As long as we struggle...

YES, as long as we struggle interiorly, there is spiritual life, the very wellspring that produces the living water for our river of life. As long as we struggle interiorly, we can be assured of our fidelity to whatever commitment we have entered into. Interior struggle is essential and indispensable in our life.

Our life is very dynamic, with all sorts of challenges to face, problems to solve, issues to be clarified. We need to see to it that our interior life, our spiritual life, our thoughts, desires and intentions are firmly rooted on God, their proper foundation.

We need not only to purify our thoughts and intentions from any stain of pride, vanity, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, anger, etc. We need to also fill them and rev them up with true love and wisdom. These are the reasons why we have to engage in a lifelong interior or spiritual struggle.

The ideal situation should be that we are always in awe at the presence of God in our life, making him the principle and objective of all our thoughts, words and deeds. We have to be spiritually fit before we can be fit anywhere else—family-wise, professionally, socially, politically, etc.

Let’s never be deceived that our life is mainly physical, and its development is just a matter of struggling externally—that we manage to eat, to work, to earn, to stay away from physical danger, etc. The real battle is in our internal selves—in our thoughts and desires, our will and plans.

The struggle in life cannot just be a matter of economics or politics. The battle always starts and ends in our mind and heart, in the spiritual aspect of our life. This is where things start to happen, and where things also get resolved.

Even if there are still things to be fixed externally, we can still manage to fix them internally, because that’s where we get in touch directly with God, and with him, nothing is impossible. Let’s disabuse ourselves from the thought that we get our ultimate peace and joy somewhere else.

That’s why we have to see to it that our thoughts and desires are properly engaged with God who is their true foundation and end, for outside of him, we will just expose ourselves to all sorts of random and usually dangerous possibilities.

And God is not a figment of our imagination, a product of our desire to believe, a mere psychological crutch. He is the most real being—in fact, the fullness of subsistent being whose essence we can somehow know but can never fathom. He is the very author of reality itself.

This task of conforming our thoughts and desires to him is getting to be very exciting, because these days many are the earthly things—attitudes, philosophies, ideologies, cultures, together with their lifestyles—that dare to be alternatives to God.

Today’s world is so immersed in worldly values that any reference to God is at best a mere formalism, a decorative item, a lip service to tradition that is already emptied of its true substance.

And this is because in the first place many people are not praying anymore, are not exercising and living by faith. They prefer to follow by the rule of “following what comes naturally.” And that’s usually just obeying one’s feelings and passions, or the many flipping fads around.

Thus you have ad slogans like, “Obey your thirst,” “I don’t wanna grow up….. I’m a Toys R Us kid,” “It’s fun to tickle your tongue with…” If you’re constantly bombarded with messages like this, chances are you will believe them, and start abdicating the use of your spiritual faculties.

We have to wage an abiding interior struggle if only to keep our sanity, our humanity. We need to do it to avoid becoming mainly conditioned by earthly values that are blind to the spiritual and supernatural realities of our life.

            We need to see to it that our mind and heart are truly engaged with God, with the living God, and not just an idea or theory of God. This is not only possible, but also highly practicable, because in the first place, God himself wants it that way.

            The reason many people find it hard to get in contact with God is because they have lost the art of prayer and contemplation, and have assumed a dominantly worldly outlook that makes them self-centered, complacent, agnostic, if not atheistic.

            This is where interior struggle is most needed.

Quidquid recipitur...

THE complete Latin expression is: Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur, which means, Whatever is received is received in the manner of the receiver.

Paraphrasing it, we can also have: Cogitum est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis, A thing known exists in a knower according to the mode of a knower.

These are aphorisms that came from the great medieval philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas who seems, unfortunately, to be hardly known, if not ignored and scorned, by today’s generation, including the thinking class.

Some say that aphorisms like these don’t hold any attraction at all from today’s youth. They have lost appeal. They can’t generate any traction.

But they seem to be applicable these days as many people are discussing whether the heavy rains and floods in Manila are God’s way of sending a message about how the RH Bill is handled in Congress.

The pro-RH, of course, dismiss such thought and simply say it’s just pure coincidence that the rains and floods came at the heels of Congress’ terminating the RH Bill debate to move on to its approval. In short, there’s no connection at all.

The anti-RH appear to make a kind of association, though not categorical and definitive, between the two events.

So, it’s quite clear that one’s views of things depend on how he thinks, in what perspectives he considers them, and many other factors that can condition his thoughts, judgments and reasoning.

            And there can be an infinite variety of conditions into which people can be classified. One can be the emotional type or the intellectual type. He can be more of an individualist or a socialist. He can be the worldly type or the pious kind. He can be an illiterate or a scholarly fellow, young or old, athletic or sickly, etc.

            Each of these types certainly would come out with his peculiar thinking, which can lead us to what is called the Rashomon effect, defined as “the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.”

            Four people can meet and enter into an agreement to do something. But when they start working on the details, they find out that they have different and even conflicting understanding of what they agreed upon. That’s the Rashomon effect, a common phenomenon.

            This, I think, is what is happening in the RH Bill vis-à-vis the Manila rains-and-floods. People are taking different and even conflicting views about them, and all the opinions enjoy a certain degree of plausibility.

            So, it really depends on how one is. If he is the religious and spiritual type, then he will tend to take these two events under some religious light. And religiosity can have many variations. You can have the orthodox and truly saintly type, or you can have the superstitious type.

            There is a distinction made by St. Paul that can be relevant here. He talks about the carnal or sensual man and the spiritual man, each one with his characteristic way of seeing and understanding things.

            “Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we may know the things that are given us from God,” he said. “But the sensual man perceives not these things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined.” (1 Cor 2,12-14)

            Obviously, these words have little traction to many people of today who depend mainly on their own perceptions and thinking, without referring them to God, the Creator of the universe and ultimate authority about what is real and not, what is true and not.

            That is the problem that we have today, which can hardly be solved by way of arguments. It’s prayer, sacrifice and other spiritual and supernatural means, in short, God’s omnipotent and merciful grace, that can do it.

            A truly spiritual man can discern what God has to say about the current RH bill status and the rains and the floods. He just cannot remain in the externals and keep himself in the level of pure logic based only on some sciences, social or meteorological, if not simply on opinion.

            St. Paul says, “The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged of no man.” (1 Cor 2,15) He is the one who knows the mind of God.

            We, of course, have to be wary of the superstitious man who is not exactly the spiritual man referred to by St. Paul.

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

I WAS reminded of these words from an old song, which I am now using as the title of this piece, when the sneaky maneuver to end the RH bill debate in Congress triggered an explosion of angry reactions both from the pros and the antis.

I felt I had to retreat to the sides for a while, since the arena is full of fire, smoke and dust, and we really cannot do anything constructive when such is the situation.

Thing is, the dialogue and debate have turned practically into a shouting match, and some of the once honorable and respectable men and women involved have mutated into mad dogs who seem to have abandoned reason and charity and have embraced the ways of passion and hatred, unloading trash and increasingly straying from the real issues.

I had to remind everyone in the social networking to stay calm and always to remain in the hold of charity, despite the sharp differences and conflicts of views. We have to avoid what is called as bitter zeal, that blinding disease of self-righteousness that leads one to pursue his perceived good cause while leaving behind charity.

Truth, justice, charity actually cannot be separated. If any of these values is missing, the others also fall even if they continue to appear standing. And that’s why, we have to learn to widen and deepen our perspectives, and not confine ourselves to what is here and now, and even in the short-run or long-run, the way they are defined humanly.

We have to think in terms of eternity, of God’s wisdom and providence. We have to bring to our mind the very crucifixion of Christ who, completely sinless, chose to assume our sins and die to them to rise on the third day. These should bring us to our senses.

There we can find the reason why we need to be patient and magnanimous, merciful and ever charitable. In the end, even if some people cause us a lot of disturbance and can even offend us, they still are our brothers and sisters. When there’s real love in the heart, these brethren really are not too heavy to bear.

Our Lord asked for forgiveness for those who nailed him to the cross. “For they know not what they do,” he said. These words explain why things and people are the way they are at the moment.

Let’s be hopeful always. Setbacks along the way are really temporary, and are meant to spur us on to greater charity and understanding. They are meant for us to have another and deeper conversion. Thing is, evil will never have the last word. We may express our anguish and frustration for now, but let’s not dwell long in them.

We have to pray that people and things calm down. Let’s sustain the effort, no matter how obstructed, to clarify the issues. Those against the RH Bill, especially if they happen to be priests and men, are not anti-poor nor anti-women. If the others can remove that bias, then we expect a more objective, balanced discussion.

And those who are for the RH are not necessarily devils incarnate. They are our brothers and sisters whom we have to love. Remember what our Lord once said: “Love your enemies…Don’t resist evil. If one strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him also the other…”

We have to understand them. Let’s try to see where they are coming from, so we would know why they say and act the way they do. And from there, let’s think of the proper and charitable way to deal with them.

Fact is, people are subject to different situations, predicaments and conditionings. Some of us are very emotional, others may be intelligent but proud. Some may be very sensitive, others hardened by their problems that can range from the merely natural to the moral and spiritual. Some can have mental disorders, others blinded by some dangerous ideologies.

We have to understand everyone. When there’s a lot of fire, we should not put more fire. We have to learn when to talk and when not. We have to learn to be attentive to the sensibilities of the different people. Having to say sorry may have to done often, even if the other party is at fault.

We have to make charity, magnanimity and prudence reign. We should not be interested simply in scoring points. Charity has to be the supreme and guiding value to live.

Let’s stay calm always!