The Holy Spirit’s constant promptings

WE should be most aware of this truth of our faith. The Holy Spirit is constantly prompting us what to think, say and do. And that’s because God, being at the very core of our existence, cannot abandon us and is constantly intervening in our lives, guiding us to where we should be. 

 A passage from the Book of Isaiah can validate that truth: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (49,15) 

 We should just have to learn how to perceive and respond properly to these promptings. That’s why we need to develop a certain spirit of recollection so that we can let our spiritual faculties, with the help of God’s grace, to detect God’s presence and interventions in our life. In the end, this spirit of recollection would develop in us a life of intimacy with God. 

 We have to realize that intimacy is the ideal condition of our life which will always be a matter of developing and keeping relationships. But we have to be intimate with God first before we can be intimate with everybody and everything else in the proper way. 

 That’s because as “image and likeness” of God, as we have been created, God as shown to us in Christ through the Holy Spirit is the very pattern of our humanity. How God is should also be how we ought to be. We have to do everything to have intimacy with God all the time because that is the best and proper condition for us to be in this life. And we can achieve it because the Holy Spirit precisely prompts us always. 

 We can somehow know that we are following the promptings of the Holy Spirit when we enjoy what St. Paul called as the fruits of the Spirit of God: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (cfr. Gal 5,22-23) 

 In contrast, we can say that we are not following the Holy Spirit’s promptings when we fall into what St. Paul also called as the works of the flesh: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing. (cfr. Gal 5,19-21) 

 We would somehow know the kind of spirit we have—either the Spirit of God or worldly spirit—by the kind of thoughts, desires and loves we have. If we look more closely at how our consciousness works, what its usual contents are, what we are most aware of, we would have an idea of the kind of spirit we have. All we have to do is to see if our thoughts, desires and loves are those of the fruits of the spirit or the fruits of the flesh. 

 This is also true when we examine the kind of dreams we have in our sleep where we are supposed to be unconscious. Our state of unconsciousness is when we disengage ourselves for a while from our bodily mechanisms. It is in that state where the spirit that animates our life is revealed. In a sense, it’s when we are unconscious that the kind of spirit we have can be known.

 We know, of course, that with our wounded, sinful human condition at present, our spirit is not yet totally that of the spirit of God. In fact, it may somehow be dominated by the spirit of the flesh, of the world, if not, God forbid, of the devil itself. 

 That is why we need to struggle. The ascetical struggle is a constant feature in our earthly life which will always be an arena between the forces of good and evil. We have to get used to this fact of life and train ourselves adequately for it.

True love generates endless generosity

THIS is what we can draw from that parable about a nobleman who had to make a journey to obtain his kingship and called his 10 servants, giving them 10 gold coins, telling them to engage in trade till he would return. (Lk 19,11-28) As the gospel also said, the parable was meant to teach his disciples to make good use of time, avoiding the thought that the Kingdom of God would soon or even immediately appear. 

 We are familiar with how this parable would unfold. And the clear lesson it was meant to impart on us is that we too should make good use of our time and our God-given talents while we are still in this this world. We actually do not know when the end of time would come, and so we should not waste time speculating on it. 

 We should just “engage in trade” as the parable would put it. In that regard, let us do our best to make the most out of what God has given us. If we truly love God and everybody else, with a love that is nothing less than a participation of the love God has for us and as commanded by Christ to us, then we will never say enough in our self-giving. 

 Even if such attitude would already seem to be going beyond common sense, our reason and other human and worldly standards that we usually use to measure our love, we would still go on giving ourselves, never saying enough. We would just give and give, even if we seem to consume ourselves till death. 

 This is, of course, an overwhelming prospect, but that is what true love is. It is some kind of madness that knows no limits. It is given without measure, without cost, without any calculation. 

 And even if such total self-giving is not reciprocated, it would still go on loving. It is purely gratuitous. Even more, even if it is not only unreciprocated but is also violently resisted and rejected, it would still go on loving. 

 It’s indeed laudable that in whatever we do, we try to give it our best shot. We should just remember that our best will never be enough insofar as pleasing God and everybody else is concerned. Our best can always be made better. 

 This should not surprise us, much less, cause us to worry. But we should acknowledge it so that we avoid getting self-satisfied with what we have done and then fall into self-complacency. That’s when we stop growing and improving as a human person and as a child of God. 

 We have to remember that we are meant for the infinite, for the spiritual and the supernatural. That’s a goal that we can never fully reach in our life here on earth. But we are meant to keep on trying. 

 What can keep us going in this regard is certainly not our own effort alone, much less our desire and ambition for fame, power or wealth. It’s not pride or some form of obsessions. These have a short prescription period. A ceiling is always set above them. In time, we will realize that everything we have done was just “vanity of vanities.” 

 It is God’s grace that would do the trick. It’s when we correspond sincerely to God’s love for us that we get a self-perpetuating energy to do our best in any given moment. It’s when we can manage to do the impossible.

Emotivism

WE have to be aware of this way of looking and reacting to things in general that is actually ruling the lives of many people, especially the young ones, who do not know yet how to properly handle their emotions, feelings and passions. 

 As commonly defined and described, emotivism is an ethical theory that says that “it is impossible to determine right from wrong. Instead, any moral statement is simply a reflection of the speaker’s emotions.” 

 Affectivity which covers the whole range of emotions, feelings, passions and humor of a person constitutes a first approach, sometimes powerful, to the reality in which he lives. Because it is a first source of information, the affective dimension should not be left aside or considered as something accessory. Rather, our affectivity needs to be properly educated. 

 In this regard, it would be helpful if we assess which desires we want to foster, which ones we are interested in having to govern our life. Of course, for this, we need to consider what God through our faith and piety would show us about how our affectivity should be handled—that is, to discover the ways of aligning our desires according to God’s law and will for us. 

 Everyone should be made to realize as early as possible that while emotions and feelings are part of our human nature, we should not allow them to be the main guide of our life. Our emotions and the whole range of our affectivity are more a part of the animal dimension of our being. As such they are blind to the spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life, and thus, they need to be educated accordingly. 

 Obviously, the guiding principle should be our faith, hope and charity which truly define us as a person and a child of God. In other words, our faith, hope and charity tell us who we really are, what the purpose of our life here on earth is, how our freedom should be sourced and oriented, etc. They provide us the moral principles that should guide the way we use our emotions and passions. 

 The common problem we have in this regard is that many people are not clear about where we can have the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom about ourselves. Some rely on some ideologies, fashions and trends. Others just seem to drift to wherever the world currents would take them. 

 Of course, given our wounded human condition, to educate our emotions and passions properly we need to ask for grace and rely more on the supernatural means without belittling in any way all the human means we can avail of. 

 We have to pray, offer sacrifices, avail of the sacraments, have devotion to Our Lady and the saints. Then we truly have to study a lot and go through the process of developing virtues. 

 This is how our emotions and passions help us in achieving an interior freedom in all our actuations. In this way, our emotions and passions get purified and are elevated to the spiritual and supernatural level. 

 This is also how our emotions and passions would know what is truly important and necessary in life, what brings us to our eternal joy. This is how they avoid getting stranded in our merely bodily and worldly conditions. 

 It is when our emotions are properly educated, that is, when they are properly integrated to the requirements of our faith, hope and charity, to the will of God, that we can say that we enjoy true interior freedom.