Thursday, April 30, 2020

Let’s be properly occupied

WITH all this restricted life we are having these days,
let’s see to it that we are properly occupied. Let us, of course,
avoid idleness, but even if we fill ourselves with activities, let’s
see to it that we are properly occupied.

            The most important thing to remember is that whatever we
are doing should be done with love for God and for others. This, we
can say, is what can be considered as the subjective requirement of
how we ought to occupy ourselves properly these days.

            Without this requirement, our activities would be
practically worthless and can even pose as a danger, even if these
activities appear to be impressive in human terms. But with it, even
our smallest and most hidden act of service would acquire tremendous
value for all of us. Let’s do all we can to see to it that it is love
that inspires and moves us to do whatever we may be doing.

            Obviously, this subjective requirement of how to be
properly occupied has its objective counterpart. And this means that
we have to have the proper sense of priority over the many options we
can have in spending our time during these stay-home dispensation. In
the end, things depend on what in our conscience God is telling us to
do.

            We just cannot do anything to fill up our time. Of course,
we have already said that as long as there is love, anything can be
pleasing to God. But again, we can also say that if there is real
love, we also would have a keen sense of order as to which activity
has greater importance over another. We would not just be doing things
simply for the sake of doing.

            In other words, in choosing the things to do out of love,
there has to be a certain order of priority. That’s because not
everything has the same value. Obviously, the things that relate
directly to God and others have priority over the things that simply
are related to our own legitimate personal interests.

            Thus, spiritual activities and the acts of piety have
priority over our mundane and secular activities. Also, those
activities that have more impact on others have priority over those
that simply benefit us more.

            It’s important that we plan our day well so that we can
really say that we are occupying ourselves properly. We should not
just be whiling away our time by filling ourselves with all sorts of
random activities that simply do not reflect true love for God and for
others.

            In this, of course, we have to expect things that may not
be to our liking. This is when we can show the genuineness of our love
as motive for doing things. This is where we can live out those words
of Christ: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and
take up his cross and follow Me.” (Mt 16,24)

            We can project the same drama Christ underwent in his
passion, especially during his agony in the garden when he “bargained”
with his Father by saying, “Father, if it is your will, let this cup
pass by me, but not my will but yours be done.” (Mt 26,39)

            So you see, we don’t need extraordinary situations to live
out the passion of Christ. We can practically do it while cooking,
doing laundry, cleaning house, doing repairs, etc., as long as we do
them with love and with the proper sense of priority and spirit of
sacrifice.

            Let’s take advantage of our stay-home time to cultivate,
polish if not perfect the way we can occupy our time properly. This
present dispensation can serve as a basic school to train ourselves in
that department.

            Part of this art of occupying ourselves properly is the
development of skills of resilience and quick adaptation, since there
will always be surprises and plans may have to be modified and revised
as we go along.

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Learn to leave all behind

THIS is not meant to be a morbid piece. Far from it.
Rather, it’s meant for us to be realistic and to really focus on what
is absolutely necessary and essential in our life, without getting
unduly entangled with the things in this life that at best only have a
relative value.

            Our present condition, where we are deprived of certain
comforts, conveniences, privileges, etc., is a good occasion for us to
learn the art of how to leave everything behind , because one day it
will be our turn to go, and what is left with us would be what we have
in our heart.

            This is what we are going to present to our Creator when
we go back to him on judgment day. This is the only thing necessary.
(cfr. Lk 10,42) Of course, that love can only be proven by the way we
handle all the things in this life—whether we did them or lived them
always with love for God and for others in mind and heart.

            Love for God and others should always be the motive of
everything that we do—from our thoughts and intentions, to our words,
and to our work. It should also be the motive when we have to go
through the different circumstances of our life, the good ones as well
as the bad ones, our fortunes and our misfortunes.

            We have to be wary of our tendency to get entrapped in our
earthly and temporal affairs or when we fail to live love for God and
for others in the different events and circumstances of our life.

            We usually have the strong tendency to be motivated only
by human and earthly values in everything that we do. We have to be
more wary of this danger and do everything to avoid it or correct it.

            As St. Paul once said: “Whether you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31) Not
contented with this, he again said: “Set your minds on things above,
not on earthly things.” (Col 3,2)

            Not that our earthly and temporal affairs are not
important. They are! They are very important, in fact. But as means
and occasions to love God and others. Failing in that love, we can be
accused of what Christ once said: “What shall it profit a man, if he
shall gain the whole world, but loses his soul?” (Mk 8,36)

            As said earlier, our earthly and temporal affairs only
have a relative value, and they acquire that value only when it is
related to the absolute value, which is none other than love for God
and others.

            That relative value of our earthly and temporal affairs
certainly would lead us to love them—and we can love them with a
certain passion—but also with a certain detachment. We should not
consider them as our ultimate end.


            A saint once said that our affairs in this world can and
should be the “divine paths of the earth.” It is there where God
intervenes in our life in his continuing work of creation and
redemption. Because of this truth, he even went to the extent of
“passionately loving the world.” But, of course, without becoming
worldly.

            Thus, we always need to rectify our intentions and
motives, because we are easily seduced and beholden to worldly values
only. In this we have to constantly examine ourselves. Our human
condition here on earth is very precarious insofar as our proper
motives for doing things are concerned.

            Toward this end, we definitely need frequent reminders and
appropriate practices of piety, like doing examinations of conscience,
saying many ejaculatory prayers and aspirations all throughout the
day, as well as some human devices like looking at the crucifix and
religious images if only to put us in the proper spiritual and
supernatural mode as we go through our earthly affairs.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Our ghostly foes

NOW that the ECQ is extended to May 15, let’s be more
skillful in dealing with the extended condition of our restricted
lifestyle. And among the things to consider are what we may refer to
as our ghostly foes that include not only the invisible Corona virus
but also the more nasty dark and negative thoughts we can have, our
fears, anxieties and even depression that can eat us up like worms.

            But more importantly, let us not disregard the wiles and
tricks of the bad spirits, the demons who can easily take advantage of
our predicament these days. Let’s never ignore them. They are always
around. In fact, these days I am receiving more reports of demonic
activities afflicting many people, and requests for deliverance and
exorcism have gone up. Let’s be forewarned to be forearmed.

            In the meantime, let’s continue praying that we can find
the necessary cure or vaccine for this deadly virus that has been
menacing us already for months and that we can return to some degree
of normalcy. Prayer should always be the basic weapon to use in these
times. Let’s never be tempted to abandon it, thinking that we would be
more successful if we simply rely on science, medicine and our wild
politics.

            These ghostly foes of ours should be tackled head-on. We
should not think that by ignoring them they would just go away. The
contrary is true. The more we ignore them, the more they become
stronger and more dangerous. We have to drive them away forthright.

            With these ghostly foes of ours, what we have to do is to
strengthen our spiritual and supernatural life. These trying times we
are having now are actually good occasions for us to truly live the
life in the spirit with God. We are no match against these ghostly
foes if we would just depend on our human and natural powers.

            If we live by the spirit of God, using to the hilt our
God-given faith, hope and charity, we would be convinced beyond any
trace of doubt that we have no reason to be afraid, over-anxious or
sad. God takes of everything, and he knows how to derive good from
evil. With him, everything, including our difficulties and disasters,
will always work for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28)

            We should just train our natural powers to be enlightened,
guided and strengthened by the supernatural power of God who likes to
share it with us by precisely giving us the theological virtues of
faith, hope and charity.

            Let us have a good grip on our thoughts and feelings so
they would not stray away from the path of our faith. We should never
dare to think that we are just living on our own, that we are alone
and lonely. God is always with us. We have to feel his immense and
abiding love for us.

            Regarding the evil spirits, neither should we be too
afraid of them. They actually cannot do anything against us unless we
allow them. But we have to acknowledge that they are the smartest of
all conspirators. Just the same, they cannot do anything unless God
allows them to tempt us. And if God allows them to do that, it is
because a greater good can be derived from such situation.
  
            This is a truth of faith that should always be kept in our
mind. We have no reason to be afraid of them, but neither should we be
welcoming of them, much less, enter into some dialogue with them.
Let’s always remember that being spiritual beings, they are far
smarter than us no matter how brilliant and smart we think we are.
They can always outsmart us.

            The thing to do is to dismiss them outright. That is the
example Christ himself gave us when he was tempted after his forty
days of praying and fasting before he started his public life. (cfr.
Mt 4)

Friday, April 24, 2020

Fighting boredom and dryness

IT cannot be denied that even with all our best efforts,
the danger of slipping into boredom and dryness is always there, what
with all this somewhat ‘forced’ stay-at-home dispensation we are
having these days. It’s truly a big challenge for us to be resilient
and practical, but we know that we have our limitations.

            Unless we let it, this should not be a big problem. We
just have to be constantly aware of that danger and do something about
it. There is always hope. As St. Paul said, “God 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) So,
let’s not exaggerate our predicament.

            But, yes, we have to learn how to fight boredom and
dryness. They usually come when the heart is not anymore beating with
love, or is weakening in that vital function. What we have to do is to
stir it up again, asking first for God’s grace but without ever
neglecting the appropriate human effort we have to exert.

            Of course, the effort we are expected to exert is no walk
in the park. We have to be ready to be heroic, to go to the extreme of
our self-giving. Let’s take comfort in the thought that God cannot be
outdone in generosity. If we are heroically generous with him, you can
just imagine how generous he will also be with us! Let’s always
remember that he promised to give a return of a hundredfold to
whatever we give him and others out of love. (cfr. Mk 10,30)

            But, yes, we have to be practical in this. What comes to
my mind is, of course, to see to it that we are always praying
whatever we may be doing at any given moment. Every activity that we
do should somehow be a form of prayer. And let’s see to it that our
prayer is a real encounter and conversation with God. It should not be
just a make-believe thing.

            Concretely, we have to see to it that our awareness of the
presence of God is constant. For this, we may have to do many acts of
faith, hope and charity, some short ejaculatory prayers or aspirations
that truly voice out what is in our heart. God, being a father, will
always understand us, no matter how much we complain in a filial way.

            It will also greatly help if we can have a list of
intentions to pray for and to offer our tasks for. These days, these
intentions are endless. There are just so many people in great need of
things, both material and spiritual. We have to do whatever we can to
help them meet those needs.

            Of course, real love is not just a matter of good
intentions and sweet words. By its very essence, it has to be
expressed in deeds. And nowadays, despite the stay-at-home order,
there will always be things to do.

            Usually they are small tasks, even menial in character.
But if done out of love for God and for others, they can acquire
tremendous power to help people in their needs. God’s mysterious ways
and the Christian doctrine about the communion of saints will see to
it that even in our hidden work done with love can reach out to people
we may not even know.

            It is also good that we come out always with some plan or
schedule of activities during the day, so that we do not get lost and
confused easily, and so that we can manage our energies properly. We
have to realize that while God’s grace can make the impossible
possible, we continue to remain human with our natural limitations.

            Let’s hope that in the end, we are always on the move,
acting with zeal. That way, we can effectively fight boredom and
dryness!

Staying on course

OUR earthly life, it is said, is a matter of a journey, a
pilgrimage toward our eternal destination. Given our conditions here
where we have to contend with all sorts of things, there is great need
for us to stay on course, avoiding getting diverted and lost along the
way.

            To be sure, we already have been given everything for us
to stay on the right track. And that’s nothing else or no one else
than Christ himself who tells us that he is “the way, the truth, and
the life.” The constant order of the day for us, therefore, is how to
be identified with Christ all the time.

            We need to be deeply and permanently convinced of this
truth of our faith and also of its practicability, otherwise we would
be wasting time. That’s because we can appear to be doing a lot of
things and yet miss the goal to which we are meant to reach.

            Especially these days when we have to contend with more
and more things brought about by our technological progress, we can
find ourselves losing focus and getting confused and lost. Our
attention can easily get scattered, our thoughts become shallow and
narrow, our reactions automatic, mindless and involuntary.

            That is why we can never overemphasize the need to be
always vigilant, ever rectifying our intentions to make sure that
whatever we are doing or whatever situation or circumstance we can
find ourselves in, we are always focused on God and on his will and
ways.

            God is both the principle and end of our life, as well as
the pattern of our life as shown to us by Christ who is made alive to
us by the Holy Spirit. He is the one that enables us to blend all
aspects, situations and circumstances of our life into one consistent
unity. In short, that’s when we can have unity of life.

            We need to be wary of our tendency to get easily entangled
in our worldly and temporal affairs. Even if we are pursuing lofty
earthly goals, like philanthropy, social justice, economic well-being,
etc., we would still end up a big failure if all these otherwise
legitimate pursuits are not inspired and aimed at the twin love of God
and neighbor.

            When we notice, for example, that we are doing well in our
business and other professions, but are rather cold and indifferent to
our duty to do apostolate and to help others get closer to God, then
we actually are not loving God by doing his will. We are simply
pursuing our own self-interests. We are apt to be reproached by Christ
who once said: “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the world,
and lose his own soul?” (Mk 8,36)

            We cannot deny that this is the common phenomenon
nowadays. Many people are just after their own things at the expense
of their duty toward God and others. We need to see to it that in all
our activities, plans and concerns, there should only be one
objective. And that is to love God and neighbor, as we have been
commanded.

            We therefore need to devise some kind of plan of life
where everything mutually influences each other in pursuit of our
ultimate goal of loving God and others. For example, our prayer should
inspire our work just as our work should give fuel and inspiration to
our prayer.

            We need to close the gap between our life of prayer or our
contemplative life, on the hand, and our active life of work and our
involvement in worldly affairs, on the other hand. Our thoughts should
always be both in heaven and on earth, not one without the other.

            This means that we should develop and grow in our
spiritual life as we get more and more immersed in our earthly
concerns. This is what is ideal for us, and it can be achieved if we
just put our whole mind and heart into this pursuit. It’s not an
impossible dream. We can always count on God’s grace.

            We need to see the intimate union between the natural and
supernatural, the material and the spiritual, the temporal and the
eternal. These are dimensions and parameters that are involved in our
life, and we just have to learn how to deal with them.

            As said earlier, we already have been given everything for
us to stay on the right track as we go through our life. We just have
to be constantly vigilant, making the necessary corrections along the
way.

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Win by losing

THAT assertion certainly raises eyebrows. How on earth, in
the commonest of common sense, can one win by losing? It’s just pure
contradiction. If you win, you win. And if you lose, you lose. Period.
It’s as contradictory as white is to black, up is to down.

            But, alas, Christ tells us so in so many words. “Whoever
finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake
will find it.” (Mt 10,39) Still in another instance, he says:
“Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or
mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a
hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Mt 19,29)

            I am sure we are scratching our head as we read these
words. Try as we might, we neither cannot just dismiss these words
since they are spoken by no less than Christ himself. There must be
something to them that our best intelligence just cannot cope.

            That’s right. These words simply have to be taken in
faith, that supernatural gift given to us to which we also have to
correspond not so much with our intelligence and understanding as with
the obedience of faith.

            Yes, we have to make an obedience of faith, that act of
believing not because we understand things presented to us but more
because they are spoken by someone who neither deceives nor be
deceived. (cfr. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 143,156)

            In other words, we believe that we can indeed win by
losing on the authority of Christ who precisely won by losing when he
willingly died on the cross but rose on the third day. In so doing, he
guaranteed the salvation of man, although we also have to do our part
of at least believing him.

            We have to understand then that what is involved here is
not just a natural truth, but a supernatural one, a truth that does
not necessarily go against our nature but rather transcends. It’s a
truth that partakes of the divine nature of God. That’s why Christ
said that we can gain and win from what may appear to be a loss if we
do things for “My sake.”

            This truth of our Christian faith is very relevant these
days as we go through a variety of privations and sacrifices and
expressions and modes of loss and defeat. Let’s hope that we come out
of this pandemic not having a kind of survivor frame of mind, but
rather that of a winner, a victor, a conqueror.

            We should see to it that we come out of this crisis
feeling enriched not impoverished, happy not sad. And the secret is
because we go through this crisis by getting closer to Christ.

            This means in concrete terms that we are growing more in
love with God and with others. We would be willing to make sacrifices.
We would be more generous in our self-giving. The privations and
sacrifices we are going through are the catalysts that would make love
for God and others deeper and stronger.

            This is how we win by losing. By growing more in love,
which is another way of saying by becoming more and more like Christ
who is God, who is love himself, we can win by losing in the sense
that we follow the very example of Christ whose supreme love for us
was shown by offering his life on the cross for our sins.

            He does not mind the cost involved. His sense of justice
is not the strict quid-pro-quo type. It is a justice totally inspired
by charity and mercy, completely gratuitous even if it is not
reciprocated properly by us.

            We need to be more familiar with this truth about winning
by losing. Let’s live out what a proverb said: “Those who give
generously receive more, but those who are stingy with what is
appropriate will grow needy.” (11,24)

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Reaching out amid lockdown

I KNOW we can never wipe out poverty entirely. There will
always be poor, suffering people. Christ himself said as much. “The
poor you will always have with you…” (Mt 26,11) But this does not mean
that we should not do anything, at least to mitigate that problem,
helping poor people as much as we can. This is the very basic aspect
of Christian charity.

            With the present dispensation of lockdowns and
quarantines, we can just imagine how the poor people, already
suffering a lot during normal times, are suffering today. I know that
we ourselves have our own share of privations, discomfort and
inconvenience brought about by these restrictions. But this does not
detract us from our duty to do whatever we can to help the more
disadvantaged ones.

            We simply cannot be aloof to the graver predicaments of
the others. Let’s be wary of the tendency to be unmindful of the
others simply because we may not be suffering as much. We can still
eat and have our comfortable time. Our fridges are still well-stocked.

            Let’s be careful because we can easily fall into a severe
case of quiet and deceptive self-indulgence. We can think that we are
not doing anything wrong because we are just by ourselves. This is a
subtle form of self-indulgence and is definitely a sin. Christ wants
us to love everybody as he has loved us, and love is not just not
doing anything wrong to others. It is being truly concerned for them,
expressed in deeds.

            Let us always remember that if we want to follow Christ as
we should, we have to deny ourselves and carry the cross. (cfr. Mt
16,24) This is always the rule to follow, in good times and in bad.

            The very least thing we can do to help is at least to
practice some form of self-denial, especially in our food, drinks,
comfort, use of gadgets, if only to show solidarity with those who are
denied of the basic necessities of life during these times. Let us be
very generous in this level of self-denial and self-giving.

            But for sure, we can do a lot more. We should not forget that many
people, with families to feed, have lost their job and their
livelihood. And because of the many restrictions nowadays, many cannot
report for work while many others cannot go home, stranded and quite
broke. People in all forms of helplessness are numberless. Human
misery has sunk quite drastically deeply these days.

            We have to reach out to them. How? That’s another
challenge to face. But there are always some ways. We are not yet dead
when we cannot do anything anymore. Where there is a will, there will
always be a way! The human spirit, especially animated by divine love,
can always find a way.

            It does not mean we be imprudent and reckless in our zeal
to help others. There certainly are risks to take. But if we plan
things well, and bring them to our prayer, we can be sure that we can
do a lot to help others in these difficult times with so many
restrictions to contend with.

            Offhand, I notice there are already some people organizing
themselves to do some feeding programs to many. This is a very good
initiative. They have tapped their own personal networks and other
organizations for this purpose, and it’s working.

            What I find more challenging is to identify those who seem
not to need some help because they enjoyed a level of comfort during
the normal times, but actually are in great need of help these days.
The overt poor are always easy to identify. And we already have some
appropriate structures for them. It’s the hidden and the new poor that
are quite difficult to identify and to extend help.

            If we bring this concern in our prayer, I am sure we can
find the appropriate ways to reach out to them.

Monday, April 20, 2020

Drain the swamp

THIS is not, of course, a political piece, much less, a
partisan one, though the title is a phrase that was popularized by US
President Trump during his presidential campaign way back in 2016. He
actually did not coin it, but with the way he is and how the state of
US politics can be described, this expression enjoyed tremendous
following.

            Wikipedia describes this expression as alluding “to the
physical draining of swamps to keep mosquito populations low to combat
malaria.” But it is often used by politicians to refer to their effort
to root out systemic corruption or whatever has become systemically
wrong in the government bureaucracy or in the political world.

            It is an expression that definitely can also be applied to
whatever is wrong at any level of the Church structure, especially
when what is wrong there has become systemic.

            We should not be surprised by this phenomenon. Given our
own weaknesses and the many temptations around, we cannot deny that in
spite of everything that Christ has given us to make us holy
individually and collectively, we always have the possibility of
lapsing into subtle compromises with error and sin until their
consequences become endemic to a particular Church structure.

            Even during the time of Christ, this draining of the swamp
was already done. Christ had to contend with the warped understanding
of religion that the leading Jews of that time had.

            Remember those lamentations Christ made against the
Pharisees and the scribes as recorded in Chapter 23 in the Gospel of
St. Matthew. Some words of Christ may be helpful to give us a savor of
how he felt about the swamp that was the state of religion at that
time:

            “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do
and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For
they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to
bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not
willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be
seen by others, etc., etc.”

            We really need to be very sharply aware of this danger and
should be prepared to take the necessary precautions and, if needed,
to do battle with it. That’s when we have to learn the art of draining
the swamp, starting with our own selves by seeing to it that we avoid
complacency, spiritual lukewarmness and any compromise with error and
sin, no matter how slight.

            And when we see signs of systemic compromises in any level
of our Church structure, we should react immediately. In fact, it
would be better that we nip these compromises in the bud. But if these
compromises have already gained some ground, then we really should
react with appropriate vigor and prudence.

            It is our duty to keep the Church structure fit to
sacramentalize the Body of Christ or the People of God that the Church
is. In this regard, our Catechism tells us that the Church, “clasping
sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification,
follows constantly the path of penance and renewal. All members of the
Church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are
sinners. In everyone, the weeds of sin will still be mixed with the
good wheat of the Gospel until the end of time.” (CCC 827)

            So we are all asked to continue the work of penance and
conversion, purification and renewal. This is something that we should
not forget, especially when we tend to believe that we are already
good or holy. We still have feet of clay, and the possibility of
falling is always there.

            Of course, in draining the swamp in the Church structure,
we should always practice charity. Bitter zeal has no place in the
Church. Better to suffer than to lack charity!