Implications and consequences of true Christian love

WE are given a good picture of what the implications and consequences of true Christian love are in one of the alternative first readings of the Mass on May 31, Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

 It’s from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans (12,9-16) where it starts with the exhortation that our love must be completely sincere, hating what is evil and holding on to what good. It continues by saying that we have to love one another as Christian brothers and sister, and eager to show respect for one another. 

 Again, detailing what this true Christian love entails, St. Paul said that we really have to work hard and avoid laziness, and that our service to the Lord, which, of course, should be translated into our service to others, should be from the heart that is full of devotion. 

 And since our life here on earth is like a journey toward our eternal home, we should be filled with hope that should be joyful, being patient in any trouble we encounter in life, and always praying. 

 St. Paul encourages us to even ask God to bless those who may persecute us, instead of cursing them, and we ought to be happy with those who are happy and to weep with those who weep. 

 Furthermore, we are told to have the same concern for everyone, avoiding any form of discrimination even as we treat different people in different ways in accordance to their needs and conditions. Yes, we have to be willing to share what we have with those in need and also willing to open our homes to strangers. 

 True Christian love should lead us to avoid pride and to be willing to accept humble duties, irrespective of whatever social or economic status we may have in society. To top it all, if this love truly reigns in our heart, we should never think ourselves as wise. On the contrary, in another letter, St. Paul advises that we should regard others as better than us. (cfr. Phil 2,3) 

 This is a tall order, of course. To be sure, it would require of us nothing less that a real identification with Christ himself, who is the very embodiment of this kind of love. Let’s hope that everyday, through the ordinary events and circumstances of life, and in our daily interactions with everyone, we can approximate this kind of love. I suppose that we are not expected to perfect it all at once, but we can always try. 

 We really have to learn to give all our heart to Christ by exercising those gifts God himself has given us so we can share his life and love, i.e., the theological gifts of faith, hope and charity. We need time and effort to do this. 

 And given our human condition now, it is a love that would know how to do spiritual battle against the enemies of God and of love. It would know how to renew itself always and to go through the lifelong process of having to begin and begin again. This way, things would always appear new to us even if we handle the same things everyday. 

 When our love is simply based on our own ideas and, worse, on our senses and feelings alone, that love can only be fake no matter how passionate it may appear, at least for a moment. It cannot stand the test of time nor cope with all the challenges, trials and temptations we have in this world.

When faced with our limitations

THAT gospel story about the blind man, Bartimaeus, (cfr. Mk 10,46-52) should remind us that we should immediately go to God and follow what he tells us whenever we are at the end of our powers and resources. Let’s abandon ourselves in his ever-wise providence and free ourselves from undue fears and worries. 

 We will always have difficulties in life. They are unavoidable. They come with the limitations of our human nature and aggravated by its condition of woundedness due to our sins. Usually, they come as small disappointments and frustrations, little failures and setbacks we meet everyday. All of them, more or less, manageable. 

 But they can also be big ones that can plunge us into deep, long-running crises of fear, anger, anxiety, hatred and despair. Cases of unsolvable predicaments, at least, humanly speaking. 

 We have to be ready for them and know not only how to deal with them but also how to derive something good from them. In these instances of the hard predicaments, for example, when we seem to be at a loss as to what to do, we should just see at what God does, after we have done all things possible to solve our problems. 

 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 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. 

 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.

With Christ, our sufferings assume a redemptive value

WE have to be ready when we are made to suffer in one way or another. And that can only mean that we assume the mind, the attitude of Christ toward suffering for us to find meaning and value to our sufferings. 

 This much we can get from the gospel of the Mass on Wednesday of the 8th Week in Ordinary Time. (cfr. Mk 10,32-45) Christ told his disciples of his forthcoming passion and death as they were entering Jerusalem. And yet, what did two of his disciples ask Christ in response? They asked that they be given a privileged place in heaven! 

 It’s truly one of those most shameful examples of impertinence we can have in our entire life. Imagine Christ already talking about his passion and death, and here we have two of his closest disciples thinking only of their own glory! 

 We need to be wary of this danger that can also happen to us. Instead of entering into the real value of suffering which is unavoidable in our life, we would think only of some privileges we think we are entitled to, due perhaps to some good deeds we have done. 

 We need to enter into the real value of suffering we can have in this life, assuming the very mind and attitude of Christ toward his own passion and death, because only then can we truly share in the victory and glory of Christ in his resurrection! 

 If we believe in Christ and follow what he has taught and shown us, we will realize that there is nothing to be afraid of suffering and death, and all the other negative things that can mark our life. 

 He bore them himself and converted them into our way for our own salvation. Yes, even death which is the ultimate evil that can befall us, an evil that is humanly insoluble. With Christ’s death, the curse of death has been removed. “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15,54-55) 

 So, we just have to be sport and cool about the whole reality of suffering and death. What we need to do is to follow Christ in his attitude toward them. For Christ, embracing suffering and ultimately death, is the expression of his greatest love for us. We have to enter into the dynamic of this divine logic and wisdom so we can lose that fear of suffering and death. 

 Thus, we have to understand this very well. 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. 

 They somehow are forms of love that have traces of self-interest. They are not a total self-giving, completely rid of self-interest, which is what true love is. And if they are not corrected, if they are not oriented towards the fullness of love, they can occasion a lot of danger and worse anomalies.

Christ gives us the best deal

“JESUS said to them, ‘I tell you that anyone who leaves home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and for the gospel, will receive much more in this present age. He will receive a hundred times more houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and persecutions as well; and in the age to come, he will receive eternal life.’” (Mk 10,29-30) 

 This is how Christ is proposing to us the best deal that we can ever have, one that gives us not only temporal benefits but also the one that truly matters, our eternal joy and fulfillment. Yes, there will be sufferings and persecutions as Christ himself warned us, but we know that he will also take care of that. “In the world,” he said, “you will have tribulation, but take courage, I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16,33) 

 We should learn how to give our all to Christ, so Christ can fully take possession of us, which is the ideal condition for our life. We have to allow Christ to fully be in us, since we are meant to be “another Christ,” sharers of the divine life and nature of God himself. 

 This is the example of Christ himself, who in the words of St. Paul said that “in our relationships with one another, we ought to have the same mindset as Christ: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness…” (Phil 2,5-7) 

 We certainly have to make some drastic adjustments in our understanding of what true love is, the very essence of God which is meant also for us, since God wants us to be his image and likeness. It will always involve self-giving, a certain losing in order to win, a certain giving up to gain something more important. 

 Christ taught about this kind of love in those parables that compared the Kingdom of God with the treasure hidden in the field, or with the merchant looking for fine pearls. (cfr. Mt 13,44-45) A certain giving up is always involved when we have to find what is best for us. And we should not be contented with what is good enough in the context of the good being the enemy of the best. 

 Christ wants us to lose in human terms so that we can win in the end in divine terms which is what really matters. This is made clear, for example, when Christ articulated the beatitudes that would somehow put us in the losing end in order to have the victory of being truly blessed. (cfr. Mt 5,3-12) 

 This is reiterated when he talked about the willingness to lose an eye, an arm, a foot, if these would cause us to sin. Better to lose them and enter heaven rather than to have them and get to hell. (cfr. Mt 5,29-31) 

 In another instance Christ clearly told us that for us to be his disciples, we should be willing to ‘hate’ our father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even our own life. We should be willing to carry our cross. (cfr. Lk 14,26-27) 

 To be able to live by this divine logic, we of course would need first of all the grace of God. We have to ask for it with humility. And then we need to do our part, exerting the due effort to acquire the appropriate attitude and corresponding virtues. We should have the attitude of willingly giving up everything else just to be with God.

Our true wealth

WE should be clear about what our true wealth is. It definitely is not anything that comes from the world—money, fame, power, etc. Our true wealth is when we finally are with God, when our heart and mind and everything else in our life go along with the will and ways of God who is willing to share who he is and what he has with us! Nothing should replace God in our life. Replacing God would be the biggest stupidity we can get into. 

 This is made quite clear in that gospel episode about a man who asked Christ what he ought to do to receive life everlasting. (cfr. Mk 10,17-27) We know how that story unfolded. It’s a pity that the man preferred to stick to his worldly riches over the real source of wealth meant for us. 

 We really should be most careful in our attitude toward our worldly wealth. While it’s true that we also need it, we should never consider it as our ultimate wealth. At best, it is only meant as a means and an occasion to pursue our true wealth. 

 Let’s be strong in resisting the temptation to be possessed by our worldly wealth, because as Christ himself said: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Mk 10,25) 

 We have to be most wary of this scenario in our life, which actually, and sadly, is quite common. There are good people who are not truly good enough, because when the ultimate test is made, they are not willing to give up all they have in order to have God. 

 They forget what St. Teresa once said, “Solo Dios basta,” (With God we have enough). They get too attached to the many good things in their life such that these blessings from God are converted into competitors of God themselves. 

 They prefer a life in this world that is without suffering, without self-denial, without the cross, as if a genuine Christian life can be exempted from all these. It is as if they have been born without original sin and have led their lives without committing any sin at all. 

 We have to be most careful with this most likely phenomenon happening in our lives. Yes, we have to be well-guarded against this temptation and do everything to combat it whenever, wherever and however it arises. 

 It would be a pity if after the many good things we may be doing, we fail to pass the final test. We have to remember that love is without measure. It is in its nature to give itself completely, convinced that what seems to be lost would actually be regained a hundredfold. In this, Christ has reassured us abundantly. 

 We have to be wary of the tricks of the devil and of our own wounded flesh that all try to block us in the last stretch in our pursuit of love. They will try to convince us that we already have given and done enough. We do not need to give more. They will try to trick us to be self-satisfied with what we already have been giving and doing. 

 To be sure, to give ourselves completely to God and to others is not easy. We need nothing less than the grace of God and our generous and prompt correspondence to it. Hard, yes, but it’s not impossible.

We should channel God’s Trinitarian life in our lives

WITH the celebration of the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity, what we are reminded of is the truth of our faith that we too have to pattern our life after the Trinitarian life of God. In other words, that our life should also be Trinitarian, channeling the very forces of truth and love that eternally operate in the 3 persons of the one God. 

 This Trinitarian life, of course, is shown to us by Christ who did everything always in obedience to the will of the Father and under the power of the Holy Spirit. He did nothing outside of this loop which, we can say, is the very life and nature of God. 

 The Trinitarian life of God is the most important mystery of our faith, the fount of all the other truths and mysteries of our faith, since it shows us the inmost, intimate life of God in himself, even before being the Creator of the universe. 

 The relevance of this mystery in our life stems from the basic truth that we, as man, are created in God’s image and likeness, adopted children of his, and therefore made to reflect and, in fact, participate in this very Trinitarian life of God. The implications and consequences of this truth are endless, but let’s tackle at least a few of them later. 

 Through this mystery, which was revealed to us in full by Christ, we are told that God, though one, are three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, because the absolutely one and simple God is never an idle God, nor a lonely God. 

 He is rather a God who is full of dynamism, an eternal dynamism of knowing and loving. His knowing and loving are no mere acts that begin and end, that come from potency to act, but are so perfect that they create the three eternal persons in that one God. 

 God’s eternal knowing and loving give rise to the eternal relations within God. The God who knows and who loves is the Father. The same God who is known and is loved is the Son. The same God who is the very love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are eternally inseparable in their eternally dynamic life of knowing and loving. 

 With respect to God’s creation, the three persons are also all involved, with the Father being the decider or author of it, the Son as the pattern of creation with us, man, as the masterpiece since we are his image and likeness, and the Holy Spirit as the implementor and the keeper of creation, and thus our sanctifier. 

 The whole God is involved in our creation and keeps it according to his will, his designs and the natures in which each creature is created. In our case, God created us with the power to know and to love through our intelligence and will, which precisely make us his image and likeness. 

 Since we are God’s image and likeness, we have to reflect and channel God’s Trinitarian life in our lives. The key to it is simply to follow God’s will and commandments. Another way of saying it is to follow Christ, “the way, the truth and the life.” 

 The implications of this truth of our faith are endless. For one, we really should try our best to know and love everyone irrespective of how they are to us, the way Christ knows and loves everyone.

The radicality of Christian love

IF we truly identify ourselves with Christ, as we should, then we have to realize that we have to love God and everybody else all the way. And this can go even to the extent of offering our very life, since, as we have been reminded, “there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15,13) Yes, we can and should give up our life if worst comes to worst. 

 Again, to clarify about who our friends are, we should take it from the viewpoint of Christ, who considered everyone to be a friend even if in our earthly conditions, we can talk of friends and enemies. 

 And that’s because at the end of the day, despite our differences and conflicts, we are all children of God, brothers and sisters to each other. We should be in friendly and brotherly terms with everybody. Thus, Christ clearly said that we even have to love our enemies. (cfr. Mt 5,43-44) 

 We should not be surprised by this radicality of true Christian love. If we would just also realize that for us to live this kind of love, we need to truly identify with Christ, always asking for his grace without neglecting the human effort we need to have this kind of love. 

 This Christian love simply goes beyond our natural human powers. It can only be lived when we receive and channel the very supernatural love God shares with us through Christ in the Holy Spirit. 

 Thus, we need to revolutionize our understanding of love which is the essence of our perfection. It should go beyond the parameters of our human condition, and give the dynamics of grace full play. 

 In practical terms, this could mean that we should never say enough to the demands of love. Loving requires us to be vitally in touch with God through prayers, recourse to the sacraments, development of virtues, carrying out of our responsibilities, etc. 

 If we persist in praying, we can increasingly discern God’s will for us moment to moment. Our capacity to follow his will and to receive and share his powers and wisdom increases. We would just find ourselves swept by the forcefulness of his love. What we found before as difficult, if not impossible, to do, we would find it rather easy now. 

 This perfection of love has endless manifestations. We would always think well of others in spite of their mistakes and even their offenses against us. Like God, we would be slow to anger and quick to forgive. 

 On our part, we should learn to find reasons to love everyone. We should not just wait for them to prove that they deserve our love. We initiate that love at the impulse of grace. That they are persons, like us, is already enough for us to love them with madness. 

 We have to learn to find excuses and to bear whatever burden and inconveniences others may cause us. We will always speak well of others. We have to learn how not to be scandalized by their sins and failures. More than this, we should be eager to give them the best—and that’s none other than God. 

 We have to learn to leave behind what so far we think is loving, because love by nature goes without measure. We have to follow its unending quest and adventure, relying mainly on the impulses of God’s grace.

The integral should give way to the essential

THIS was clearly expounded by Christ himself when he said, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.” (Mk 9,43) 

 And he continued, “And if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off. It is better for you enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna.” 

 In another part of the gospel, the same idea is reiterated. The parables of the hidden treasure and the precious pearl (cfr. Mt 13,44-45) speak of how one should leave behind or sell other possessions if only to get the most important goal in life. 

 I also remember a Spanish saint who said that after the Spanish civil war, he happened to go into where the final battle was held. And he saw strewn on the ground greatcoats, water bottles, haversacks stuffed with family souvenirs, letters, photographs of loved ones that belonged not to the vanquished but to the victors who must have felt that those items could be thrown away if only to leap over the enemy defenses. 

 In our life, there will be many occasions when we have to sacrifice certain things if only to keep what is truly essential in us, and that can only be LOVE, which is the essence of God and the essence of our humanity, since we have been created in God’s image and likeness. 

 Given our wounded human condition here on earth, marked as it is by our natural and infranatural limitations, weaknesses, temptations and sin, we should not be surprised that the likelihood for us to commit some mistakes, even grave mistakes, is high. And we just have to face the consequences without losing what is essential in us. 

 We may lose our good name, our fortune and possessions, and even our faculties and life itself, because of a mistake or a sin we have committed, or of an offense others may inflict on us, but we should always keep our loving relation with God and everybody else ever intact and strong. 

 This is not easy, of course, but if we persist in following what Christ taught and lived, always asking for his grace and making the effort to develop the pertinent attitudes and virtues, we can hack it. 

 And instead of feeling disadvantaged or unlucky in life, we, instead, would feel happy and confident about how our life is going. We know that in this life, there are times when we have to give up certain things if only to gain a much greater thing, the most important goal of our life. 

 Besides, given the many options in our life, we should try our best in being discriminating in our choices. We should learn to always defend and uphold what is essential in our life even at the expense of doing away with many non-essential things that serve only as some kind of decorations in our life. 

 In this regard, we should be willing to follow the example of Christ in his love for us out of his obedience to the Father. And that is none other than to be willing to offer our life even for the sins of the others. It may look like a most unfair deal, but that is the best expression of true love!

Unity amid our differences, diversity, conflicts

“WHOEVER is not against us is for us.” (Mk 9,40) Words of Christ in response to his disciples who said, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.”

 If we have the spirit of Christ, as we should, then we would have the same reaction when we are faced with a similar situation, which is something common since we cannot deny that we will always have some differences and conflicts among ourselves, and will have to contend with the unavoidable diversity of cultures, beliefs, lifestyles, etc., among ourselves. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to have some kind of exclusivistic mentality, which is part of our wounded human condition. This is due mainly to our tendency to use merely human or worldly standards, instead of the sense of unity that comes from God and is what is truly proper to us, children of God as we are. 

 We also tend to stereotype people, to box them in, practically straitjacketing a person as if that person cannot change for the better. We seldom give others second chances. We end up being stricter than God who always blends his strictness with mercy. 

 And again, we also tend to dogmatize what simply are matters of opinion and personal and class preferences. And so, we end up being unnecessarily divisive among ourselves. This is not to mention that we often compare ourselves with others, and end up falling into petty envies, etc. 

 How can we manage to have unity amid our unavoidable differences, diversity and conflicts? To be blunt about it, it’s when we adapt Christ’s spirit that is marked with pure charity. Only then would we manage to deal properly with our differences.   

Yes, it’s the charity that St. Paul describes as “patient, is kind. Charity does not envy, does not act wrongly, is not inflated. Charity is not ambitious, does not seek for itself, is not provoked to anger, devises no evil. Charity does not rejoice over iniquity, but rejoices in truth. Charity suffers all, believes all, hopes all, endures all.” (1 Cor 13:4-7) 

 Yes, it’s the charity that enables us to bear the burdens of each other and thus fulfil the law of Christ. (cfr. Gal 6,2) It’s the charity that is willing to suffer for the others, and can consider as our real treasures here on earth the following conditions: hunger, thirst, heat, cold, pain, dishonor, poverty, loneliness, betrayal, slander, prison… 

 It’s the charity that considers sacrifice as its way, that welcomes any cross that can come our way, that is detached from passing opinions and views, and willing to suffer for the truth, no matter how unfair that would be. It’s the charity that knows how to love enemies and to be ever merciful and magnanimous, how to be “all things to all men,” (1 Cor 9,22) irrespective of how the others are. 

 It’s charity that perfectly blends truth, justice and mercy, and ends up achieving unity and equality among ourselves. If we have this charity, we would be willing to suffer and even to die for others, as Christ did, if only to achieve the real unity among ourselves. 

 Like Christ, we have to take the initiative to understand everyone, to be patient and willing to suffer for whatever it takes to have that all-inclusive kind of love. Far from turning us off or distancing ourselves from the parties concerned when we experience these differences and conflicts, we should all the more be interested to be with them, to help and love them in whatever way we can, always with God’s grace.

Let’s enter into the wisdom of the cross

THE gospel reading of the Mass on Tuesday of the 7th Week in Ordinary Time (Mk 9,30-37) reminds us that true wisdom, given our wounded human condition here on earth, can only be found in the cross of Christ. 

 “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise,” Christ told his bewildered disciples as it does to all of us now. But the fact is that it is through Christ’s suffering and death that our redemption is achieved. His resurrection, his victory over all our sins and death itself, is achieved through the cross. This is how we have to see the value and the wisdom of the cross. 

 We need to understand, guided by our Christian faith, that if we want to be truly wise, we need to look at Christ’s cross, understand its significance, and start to be consistent with it. 

 This is the kind of wisdom every believer and follower of Christ should have. It’s not enough to have the wisdom of this world, no matter how practical that may be, nor the wisdom of the flesh, no matter how mind-blowing, much less the wisdom of words, no matter how clever. 

 The wisdom of the cross is first of all a gift of the Holy Spirit to us before it becomes a virtue in us. Since it’s a gift, we have to pray for it constantly and be as receptive to it as we can be. Since it’s a gift that needs to be a virtue, we have to cultivate and develop it also. 

 The wisdom of the cross is the most perfect gift, embodying all the other spiritual gifts, since it makes charity complete and perfect by infusing light and love into our soul. 

 With it we are able to discern God and the divine things in everything that we see and do. It gives us the appetite to relate everything to God, linking us to God through the things of this world. 

 It goes beyond understanding and knowledge which enable us to know divine and natural things in themselves and in their mutual relations, but without relating them to God, their ultimate cause. 

 These gifts and virtues do not automatically lead us to love, since they fall short of bringing us to God who is love, as St. John said so succinctly. It’s wisdom that does that. Wisdom makes us into contemplative souls, seeing and loving God in everything. 

 With this definition of wisdom, it can be said that it’s hardly seen around, since that reference to God is scarcely done in the things we do. We think, reason out, speak, act and behave often by ourselves, without God. 

 But it can reside deep in our hearts, not visible to our senses and our worldly ways. As the Book of Wisdom says: “In each generation wisdom passes into holy souls, she makes them friends of God and prophets.” (7,27) 

 In cultivating and developing wisdom as a virtue in us, we need to struggle against things like laziness, disorder, unhealthy attachments, pride and all forms of sin. In fact, everything can be a frontline in this struggle. 

 Thus, this wisdom has to be the wisdom of the cross, which is the wisdom of Christ, since Christ showed the ultimate saving truth and love, and shares these things with us up to now, by dying on the cross.

Christ gives his mother to be our mother too

IN the gospel reading of the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, (Jn 19,25-34) we see how Christ entrusts his mother to St. John. “Woman, behold, your son,” Christ told his mother to St. John who was also present at the crucifixion of Christ. And then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” 

 The Church has always interpreted this gesture of Christ as him entrusting his own mother not only to St. John but also to all of us. This is one of the sweetest moments in the otherwise bitter episode of the death of Christ. 

 It shows not only Christ’s magnanimity and love for us, but also validates the basic truth of faith about ourselves that we truly are brothers and sisters of Christ. We belong to the same family. It’s worthwhile to pause for a while and savor this tremendous truth about ourselves that should fill us with great joy and strengthen our faith, hope and charity despite whatever we can encounter in our life here on earth. 

 The Blessed Virgin Mary is the epitome of how a mother should be—always caring for her children, ever ready to suffer for them and to defend and speak well of them in spite of how the children behaves. She, of course, would also be quick to guide and correct them whenever they stray, but always in a most tender way. 

 And that is because of her perfect identification of her will to the will of God, giving us a concrete example of how a human being can be so identified with God’s will that she becomes God’s perfect image and likeness as God wants her and also us to be. 

 We can be sure that how the Blessed Virgin took care of Christ would also be how she would take care of us. And that can only mean that at the end of the day, what she is interested is our own salvation and sanctification. 

 She definitely would help us how to stick with Christ, how to closely follow and be faithful to God’s will and ways, irrespective of how our earthly life goes. She would teach us how to be with God as we immerse ourselves in our earthly and temporal affairs which usually consist of small and ordinary details and items. 

 Yes, she would teach us how to be a real contemplative right in the middle of the world, how to transcend from the natural and infranatural conditions of our life to enter into the supernatural level of God meant for us. 

 How important therefore that we do not take for granted this duty to take care of our true common mother, ever deepening our devotion to her that should be lived with appropriate practices of piety, like praying the rosary, making pilgrimages to her shrines, giving her short ejaculatory prayers that would express our love and affection for her. 

 We should never be afraid nor ashamed to approach her, asking for her powerful intercession, whenever we are in trouble. To be sure, the Blessed Virgin Mary, being a mother, would be quick to clean us up whenever we find ourselves dirtied morally and spiritually. She is never scandalized by our sins. She is all there for us! 

 Developing a deep devotion to her would help us keep our relation with God strong and vibrant.

Developing our spiritual character and personality

WITH the celebration of Pentecost Sunday, we are reminded that the Holy Spirit is always with us, always intervening and directing our life toward its proper end and its fullness or perfection. He is leading us toward how we should be, that is, that we truly become God’s image and likeness, sharers of his divine life and nature. 

 For us to correspond properly to this basic truth of faith about ourselves, we need to see to it that our basic natural humanity, with its given temperament that is the effect of our biological constitution, develops a character and personality that is guided by the Holy Spirit and eventually adapts the spirit proper to us, which is none other than the spirit of Christ who is the pattern of our humanity, the savior of our damaged humanity. 

 This is how we direct our life and our humanity toward its fullness, enabling us to transcend our natural self to our spiritual and supernatural self when we eventually would share God’s life and nature. 

 It’s important that we understand the process of how our basic temperament can develop its proper spiritual character and personality. Each of us, of course, goes through this process in a unique way, but we all have a common goal and the means we need for this process are also common or shared. 

 We know that a person’s temperament refers to one’s most instinctive reactions or automatic behaviors. It is determined by genetics and can be seen in the early stages of childhood or even in infants. It definitely needs to be educated and developed, otherwise it remains in the primitive stage of our humanity. 

 This need for education and development of the temperament is what is called the formation of one’s character. There, of course, are many elements that can go into such education and development. The social and cultural environment, and many other factors, greatly affect one’s character. 

 It is important therefore that for one to have a proper character, he should be educated properly. And that can only mean, in the end, having a truly Christian formation which is not simply a matter of knowing Christian principles and values but rather of truly living and being consistent to these Christian principles and values. 

 This is where the skill of how to discern and follow the abiding promptings of the Holy Spirit should be truly learned. This is where we have to learn to be truly contemplative souls such that even while being immersed in the things of this world, we would still be with the Holy Spirit. 

 The result of educating our temperament and of forming a certain character with its corresponding ways of behaving and reacting to anything in life is what would constitute as our personality. There can be as many kinds of personalities as persons themselves, but what should be common in them is that it is a personality that is animated by the spirit of Christ precisely through the Holy Spirit. 

 It should be a personality that reflects and channels Christ’s goodness, charity, compassion, mercy, etc. Its understanding of what is truth and justice, etc. should be that of Christ himself. 

 Given the confusing environment and world culture we are having now, we really need to work intensely in imparting the formation of our proper character and personality. It’s a duty and responsibility that we have to carry out most seriously.

“Follow me”

THAT’S what Christ told Peter after telling him what to expect as the rock on which Christ would build his Church. (cfr. Jn 21,19) 

 “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go,” Christ told him. And the gospel said that Christ said this to signify the kind of death Peter would have to glorify God. 

 Let’s remember that the key to enable us to tackle whatever difficulty and challenges we may have in life is to follow Christ. If we want to follow him and to become like him, sharing his very spirit that is intended for us by God, our Creator, we have to learn and even to welcome and love suffering. It’s in suffering that the fullness of love, which is the very spirit of Christ, is attained. 

 We have to understand this very well. 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 forms of love, they are not yet the fullness of love. 

 They somehow are forms of love that have traces of self-interest. They are not total self-giving, completely rid of self-interest, which is what true love is. And if they are not corrected, if they are not oriented towards the fullness of love, they can occasion a lot of danger and, worse, anomalies. 

 Loving the cross the way Christ loved it is the ultimate of love. It is the love that is completely deprived of selfishness. It is total self-giving, full of self-abnegation. St. Paul described this kind of love in Christ when he said: 

 “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2,6-8) 

 The cross, which is the symbol of all our sinfulness and the death that is the consequence of our sin, has not led God to hate us and to condemn us forever. Rather, it has moved God to love us with a love greater than that of creating us to be his image and likeness. 

 To follow Christ or to be truly Christ-like would, of course, be an endless affair. We can never say we are definitively Christ-like, since we can never exhaust the richness of Christian life no matter how much effort we exert. We just have to try and try. At least, everyday we should be able to say that we are becoming more and more like Christ in a specific aspect. 

 To follow Christ, we have to offer everything in our life to God. We have to learn to give up everything for God, to live true detachment from earthly things even as we continue to use them. We have to reach that point that we are willing to offer our life to God, unafraid of death and all the suffering that goes with dying.

The pursuit for unity with God

ONCE again, we are made to consider the greatest desire Christ expressed just before his passion, death and resurrection in the gospel reading of the Mass on Thursday of the 7th Week of Easter. (cfr. Jn 17,20-26) 

 His desire was “that they (we, all of us) may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.” May it also be that Christ’s greatest desire would also be our greatest desire! 

 Again, we have to remind ourselves that this is actually the ultimate goal of our life. God wants us to be fully united with him through Christ in the Holy Spirit, a unity that also has as its necessary corollary, our unity with everybody else. It’s a unity that, as Christ said, is the same as that of the Father and Christ. In other words, the unity of the 3 persons of the Blessed Trinity. 

 It’s, indeed, a tall order. We can readily doubt as to the veracity of this revelation. But Christ clearly said it. We cannot doubt it anymore. We should just take that leap of faith, and say, “I believe.” And then, with God’s grace and with all the means Christ has given us, let’s act on this truth of our faith about ourselves. 

 We should consider seriously the fact that we need a working plan that would help us realize this basic truth of ourselves. We cannot overemphasize this basic need of ours to make plans and strategies. 

 We should have some clear vision of our goals and means and timetables involved. That way, we would have a better grasp of how to identify and handle issues, problems and challenges. That way, we would have a good sense of priority, especially nowadays when we are faced with many competing options. 

 Making plans and strategies may require some time and effort, but it’s an investment that is all worth it. The little time and effort required can actually multiply our time and make our efforts more productive at the end of the day. It’s like the little rudder that St. James talked about in his letter. (cfr. 3,4) Our plans and strategies can have the power to accomplish great things, like a rudder giving direction to a big boat. 

 In these complicated times of ours with so many issues, problems and challenges spewing out, the need for plans and strategies have become more indispensable so that we can study them better and know exactly what to do with them. The way things are now, these issues, problems and challenges really need to be studied well, making due consultations when necessary. 

 Of course, the most important goal of our plans and strategies is how to relate everything to God. And then we have to concretize how to make that plan practicable. Obviously, this would involve the whole idea of developing the virtue of order and keeping a keen sense of priorities. In this regard, the inputs of our Christian faith are necessary. 

 We need to look into our attitudes, practices and habits, and see which ones would reinforce this effort and which would hinder it. We have to know how to make plans and strategies that are realistic and are organic in the context of our personal circumstances. They have to be plans and strategies that know how to flex with the changing circumstances. 

 All these should give us the sensation that we pursuing unity with God and with everybody else.

Toward the fullness of our humanity

“THAT they may be one, as we also are one.” (Jn 17,11) Words of Christ just before he entered into the culminating act of human redemption, expressing his greatest desire for us. We have to realize that this is the ultimate goal of our life here on earth. Reaching this goal would constitute the fullness of our humanity. 

 How important and crucial it should be for all of us to realize as early as possible this ultimate goal of our life. That way, we can readily arrange the different aspects and elements of our life to pursue this goal. We need to help one another to make this realization clear and abidingly acted upon. 

 While it’s true that we are already human right at the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb, we know that our humanity needs to develop. We start as a zygote, then a fetus, then a baby at birth. We go through the stages of childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. 

 We grow physically, develop emotionally, psychologically, mentally. As a person, we realize that we need to relate ourselves to others. We just cannot be on our own, like an isolated island. We need a family, a community, a society. 

 There are many other things that we have to grow in and develop. But there is one thing we should not forget. With our intelligence and will, we are poised to enter into the world of ideas and reason, until we become aware of a spiritual world that later on would introduce us to the supernatural world. 

 This is where we become aware of a Supreme Being who definitely is above our nature and is therefore supernatural, and who is responsible for everything, creating them and giving each one its nature, order and purpose. 

 And if we believe in what our Christian faith teaches us about ourselves—that we are God’s image and likeness, meant to share God’s life and nature—then we should realize that we not meant only to be a natural man, ruled simply by the law of nature. We are meant to enter into the supernatural life of God. 

 In other words, we are not meant only to stay in the level of the natural. We are meant to live in the level of the supernatural, with God. This is where the fullness of our humanity is attained. It’s when we truly share God’s life and nature through our vital identification with Christ who offers us “the way, the truth and the life.” 

 This identification with Christ is possible with our intelligence and will. That’s when we become capable of receiving Christ in our life. For his part, Christ has already done everything so that he and us can be one. 

 He already paid for our sin through his passion, death and resurrection. He continues to give himself to us especially in the sacraments, and most especially through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist where he makes himself the Bread of Life for us to eat so we can have eternal life even while here in this world. Christ shows us how to behave and to react to any situation and condition we can have in this life. 

 We should make everyone realize that the main purpose of our life here on earth is to pursue the fullness of our humanity. It is for us to become saints, to be holy, just as the heavenly father is holy, merciful and perfect.

God’s love gives us complete joy

THE gospel of the feast of St. Matthias on May 14 tells us about how much God loves us, where we can find that love and how that love gives us also the complete joy. (cfr. Jn 15,9-17) 

 “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.’” 

 We all know that we are meant to be happy. When we are sad, for whatever reason, we know that it is not supposed to be. And when that sadness is kind of stable, then we usually consider that situation as illness. 

 We have to learn how to find joy then, its true source, the one that can be attained and felt whatever setting we may find ourselves in. Joy should not be based only on some shallow and shifty ground, like our physical, emotional or social conditions. They are very unreliable foundations, and can be very dangerous. 

 Joy and happiness can only be found in God, that is, in following his commandments. That’s for sure. He is the source of all good things, the creator and foundation of all reality. And when we mess up things that obviously will lead us to trouble and sadness, he it is who will fix things, heal what is sick, repair what is damaged, recover what is lost. 

 This is a truth that needs to be emphasized again. Many have forgotten it, or worse, are ignorant of it. Especially the young who obviously need to be properly taught things, they easily fall into a very restricted and distorted understanding of joy, associating it with some bodily pleasures, emotional highs, or favorable social standing. 

 Many others have sourced it on the possession of good health, wealth, fame, worldly power. This conception of joy is notoriously biased and one-sided. It cannot stand the test of time with all its varied situations. It prospers only during fair weather, not in bad. 

 We need to go to God to find joy. As a psalm says it very well, “To be near God is my happiness.” (72) We have to strengthen this conviction. Those without God will surely perish and get destroyed sooner or later. That much the same psalm warns us. 

 And God is neither far nor hidden nor ignorant. That sensation or attitude that we can sometimes have toward God is at best apparent. It’s false and without basis, since the truth is that God is at the very core of our life. And if we have faith, we can actually see him everywhere. And we know he is a father who always cares for us. 

 The joy that is rooted on God transcends the physical and earthly dimensions. They can be lived even in what may be considered humanly speaking as difficult moments of pain, suffering and privation. 

 We need to go theological to attain this state of joy. We cannot rely solely on the physical, medical and other worldly elements that go into the making of joy. We need faith. We need to be vitally united with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

We are never alone

“BEHOLD, the hour cometh, and it is now come, that you shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” (Jn 16,32) 

 These words of Christ should remind us of what to expect when we truly follow him. We can expect to be misunderstood and abandoned, and yet we should never feel alone because, as Christ said of himself which can also be said of us if we follow him, we can never be alone, because the Father will always be with us. 

 We just have to train our human faculties—our intelligence and will, our emotions, memory and imagination, etc.—to align themselves to this truth of our faith. Let’s remember that we are not meant to be guided only by our natural powers. Given the way God wants us to be, we should be guided by God’s supernatural powers—the faith he shares with us, and the many graces and blessings he gives us. 

 When we feel alone, we have to convince ourselves that we are not with God, and thus, should correct this anomaly that once was articulated by St. Augustine—that God is always with us but our problem is that we often are not with him. Thus, we can feel alone. 

 But, indeed, we are never alone. Even in our most solitary moments, we have no reason to feel alone. That’s simply because God is always with us, is always intervening in our life, is always pouring out his love and graces to us. 

 And if we make the necessary effort, we will also realize that not only is God with us, but that with God we also are with everybody and everything else. We are actually and objectively in a state of communion with God and with everybody else. With our intelligence and will, plus God’s grace, we are wired for this. To feel alone is actually an anomaly and a magnet for all sorts of temptations and dangers to come and hound us. 

 Not even death nor distance can and should separate us from others, much less, from God. We should be able to echo St. Paul’s words in this regard with conviction: “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord…” (Rom 8,38-39) 

 Let’s never forget that it is only when we are in the company of God and of everybody else, regarding them in the way that our faith teaches us, that we can manage to be on the right path to our eternal destination. Temptations and sin can come only when we dare to be and to feel alone. 

 This reminder is timely especially for those who travel alone and find themselves in new, unfamiliar places, and who do not know the people of the locality. In occasions like this, we should make it a point to make extra effort to realize that we are never alone. 

 Otherwise, we become easy prey to temptations and falling into sin would just be a moment or some steps away. Let’s remember that it is on these occasions that the devil pulls his most devious tricks. 

 He can whisper that since anyway no one knows us here, we can do anything we like. He can induce us to give in to what our wounded flesh likes to do. He can easily lead us to act out our fantasies and our dormant immoral desires.

Always thinking of heaven and our earthly duties

ON the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, we are reminded that we should always have heaven in mind, for that is where we came from and where we are supposed to go as our ultimate destination and to have our definitive state of life for all eternity. 

 But as the readings of the Mass on this Solemnity would also remind us, we should also realize that the way to heaven is to continue carrying out our Christian duties here on earth. (cfr. Acts 1,1-11; Eph 4,1-13; Mk 16,15-20) 

 In other words, our path to heaven should be our Christian duties here on earth. We therefore have to learn how to unite heaven and earth in our mind and heart, and in our whole life, in their proper order, distinguishing between what is the end and what are the means. 

 We have to realize then that our earthly affairs are actually designed by God to bring us back to him, and it would be up to us to follow that design or not. Of course, knowing how we are, there is always the tendency to follow simply our own designs rather than God’s. And that’s something we have to be wary of and to correct. 

 We should be very clear about this basic truth about the world in general or about the whole of nature that has been created by God. We need to realize that as God’s creation, the whole world of nature has been imprinted with God’s laws that are meant to give glory to God and to lead us also to him, giving him glory as well. In other words, depending on how we see the world, it is actually a pathway to heaven, to God. 

 Everything that we discover and make use of in the world should lead us to ask ourselves whether what we are discovering are truly in accordance to God’s will, to his true designs of the world, and whether we can discern how they can be used to give glory to God, which is a matter of loving him and serving the whole of humanity. 

 We have to be wary of the danger of discovering and using things simply in accordance to our own understanding of them and also to our own interest only. This is a common and abiding danger that we have to be most wary about. We have to do everything to avoid and overcome that danger. 

 Thus, we have to develop that strong and deep attitude of always referring things to God before we put our hands on them. That way, we would be putting ourselves on the right track that hopefully will lead us to God and to see and use things the way they should be seen and used. 

 This attitude, of course, would require us to be guided always by our Christian faith, instead of just being guided by our human estimation of things. And for that faith to be effective in us, we obviously need to be humble. Without humility, there is no way faith can have any effect on us. 

 Everyday, we should be keenly aware that we need to be fruitful and productive. That’s simply because even from the beginning of our creation in Adam and Even, this has always been God’s will for us. 

 We should be looking for God always in everything that we get involved in. In all the things that we do or handle, we should be asking what are there in those things that are for God, rather than being interested only on what are there in those things that are for us.

We should be confident, happy and at peace

YES, we can afford to be confident, happy and at peace in spite of whatever difficulty, trial and challenge we may be facing as we try our best to be consistent with our Christian identity. While suffering will be unavoidable, the grace and the help of God is always assured. There is really no reason for us to worry for long. 

 This is what we can gather from the readings of the Mass on Friday of the 6th Week of Easter. (cfr. Acts 18,9-28; Jn 16,20-23) In the first reading, Christ in a vision told St. Paul: “Do not fear, but speak; and hold not thy peace, because I am with you, and no man shall set upon you to hurt you…” 

 The gospel reading of the day reinforces the same idea. “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices,” Christ told his disciples. “You will grieve, but your grief will become joy.” And he continued, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.” 

 There we have the basis why we can afford to be confident, happy and at peace irrespective of how our life of taking seriously our Christian duties would lead us. Our sense of confidence, joy and peace should spring from a faith that gives us the ultimate meaning and proper direction to all our human knowledge and endeavors. It is what gives the original perspective to all events, good or bad, in our life. Otherwise, we would end up confused and lost. 

 We also need to make our faith grow to cope with the multiplying infranatural consequences of our human condition that is weakened by sin. There’s no other way to manage and survive the consequences of sin, ours and those of others, personal as well as the collective and structural, than by relying first of all on our faith. Without faith, we will find no exit, no relief from this wounded status of ours. 

 That’s why St. Paul said: “Above all, take the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” (Eph 6,16) Faith holds pride of place in our armory to wage that lifelong battle with our wounded flesh, the temptations of the world, and the tricks of the devil. 

 Without faith, we would be easy prey to these enemies of our soul. Without it, we most likely would be filled with fear and anxiety, if not sadness and desperation. Faith unites us to the tremendous power of God over any kind of evil, self-inflicted or caused by others. 

 There’s no way we can achieve our ultimate goal without faith. With God, we have everything. As St. Teresa de Avila would put it: “Solo Dios basta!” (God alone is enough!) 

 Let’s just strengthen our faith and keep our piety vibrant for only then can we manage to make these very reassuring words of Christ effective in our life. With this condition, we can afford to be hopeful and confident. 

 With this condition, we can be like a good sportsman who would always train himself for his sport and play the game bent on winning though losses can also take place, and yet would still go on playing his game. 

 We should assume the mind of Christ who, when he fell a number of times on his way to Calvary, never let go of the cross. We have to strengthen our sense of being children of God who always takes care of us.

Just continue doing apostolate despite contradictions

THIS is what we can learn from St. Paul who, despite being contradicted and rejected by some people, just proceeded to go on preaching. (cfr. Acts 18,1-8) These contradictions should not stop us from carrying out our important duty of spreading the Word of God, which is another way of showing and imparting the very spirit of Christ on the people. 

 If we have to be consistent with our Christian identity, then we have to be ready to be a sign of contradiction, as Christ himself was and continues to be. Let’s not forget that prophecy made by Simeon when the child Jesus was presented in the temple. “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself (Mary) a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” (Lk 2,34-35) 

 We have to train ourselves to be tough with the toughness of Christ so we can take on any and all forms of contradictions that we can encounter in life. Yes, we can be misunderstood, slandered, mocked, persecuted and even martyred in this life. But we should not worry, because as Christ himself assured us, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!” (Jn 16,33) 

 Our toughness should be the toughness of Christ who was and continues to be willing to bear all the problems of men, and goes all the way to offer his life for the salvation of men. 

 With Christ and in him, our toughness would also know how to be tender and gentle, how to be understanding, compassionate and empathetic, as described in this passage from the gospel of St. Matthew: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not extinguish, till he leads justice to victory.” (12,20) 

 While our toughness will always be a fruit, first of all, of God’s grace, it will also depend on our proper attitude, skills and virtues. What we have to do first is to rein in but not suppress our emotions and passions, subjecting them to the tenets of our faith rather than just the impulses of our hormones. 

 We have to learn how not to overdramatize the pain and suffering involved in bearing the burdens of the others. This is important because this will help us to think more objectively, and therefore enabling us to make better judgments and assessments of things. 

 Ideally, we should not be weighed down by any worry since God takes care of everything. Some Bible passages reassure us of this truth. “So do not fear,” the Book of Isaiah says, “for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” (1,10) 

 And St. Paul in his Letter to the Philippians says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (4,6-7) 

 Still, from the Psalms, we have these reassuring words: “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” (27,1)

Creativity in preaching God’s word

IT’S amazing how St. Paul and his companions weathered all kinds of trials and challenges just to proclaim the Good News about Christ and our salvation. Even when he was mocked by non-believers, he just persisted in preaching, trying his best to adapt his preaching to the way the people were, without of course compromising the integral truth of God’s word. He knew how to relate highly supernatural truths to common earthly things. 

 This we can glean in the first reading of the Mass on Wednesday of the 6th Week of Easter. (cfr. Acts 17,15.22-18,1) This example of St. Paul reminds us, especially the priests, to be creative in proclaiming the Word of God. 

 In this regard, we first of all should be properly spiritually prepared to carry out this duty. We really need to have the very mind and heart of Christ whose teachings blended very well the characteristics of forcefulness, charity and mercy, of articulateness, eloquence and fluency. We need to spend time meditating on the life, words and deeds of Christ if only to get an idea of how to preach the way Christ himself preached. 

 The goal to pursue is for us to make Christ words real in us: “He who hears you, hears me.” (Lk 10,16) Let’s remember that Christ imparted highly moral and supernatural truths in ways that can easily be understood by the people. He used parables, metaphors, similes and other appropriate literary devices just to reach people’s minds and hearts. 

 It is also important that we really know the people to whom we would be preaching. That way we would know how to calibrate our preaching—when to be forceful, even to the extent of throwing lightning and thunder, and when to be mild, poetic, using memes and what usually are referred to as “hugot lines.” 

 We certainly have to know the art of gradualness in our preaching. With our times getting more complicated and the discussions and exchanges on several concerns getting more controversial and conflictive, we should truly learn the art of gradualness. 

 For us priests, especially, we need to internalize God’s word, not in the way an actor internalizes his script. We should internalize it by making it the very life of our mind and heart, the very impulse of our emotion and passions. It should be the soul of our whole life. 

 Thus, when we preach we cannot help but somehow showcase the drama inside our heart, giving others a glimpse of how our heart is actually taking, handling and delivering the word of God. 

 Preaching should reflect the condition of our heart as it grapples with the living word of God. It should not just be a matter of declaiming or orating, reduced to the art of speaking and stage performing, a mere play of our talents. 

 Neither should it be just a display of our intellectual prowess or our cultural wealth. It should manage to show the actual living faith and love our heart has for God’s word, how our heart is receiving it and reacting to it. 

 Thus, preaching is a matter of how effectively we manage to show and teach Christ to the others. It’s never about us, the preachers. Rather, it can be about us in our effort to bring Christ to the others. Its success or failure depends solely on this.

Be not afraid

THE story of Paul and his companion, Silas, going to many places to preach and to convert many people, and in the process met severe opposition also and were, in fact, imprisoned and later released in a miraculous way, somehow tells us that we too, if we have to be consistent to our Christianity, should be bold in proclaiming Christ to the world, willing to face whatever difficulty we can meet along the way. (cfr. Acts 16,22-34) 

 We should not be afraid to do so, because in spite of whatever difficulties and contradictions we can meet along the way, God will always take care of everything. He has the last word always. We may undergo a lot of suffering and can be martyred even, but the victory of Christ for us is always assured. 

 What we have to do is to always be bold and magnificent in carrying out this duty of spreading the Word of God far and wide. This task should give us the greatest joy since we would be truly following what Christ wants us to do. 

 It’s important that we set our mind and heart on this divine wisdom that tells us that our joy is in following the will of God as shown to us by Christ and the Holy Spirit. It’s important that this joy and its accompanying peace of mind, is always felt even if we cannot avoid the most painful suffering along the way.

 It would be good if everyday we set some apostolic goals and missions for us to accomplish. This would make our life dynamic, putting it in some adventure that should captivate all our faculties. These goals and missions may be big or small. What is important is that they should urge us to action in order to obey God’s will. 

 Even in terms of mental health, this duty to undertake apostolic goals and missions can be very helpful. It would put us in a positive and constructive frame of mind. It would fill us with a healthy sense of duty, keeping us away from the dangers of idleness, laziness and that state of just floating around aimlessly. 

 It would be good if at the end of the day, as we go to bed, even if there are still issues to resolve and mistakes to correct, we should feel happy and fulfilled, and at peace because of the apostolic goals and missions we carried out. This is the ideal way to end the day—happy and at peace, reconciled with our Lord because whatever mistakes and sins we commit, we can always ask for pardon and God will always be merciful. 

 We should avoid ending the day in the state of anxiety, apprehensions and the like. These are highly toxic to our spirit. They affect even our bodily health. What should prevail in our mind and heart is that of joy and peace, again in spite of things that we still need to work out. 

 Let’s hope that we can make these words of St. Paul our own also: “In all things we suffer tribulation, but we are not distressed. We are sore pressed, but we are not destitute. We endure persecution, but we are not forsaken. We are cast down, but we do not perish. We are always bearing about in our body the dying of Jesus so that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodily frame.” (2 Cor 4,8-10)

The Holy Spirit strengthens our faith, hope and charity

WE should never take for granted the crucial role of the Holy Spirit in our life. He is God who continues to guide us, to abidingly intervene in our life, prompting us about what to think, say and do. 

 This is simply because our life—we should never forget this—is actually a sharing of the life of God. We are his image and likeness. God and us share the same life and nature, that is, if we only follow God’s will and ways that precisely are shown to us by the Holy Spirit. 

 This truth of our faith can be gleaned from the gospel reading of the Mass on Monday of the 6th Week of Easter. (cfr. Jn 15,26-16,4) “When the Advocate (the Holy Spirit) comes whom I will send you from the Father,” Christ told his apostles, “he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.” 

 Christ said this to his apostles, and now to us, with the view to strengthen the apostles’ and our faith, hope and charity, given the fact that it would be unavoidable for us to encounter all sorts of trials and sufferings in this world for Christ’s sake. He is reassuring us that things will just be all right despite these trials and suffering. 

 At one point, Christ even told his apostles—and again, now to us—that “they will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God.” (Jn 16,2) 

 Those words, indeed, are very intriguing. They remind us that our enemies are not so much those who openly declare themselves to be so. They rather are those who can appear to be at our side but are sadly entangled in their own world of what is right and wrong and cannot go to the extent of the radical kind of love Christ is showing and commanding us to live. 

 We have to see to it that our relation with the Holy Spirit is strong, deep and abiding. We have to learn to discern his constant promptings, because only with him can we truly be authentic Christians, vitally united with Christ, with no other purpose in life than to carry out the will of God for all of us. 

 We have to disabuse ourselves from the thought that the Holy Spirit guides only some special people. He guides all of us. We have to do everything to keep this awareness of the Holy Spirit’s abiding interventions in our life alive and operative. This duty and task is not meant for some special people only but rather for all of us. And this we can do if we try to keep ourselves always in the presence of God, constantly asking him and consulting him. 

 “Oh, Holy Spirit,” we may start asking, for example, “how should I understand this thing that is happening to me now, how should I react and behave, what are you trying to tell me in this particular event and circumstance, etc.?” 

 If we ask these questions with faith, we know that we are not simply talking to the wind. We would be convinced that we are engaged in an intimate conversation with someone who is everything to us, the one who actually is the main shaper of our life!