Pivoting from the customary to the heroic

THIS is how our spiritual life should be, how our relation with God and with everybody else should be. It will always involve the dynamic of pivoting from where we are at the moment to another and higher level of love and self-giving. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to be contented with what we may already have achieved in terms of loving. We should see to it that we continue to break new frontiers in loving. Despite our limitations, we know that with God, nothing is impossible. Things would just depend on us, on how we are receptive and corresponsive to God who loves us first and teaches us and enables us to love the way he loves. 

 Let’s not be deceived by the rationalization that we have already given much. St. Augustine somehow warned us of that danger when he said to the effect the in our spiritual life, if we do not move forward, we actually move backward. There’s no such thing as a stable point in loving. 

 Heroism is the name of the game of our life. We have to go all the way until we give up our life, channeling the same love that Christ showed us. He gave up his life out of love for us and in fidelity to God the Father’s will. 

 For this, we really need to continually ask God for grace, light and strength, so we may know what we ought to do. We have to make plans and strategies to carry out this ideal of love meant for us. 

 We have to remember that God already has given us everything so we can love the way he loves us. As Christ said: “To whom much is given, much will be required.” (Lk 12,48) We have been blessed with talents, wealth, knowledge, or time and are expected to use these gifts to help others and to give glory to God. 

 Definitely, loving will always involve and, in fact, require sacrifice. Where there is no sacrifice, there cannot be love. Love grows only to the extent that we are willing to make sacrifices. Without sacrifice, we sooner or later will be swallowed up by our own egoism, our own selfishness. 

 And this selfishness can take the form of laziness, attachment to certain things to the point of self-absorption, etc. We have to be ready to do battle against these anomalous tendencies of ours. 

 We should always remember that the very essence of love is self-giving. In love, the lover needs to lose himself in his beloved. He has to be identified with his beloved. And this will always involve self-denial. 

 The self-giving and losing that love requires would actually enrich the person in his dignity. This way of loving conforms to what Christ himself said: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16,25) 

 That’s why Christ himself said that if anyone wants to follow him, that person has to deny himself and, in fact, should carry the cross also. Otherwise, he cannot love. And true love is personified in Christ himself. 

 In other words, we can only love truly when we identify ourselves with Christ who precisely commanded us to love one another as he himself has loved us. We have to understand that only in Christ would we manage to keep our love alive and vibrant, always fresh, new and creative. It’s a love that is open to anything, and willing to go through all the challenges, trials, difficulties, etc. 

 In short, only with Christ can we manage to pivot from the customary to the heroic, from the traditional to the innovative, etc.!

Unifying our external senses and our spiritual powers

WE should do our best to pursue this ideal. We know that due to our wounded condition here on earth, there is division and conflict between our corporeal and spiritual dimensions of our life. St. Paul articulated this condition well when he said: “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Rom 7,19) 

 But there is always hope as long as we also train ourselves precisely to unify our external senses and corporeal faculties, and our spiritual powers. Unifying our external senses and our spiritual powers brings about the basic unity of life we are meant to have. It’s a way to achieve that ideal condition of our life where we become recollected and contemplative even in the midst of our earthly affairs. 

 And by unity of life, we mean the ideal of first of all letting our spiritual powers be animated by the spirit of God, and then letting our spiritual powers animate our external senses. The perfection of this unity of life is when we manage to unite ourselves in the life and nature of God as we are meant to be, since we are God’s image and likeness. 

 Of course, our external senses—sight, hearing, feeling, etc.—feed our spiritual powers of our intelligence and will with raw data, but these spiritual powers of ours, in a manner of speaking, should refine and purify the data received, and animate them with the spirit of God, that is, with our faith, hope and charity. 

 We should avoid reversing the roles between our corporeal and spiritual faculties, making our external senses rule and dominate our spiritual powers. Nowadays, this anomaly is taking place and is quite common even. Our external senses are now overstimulated to such an extent that they deaden or numb our spiritual faculties. 

 As consequences, we are seeing a rise in mental illness and a greater vulnerability to demonic possessions and other irregular situations. Many people, especially the young ones, are falling into all kinds of obsessions and addictions. 

 The main problem, of course, is that the senses are not united or inspired by faith. They are just left on their own, ruled mainly by instincts and other biological factors. Or at best they may be guided only by an intelligence that is not yet enlightened by faith. 

 And things can become so bad that these senses can get quite hostile to anything related to faith that definitely involves spiritual and supernatural realities. We need to realize that the first, last and constant object that our senses should perceive is God since he is the origin of everything, the maintainer of the existence of all things. He is everywhere. .

As St. Augustine once said: “To find where God is may be difficult, but to find where he is not, that is even more difficult.” And to be sure, God’s presence in everything is not something cold and indifferent. It is full of love and solicitude. He is always and actively intervening in our lives. 

 We need to train our senses to be guided by our Christian faith, hope and charity, so we can capture this very consoling reality. They should not just be left on their own, guided and ruled only by factors other than our faith, hope and charity. That state of affairs would lead us nowhere other than trouble. 

 Thus, if we are serious with guiding our senses and emotions with faith, we have to realize that our faith should not just be an intellectual affair, lived and pursued only in the spiritual world of good intentions and right doctrine. It has to involve the basic elements of our humanity, which are our senses, our feelings, our emotions and passions.

Speak and listen with charity always

SOMEONE sent me a podcast about how one should speak so that people listen and not get turned off. Among the mistakes that should be avoided in this regard are the following: neglecting to prepare, using filler words, talking too fast, talking too softly, forgetting to make eye contact, using distracting mannerisms, having low energy, misusing visual aids, etc. 

 I suppose there can be many more. We have all sorts of defects and limitations, and in spite of our good qualities, these negative elements always manage to come out, one way or another. That’s a fact of life that we should consider as a given. 

 Of course, we should try our best to speak in the most ideal way we can manage. There are courses and training for that purpose, and we should not ignore them. On the contrary, we should do everything to sharpen the skills we are taught in this area of public speaking. 

 But one thing we should never forget is the spiritual side of public speaking. This is basic and indispensable. And this can only mean that while we do everything to prepare ourselves adequately for this task of public speaking, we should not forget to speak always with charity. 

 And by speaking with charity, what is meant, to be blunt about it, is for us to speak with God and for God. Only then can we manage to know what to say and how to say it, given the conditions and circumstances of a given occasion. Somehow the unavoidable negative elements that will always hound us in our public speaking would be mitigated, if not healed, and can even become an asset or advantage. 

 This training in charity is most valuable for everyone involved in public speaking. Let’s remember that when we do some public speaking, we are not speaking only to clients or customers or possible voters, etc. We are speaking, first of all, to persons and children of God who have to be treated that way always. 

 Let’s remember that charity in the end is where the truth is. It embodies everything that is good and proper to us, irrespective of our personal conditions that can vary immensely. It can be forceful but not hurting, soft and meek but not spoiling. It gives us the best combination and blend of apparently contrasting or competing elements involved in our public speaking. 

 Now, if we have to speak with charity, we should see to it also that we learn how to listen with charity. With charity, we can always get something useful and enlightening even in the worst scenario that a particular public speaking event can occasion. 

 And this again is a matter of listening with God and for God. Listening with charity enables us to sift and process things calmly and properly. Even in moments of disagreement and conflict, no matter how serious, we can still manage to discern what God wants us to get from a particular speaker. And more importantly, we can manage to love the speaker even if he is clearly wrong about something. 

 The art of speaking and listening should be animated by the proper spirit of charity. Otherwise, despite the excellent techniques and skills we can have in these areas, we would be swallowing some sweet poisons that can lead us sooner or later to some disaster, spiritually and morally. 

 The training of speaking and listening with charity always should start in the family and reinforced in schools and in other platforms.