ineffable ways, can also talk to us through these crosses. In fact, he can convey precious messages and lessons through them. It would be good that we have a theological attitude toward them, and be wary of our tendency to react to them in a purely human way, based only on our senses and feelings and on worldly trends. 

 In all our affairs and situations in life, we should always go to God to ask for his help and guidance, and to trust his ways and his providence, even if the outcome of our prayers and petitions appears unanswered, if not, contradicted. 

 This should be the attitude to have. It’s an attitude that can only indicate our unconditional faith and love for God who is always in control of things, and at the same time can also leave us in peace and joy even in the worst of the possibilities. 

 Remember the Book of Ecclesiastes where it says that for everything there is a season, “a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal…” But everything is under God’s control. 

 We have to follow the example of the many characters in the gospel who, feeling helpless in the many predicaments they were in, earnestly rushed to Christ for some succor. They went to him unafraid and unashamed and they got what they wanted. 

 It may happen that we may not get what we want. And in this, we should not be too surprised or too worried. What is sure is that God always listens and gives us what is best for us. 

 In those situations, I believe we just have to allow ourselves to play in God’s game plan, in his abiding providence whose designs are beyond reckoning, or are way beyond our comprehension and appreciation. 

 In this life, we need to develop a sportsman’s attitude, since life is like a game. Yes, life is like a game, because we set out to pursue a goal, we have to follow certain rules, we are given some means, tools and instruments, we train and are primed to win and do our best, but defeats can always come, and yet, we just have to move on. 

 We need a sporting spirit because life’s true failure can come only when we choose not to have hope. That happens when our vision and understanding of things is narrow and limited, confined only to the here and now and ignorant of the transcendent reality of the spiritual and supernatural world.

Don’t panic when God tests us

IT’S something we should expect. It should be considered a given in our life, a fact of life. God can test us. He can seem to ask us to do something not only difficult but also impossible. 

 We are reminded of this aspect of our life in that gospel episode where Christ asked his disciples to feed the big crowd that gathered to listen to him. (cfr. Jn 6,1-15) “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He said this to test Philip, one of the apostles, because he himself knew what he was going to do. 

 And poor Philip could not help but say, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” But another apostle, Andrew said, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” And then the big miracle of the multiplication of the loaves of bread and fish took place. 

 We should realize that when God tests us, it is because he finds us ready for it and also because he wants us to grow more in our spiritual life, in our trust in him and in his providence. The test is an occasion to grow in some virtues. 

 So what we have to do is to enliven our faith and realize that God takes care of everything. We, of course, should do our part, even if what we can do would be hardly anything, just like the few loaves of bread and fish that the apostles provided for the big crowd. 

 We know that as long as we are with our Lord, everything will work out for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28) Not only our limitations but also our mistakes can lead to some good if referred to God. 

 We should train ourselves in strengthening our faith so that our reactions to God’s tests on us would not unnecessarily lead us to fall into stress, sadness or bitterness. 

 For this, certain spiritual exercises are needed, like repeating some ejaculatory prayers that express our trust and hope in God’s providence, making more acts of self-denial, having more recourse to the sacraments, etc. 

 Especially these days when we are easily seduced to react to things in a superficial way—like just being instinctive or emotional or just flowing with the fashions of the time—we need to realize that strengthening our spiritual exercises and having constant recourse to the supernatural means like the sacraments, is a must. In fact, it’s an urgent must. 

 If we have to do a million things just to survive, let alone, to keep ourselves physically fit, like having to eat, drink and exercise regularly, and of course, preparing the food and the other things needed, so should we do a number of things also to keep ourselves spiritually alive and healthy. 

 Obviously doing the spiritual things require a certain kind of effort since they are not dictated by our physical needs which we immediately feel. They depend a lot on the level of our faith and our correspondence to God’s grace. 

 And so, we just have to help one another to realize this need for spiritual and supernatural means to develop our spiritual and supernatural life, explaining things well with gift of tongue and giving good example to everyone.

Strengthening our belief in Christ

WE should try our best that our belief in Christ is strong and abiding, so much so that he is always in our mind and heart, and is the spirit behind every thought, word and deed that we do. This is actually what is ideal for us, since Christ is the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our humanity damaged by sin. 

 We are reminded of this truth of our faith in that gospel of St. John where it says: “The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things. But the one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy. For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.” (Jn 3,31-34) 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to take Christ for granted, considering him only as a historical man who lived in the past and is now no more than a memory. He is both God and man who is alive up to now and all through eternity, and is actively intervening in our lives. 

 He is the fullness of the revelation of God to us, and offers us the “the way, the truth and the life” so we can manage to be on the right path amid the twists and turns of our earthly pilgrimage. 

 In this particular above-cited gospel, we are told that Christ relays the very words of God, words that would lead us to eternal life. This part of the gospel should push us to continually study and meditate on the gospel, each time drawing from it practical resolutions that should little by little and steadily make us to be “another Christ” as we should. 

 Gospel-reading and spiritual reading in general should be a staple practice in our daily life. That way our spiritual operations—our thoughts, desires, intentions, down to our imagination, memory, feelings and passions—would be inspired and guided by Christ’s words and would channel the very spirit of Christ. 

 We should make this practice popular to counter the strong and tight grip of the new technologies that seduce us to fall into self-indulgence, leading us to only satisfy our emotional, intellectual if not carnal curiosities. For this, we obviously have to follow what Christ himself told us clearly—that if want to follow him, we should deny ourselves and carry the cross. (cfr. Mt 16,24) 

 We should do everything that would help us make Christ alive in our lives. We should avoid ignoring Christ, overcoming that predicament once expressed by St. Augustine who said in this regard: “You were with me, and I was not with you.” 

 Everyday, we should go through certain practices that would make the presence of Christ in our life strong and abiding. If in our bodily life, we need to eat and drink, do some exercise, engage in some work to survive, we should also do something appropriate to survive in our spiritual life. We need to pray, do some sacrifices, develop virtues and avail of the sacraments. 

 We have to be realistic in developing our spiritual life, in our relation with God, that in the end is the most important aspect of our life here on earth.

Proactive in helping and saving

THIS is the attitude to develop and to have if we are to be like God as we should, since we have been created in his image and likeness. We should not be reactive in extending help to others, waiting for them to give us some strong reasons to help them. Rather, we have to take the initiative. We are reminded of this truth of our faith in that gospel of St. John where it is said that: 

 “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” (Jn 3,16-17) 

 It’s undeniable, of course, that with the way we usually are, this standard is difficult if not impossible for us to achieve. But that’s the challenge we have to face. With God’s grace and our earnest efforts, we can hack it. 

 Let’s have the attitude of the brothers, James and John, who simply said, “Possumus,” that is, yes, we can, when Christ asked them if they were willing to drink of the cup Christ was to drink and to be baptized with which Christ was to be baptized, that is, to suffer and die with Christ. (cfr. Mk 10,39) 

 Let’s remember that what is impossible with us is always possible with Christ. Let’s just be game in reconciling ourselves with this very challenging aspect of Christian life. And let’s gradually develop the proper attitude and virtues. Actually, everyday we are given many opportunities to develop these attitude, practices and virtues. 

 This is what true love is all about. It is given gratuitously, without counting the cost nor expecting any reward. In fact, love is made more pure when instead of being rewarded for it, we get the opposite—we are misunderstood, ignored, maligned even. 

 In this regard, it helps that we become very mindful and thoughtful of the others. We need to be mindful because we have to know what’s going around us. We should never be aloof and indifferent. We have to be aware not only of things and events that are taking place, whether near or far, but also and most especially of persons, starting with the one right beside us. 

 In this way, we become active agents in the itinerary of our history as well as ministers of God in the very lives of people. We should not forget that our life is always tied to the lives of others, and that we too have a role to play in their lives, obviously in different ways and in varying degrees. 

 At least, when we are aware of our togetherness and are actively maintaining it, whatever good we have would always be shared by being multiplied, and whatever evil or misfortune we have would also be shared by being divided among us. That’s how things work. 

 And not only should we be mindful. We also need to be thoughtful. We should think ahead of how things are developing and of what we can do to help shape its evolution. Life is always a work in progress, and there are goals, the ultimate and the subordinate, to reach. We should not get stuck with the here and now. 

 We should learn to read the signs of the times and to prepare ourselves for whatever indications or warnings they are giving us. This way we put ourselves in condition to influence the flow of things, and to somehow already fashion the future, keeping always in mind the ultimate goal of mankind—our salvation.

Taking care of our doctrinal formation

THAT gospel episode where a leading Jew, Nicodemus by name, asked Christ about what was to be born again (cfr. Jn 3,7-15) tells us that we need to give due attention and care for our doctrinal formation. And that’s simply because our Christian faith, supernatural and mysterious as it is, also comes to us in the form of doctrines that we need to study and understand. 

 We need to see this vital connection between God and the doctrine that we need to study and meditate on. Hopefully, we assimilate this doctrine such that it becomes flesh of our flesh. 

 Our usual problem is that we tend to disconnect the two, raising all sorts of reasons why such vital link between God and the doctrine cannot be possible, if not always, then from time to time. 

 There’s obviously some point to why the doctrine cannot fully capture God and his teachings. And that’s because of the human elements involved in the doctrine. But in spite of that, we need to realize that in its substance and in its core, the doctrine is actually divine. 

 We just have to know how to distinguish between its divine character and its human elements that would unavoidably include some limitations. This is actually part of our human condition and we just have to learn how to live with it. 

 Truth is God always intervenes in our life and makes use of our humanity to come and be with us. We should not waste time making a big fuss about the human limitations that accompany this abiding divine interventions. 

 That’s why God through Christ in the Spirit has endowed the Church with the proper power and authority to teach his doctrine integrally and infallibly, much like we as a nation entrust our government with certain power to govern us in spite of the many limitations in the men running the government. 

 Except that in the case of God in relation to the Church, the act of empowering goes far more radically than what takes place in our empowering of our government to rule over us. 

 We need to consider the Church doctrine as the true and most precious doctrine that can bring us to our ultimate joy and end. It is not just a man-made doctrine that can give us some benefits and advantages, some social or economic progress, but not our ultimate supernatural end. 

 We also need to see the Church doctrine as the proper spirit that should animate any human doctrine we may make for some practical purpose we may have in the different aspects of our life—personal, family, professional, social, political, etc. 

 Thus, it is essential that we learn to know the Church doctrine or the doctrine of our faith such that this doctrine becomes the moving spirit behind our every thought, word and deed, behind our every plan and project, big or small, ordinary or extraordinary. 

 There is need for us to know how to relate the doctrine of our faith to our daily affairs and to our very serious and big projects and plans, and vice versa. At the moment, this expertise is hardly known, its need hardly felt. 

 This is the challenge we are facing today as we tackle the increasingly rapid, complex and complicated developments. Let’s hope that we can overcome whatever biases we have that hinder the appreciation of our basic need for Church doctrine in our human affairs.

What is to be born again?

BORN again! That is very popular expression these days, thank God. But I believe we have to know what truly it is and what it involves. The expression can come from that gospel episode where Christ told a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, Nicodemus by name, that he has to be born again to be able to see the Kingdom of God. (cfr. Jn 3,1-8) 

 Obviously, the poor Nicodemus did not understand what Christ meant. “How can a man once grown old be born again?” he asked. And so, Christ had to explain. “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.” 

 These words of Christ should make us aware that to be a man is not simply a matter of being born in the flesh, subject only to the laws of nature. While all the material beings have a certain spirit also, that of man is not simply a natural spirit, but the very spirit of God himself that would truly make us God’s image and likeness, as God wants us to be. 

 Let’s remember that when God created Adam, he first took clay and shaped it in a form of man. But that clay form did not become truly alive until God breathed into it the breath of life. (cfr. Gen 2,7) But as we all know, that state of original justice of man was lost when both our first parents fell into sin. That’s when we, their descendants, would be born not anymore in the state of original justice and in need of recovering such state. 

 Thus, there is the need to be “born again,” so that we should not be born only in the flesh but also in the Spirit of God that gives us the true life, the life proper to us as God’s image and likeness, children of his, sharers of his divine life and nature. 

 And that we can now be born again in the Spirit is made possible because of the redemptive work of Christ who regained for us the Spirit to be with us all throughout our life. It is this life in the Spirit that would enable us to enter, understand and live the spiritual and supernatural life meant for us, going beyond what we merely understand and live in the level of the material, the temporal and the natural. 

 With the sacraments, first with Baptism that would incorporate us into the life of Christ, then Confirmation that would strengthen our life with Christ, then the Holy Eucharist that would nourish our life with Christ, and all the other sacraments, we can manage not only to be born again in the Spirit but also to live with God in our earthly sojourn. 

 It’s important that we enliven and strengthen this life in the Spirit all the time. For this, we have to do our part to correspond what God in Christ through the Spirit has provided us. Thus, if we have to do a number of things to maintain our natural self, we should also do the relevant things to maintain and grow in our spiritual and supernatural life. 

 Thus, if we have to eat and sleep, take shower, exercise, study, etc., etc., to keep us naturally healthy, we need to do certain spiritual exercises like prayer, sacrifices, ascetical struggles, etc., and to avail ourselves of the supernatural means like the sacraments to keep ourselves spiritually and supernaturally alive! 

 That’s what to be “born again” involves.

The Easter life

THE gospel reading of the 2nd Sunday of Easter which is also called the Divine Mercy Sunday (cfr. Jn 20,19-31) can very well tell us about what Easter life is all about, what life after Christ’s resurrection is all about insofar as we are concerned. 

 The gospel starts by telling us about Christ’s appearance to his stunned disciples, showing them his hands and his side to convince them that he really was Christ. Then he told them that they had the same mission that Christ had. “As the Father has sent me, I also send you,” he said. Then he breathed on them the Holy Spirit such that whose sins they forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins they retain, they are retained. 

 Then by some twist of fate, Thomas, one of the disciples, was not around at that time. And when told about Christ’s appearance to them, he did not believe. “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe,” he said. 

 Thus, 8 days later, Christ again appeared to them, this time with Thomas around. He called Thomas, showed him his hands and side, and that was only then that Thomas believed, saying, “My Lord and my God!” From a doubting Thomas, he became an intensely believing Thomas. 

 All these details of the gospel tell us that living the Easter life means that we should realize ever deeply and abidingly that we have the same mission as Christ, pursuing it in different ways and in accord to one’s status in the world and in the Church. We have to continue the work of redemption whether we are clerics, religious or laypeople. 

 In this regard, it is important that our faith is always strong and deep, and that we show that faith always in deeds, since that would convert that faith into real charity which is what we ultimately should achieve. In other words, we need to be strong in faith and active in good works, doing all sorts of apostolate wherever we are. 

 Easter life, in effect, is life in the Holy Spirit. We have to always strengthen this awareness about our life that would make us always feel that we are never alone, since God in the Holy Spirit is always with us. 

 We have to feel very much at home with this very wonderful reality and start to correspond to it as we ought. We have to go beyond our earthly dimensions and enter into the more fascinating world of the spiritual and the supernatural. 

 This does not mean that we escape from our earthly reality to be in the spiritual and supernatural reality. No. It means that while deeply immersed in our mundane conditions, we also have to learn to go beyond them to be with God. This is what the word ‘transcendence’ means. 

 To be sure, we are enabled to do that, because of our intelligence and will. These are powerful faculties that would enable us to know and to love, and eventually to enter in the lives of others and ultimately to be with God. But more than that, we are given God’s grace that would enable us to enter and to share God’s supernatural life and nature. 

 This is what Easter life is all about!

Christ’s initiative and our correspondence

FRIDAY in the Octave of Easter has this gospel reading about Christ taking the initiative after his own resurrection to reveal himself to his disciples. (Jn 21,1-14) This kind of behavior is always a given in Christ. We should try our best to be quick to correspond to this reality and do it as best that we can also. Let’s remember that as St. John also said in his First Letter, we can manage to love because God loved us first. (cfr. 4,19) 

 We should not doubt this basic truth of our faith regarding Christ’s relationship with us. Much less should we ignore it. We need to enliven this truth of our faith and, in fact, make it a constant and driving element in our very consciousness. 

 That is why it is important that from time to time, we pause and consider this truth so that it would really sink into our consciousness, making it the original and ultimate shaping and directing principle of our thoughts, desires, words and deeds. 

 Let’s always remember that God in Christ through the Holy Spirit will always love us, irrespective of how we are toward him. In fact, even when we stray from the path proper to us, God’s concern and love for us increases. This truth has been vividly dramatized in those parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the prodigal son. 

 We should learn how to react to this tremendous love God has for us. We have to learn how to repay love with love. And that means that we should try our best to identify ourselves as completely as possible with God’s will and ways. That’s how love works. 

 Because of God’s love for us, he makes himself man in Christ, even going to the extent making himself like sin without committing any sin, just to identify himself with us. He showers us with many good things and ultimately gives us mercy since we cannot avoid falling into sin one way or another. 

 If we have to repay God’s love with love, then we have to do our best to identify ourselves with him, by getting to know and to live his very own will and ways as revealed to us in full by Christ and made perpetual through the Holy Spirit. 

 That is why we have to come up with a plan of life that would effectively capture and put into action this truth about us in our relation with God. We need a time for prayer. We need to study the doctrine of our faith. We need to undertake ascetical struggle, given our weaknesses, limitations and the enemies of God and our soul as well as the spiritual and supernatural goal that we have to pursue. 

 We need to become true contemplatives even while immersed in the things of this world. That means that our temporal affairs should be no hindrance in our abiding relationship with God. In fact, they should become the occasion and the means to keep us with God. Even the unavoidable negative things in our life should be a reason to go and to be with God. 

 That’s how our correspondence to God’s tremendous and abiding love for us should look like. This should be the normal way of life for us. We need to help each other to cultivate this kind of culture in our society and in the world in general!

Only Christ gives us the real peace

LET’S be clear about this. Only in Christ can we have the real peace, one that can always be enjoyed despite the twists and turns of our earthly life, marked by a lot of challenges, trials, difficulties, failures, and a long etcetera of negative things. 

 “Peace be with you,” he told his disciples when he suddenly appeared before them after the two disciples whom Christ approached on their way to Emmaus, narrated to the others what happened during their journey. (cfr. Lk 24,35-48) 

 Of course, the disciples were startled and terrified. They thought they were seeing a ghost. That’s when Christ reassured them that it was truly him by showing the nail marks on his hands and feet. 

 This gospel episode simply tells us that Christ is truly God and is our savior. It validates everything that he said about who he was and is and about who we really are. And that he cares for us always. More than that he always gives us this gift of peace which is different from the peace that the world offers us. (cfr. Jn 14,27) 

 Of course, with that Christ-given peace comes joy also. The joy and peace that comes from God are always a fruit of a continuing spiritual battle to keep God’s love burning in us. 

It’s a joy and peace that is compatible with the cross. It is not afraid of suffering which also has an important role to play in our life and in the redemption of mankind. It’s a joy and peace that comes as a consequence of faith and a growing identification we ought to develop with Christ who bore all the sins of men and the evils of this world and conquered them with his resurrection. In short, it’s a joy and peace that expresses guaranteed victory even if at the moment we are still fighting and suffering. It’s an all-weather kind of joy and peace. 

 If we would only believe this truth of faith about peace, then we somehow would know how to have peace in our mind and heart even if we have to go through the unavoidable battles and episodes of anger and agitation, of fears, worries and the like in our life. 

 The secret, of course, is to be with God, to identify ourselves with Christ, following his teachings and example. With Christ, we would know how to deal with all the elements of our life that are contrary to our dignity as children of God, and yet not eaten up by bitter zeal, anger, hatred and the like. In fact, we would know how to always live charity whose manifestation will include peace of mind and heart. 

 It’s important that we have peace in our mind and heart because that is the requirement for us to see things clearly and objectively, to make judgments fairly and to do things well. With peace, we can manage to be hopeful and happy even while still cruising in this vale of tears of ours. 

 Without peace, we can only manage the opposite. Our biases will dominate the way we perceive things, make judgments and do things in general. And our suffering continues and can worsen. 

 While peace is an effect of charity, it is also what keeps charity going. There is always an intimate mutual relationship between charity and peace. The more love for God and others we have, the more peace we will also enjoy. And vice-versa—the more peace we have, our love for God and others would also grow.

God is always around

THE story of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus (cfr. Lk 24,13-35) reminds us that God is always around. We should make this truth of faith a strong and constant conviction of ours, especially in moments and situations where we find ourselves in difficulties. We should never allow ourselves to sink in some discouragement and depression because God would always be around to help. 

 As the story goes, these two disciples were sad after witnessing the death of Christ on the cross. They thought he was the one who would save Israel from bondage. Without knowing it, Christ approached them and engaged them in some conversation that left them astonished with what they heard from him. Finally, they recognized him at the breaking of the bread when they invited him to take supper with them. 

 We just have to remember that God never abandons us and is, in fact, all ready and prompt to come to our aid, albeit in ways that we may not realize, at first, just like what happened in that story of the two disciples. 

 We should not allow our feelings of sadness to be so dominant and pervasive that we shut off God’s many and often mysterious ways of helping us. If we do not pose a deliberate impediment to God’s ways, there is always hope. In our darkest moments, some light will always come piercing and dispelling the darkness away. 

 In so many ways, God will remind us, as Christ did to the two disciples, about the meaning of all human suffering, and of how our suffering can be a way to our joy, to our fulfillment as a man and as a child of God. He will explain to us why we have suffering in this life and how we can take advantage of it to derive something good from it. 

 And like the two disciples, let us feel reassured by these truths of our faith. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Lk 24,32) they said in amazement. 

 We should learn to trust in the loving and all-wise providence of God, and while we have to do our part, we should also realize that we are not meant to solve all our problems in life. We just have to abandon ourselves in God’s providence. He will be the one to resolve, complete and perfect everything. 

 “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” (Mt 6,26) 

 With these words, Christ clearly tells us to be trusting of God’s ever-wise and merciful Providence. He will provide everything that we need, especially the one that matters most to us. We may experience some privations, some losses, etc., but if we stick with God, we know that everything will always work out for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28) 

 With all the things that we have to contend with in this life, we certainly need to have a healthy sense of trust in God’s loving and wise providence, abandoning ourselves in his will and ways that often are mysterious to us and can appear to be contrary to what we would like to have. 

 A healthy spirit of abandonment in God’s hands is necessary even as we exhaust all possible human means to achieve our goals or simply to tackle all the challenges, trials and predicaments of our life. We should never forget this truth of our faith.

The ultimate purpose of our freedom

MARY Magdalene, a big-sinner-turned-saint, teaches us a great lesson about freedom. And that is for us to realize that the ultimate purpose of our freedom is to look for Christ, for God, in everything we do and have in this world. In this life, we are always confronted with a choice—whether we want to be with God and or simply to be by ourselves. We have to make the proper choice. And that’s what our freedom is all about. 

 As the gospel narrates, (Jn 20,11-18) Mary Magdalene, despite the heavy load of her past, went early to the tomb of Christ and when she found it empty, chose to sit there weeping. She was bent in looking for Christ who gave her the greatest liberation from her dark past. And she was richly rewarded. She became one of the first, if not the very first, to see the resurrected Christ. 

 Many people, of course, have their own ideas of freedom. But if we really want to know what it is, where it can be found, how it should be exercised, etc., we have nothing to do other than to look at God who is the source and end of freedom. He is the one who gives the law proper to our use of freedom. 

 And what can we see in God with respect to freedom? The direct answer is that God did everything for us completely free, without any special reason, without any pressure. We can say that he did all those wonderful things for us because he just wants to. In our local lingo, he did them because “trip ko lang!” 

 What he did and continues to do to us can only be characterized as being completely free. It was pure grace, unadulterated gratuitousness. That in the end is what freedom is all about. 

 He created us freely. There was no necessity on his part to create us. But he did it just the same. He endowed us with the best things, such that we became his image and likeness, adopted children of his. There was no need for him to do that to us. But again, he did it just the same. 

 And even if we spoiled his original design for us by falling into sin, by going against his will which can only be good for us, he did not leave us and, instead, promised to redeem us. He would have lost nothing nor gained anything if he would have just allowed us to get lost. But, no, he preferred to save us. 

 There was no necessity for him to send his son who became man to redeem us. But he did it—completely freely. The son, Christ, did not have to offer his life on the cross to save us. There are many other ways to do that. But he chose it freely because it was the best way to save us, respecting our human nature that needs also to be responsible for our salvation. 

 He is willing to assume all our sins without committing sin. He offers us boundless mercy for the taking. He did all these completely freely, completely gratuitously. He actually gains nothing, but we gain everything if we follow him in living that kind of freedom. 

 We need to process these considerations of freedom slowly so as to reflect them little by little in our lives. It will take time and a lot of effort to imbibe this kind of freedom which can only be the genuine one. Outside of this, our idea of freedom can never be right. It can have some aspects of freedom, but not the whole, true one. 

 Again, the ultimate purpose of our freedom is to be with God! Let’s not waste it on other things which are meant only to bring us to God in the end.

Unafraid to proclaim the Good News

AFTER the resurrection of Christ, the guards of the tomb went to the chief priests to report what had happened. But they were told, obviously to deny again the divinity of Christ, that his body was stolen and to spread that lie to explain why Christ’s body could not be found anymore. 

 It is important that we proclaim with conviction the resurrection of Christ, because even if there are many elements that can show Christ’s divinity and his claim to be our savior, his resurrection constitutes the most convincing proof of this truth about him. 

 As the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms, “The Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of our faith in Christ, a faith believed and lived as the central truth by the first Christian community; handed on as fundamental by Tradition; established by the documents of the New Testament; and preached as an essential part of the Paschal mystery along with the cross.” (638) 

 And it adds: “The mystery of Christ's resurrection is a real event, with manifestations that were historically verified, as the New Testament bears witness.” (639) 

 We should have no doubt about Christ’s resurrection so that we can have it as a driving force to our efforts to spread the Good News about everything that Christ has taught us about ourselves and about everything else. 

 Especially nowadays when a good part of the world is distancing itself from God, from faith and religion, due to its apparent growth of power due to the advances in the sciences and technologies, there is a great need to bring Christ at the center of all our human affairs. 

 Thus, we need to constantly and forcefully proclaim the gospel where the truth about Christ and ourselves can be found. After all, proclaiming the gospel is one central duty of every follower of Christ. In fact, our Lord told his disciples just before ascending into heaven: “Go into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mk 16,15) 

 Though addressed directly to his disciples, we have to understand that these words are meant also, in varying degrees and ways, to all of us, members of Christ’s mystical body, his Church. 

 We just have to feel the unfading urgency of this command, and overcome whatever prejudice or obstacle that may still keep us from undertaking this important work. 

 We should echo St. Paul’s sentiments: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” (1 Cor 9,16) Like St. Paul, we need to relish the full weight with which Christ commissioned him to fulfill this task. 

 We just have to understand also that proclaiming the gospel is not just an intellectual affair. It involves our whole being, and it requires nothing less than our conversion, and not just our attaining knowledge and familiarization of Christ’s words. 

 In other words, proclaiming the gospel requires our living it, that is, living the very life of Christ who said: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” (Jn 3,16) 

 Proclaiming the gospel requires assimilating it, identifying ourselves with it, making it the flesh of our flesh. It should not just be a possession, a property that we can have and then dispose. It has to be our very own life.

Christ’s resurrection our supreme joy

THAT’S right! With the resurrection of Christ, we have our greatest joy since we are now assured of our own redemption as long as we also do our part of the deal. Christ has given us everything to recover us from our self-inflicted alienation from God. The only thing that can stand in the way is when we obstinately refuse to believe this truth of our faith. 

 With his resurrection, Christ has finally conquered death itself and with it all the malice of sin and evil. It’s the victory that recovers our original dignity as image and likeness of God and nothing less than God’s children in Christ, the dignity we lost because of sin. 

 This ultimate victory even enhances that dignity, since it involves God becoming like us so that we can be like him! It’s this very sublime exchange and sharing that comprises the supreme good that can happen to us. Yes, we are meant to be one with God, sharing his very life and nature, since we are his image and likeness, children of his. 

 Some people have considered it a Pyrrhic victory since it involves quite a tremendous cost. It’s like saying that the resurrection of Christ has given us only a zero-sum triumph, since what we gain with it is almost the same as what we lose. 

 This is, of course, a very poor understanding of this truth of faith. While it’s true that this culmination of the redemptive work of Christ on us entailed nothing less than his life, it’s also true that that death has been converted into a gateway to our salvation with his resurrection. What matters is what happens in the end, with an effect that will be for always. 

 If we believe this truth and live it ourselves, identifying everything in our life with the life and the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, then we too can partake of this ultimate victory. 

 We should not forget that it will involve nothing less than the offering of our life. Before that, it obviously will entail a lot of suffering—the cross, in other words—which Christ already warned us about when he said that if we want to follow him, then we should deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. 

 It would be nice if we can quit wasting time by fussing about this truth, and simply proceed to live it, acquiring the relevant attitude and skills to put it into practice. Yes, with this truth about our assured ultimate victory in Christ, we ought to have the confidence and serenity in going about the affairs of our life. Plus, a driving sense of responsibility that should push us to do things for others without counting the cost. 

 We just have to deepen our belief that with Christ’s resurrection, sin and death have been definitively conquered, and a new life in God is given to us. We are now a new creation, with the power of Christ to conquer sin and death and everything else that stands in the way of our becoming true children of God. 

 And so, we have every reason to think that we can live forever in Christ over whom death no longer has dominion. In spite of whatever, we have every reason to be happy and confident, as long as we are faithful to Christ.

Our need for the cross

IT’S Good Friday! The mood, the atmosphere takes on a very dark hue. And despite the many secularizing and paganizing elements around these days, somehow we assume a most serious face as we commemorate, bring to mind, and liturgically make present, the very passion and death by crucifixion of the Son of God, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. 

 Yes, the readings are long, (cfr. Jn 18,1-19,42) but thanks to God, we have learned how to bear the experience and to make alive and be part of the very events narrated in those readings. We try to draw meaningful and spiritually vivifying insights from the prayers offered on this day. 

 The main lesson we can derive from this celebration of the death of Christ is that we have a great and essential need for the cross of Christ. We need to know the purpose of the cross because the cross, through Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, is where everything in our life is resolved. Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is the culmination of Christ’s redemptive mission on earth. 

 Yes, Christ preached. He performed miracles. But in the end, he had to offer his life on the cross because no matter what he did, our sins are such that they simply cannot be undone and forgiven through the preaching of the truths of our faith and the tremendous effects of the miracles. Christ has to offer his life on the cross! 

 In other words, the cross and all the suffering it involves are the consequences of our sins which need to be forgiven and undone. And that can only happen when with Christ, we go through the consequences of our sin by suffering them with Christ on the cross. Thus, the cross of our sins has been converted by Christ into the cross of our salvation. That’s how we have to understand the cross and all the suffering it involves. 

 We should not be afraid of the cross. In fact, we should be looking forward to have it if only to help in Christ’s continuing work of our redemption. We need to understand that unless we love the cross, we can never say that we are loving enough. Of course, we have to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God wills it—the way Christ loves it—that we can really say that we are loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to limit our loving to ways and forms that give us some benefits alone, be it material, moral or spiritual. While they are also a form of love, they are not yet the fullness of love. 

 We have to realize more deeply that the cross heals what is sick and wounded in us, resurrects what is dead, forgives what is sinful. There is no evil in man and in the world that cannot be handled properly by Christ’s cross. That’s why we should not feel at all hopeless when we find ourselves in a deep mess, often created by our own selves, our own foolishness. 

 The cross symbolizes all evil and sin, and with Christ embracing it and dying on it, the cross gets transformed from being a tree of death to a tree of life. It effects our redemption. We should not be afraid of the cross. In fact, we should learn to love it.

Love consummated and made perpetual

THAT, I believe, is the main message of the gospel we have on Holy Thursday. (cfr. Jn 13,1-15) It’s about what happened during the Last Supper where aside from instituting the two sacraments of Holy Orders and the Holy Eucharist, Christ showed his apostles how love that is consummated by him in his total self-giving to us can be made perpetual. 

 The gospel started by stating that Christ, upon knowing that his hour of supreme sacrifice was coming, continued to love his people and “loved them to the end.” That’s when he instituted the two sacraments and showed his apostles how this consummate love of his can be made perpetual. 

 That’s when he proceeded to wash their feet that shocked them. Even Peter at first refused to be given such treatment. But Christ insisted, telling them, “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” (Jn 13,14-15) 

 There’s no other way to imitate that consummate love of Christ for us and to cooperate perpetually in the Christ’s continuing work of redemption, his supreme manifestation of his love for us. As Christ told his apostles, we too have to learn how to lower ourselves to be able to serve everyone, which is what loving in its true essence is all about. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to get self-absorbed, the very opposite of what we are supposed to be—to think always of the others and to serve them unstintingly. This tendency is actually the stupidest thing we can get enmeshed in. But it’s kind of automatic in us to get self-absorbed. We have to be more aware of this disturbing reality and do something about it non-stop. 

 We have to do everything to acquire, develop and enrich this attitude of always wanting to serve and not to be served in ourselves and among ourselves, inspiring and inculcating it in others as much as we can, for it is what is truly proper of us all. 

 With God’s grace, we have to exert effort to overcome the understandable awkwardness and tension involved in blending the natural and the supernatural aspects of this affair, as well as the expected resistance we can give, due to the effects of our sins. 

 We can make use of our daily events to cultivate this attitude. For example, as soon as we wake up from sleep in the morning, perhaps the first thing we have to do is address ourselves to God and say “Serviam” (I will serve). It’s the most logical thing to do, given who God is and who we are in relation to him. 

 And “Serviam” is a beautiful aspiration that can immediately put us in the proper frame of mind for the day. It nullifies Satan’s “Non serviam” and our tendency to do our own will instead of God’s, which is what sin, in essence, is all about. 

 And as we go through our day, let’s see to it that everything we do is done as a service to God and to others. Let’s not do them merely out of self-interest or self-satisfaction. That kind of attitude is highly poisonous to us, ruinous to our duty to love. Sooner or later, we will find ourselves completely engulfed by self-centeredness. 

 This is how the consummate love of Christ for us is made perpetual.

When bad things happen

WE should be ready when bad things happen in our life. In fact, we should expect the worst in life, like when death, which cannot be solved anymore, would finally come to us. Before death, we should be ready when cases of severe misfortune or harsh crisis of some kind come our way. 

 We are somehow reminded of this need for readiness in the gospel reading of Wednesday of Holy Week. (cfr. Mt 26,14-25) There Christ was talking about his impending betrayal by no less than one of his apostles and did not run away from it since he knew it was his time to consummate his redemptive mission. 

 We should try our best to have the mind of Christ when bad things happen to us. If we still can have time and find some solutions to these problems and difficulties, then by all means, let’s do it. But if there is no more time or that solutions are hard to find or, worse, when no more solutions can be found, let’s see to it that we do not fail to go through these situations always with Christ. 

 Of course, when times are good, we should always enjoy them with Christ too. Otherwise, those good things can easily turn bad for us. In fact, there should be no time, no circumstance, no situation in our life when we can distance ourselves from Christ. 

 We therefore need to develop a certain discipline where Christ should always be in our mind and heart whatever the circumstance or situation is. We cannot deny that we tend to forget Christ in certain situations and prefer to deal with them simply with our own human powers. Obviously, we have to make full use of our human powers and faculties, but we should never fail to depend on God, on Christ, first of all! 

 We should always go to Christ who is “the way, the truth and the life” since he surely is the one who will show us how to handle the difficulties we encounter in life. In all our affairs and situations in life, we should always go to God, to Christ, to ask for his help and guidance, and to trust his ways and his providence, even if our prayers and petitions appears unanswered, if not, contradicted. 

 This should be the attitude to have. It’s an attitude that can only indicate our unconditional faith and love for God who is always in control of things, and at the same time can also leave us in peace and joy even at the worst of the possibilities. 

 Remember the Book of Ecclesiastes where it says that for everything there is a season, “a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal…” But everything is under God’s control, and even if we are capable of eternity, we just the same “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” (3,1ff) 

We just have to trust him. We have to follow the example of the many characters in the gospel who, feeling helpless in the many predicaments they were in, earnestly rushed to Christ for some succor. They went to him unafraid and unashamed and they got what they wanted.

Dealing with unavoidable treachery

IT’S a fact of life. We are all traitors. We practice treachery even within ourselves. That’s why we fall into sin. We, of course, do it also among ourselves. And in spite of our best efforts, we can still fall into it even with God. In fact, it’s with God that we are most treacherous, since any treachery we do with our own selves and with others is first of all a treachery with God. Every sin is a form of treachery with God. 

 We are reminded of this intriguing phenomenon in the gospel reading of Tuesday of Holy Week. (cfr. Jn 13:21-33, 36-38) We are presented with the sad story of Judas Iscariot, one of the apostles who enjoyed intimate moments with Christ and confidence from him. 

 Despite that ideal condition, Judas managed to turn Christ in. Of course, he showed repentance later on that led him to hang himself. But it’s not for us to judge where he is now. We know that God is the only one to give the final judgment and that he is all merciful. 

 So, we should not be surprised by this fact of life and just proceed to see how we can deal with this danger more effectively. And I believe that the way to do it is to truly develop an abiding intimate life with Christ. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to ignore the due attention and care we need to give to our interior, intimate life where our true world as a person is located. That’s where we know who we really are and how we are relating with everyone and with everything. 

 Our usual problem in this area is that we just live our life most of the time reacting in a purely human and natural way to things around us. As a result, we are prone to fall into either activism or obstructionism, and all the other isms that are actually not proper to us as a person, let alone, as a child of God. And the inevitable effect is that there is hardly any intimate life in us. 

 If we want to be consistent with our faith and allow our faith to guide our mind and heart and all the other faculties we have, then we would know that God is with us and that he loves us and is always intervening in our life. In fact, we believe that he is actually directing and shaping our life. Ours is simply to go along with him as far as we can. 

 This is what is called developing an intimate life or a life in the Spirit of God. It is an abiding awareness that God is with us and that we are living our life with him and for him. Everything in our life would have God as the main reference point, the beginning and end, the giver of meaning to everything, and the provider of all the resources we need to deal with any situation in our life. 

 This is how we can aspire to effectively deal with the constant danger of treachery. We can have the sense of confidence once articulated by St. Paul when he said: “If God is for us, who can be against us?...Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers…will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8,31.38-39)

God and the poor

THE gospel reading for Monday of Holy Week, taken from the gospel of St. John 12,1-11, reminds us that we should not make God and the poor to compete with each other for our attention, care and love. Our attention, care and love for them should always go together. If we love God, we should also love the poor. If we love the poor, it is presumed that we love God first. 

 This truth of our faith was highlighted when Judas Iscariot complained why a woman wasted precious oil on Christ when it could have been sold and the sale could have been given to the poor. 

 That’s when Christ told him, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” (Jn 12,7-8) 

 It’s interesting to note that the gospel mentioned that Judas was actually not interested in caring for the poor but that he was a thief and held the money bag of the apostles and used to steal the contributions. 

 That observation is very important and should be taken seriously, especially among the clergy and those involved in financial matters. It cannot be denied that money can easily corrupt anyone. We should exert special effort to be truly guarded against this temptation. 

 And the only way to do that is be truly with Christ and to have a clear and strong purity of intention every time we handle money. Money should be used to give glory to God and for the common good, giving special preference to the poor. Otherwise, we end up as an easy target to this irresistible temptation. 

 In this regard, we have to learn how to use money to give glory to God. It cannot be denied that many times we think that money is just a purely personal affair, and that God has nothing to do with it. We have to correct that dangerous misconception about money. We need to realize that money is a very powerful tool to achieve something good or something bad. We need to use it wisely. 

 Given all these considerations, I imagine that we really need to be prayerful so as to always be in God’s presence, ever mindful of his will and ways with respect to the use of money. We should learn how to be recollected while in the midst of the hustle and bustle of our daily activities and concerns. 

 This, of course, will require a certain discipline. We have to train our senses and our other faculties to discern God’s presence and providence in everything. In short, we have to become real contemplatives in the middle of the world. 

 Thus, a certain plan has to be developed and followed, a plan consisting of a number of acts of piety that can help us to be in God’s presence and to decipher his will and ways all throughout the day and in all kinds of situations that we find ourselves in. 

 This can mean a daily period of prayer and meditation, recourse to the sacraments, thorough study of the doctrine of our faith, and some devotions that will keep our heart aflame all the time. 

 We have to learn how to relate everything to God, a process that may involve the practice of relating things to the different lawful authorities that we are subject to. These lawful authorities are God’s immediate representatives to us.