Win by losing

THAT assertion certainly raises eyebrows. How on earth, in

the commonest of common sense, can one win by losing? It’s just pure

contradiction. If you win, you win. And if you lose, you lose. Period.

It’s as contradictory as white is to black, up is to down.

            But, alas, Christ tells us so in so many words. “Whoever

finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake

will find it.” (Mt 10,39) Still in another instance, he says:

“Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or

mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a

hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Mt 19,29)

            I am sure we are scratching our head as we read these

words. Try as we might, we neither cannot just dismiss these words

since they are spoken by no less than Christ himself. There must be

something to them that our best intelligence just cannot cope.

            That’s right. These words simply have to be taken in

faith, that supernatural gift given to us to which we also have to

correspond not so much with our intelligence and understanding as with

the obedience of faith.

            Yes, we have to make an obedience of faith, that act of

believing not because we understand things presented to us but more

because they are spoken by someone who neither deceives nor be

deceived. (cfr. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 143,156)

            In other words, we believe that we can indeed win by

losing on the authority of Christ who precisely won by losing when he

willingly died on the cross but rose on the third day. In so doing, he

guaranteed the salvation of man, although we also have to do our part

of at least believing him.

            We have to understand then that what is involved here is

not just a natural truth, but a supernatural one, a truth that does

not necessarily go against our nature but rather transcends. It’s a

truth that partakes of the divine nature of God. That’s why Christ

said that we can gain and win from what may appear to be a loss if we

do things for “My sake.”

            This truth of our Christian faith is very relevant these

days as we go through a variety of privations and sacrifices and

expressions and modes of loss and defeat. Let’s hope that we come out

of this pandemic not having a kind of survivor frame of mind, but

rather that of a winner, a victor, a conqueror.

            We should see to it that we come out of this crisis

feeling enriched not impoverished, happy not sad. And the secret is

because we go through this crisis by getting closer to Christ.

            This means in concrete terms that we are growing more in

love with God and with others. We would be willing to make sacrifices.

We would be more generous in our self-giving. The privations and

sacrifices we are going through are the catalysts that would make love

for God and others deeper and stronger.

            This is how we win by losing. By growing more in love,

which is another way of saying by becoming more and more like Christ

who is God, who is love himself, we can win by losing in the sense

that we follow the very example of Christ whose supreme love for us

was shown by offering his life on the cross for our sins.

            He does not mind the cost involved. His sense of justice

is not the strict quid-pro-quo type. It is a justice totally inspired

by charity and mercy, completely gratuitous even if it is not

reciprocated properly by us.

            We need to be more familiar with this truth about winning

by losing. Let’s live out what a proverb said: “Those who give

generously receive more, but those who are stingy with what is

appropriate will grow needy.” (11,24)

Reaching out amid lockdown

I KNOW we can never wipe out poverty entirely. There will

always be poor, suffering people. Christ himself said as much. “The

poor you will always have with you…” (Mt 26,11) But this does not mean

that we should not do anything, at least to mitigate that problem,

helping poor people as much as we can. This is the very basic aspect

of Christian charity.

            With the present dispensation of lockdowns and

quarantines, we can just imagine how the poor people, already

suffering a lot during normal times, are suffering today. I know that

we ourselves have our own share of privations, discomfort and

inconvenience brought about by these restrictions. But this does not

detract us from our duty to do whatever we can to help the more

disadvantaged ones.

            We simply cannot be aloof to the graver predicaments of

the others. Let’s be wary of the tendency to be unmindful of the

others simply because we may not be suffering as much. We can still

eat and have our comfortable time. Our fridges are still well-stocked.

            Let’s be careful because we can easily fall into a severe

case of quiet and deceptive self-indulgence. We can think that we are

not doing anything wrong because we are just by ourselves. This is a

subtle form of self-indulgence and is definitely a sin. Christ wants

us to love everybody as he has loved us, and love is not just not

doing anything wrong to others. It is being truly concerned for them,

expressed in deeds.

            Let us always remember that if we want to follow Christ as

we should, we have to deny ourselves and carry the cross. (cfr. Mt

16,24) This is always the rule to follow, in good times and in bad.

            The very least thing we can do to help is at least to

practice some form of self-denial, especially in our food, drinks,

comfort, use of gadgets, if only to show solidarity with those who are

denied of the basic necessities of life during these times. Let us be

very generous in this level of self-denial and self-giving.

            But for sure, we can do a lot more. We should not forget that many

people, with families to feed, have lost their job and their

livelihood. And because of the many restrictions nowadays, many cannot

report for work while many others cannot go home, stranded and quite

broke. People in all forms of helplessness are numberless. Human

misery has sunk quite drastically deeply these days.

            We have to reach out to them. How? That’s another

challenge to face. But there are always some ways. We are not yet dead

when we cannot do anything anymore. Where there is a will, there will

always be a way! The human spirit, especially animated by divine love,

can always find a way.

            It does not mean we be imprudent and reckless in our zeal

to help others. There certainly are risks to take. But if we plan

things well, and bring them to our prayer, we can be sure that we can

do a lot to help others in these difficult times with so many

restrictions to contend with.

            Offhand, I notice there are already some people organizing

themselves to do some feeding programs to many. This is a very good

initiative. They have tapped their own personal networks and other

organizations for this purpose, and it’s working.

            What I find more challenging is to identify those who seem

not to need some help because they enjoyed a level of comfort during

the normal times, but actually are in great need of help these days.

The overt poor are always easy to identify. And we already have some

appropriate structures for them. It’s the hidden and the new poor that

are quite difficult to identify and to extend help.

            If we bring this concern in our prayer, I am sure we can

find the appropriate ways to reach out to them.

Drain the swamp

THIS is not, of course, a political piece, much less, a

partisan one, though the title is a phrase that was popularized by US

President Trump during his presidential campaign way back in 2016. He

actually did not coin it, but with the way he is and how the state of

US politics can be described, this expression enjoyed tremendous

following.

            Wikipedia describes this expression as alluding “to the

physical draining of swamps to keep mosquito populations low to combat

malaria.” But it is often used by politicians to refer to their effort

to root out systemic corruption or whatever has become systemically

wrong in the government bureaucracy or in the political world.

            It is an expression that definitely can also be applied to

whatever is wrong at any level of the Church structure, especially

when what is wrong there has become systemic.

            We should not be surprised by this phenomenon. Given our

own weaknesses and the many temptations around, we cannot deny that in

spite of everything that Christ has given us to make us holy

individually and collectively, we always have the possibility of

lapsing into subtle compromises with error and sin until their

consequences become endemic to a particular Church structure.

            Even during the time of Christ, this draining of the swamp

was already done. Christ had to contend with the warped understanding

of religion that the leading Jews of that time had.

            Remember those lamentations Christ made against the

Pharisees and the scribes as recorded in Chapter 23 in the Gospel of

St. Matthew. Some words of Christ may be helpful to give us a savor of

how he felt about the swamp that was the state of religion at that

time:

            “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do

and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For

they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to

bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not

willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be

seen by others, etc., etc.”

            We really need to be very sharply aware of this danger and

should be prepared to take the necessary precautions and, if needed,

to do battle with it. That’s when we have to learn the art of draining

the swamp, starting with our own selves by seeing to it that we avoid

complacency, spiritual lukewarmness and any compromise with error and

sin, no matter how slight.

            And when we see signs of systemic compromises in any level

of our Church structure, we should react immediately. In fact, it

would be better that we nip these compromises in the bud. But if these

compromises have already gained some ground, then we really should

react with appropriate vigor and prudence.

            It is our duty to keep the Church structure fit to

sacramentalize the Body of Christ or the People of God that the Church

is. In this regard, our Catechism tells us that the Church, “clasping

sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification,

follows constantly the path of penance and renewal. All members of the

Church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are

sinners. In everyone, the weeds of sin will still be mixed with the

good wheat of the Gospel until the end of time.” (CCC 827)

            So we are all asked to continue the work of penance and

conversion, purification and renewal. This is something that we should

not forget, especially when we tend to believe that we are already

good or holy. We still have feet of clay, and the possibility of

falling is always there.

            Of course, in draining the swamp in the Church structure,

we should always practice charity. Bitter zeal has no place in the

Church. Better to suffer than to lack charity!