Always with God as times change

IT’S unavoidable. We should not be surprised by it. In fact, we should expect it. But let’s see to it that we do not get lost. We should still be clear about where we came from, what the meaning and purpose of life are, etc. We should never miss these existential and ultimate considerations even as we go along the changing fashions, trends and cultures of our times. 

 That way we can still distinguish between what is good and evil, what has absolute and relative value, what is safe and dangerous among the different elements we have to face. The important thing is that we are clear about where we are going, how we are managing to get to our real destination amid these varying conditions that can be very confusing and deceptive. 

 I must confess that I belong to the generation of the Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole songs, and a sprinkling of classical music of Chopin and Mozart. And through the years, I have been enjoying the different kinds of songs that became popular—from the Beatles, the Bee Gees, Rey Valera, Adele, etc. 

 Nowadays, I am listening to the likes of Billie Eilish and those Pinoy comedians who sing Pilipino songs (Tagalog, Bisaya, etc.) in Korean tunes. They provide innovations that elicit mixed reactions, and are often met with both admiration and disappointment, both applauded and criticized. 

 Well, that’s a fact of life. We just have to learn how to accept it and learn to deal with it properly. But we need to recognize that navigating the changing currents of life requires anchoring our souls to something firm and steady. It’s now becoming clearer that we need strong core values—our foundation—to keep us stable when life becomes confusing. In short, we need to have some kind of a ‘safe harbor’ mindset. 

 We have to be wary of the danger St. Paul once warned us about when he said that we should be “no longer like children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and their cunning and craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” (Eph 4,4) 

 In other words, we should not be naïve who would just mindlessly go along where today’s current fashion and trends would bring us. Rather, we should always be circumspect, acting with careful consideration of the different elements involved in a certain matter. Yes, we have to stay guarded and vigilant as well as cultivate a practical wisdom that applies smart and realistic thinking in our daily life. 

 In all this, what is crucial is, of course, to stick with God always. Only with him can we be properly vigilant. It’s a vigilance that is an effect of keeping our love for God and others burn more and more. Without this impulse, we will surely be easy prey to the confusing, alluring and deceptive things of our times. This, of course, will always involve demanding on ourselves more and more. 

 We just have to be vigilant always. That is why the Bible is full of reminders about this need. “Be watchful,” St. Paul says, for example, “stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” (1 Cor 16,13) St. Paul practically has given us a good program of how it is to be watchful always. 

 Let’s learn the appropriate skills and art of being watchful both in good times and bad times and also in ordinary times when things appear to be neutral yet. Let’s sharpen our skill in examining our conscience, in reading the signs of the times, in assessing the different circumstances of the day, etc.

Freedom of spirit

LET’S hope that more and more of us get familiar with this freedom of spirit which is actually the true freedom meant for us. It’s not a freedom that is guided only by our own estimation that is steered only by our reason, by some social trends and ideologies, and much less by our animal instincts and urges. 

 To arrive at this knowledge about our true freedom which is the freedom of spirit, we need to ask ourselves the existential questions of where we came from, what the meaning and purpose of our life are, etc. For this, we just have to go from the natural and social sciences and to launch into the philosophical, metaphysical and theological. 

 This freedom of spirit is where we act in accord with God’s truth and goodness. It is exercised at the instance of the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Our freedom is not simply the power to act or not to act, and so to perform deliberate acts of our own. Our freedom attains its perfection when directed toward God, the sovereign Good, from whom we come and to whom we are destined to share in his very life and nature. 

 This is the freedom that was won for us by Christ who redeemed us from the bondage of sin. That is why St. Paul said: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal 5,1) And it is in Christ that we share in the truth that would set us free, as again articulated by St. Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians where he said: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (3,17) 

 This is the kind of freedom that springs from an inner habit of virtue and not merely from some external command. This is when we do things under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and doing it willingly, with our whole heart. 

 This can only mean that our true freedom is the result of our docility to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the promptings of the grace of God, making us free and effective collaborators in God’s continuing work of human redemption that would complete our creation by him. Our freedom is not meant only to achieve an earthly and temporal goal. 

 In other words, this freedom of spirit enables us to grow in docility to God’s grace, and to collaborate freely with God, serving others with love and building a society on the basis of truth, justice and charity. It also protects us from the slavery of sin, from worldly pressures and false liberties that lead to license. 

 We can have this freedom of spirit if we live by faith in God. It is made alive especially through the sacraments—Baptism, Penance and the Holy Eucharist. It is nurtured in prayer and the continuous growth of the virtues. 

 The role of prayer is crucial because that is where we can discern and embrace God’s will. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, said in effect in this regard that we must pray to be able truly to know what God wants. (cfr. 8,27) 

 It’s clear that this freedom of spirit is a matter of being docile to the promptings of grace. It is what perfects our natural freedom, aligning it with the will and the ways of God. It’s important that we form our conscience according to the truths of our faith. For this, a lifelong formation of conscience is needed. Our freedom of conscience should be the freedom of spirit!

The instinct of seeking God always

WE need to cultivate this instinct. It does not come automatically through the working of our biological make-up. It requires the grace of God and our effort. And for that, we have to learn how to deal with the interplay of the supernatural, natural and infranatural forces that are at work in us. 

 Yes, we need faith, the grace of God, plus the attitude of humility and obedience on our part to be able to feel the need to seek Christ always in our life. We also have to learn how to be guarded against our weaknesses, temptations and the sins and mistakes we commit that would definitely spoil our effort to seek God as an instinct. 

 It’s always God who makes the initiative for us to have this instinct of seeking him always. But we have to try to be discerning, receptive and responsive to this reality. And this can only happen if we are first of all humble enough to acknowledge that we are not our own being. 

 That is, that we just did not come from our own parents and the long line of our ancestry. Nor did we just come into existence in some spontaneous way. All of us and everything else in existence have a beginning. This consideration should lead us to the realization that we and everything else must have come from a being who has no beginning, who has always been existing from all eternity. 

 This is when we can start to realize that there must be a God who is responsible for the creation of the whole universe. And as we try to know more about him who reveals himself to us in various ways and continuously, we would eventually get the picture of who we really are, what we are supposed to be, and how our relation with God should be. 

 This is when we can feel the need to seek Christ and to be with him always. He is actually everything for us. We need him more than we need air, food, etc. He is our basic need because not only are we just any creature of his who needs him for existence, but we are the most special ones since we have been created by him in such a way that we become his very image and likeness, meant to share his very life and nature. 

 If we only would realize this basic truth about ourselves, then there is no doubt that we would feel the need to be seek him and be with him all the time. We just cannot be on our own. And by being with him, we would avoid drifting aimlessly in life. We would have a complete picture of the purpose of our life and of the whole universe. 

 For this to take place, we should understand that our freedom is best exercised when it is used to seek God first and always. We would realize that we are actually given a choice of whether we choose to be with God or simply to be on our own. 

 What can help us in this is when we learn really to have a personal and intimate relation with God by means of prayer and the other practices of piety, especially the reception of the sacraments. We would also feel the need for an appropriate means of continuing formation, considering that we often find ourselves inconsistent, vacillating and irresolute in our resolve and commitments. 

 Let’s hope that we can truly develop this instinct of seeking God always.