Easter and the life-and-death issues

HAPPY Easter to all! Christ is truly risen, never to die

again. We are now a new creation. Sin and death have been conquered by

Christ’s cross.

            We have reason to be happy and hopeful, no matter how dark

our earthly situations may be. We have to remember, though, that our

own resurrection in Christ always has to pass through the cross,

through suffering.

            Our death is not forever. Our pain and sorrow here are

emptied of their sting. With Christ’s resurrection, we have hope of

the kind that does not defraud. Sadness should not stay with us for

long.

            All this translates to the truth that Easter is the

celebration of our new, redeemed life in Christ in the Spirit. It’s

not just human life—biological, physical, professional, social, etc.

It is supernatural life, the life really meant for us. Let’s be more

conscious of this wonderful albeit demanding truth.

            This is the life that can contend with any situation in

our earthly affairs. It has the capacity to go beyond death, beyond

sin. It has tremendously healing, strengthening and purifying powers.

            For this to happen, we have to follow Christ. Of course,

not only in the physical or emotional sense. We follow him through

faith, hope and charity, supernatural virtues that connect us vitally

with him.

            We follow him when we cling to his teaching, now the

doctrine also of his Church. When we assimilate his teaching and make

it our own, we unite ourselves with his will. We will be in the same

wavelength with him.

            We follow him when we avail ourselves of the sacraments,

his continuing presence and action. Christ continues to live on.

Precisely he resurrected. Death has no dominion over him. And though

he already sits on the right hand of his father, he makes himself

easily available to us. He in fact wants to enter our life.

            We follow him when we make ourselves active and living

members of his Church, allowing ourselves to be governed pastorally by

his ministers, the clergy and the hierarchy, from the Pope down to the

last priest and deacon. Christ leads us through them.

            We need to have the necessary dispositions to achieve all

these requirements for following Christ. We need to be humble, docile

and obedient, completely free and responsible which should go together

always.

            And given the complicated conditions of our life today, we

have to be shrewdly prudent. We need to have the prudence of the

spirit, never of the flesh, no matter how attractive the latter tries

to make itself up.

            In our political life, we need to be very discerning in

choosing our leaders. If we truly live the spirit of Easter, then we

have to choose leaders who are clearly pro-life, not pro-death nor

anti-life.

            We may have varying opinions—valid and with their

advantages and disadvantages—with respect to purely political,

economic and social issues. In these issues, we have to learn to

dialogue civilly, respecting one another’s opinions.

            But when it comes to matters of faith and morals, like

what the life issues are all about, then we should try to choose what

promotes life over death, what favors true good over attractive evil,

doing this always with charity.

            Anti-life politicians, simply put, are those who are for

extra-judicial killings, contraception, divorce, abortion, same-sex

unions, immoral family planning methods, etc.

            Since many of these anti-life politicians usually crow

that they are actually for life, then we have to examine whether they

follow truly Christ. Thus we have to see how closely they follow

Christ’s doctrine, his sacraments, and his Church.

            We have to be wary of politicians’ and ideologues’

charming ways. We have to assess their views and positions according

to the sure touchstones of prudence.

            This is, of course, a very delicate task. It should be

done with utmost respect for freedom and in utmost charity. This is

because the truth can only be properly affirmed and defended in

charity.

When prayer gets desert-dry

WE have to be prepared for this eventuality that, sad to

say, given our current frenzied conditions, many people claim to

experience. There can be many explanations for this.

            One is that we are not actually taking care of our spirit

of recollection all throughout the day. That’s why we find it hard and

awkward to pause and do some kind of reflection and meditation, or

even short, spontaneous chitchat with God.

            We allow ourselves to be carried away by purely worldly

impulses that would at least marginalize if not omit God altogether in

our daily affairs. And so we cannot relate ourselves to him and thus

find no urge to pray. We find him a stranger in our life.

            Another is that we are just lacking in faith and, in fact,

are carrying serious doubts and unresolved issues with respect to our

faith. This can be worsened by the fact that aside from doing nothing

about it, we expose ourselves to ideologies, cultures and lifestyles

that are hostile to religion and spiritual and supernatural realities.

            And nowadays, such ideologies and lifestyles are rampant,

ever reinforced by the media and other elements in the world. Not only

are we referring to some sustained campaign for relativism,

agnosticism and atheism. We can now talk about outright hostility

against God.

            Or it could simply be lack of effort and spirit of

mortification. Prayer will always require some sacrifice. Christ

himself had to wake up early in the morning and go to some isolated

place to pray to his father.

            Even those who already know about the importance of prayer

and are doing something about it do not make the necessary effort to

discipline themselves and fight against the usual enemies like

laziness, attachment to comfort, egoism, etc.

            And the last but not the least of the reasons could be

that God simply wants us to suffer this drying in our prayer just to

test us and to draw from us the impulse to grow precisely in our

spirit of prayer, showing us where we are weak at and where we should

therefore work on.

            In any event, when our prayer gets desert-dry for whatever

reason, we should try to stay calm and to avoid over-reacting by

worrying too much about it. What we can do is to precisely make use of

that predicament as the very material for our prayer.

            In those cases where we find no reason to pray, we should

just allow the heart to take over, making many acts of faith, hope and

charity, usually done in repeated ejaculatory fashion until the heart

begins to burn.

            Let’s remember that the heart has a language that goes

beyond reason and words, and when it takes the lead in our prayer, it

will surely bring us to considerations we never thought or expected

before.

            We should not be afraid when our prayer gets desert-dry.

We should just persist in spending some time with God, allowing the

heart to take over. In the end, it will be God who will take the lead,

and we would just go along.

What the Holy Week teaches

MANY precious insights and lessons can be derived if we

enter into the spirit of the Holy Week. Let us thank God for all of

them and strengthen our resolve to go through the Holy Week keeping

our faith and piety as vibrant as possible. That way, we can

predispose ourselves to continually discern these insights and

lessons, refining, polishing and deepening them as we go along.

            Among these precious insights and lessons is the idea of

human and Christian perfection which, I believe, is patently shown by

Christ as we liturgically celebrate his Passion, Death and

Resurrection.

            For many of us, our usual understanding of what is perfect

and complete is when we manage to pass a certain test, conquer a

certain battle, win in a certain contest, all measured in human terms.

            That is to say, that the victory and conquest is measured

in terms of points scored, wealth earned, popularity gained, or in

terms of mere physical and mechanical perfection.

            Those standards of perfection and completion obviously

have their proper value and place in the sun, but they definitely are

still far from what is ideal to us as persons and as children of God.

            They are far too exclusive, not inclusive, and are unable

to find value in suffering, and reason and meaning in the many human

imperfections and natural limitations that we all have.

            It’s an understanding of perfection that is not realistic,

given our wounded human nature and damaged condition. It fails to

consider many other things that are unavoidable in our earthly life.

            In this Holy Week, from Christ’s triumphal entry into

Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, to his death on the cross and

resurrection, what we see is Christ’s determination to perfect and

complete his redemptive work by obeying the will of his Father, no

matter what it costs.

            Our idea of human and Christian perfection has to conform

to that model shown to us by Christ. It can be very strict and

demanding insofar as the human and natural standards are concerned,

but all of that should not in any way undermine the charity and mercy

that has to be extended to everyone no matter how they are.

            We have to realize that our human and Christian perfection

is achieved to the extent that we follow Christ all the way to the

cross so that we too can share in his resurrection. It is a perfection

that will always involve suffering, that is, the cross of Christ that

paved the way to his resurrection.

            What the Holy Week teaches us is to train ourselves to

suffer with Christ, to take up the cross of Christ without fear. We

should be reassured of the victory that can be the consequence of this

attitude, banking also on the reassurance that was once expressed by

St. Paul:

            “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to

mankind. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond

what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a

way out so that you can endure it.” (1 Cor 10,13)