Prayer is indispensable in our life

THAT earnest request of Christ’s disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray,” (Lk 11,1) should also be always ours. We may have been praying for the longest time already, but knowing how we are, with our wounded humanity, we know that we can always go through the motions of praying without actually praying! 

 We have to be humble enough to acknowledge this fact of life that should lead us to importune our Lord to teach us how to pray. We know that without prayer, we would just be a hopeless case, regardless of certain signs that may tell us otherwise. 

 Prayer is the most basic way we have to be connected with God as we should. That’s where we maintain our existential sharing with God’s life and nature. Our union with God begins and ends with prayer. 

 The beatific vision that we are told about as our ultimate way of being with God in heaven can also be regarded as the ultimate form of prayer that we can have. But while here in our earthly sojourn, we need to learn how to pray, taking advantage of everything in our life as an occasion, means and reason for prayer. 

 Yes, prayer can lend itself to infinite ways and forms, although given our human condition whose development always involves some processes and stages, we need to learn first the most basic form which are the vocal prayers. 

 In this, the most helpful vocal prayer is the one Christ himself told his disciples about how to pray. We need to study and meditate on what we now call as the Lord’s Prayer, since it was what Christ told them about how his disciples should pray. 

 We can consider that prayer as the model prayer, showing us how to address God and what we should tell and ask from him. We should try to discern and catch the spirit behind that prayer. 

 In the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we are told that “the Lord’s Prayer reveals us to ourselves at the same time that it reveals the Father to us.” (2783) 

 In other words, we are told who we really are and who God is to us. Thus, no matter how our life here on earth goes, we should never forget that we are children of God who will do everything to bring us back to him. Psalm 129 reinforces this truth of our faith: “With the Lord, there is mercy and fullness of redemption.” 

 We just have to make sure also that, as expressed in this prayer, we also have to be merciful to everyone just as God is merciful to us. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” 

 We have to understand that forgiveness or mercy is the ultimate expression of love which is the very essence of God and which is also meant to be essence of our humanity since we are God’s image and likeness, children of his. 

 And as if to underscore the importance of this point, Christ reiterated: “For if you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offences. But if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offences.” (Mt 6,14-15) It’s clear therefore that we can only be forgiven if we also forgive others. 

 We have to be clear that this injunction is meant for everyone, and not only for a few whom we may consider to be religiously inclined. That’s why when asked how many times we should forgive, he said not only seven times, but seventy times seven, meaning always.

Training our mind and heart to be properly focused

THIS is what we can gather as a lesson from that gospel episode about the two sisters, Martha and Mary, in their relation with Christ. (cfr. Lk 10,38-42) Both were good sisters and followers of Christ, but the former failed to take the proper priority regarding their relation with Christ. 

 While everything temporal and earthly plays an important role in our relation with God, they can be dangerous if they do not have God as their beginning and end, and are simply understood and treated as temporal and earthly. 

 We really need to train our mind and heart to be always anchored and focused on God. This will take a lifetime to achieve, and we may not be able to perfect it, but the point is simply for us to just try and try. 

 Especially these days when we are heavily bombarded with fantasies and fictions in novels and movies, we can easily be gaslighted to believe in them if our faith in God is not nourished regularly in our mind and heart. 

 We would fail to realize that these fantasies and fictions are just make-believe things that only serve as a temporary way of rest and recreation and should not be taken seriously. With a weak hold on our faith and on our spiritual life, we would fail to realize that we are just being tickled to play the game of self-indulgence that would slowly snuff out our relation with God and with others.   

These fantasies and fictions often appeal to our emotions and passions, leading us to be more carnal than spiritual, more animal-like than God-like as we should be. They usually play out the law of Talion in their storylines and narratives, making the eye-for-an -eye and tooth-for-a tooth behavior as the standard of our life. 

 It’s not a matter of considering these fantasies and fictions as bad. They can serve a legitimate purpose and can be truly helpful to us as long as we too take the necessary precautions and prudence in enjoying them. 

 We need to spend time and effort to make God truly present, acknowledged and responded to in our mind and heart. Thus, the need to spend time praying and meditating on the life of God, studying and internalizing the doctrine and teaching of Christ and of the Church, having recourse to the sacraments and other human devices that would help us live always in the presence of God. 

 When we notice that we are more attracted to the extraordinary happenings in these fantasies and fictions than on the miracles of Christ, we would already have an indication of the wrong priorities we have in life. 

 We have to remember that the miracles of Christ are real while those extraordinary happenings in those fantasies and fictions are not. The miracles of Christ are meant to draw us closer to God, to grow in our faith, to lead us to another conversion, to enter into the spiritual and supernatural world, etc., while those extraordinary happenings in those fantasies and fictions are a subtle way for us to indulge on ourselves and to trap us only in the here and now. 

 We should have a well-articulated plan of life that can foster true piety 24/7. Especially these days when the world is rapidly developing, causing a lot of confusion, if not error, this need for an effective plan of life should be considered as urgent.

Charity amid our growing differences and conflicts

CONSIDERING the rapidly growing differences and conflicts among ourselves not only in terms of age and generation, but also and especially in terms of opinions, lifestyle, culture, and even beliefs, etc., we have to be prepared to deepen and broaden our sense of charity so we can manage to love everyone, as we should, in spite of all the in spites of. 

 We can only do this if we truly identify ourselves with Christ, having his very mind and heart that are willing to go all the way to offer his life if only to love everyone, even if not all will reciprocate that love. 

 In many schools at this time, there is such a thing as retooling their programs if only to align and adapt their training to the fast-evolving developments and needs of the industry, corporations and other institutions they want to serve. What should never be neglected is how to equip the students in their spiritual and moral life, and particularly in how to live in charity, in the context of the current world condition. 

 I am particularly concerned about how the young ones especially are being prepared to face the challenges of the times. They are getting more and more exposed to highly fictionalized movies and books that show, if not promote, violence, rash judgments, the law of Talion. And they seem to be undernourished, if not starved, in their life of piety. It looks like religion to them has become an irrelevant item in their lives. 

 The challenge to face nowadays is how to teach everyone, especially the young ones, how to find Christ in everything, and how to let everyone realize more deeply that we need Christ in all our earthly affairs. This, definitely, will be a daunting task, but I believe it is all worthwhile. 

 We cannot deny that many people are trapped in the earthly systems of self-indulgence, self-assertion and self-affirmation, with their relation with God and with others practically unattended. There is a great need for everyone to learn what Christ told us about how to follow him: that we have to deny ourselves and carry the cross. (cfr. Mt 16,24) 

 This is the formula to follow if we want to live charity that has a universal coverage. Charity is not only for those who are right in something. It’s also for those who are wrong. It’s not only for the winners. It’s also for the losers. Not only for friends, but also for enemies! 

 But the universal inclusivity of charity does not do away with the exclusivity of truth. It does not do away with the distinction between good and evil, between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood. In fact, it sharpens that distinction. And yet, it still works in all that distinction. 

 Yes, charity is all-inclusive, though it is expressed, of course, in different ways. As they say, we have to have different strokes for different folks. And that’s simply because at the end of the day, whether we like it or not, we are all creatures and children of God, brothers and sisters to each other. We have been created by our Creator out of love and also for love. 

 We have to realize that our life here on earth can be described as a journey toward our ultimate home, which is to be with God our Father and Creator in heaven. It will be charity that would keep us going and that would enable us to leap to the eternal supernatural life with God.

Marriage is not our creation

“WHAT therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mk 10,9) 

 That, in a nutshell, is how God created and designed marriage for us. It’s a lifelong, unbreakable commitment that is founded on God’s love and on our faith in him. Marriage is never just our own invention that would depend on how things go nor on the terms we set for it. Marriage should be entered into according to God’s designs for it, according to his terms, and not ours. 

 Thus, in the wedding ceremony, the man and the woman, armed by God’s grace, promise each other that they will stick together “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” 

 As designed by God, marriage is for a man and a woman who in their God-based love for each other make themselves one flesh. Being a God-based love, it has to go beyond the human level of love. It has to be a love that is supernatural as shown to us and shared with us by Christ. 

 This God-based love will definitely be quite a tall order for us, since we are expected to go beyond our human and natural powers and resources. But as long as our faith in God is deep and strong, we can hack it, because more than us it is God himself who will enable us to love as God loves as shown to us by Christ. This God-based love can handle anything in our life. 

 Given the confusion and errors now besetting this issue on marriage, we need to reiterate that marriage is meant only for a man and a woman. There’s no such thing as same-sex marriage. Why? Because marriage is meant primarily for procreation of children. 

 And it has be exclusive—that is, between one man and one woman. It cannot be polygamous. Why? Because marriage is based on a love that involves the use of the body. Since in love, everything is supposed to be given to the beloved by the lover, once that body is given to the beloved, it cannot anymore be shared with another partner. Unlike in a love that is spiritual, the more people we love, the better. 

 But more important to realize about marriage is that it is actually a path to holiness. It is not just a purely human and temporal affair. It has great potentials for the parties involved to pursue the common goal of ours to attain holiness, our identification with God through Christ, since we are all God’s image and likeness. 

 That is why everything has to be done to make marriage achieve its fullest dignity. And that means that we have to purify and elevate the love that is the very germ of marriage to the supernatural order as it should be. 

 That love has to develop from simply being natural and body-emotion-world reliant to being more and more spiritual and supernatural, driven by grace rather than by mere natural forces. 

 With the sacrament of marriage, the love between husband and wife is already guaranteed to have all the graces needed to make that marriage reach its fullness. What is needed is the faithful and generous correspondence of the parties concerned to those graces. 

 The parties involved should realize that their love for each other should reflect and channel the very love Christ has for the Church. Yes, the union of husband and wife should be like that of Christ toward the Church. (cfr. Eph 5,22-33)

Christ’s anger meant for our conversion

From time to time, we see Christ showing anger over certain issues. This only validates the fact that anger is not necessarily bad, since it is part of our human nature and definitely also of the supernatural character of our life. We just have to be very careful about it, seeing to it that our anger is righteous anger, and not just the anger of a brute animal. 

 When Christ got mad over some leading Jews of his time, (cfr. Lk 10,13-16) that was because despite the many good things Christ showed them, they persisted in their own self-righteous ways and even went to the extent not only of not believing in Christ but also of finally condemning him to death. 

 We too should feel the anger of Christ, since we cannot deny that despite everything that Christ has done for us, we continue to be erratic in our ways, falling into all kinds of anomalies and sins. By feeling Christ’s anger, we should also feel the need for us to have another round of repentance and conversion. 

 Let’s just be frank about ourselves. We are all sinners! No matter how much we try to be good and holy—and to a certain extent, we can actually manage to achieve that ideal—we can still find ourselves falling into sin, if not big ones, then small ones, which can actually be more dangerous since we can tend to take them for granted, until we get used to them and would not feel anymore the need for repentance and conversion. 

 We have to understand that conversion is a continuing affair for all of us in this life. We can never say, if we have to follow by what our Christian faith tells us, that we are so good as to need conversion no more. We are all sinners, St. John said. And even the just man, as the Bible said, falls seven times in a day. 

 Besides, it is this sense of continuing conversion that would really ensure us that whatever we do, whatever would happen to us, including our failures and defeats, would redound to what is truly good for the parties concerned and for everybody else in general. 

 That’s because conversion brings us and everything that we have done in life to a reconciliation with God, from whom we come and to whom we go. 

 Also, Christ’s anger is actually a call for us to practice sincerity and consistency in our life, avoiding even the slightest trace of hypocrisy and double life. In fact, we should develop what is called as unity of life, rooted on our earnest effort to identify ourselves with Christ who is the pattern of our humanity, the savior of our damaged humanity. 

 We have to understand that only with Christ can we aspire to have unity and consistency in our life, one that is not rigid. Rather it is a consistency and unity that knows how to adapt itself properly given the different and changing conditions and circumstances of our life. 

 So, we really have to earnestly pursue the effort of living and defending our Christian identity all the time. We should not be afraid to show our Christian identity at all times and in all situations. We should not be Christian by name only, but also by our thoughts, desires and deeds, and in all aspects of our life. We should not be Christian in good times only, but also, and most especially, in bad times. We should not be Christian only in our sacred moments, but also in our mundane activities.

We are vital cooperators of Christ’s mission

WE need to realize this truth about ourselves more deeply and stably. We are meant to be living cooperators of Christ’s continuing mission of human redemption. And this is not only for a few, but actually for all of us. Of course, this truth of our faith can be acted on in stages. We cannot be all of a sudden active cooperators of Christ’s mission. It takes time, effort and, of course, God’s grace for us to achieve this ideal and dignity. 

 “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so, ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest,” Christ told his disciples, and is now telling us. (Lk 10,2) Despite the limitations and inadequacies we think we have to carry out this mandate, we should just try our best to respond to it. 

 We cannot deny that especially these days, there is a great need for these “laborers for the master’s harvest.” Today’s mission lands are not so much those places and people who are far away from the mainstream, those who still are kind of primitive in their culture and deprived even of the basic material necessities, as those who are in developed countries but very far in their faith. 

 More than far from the faith and from God, many people today look more resistant and even against God and anything that has to do with religion. They are more challenging since the attention and evangelization to be given to them require a more complex strategy. 

 In a sense, these places and people can constitute as the new peripheries that Pope Francis likes to talk about. And when he said that the Christian missionaries as shepherds should be ready to acquire the smell of the sheep, to be sure it will be a different smell from what we usually expect from poor, underdeveloped places and people. But just the same, it will be the smell of the lost sheep, even if the smell is sweet to the senses. 

 We therefore have to make some drastic updating of our understanding of what a missionary is. We should not get stuck with the common textbook idea that a missionary is usually a priest or nun who goes to a far-away place, and literally starts a settlement there. 

 While this concept of a missionary is still valid—it will always be—it now cries to be expanded to reflect its true character, especially given today’s fast-moving and more complicated world. 

 We have to understand that everyone, by virtue of his sheer humanity and much more, his Christianity, is called to be a missionary, and that he does not need to go to distant lands because his immediate environment already needs a more effective, down-to-earth evangelization. 

 Yes, even the ordinary guy in an office, the farmer, the businessman, the politician, the entertainers, artists and athletes, are called to be missionaries. That’s simply because as persons with a prominently social dimension in our life, we have to be responsible for one another. 

 And the biggest responsibility we can have for the others would be their moral and spiritual welfare, much more than just their economic or social wellbeing, though this latter concern is also very important. It is this responsibility that we have to learn how to be more serious about and more competent in fulfilling. This is the current situation and challenge to all of us.

A special day

OCTOBER 2 is a special day for me. First, because it is the memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels to whom we should try to have a great devotion. That’s because they actually are very helpful in our daily affairs, since they are our direct link to God. Christ said that the angels see and attend to God face to face. (cfr. Mt 18,10) They serve as his agents and messenger to us. They give us a lot of help. 

 Even in our material needs, we can ask them to facilitate things. It may just be a matter of looking for a parking space in a crowded place, or of asking for safety and security when we travel. We should not hesitate to ask them for help. It’s their pleasure to be of help. 

 Second, October 2 marks the anniversary of the foundation of a Church institution to which I intimately belong—Opus Dei. It was on this day in 1928 that St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder, saw what God has been hinting at him since he was still in his teens. 

 It was during a retreat for diocesan priests that he attended when, after Mass, he returned to his room and began to put his notes in order. Suddenly, he said, he “saw” what God wanted him to be and to do. 

 He said that what he saw were people of every nation and race, of every age and culture, seeking and finding God right in the middle of their ordinary life, their work, their family, and their friendships.  He said that he saw people who looked for Christ in order to love him and to live a holy life until they were completely transformed and made into saints—saints in the middle of the world, as in a tailor saint, for example, a baker saint, and in the context of current circumstances, a “habal-habal driver saint, and even a politician saint. Indeed, what a gratifying prospect that would be! 

 He said that he saw ordinary persons as saints, deeply identified with Christ, and who direct all their activities to God, who sanctify their work and thus sanctify themselves in their work and sanctify others through their work. 

 Third, it was on a day like this when I, at 18, and having been exposed to these considerations, decided, for reasons I did not quite understand, said yes to a lifelong vocation of total commitment to give myself completely to live the spirit of Opus Dei and carry out its mission. 

 At first there was no intention of becoming a priest. I would just be a committed layman, working in the middle of the corporate world, and trying the bring the message of Opus Dei there. This involved living in apostolic celibacy so that I could give myself more wholeheartedly to the mission of Opus Dei. 

 It was only when I was 35 when I was asked if I would like to become a priest, to which I immediately said yes. I was sent to Rome and Spain to finish my ecclesiastical studies, and finally got ordained when I was almost 40. 

 As an anniversary, every October 2 gives me reasons to be truly joyful and thankful, as well as an occasion to renew my commitment of love and to see if I am still on the right path toward my final destination. 

 Indeed, October 2 is a very special day for me!

Despite contradictions, let’s be constant in doing good

THIS is the lesson we can learn from that gospel episode where Christ corrected his disciples who wanted to bring fire on a Samaritan village that did not welcome them. (cfr. Lk 9,51-16) 

 We cannot deny that in our life, in spite of our good intentions and deeds, there will be times when we still can be rejected and even ridiculed by some people for one reason or another. We have to be guarded against reacting on these occasions in a purely human way, not the Christian way. 

 Indeed, our zeal to follow Christ can intriguingly counter what to be a true Christian is. We should not be too surprised by this phenomenon. It’s part of our wounded human condition here on earth. But we should correct ourselves as soon as possible. 

 A true Christian loves everyone, including one’s enemies. He is willing to suffer, and even to die, if necessary, out of love for God and for everyone else. The contradictions he encounters in life do not snuff out his eagerness to continue doing a lot of good. 

 Yes, we will always be hounded by contradictions in our life, but let’s learn the art of converting them into occasions to go to God more closely. And that’s when, with God, we can manage to derive good from evil. 

 On our part, we just have to be humble enough to accept this fact of life, and more, to go to God to ask for forgiveness and help every time we are feel the sting of evil. It is pure pride when we refuse to acknowledge this fact of life, and more so, when we refuse to go to God for forgiveness and help. 

We have to realize that the root of this all-too-human reactions of ours before certain contradictions is the fact that we are not yet as spiritual and supernatural as God wants us to be. St. Paul offers some explanation in his Letter to the Romans: 

 “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 

 “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 

 “So, I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work with me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! 

 “So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (7,14-25)