A call to return to God

THIS is one of the important messages of the Lenten season. We are asked to return to God even if we feel we do not deserve to be received by him. God’s love is such that it can heal whatever wound we have both in body and soul. God’s love can even bring back the dead to life again. 

 This Lenten message is somehow articulated in the Book of Hosea where it says, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord thy God, for you have fallen down by your iniquity.” (14,2) And then it continues with this assurance from the Lord: “I will heal their breaches, I will love them freely, for my wrath is turned away from them.” (14,5) 

 We should not hesitate to respond to this invitation, trying our best to do our part of going through some sincere transformation by way of true repentance that is deep and heartfelt, and not just through some outward rituals or gestures. 

 Let’s take this Lenten season as an occasion to realize more deeply our need for continuing repentance and conversion and to cultivate an abiding spirit of Christian penance that does not take away our hope, joy and peace. 

 We have to understand that conversion is a continuing affair for all of us in this life. We can never say, if we have to follow by what our Christian faith tells us, that we are good enough as to need conversion no more. We are all sinners, St. John said. And even the just man, as the Bible said, falls seven times in a day. 

Besides, it is this sense of continuing conversion that would really ensure us that whatever we do, whatever would happen to us, including our failures and defeats, would redound to what is truly good for the parties concerned and for everybody else in general. 

That’s because conversion brings us and everything that we have done in life to a reconciliation with God, from whom we come and to whom we go. In this regard, we just have to cultivate the spirit and virtue of penance. It’s not to paint a dark world for ourselves. If we believe in God, we know that our life ought to be always bright and cheerful, and that everything, including our mistakes, can work out for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28) 

We cannot deny that we have weaknesses. And temptations are never lacking. And in spite of our best efforts, we know that sooner or later we find ourselves falling into sin. 

 We need to know how to deal with these conditions.  We need to find a way to derive some good from them, since if we have hope, some good can always be achieved from them. 

 The virtue of penance starts when we acknowledge these conditions about ourselves. We should be humble enough to accept this reality. 

 But the virtue of penance goes farther than that. It grows when we put up the necessary defenses against these enemies of our soul and wage a lifelong ascetical struggle. Yes, our life will be and should be a life of warfare, a war of peace and love that will also give us certain consolations in spite of the tension. 

 And for this penance to be a true virtue, it has to include an indomitable hope that can survive even in the worst of scenarios. In fact, this hope gets stronger the uglier also the warfare gets. 

 It's a hope based on God's never-sparing mercy. Some relevant words of St. Paul: “I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil 1,6) It would be good if these Pauline assurance forms the deep attitude we should have toward our fragile human condition.

Beware of the dumb devil

THAT gospel episode of Christ casting out a dumb devil reminds us that we have to be wary when we keep critical and negative thoughts in our mind and heart, allowing them to fester to such an extent that we cannot anymore have any positive and constructive thought about something or someone. (cfr. Lk 14,11-23) 

 To counter this, we should try to enter into a dialogue first with God in our prayer and then with all the parties involved in any issue. This means that we should try to be open, sincere and transparent in sorting out whatever problem we have, always relying on the belief and hope that God will always help, that with him everything will work out for the good. 

 And with the other parties involved, we should just present our side as well as listen to theirs, and see how things can be resolved peacefully and satisfactorily. Of course, in this dialogue, we should follow Christ’s way of presenting the truth and our views always with charity, which can mean that in the worst scenario, we, like Christ, would just allow ourselves to suffer for whatever unfairness may come about. 

 It’s when we go to God first whenever we have this kind of predicament that we can manage to overcome the tricks of the dumb devil, that is, when we can talk and start the process of having a dialogue that eventually will lead to some resolution of any problem or issue we have. 

 In this regard, we need to see to it that we are most aware of a persona-non-grata that is called pride. We should keep it at bay, exerting appropriate effort to resist its many strong impulses and urges. 

 Pride always spoils dialogue. It feeds on our self-interest to the point of making us deaf and blind to the points, let alone, the valid points, of the others. It usually sources its strength more from feelings than from reason, more from our own estimation of things than from faith that gives us the full picture of things and leads us to the common good. 

 Besides, pride usually has bad manners and employs bad language. It always tries to dominate the conversation, using bullying tactics. It is more interested in scoring more points than in earnestly looking for what is true and fair. Its logic clearly follows the path of selfishness. Charity is a complete stranger in pride. Suffering and humiliations play no positive role in pride. 

 When one, for example, is accused falsely of something, pride would lead him to react very badly, and even violently. He cannot stand being misjudged and mistreated. His pride-stained sense of justice would immediately give a knee-jerk response along the lines of the tooth-for-a-tooth law of the wild. 

 Pride leads one to see things superficially. There is no depth in its considerations. It gets entangled in the externals and in the appearances. Besides, it usually assumes a rigid attitude, unable to be flexible and to adapt to different circumstances. It makes a person one-track-minded. A proud person is always closed-minded. 

 We have to be extremely conscious of the workings of pride in us, because it is so embedded in our systems that we often would not know we are being victimized by it. A saint once said that pride is so strongly incorporated in our life that it would only disappear twenty-four hours after our death. 

 We need to be humble to allow the spirit of God, which is the spirit of truth, justice and mercy, to enter into our hearts, enabling us to engage in a fruitful dialogue.

Divine law and human law

SOMEHOW, when Christ said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not abolish but to fulfil,” (Mt 5,17) we are led to realize that there must be different categories and levels of law and that in the end, the ultimate distinction is between divine law and human law. 

 Divine law, of course, comes from a higher power, no less than God himself, and covers everything in our life since it focuses on the moral and spiritual dimensions of our life. Human law is made by men through a variety of agencies, and it mainly focuses on rules for social order, rights and governance. 

 This divine law has been embodied, revealed and commanded of us by Christ, the son of God who became man to redeem us and the very pattern of our humanity. As such, he rightly claims to be the fulfillment of all the laws we have. 

 We have to disabuse ourselves from the thought that our laws can be based only on our common sense, or on our own estimation of what is good and evil according to the values of practicality, convenience, etc., or on our traditions and culture, etc. 

 While these things have their legitimate role to play in our legal and judicial systems, we have to understand that they cannot be the primary and ultimate bases. It should be God, his laws and ways that should animate the way we make laws as well as the way we apply and live them. After all, being the Creator of all things, he is the one who establishes what is truly good and evil, what is right and wrong, what is fair and unfair. 

 In this regard, we have to learn to distinguish and properly blend both the letter and spirit of our human laws. That’s the ideal. In our earthly reality, of course, the letter of the law will always be found wanting in terms of capturing the whole spirit of the law which should channel the spirit of God. 

 This discrepancy between the letter and the spirit of the law has been referred to a number of times in the gospel. One example is when Christ told the Jews: "You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.” (Mk 7,9) 

 We need to understand that our laws, both in the civil and especially in the ecclesiastical sphere, should be animated by the spirit of God who knows all things and keeps everything in its proper order. We should not just make our laws, interpret and apply them to specific cases by basing them only on our own estimation of things, inspired only by some cultural, historical, political, social, economic or some ideological ethos. 

 We need to realize that it is Christ who ultimately gives the real meaning and purpose of our laws. We have to disabuse ourselves from the thought that our laws can be based only on our common sense, or on our own estimation of what is good and evil according to the values of practicality, convenience, etc., or on our traditions and culture, etc. 

 For this, we have to learn how to assume the very identity of Christ. This may need a certain discipline, like spending time meditating on the life and teachings of Christ, developing the art of being recollected and contemplative so that we would always be aware that our thoughts, desires, words and deeds should always be with Christ and not just by our own selves.