Always be prepared for the worst scenario

WE can somehow draw this conclusion after reading that gospel episode where Christ asked Peter three times whether he, Peter, truly loved Christ. (cfr. Jn 21,15-19) After Peter assured Christ that he indeed loved Christ, Christ proceeded to describe the manner of death that Peter would have later on. 

 Indeed, if we truly would identify ourselves with Christ as we should, we should also expect this kind of tragic death for us. It’s not a condemnation but rather an invitation to share the kind of love that God in Christ has for all of us. 

 We have to understand that suffering and death would be the greatest manifestation of love we can have for God and for everybody else as articulated earlier when Christ said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15,13) 

 The concrete way of dying may not be like that of Christ nor of Peter, tragic and very bloody. But we should try to develop that kind of attitude towards our death and be prepared for it. 

 We know that there will be a lot of suffering, trials, challenges, and all kinds of negativities which are an effect not of God’s will and designs but rather of man’s weakness, limitations and even malice. We should learn how to handle these situations by following the example of Christ, if not by identifying and uniting ourselves as intimately as possible with Christ. 

 If we are truly with Christ, we would know how to take maximum advantage even of our difficulties, problems and all the other negative things that can take place in our life here on earth. These negative things are unavoidable, in fact. We should know how to handle them properly. But it would be a pity if we fail to see the great potentials they have in generating more and greater good. 

 We should always remember that God takes care of everything. And even from evil, he would know how to derive some good. With him, everything, including our failures and sins, would always work for the good. His wisdom, his omnipotence, his mercy, etc. would take care of all that. 

 The crucial thing to do is to be with God, which definitely will require some discipline from us. And so, even if especially at the beginning, we would find it hard, if not almost impossible to be with God, we just have to do what we can to achieve that ideal condition for us. In time, and with faith and our unrelenting effort, to be with God is not only achievable, but something that can become a stable state of life for us. Again, let’s remember that we are actually meant for that state of life. 

 We can be sure that on the part of God, everything is made available, so that whatever difficulty and problem we can have in this life, we would know how to leverage them to our real and lasting advantage, and not just some false and passing advantage. 

 So, we just have to be ready for the worst scenario in our life and know not only how to deal with our predicaments but also how to derive something good from them. In these instances of the hard predicaments, for example, when we seem to be at a loss as to what to do, we should just see at what God does, after we have done all things possible to solve our problems.

The sorrow of love

THAT’S when whatever causes us pain, suffering and sorrow is referred and united to the saving passion, death and resurrection of Christ. That sorrow, though always with some bitterness, would also assume the flavor of sweetness, something that is not only bearable but also lovable. It’s a sorrow that is lived in love, enabling us to be willing to suffer out of love. 

 We therefore have to learn how to handle our sorrows well, since in the first place they are unavoidable in our life. We have to develop first of all the proper attitude and the corresponding skills so that our sorrows would not just be purely negative elements in our life. They, in fact, can and should become sources and occasions of many good things. 

 For this to happen, the first thing to do is to develop a spiritual attitude and supernatural outlook in life, based on our faith in God that has to grow stronger everyday. That faith, of course, would give rise to hope and charity that would put meaning and sweetness to whatever pain, suffering and sorrow we can experience in this life. 

 Taking care of the spiritual and supernatural aspects of our life enables us to imitate Christ in being patient and willing to go through all the sacrifices we can meet in our earthly life. It's a patience that is also founded on the truth that all our sorrows and sufferings in life always have some redemptive meaning. 

 Our main problem in this issue of our earthly suffering and sorrow is that our attitude towards this unavoidable element in our life is taken out of its fundamental context of faith and religion. We just look at it in a purely human and natural way. We just look for the human and natural causes as well as for their human and natural solutions or remedies. 

 If we follow the wisdom of our Christian faith, we for sure would lose the fear of suffering and sorrow. In fact, the contrary would take place—we would look for occasions when we can suffer and experience sorrow. 

 If we believe in Christ and follow what he has taught and shown us, we will realize that there is nothing to be afraid of suffering and death, and all the other negative things that can mark our life. 

  He bore them himself and converted them into our way for our own salvation. Yes, even death which is the ultimate evil that can befall on us, an evil that is humanly insoluble. With Christ’s death, the curse of death has been removed. “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” St. Paul said. (1 Cor 15,54-55) 

 So, we just have to be sport and cool about the whole reality of suffering and death. What we need to do is to follow Christ in his attitude toward them. For Christ, embracing suffering and ultimately death, is the expression of his greatest love for us. We have to enter into the dynamic of this divine logic and wisdom so we can lose that fear of suffering and death and instead, convert them into expressions of love. 

 Thus, we have to understand this very well. Unless we love the cross, we can never say that we are loving enough. Of course, we have to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God wills it—the way Christ loves it—that we can really say that we are loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love. This is when we can experience the sorrow of love.

Only with God…

TO complete the statement, it’s only with God when we can be right and do right. That’s the ideal condition of our life here on earth, and we should just do everything to pursue that goal which would mean our perfection and fulfillment. 

 Our life, whether we are aware of it or not, is a shared life with God. It’s God actually who, as our Creator, is always with us and is directing us toward our perfection through his providence. Ours is simply to follow him. We should be wary of our tendency to think that to affirm our true identity and to live out our true freedom, we should be just be by ourselves. 

 This basic truth about ourselves was somehow expressed by Christ when in his High Priestly Prayer he said, “Holy Father, keep them in your name whom you have given me; that they may be one, as we also are.” (Jn 17,11) 

 We have to learn to refer everything to God, always asking for his guidance so we may know how to follow what he is showing us amid the varying and often confusing conditions and circumstances of our life here on earth. 

 For this, we obviously need to humble ourselves so we would feel the need to go to God asking for guidance always, even if that guidance is always made available to us. We cannot deny that we are notorious for relying simply on our own knowledge and estimation of things as we carry out our tasks, tackle the different challenges and trials, hurdle the barriers that we encounter in life. 

 For us to see how God is guiding us, we definitely need to enliven our spiritual life that should be nourished by a life of prayer, sacrifices, ascetical struggle, recourse to the sacraments, etc. In short, we should have a plan of a life of piety that is kept going and growing by having a lifelong program of formation. 

 This formation should tackle the human, doctrinal, spiritual, professional and apostolic aspects of our Christian life. This formation would greatly help us to punctually discern what God is actually prompting us in every situation of our life. 

 Also helpful in this regard is to have recourse to spiritual direction and accompaniment with someone who can truly guide us. It is a good way of truly recognizing the voice of God and not easily deluded by other voices that can sound like God’s voice but actually are not. 

 These days, we have to be wary of the many imitations around that can mislead us. We need to have recourse to spiritual direction, choosing a good spiritual director who should be a true man of God, because we are poor directors of our own selves. 

 We can easily fall at the mercy of our own weaknesses which we should be humble enough to acknowledge. This is not to mention the many tricks of the devil and the allurements of the world that can imitate God’s voice, offering us sweet poison. 

 Definitely, to be able to discern and follow God’s continuing guidance over us, we need to practice restraint and moderation in our speech, sleep, idle mirth, etc. In other words, we should try to live as spiritual men, not just carnal men. 

 We should always remember that our life is not just lived in the level of the physical and material dimensions. It is not even lived in the social level in all its aspects—economic, political, historical, etc. 

 Our life has a prominently spiritual dimension that requires us to nourish the way we think, judge, reason and ultimately to love. These are the functions of our spiritual soul. It’s in this dimension that the supernatural aspect of our life enters.

Insist and persist in prayer

WHENEVER we find ourselves in some helpless situation due to a persistent weakness—like the weakness of the flesh—or to some challenges and trials that are increasingly getting heavier each day, or to some misfortune that we find impossible to bear, then we should just insist on praying and begging our Lord for help. 

 While it’s true that we should also be accepting of whatever fate would come our way, no matter how trying, we have no reason to think that we can and should stop bothering God for the relief that we need. 

 We should rather act like that Syrophoenician woman who displayed a persistent and humble faith while asking Christ to cast a demon out of her daughter. (cfr. Mk 7,24-30) Despite initial rebuffs based on her nationality, she won Christ’s admiration by arguing that “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” resulting in her daughter’s instant healing. 

 That is why it is important that we always think and act according to our faith, more than just our feelings or our own natural and human estimation of things. It is faith that gives us the global picture of things. It manages to give us the real and redemptive meaning to any situation in our life. 

 It is our faith that reassures us that we are never alone, that we are never left abandoned to fend for ourselves against anything that can take place in life. Like that sick man at the poolside of Bethesda, lying there for 38 years, waiting for his lucky turn, (cfr. Jn 5,1-15) we should remain hopeful that not everything is lost. 

 God will always intervene in our life. He is a good father to us, ever merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, quick to forgive. We might be a misbehaving child, but he always looks first at our being his child before he does something with our misdeeds. 

 It might be good to always relish this psalm that reassures us of the goodness of God in spite of our mistakes: “For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.” (30,5) 

 Our problem is that we many times choose to be guided by our own feelings and private thoughts, detached from our faith. And so, we plunge into fear and shame, sadness and depression, and we suffer unnecessarily. Rather, let’s just be insistent and persevering in our prayer. 

And if God seems to ignore us, we have to realize that he is simply testing us for a number of reasons—to strengthen our faith, to purify our intentions, to grow in the other virtues, etc. But to be sure, God is never indifferent to our needs. He is always solicitous. He even knows more of our needs than we do, and makes provision for them. It’s rather us who do not notice what God is giving and doing for us most of the time. 

 Obviously, for our prayer to be insistent and persevering in spite of what may appear as God’s initial indifference to our requests, we need to spend some moments of special and serious conversation with him, like some period of mental prayer, meditating on God’s word, having recourse to the sacraments, etc. These are like the refueling process that helps us to continue going on with our spiritual life. 

 The important thing to remember is that we should never give up on our prayer. Rather, let us always sharpen our dispositions for prayer.

Despite the heavy drama of our life

WE should stick firmly to what Christ assured his disciples, and now us. Considering that our life here on earth is often referred to as a “vale of tears,” let’s avoid over-reacting to the heavy drama that we can expect in this life. 

 Let’s relish these words of our Lord: “In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16,33) Yes, our life here on earth is actually just transitory. It is a difficult journey toward our definitive destination. But there is always hope of reaching a better place, that is heaven, in the end. 

 We have to learn to have confidence in God’s loving providence over us by always strengthening our faith and referring everything in our life to him who knows how to derive good from evil.

 Our sense of confidence should spring from a faith that gives us the ultimate meaning and proper direction to all our human knowledge and endeavors. It is what gives the original perspective to all events, good or bad, in our life. Otherwise, we would end up confused and lost. 

 We also need to make our faith grow to cope with the multiplying infranatural consequences of our human condition that is weakened by sin. There’s no other way to manage and survive the consequences of sin, ours and those of others, personal as well as the collective and structural, than by relying first of all on our faith. Without faith, we will find no exit, no relief from this wounded status of ours. 

 That’s why St. Paul said: “Above all, take the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” (Eph 6,16) Faith holds pride of place in our armory to wage that lifelong battle with our wounded flesh, the temptations of the world, and the tricks of the devil. 

 Without faith, we would be easy prey to these enemies of our soul. Without it, we most likely would be filled with fear and anxiety, if not sadness and desperation. Faith unites us to the tremendous power of God over any kind of evil, self-inflicted or caused by others. 

 There’s no way we can achieve our ultimate goal without faith. With God, we have everything. As St. Teresa de Avila would put it: “Solo Dios basta!” (God alone is enough!) 

 And so, there’s really no reason to be too worried and anxious when we encounter some difficulty in our life. In fact, we have every reason to be confident and at peace, focused on what we are supposed to do. And that’s because we are always in God’s hands. 

 Whatever situation we may be in, we can be sure that God will always provide for what is truly needed by us, and it may not be what we want. We just have to trust him completely for he knows better than we do, and what we want may not be what we need. It may not even be what is good for us. 

 Yes, there will always be challenges, problems, difficulties that humanly speaking may be impossible for us to tackle. But as long as we have trust in God, we can sincerely echo St. Paul’s words: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4,13) These words have been verified to be true in the lives of all the saints, especially the martyrs. 

 It’s important that we be confident and at peace always, because that would put us in the proper condition to do the things we are supposed to do. It will make us bold and courageous, fruitful and productive.

The significance of Our Lord’s Ascension

A NUMBER of very meaningful considerations can be drawn from the Ascension of Our Lord into heaven. One is that with it we are reminded that like Christ, who is the pattern of our humanity and the redeemer of our damaged humanity, we actually came from heaven and are meant to return there for our definitive state of life after “passing” the test God has given us if what he wants us to be is also what we ourselves would like to be. 

 With our Lord’s Ascension, we are told that heaven is now open to humanity after it has been closed due to the fall of our first parents. We have been alienated from our Father God and are now reconciled through the redemptive work of Christ. 

 Our Lord’s Ascension also brings home to us our true home which is heaven where there will be “no more tears, pain or death, (cfr. Rev 21,1-4) where “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, or the heart of man conceived,” (cfr. 1 Cor 2,9) It’s there where we become a new creation, achieve the perfection of our humanity, and where we enjoy endless peace and bliss. 

 We really need to develop a yearning for heaven, but doing so by being keenly aware of our duties here on earth. The latter are our daily ordinary pathways to heaven, aside from the sacred means Christ has given us. 

Yes, we have to always keep heaven in mind and live our earthly life with this goal in sight, using our daily duties and experiences as pathways to reach God. Yes, as we yearn for heaven, we should be keenly aware of our duties here on earth. We need to see the organic connection between our earthly life and duties and our heavenly yearning. We cannot have one without the other. 

 In this regard, we have to do a lot of apostolate which would require of us that we, first of all, should be driven with love for God. Otherwise, our apostolate, our love for the others would have no steam to run on. 

 We need to see to it that our love for God always grows everyday, so that our love for others would also correspondingly grow. In this, we have to realize, first of all, how much God loves us. Only then can we start loving him and loving the others. 

 That is why we have to pray and consider the truths of our faith that show us much more than what our senses can discover. We can say that a person who does not pray is a person who cannot fall in love properly. 

 That’s because a prayerless love is a love that is simply driven by earthly elements that cannot last for long and cannot cope with all the demands of true love. It’s love that would be completely at the mercy of earthly and temporal conditions. 

 With sincere prayer, we would manage to keep our mind and heart, our thoughts and desires to somehow start and end with heaven. Thus, we can fulfill what St. Paul once said: “Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that are on earth.” (Col 3,1) 

 We have to learn how to relate everything to heaven, and not get entangled with our merely earthly and temporal affairs. Everything is meant to start and end with God who is the Creator of everything and the very foundation of reality.

“Your sorrow shall be turned into joy”

THESE are words Christ addressed to his disciples as he bade farewell to them. “Amen, amen I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” (Jn 16,20) 

 Christ was consoling his disciples amid their sorrow over his impending departure. He used the analogy of childbirth to promise transformative joy as well as direct access to the Father through prayer in his name. 

 “A woman, when in labor, has sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she has brought forth the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world,” he told them. Then he reassured them that “if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you.” (Jn 16,21.23) 

 This gospel episode simply shows Christ’s assurance of joy, a joy that transcends pain amid temporary worldly opposition, a joy that has lasting effects in eternal glory. This episode somehow reminds us to broaden our understanding of things as we go through the drama of our earthly life that will always involve suffering. More than that, it encourages us to learn the art of how to find joy even in our suffering. 

 We need to realize that in our life here on earth, joy and sorrow are intertwined, and we can manage to find joy even in suffering as long as we identify ourselves with Christ. We have to remember that Christ has conquered everything and has converted all the negative things in life into means for our purification and strengthening. 

 What we have to do is to unite whatever suffering we have with the suffering of Christ, because by so doing, we would be participating in Christ’s redemptive mission. So, we just have to relate everything to Christ by praying always, ever trusting in God’s presence and power. This mindset helps us develop a strong faith and confidence in Christ, enabling us to face whatever challenges and temptations would come our way. 

 Let’s be convinced that with Christ, suffering becomes an act of selfless love that can take on anything. Only in him can we find joy and meaning in suffering. With him, suffering loses its purely negative and painful character, and assumes the happy salvific character. 

 We need to process this truth of our faith thoroughly, always asking for God’s grace and training all our powers and faculties to adapt to this reality. That’s why Christ told us clearly that if we want to follow him, we simply have to deny ourselves, carry the cross and follow him. There’s no other formula, given our wounded human condition. 

 This self-denial and carrying of Christ’s cross will enable us to see that suffering is obviously the consequence of all our sins—ours and those of others. Embracing suffering the way Christ embraced his cross unites our suffering with that of Christ. 

 Our motive for it is like that of Christ. It’s the desire to conquer that suffering and ultimately our death through his death and resurrection. It’s obeying God’s will just like Christ obeyed his Father’s will. “Not my will but yours be done.” 

 Our reaction to any form of suffering in this life should therefore be theological and ascetical. It should be guided and inspired by faith. It should not just be physical or a natural affair. It should reflect the spiritual and supernatural realities to which we are all subject.

Let’s never be just by ourselves

THAT’S how we should be. To simply be by ourselves is actually an anomaly. As persons, endowed with intelligence and will, with the capacity to know and to love, we are meant to relate ourselves with others—with God, first, and then with everybody and everything else. 

 Thus, a point in the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states that, “being in the image of God, the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.” (357) 

 The Catechism explains further, shedding light on the difference between a something and a someone. 

 The human person who is a someone and not just a something is “capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. 

 “And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.” 

 A person is an individual who is always in relation with others. He simply cannot be on his own. His life, his growth and maturity, his capacity to resist temptations and to handle his weaknesses well would depend on his relation with God and with others. 

 Since we are made in the image and likeness of God, we as persons must somehow reflect also the perpetual relation within the three persons in one God. We are meant to be taken up, with God's grace, in that Trinitarian relation of knowing and loving one another. 

 That's why Christ told us in no unclear terms that the greatest commandment we ought to follow is to love God with all our might, and the second greatest is to love our neighbor. 

 We need to train ourselves to be always mindful and thoughtful of the others. In this way, we avoid confining ourselves to our own world which definitely will not be the real world, because it would be a world of pure subjectivism, detached from the objective world outside of ourselves. 

 We have to be both mindful and thoughtful, because this is what is proper to us. If we fail to cultivate these traits, we actually would be harming our very own humanity, aborting our road to human maturity, not to mention, the fullness of Christian life. 

 We need to be mindful because we have to know what’s going around us. We should never be aloof and indifferent. We have to be aware not only of things and events that are taking place, whether near or far, but also and most especially of persons, starting with the one right beside us. 

 And not only should we be mindful. We also need to be thoughtful. We should think ahead of how things are developing and of what we can do to help shape their evolution. Life is always a work in progress, and there are goals, the ultimate and the subordinate, to reach. We should not get stuck with the here and now. 

 We also should learn to read the signs of the times and to prepare ourselves for whatever indications or warnings they are giving us. This way we put ourselves in condition to influence the flow of things, and to somehow already fashion the future. In this way, we extricate ourselves from our own subjective world and get to grapple with the objective reality.

Harmonizing our life’s different dimensions

IT’S obvious that we have to contend with the many aspects and dimensions of our life—the natural and the supernatural, the temporal and the eternal, the material and the spiritual, etc. We cannot deny that very often we see them competing or even in conflict with each other. 

 We, therefore, need to tackle the challenge and the complicated task of how to harmonize them in such a way that we can achieve what we may call as unity of life that pursues the proper and ultimate goal of our life. 

 Said in another way, we have to find a way of how we can live our spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life with naturalness as we go through our daily activities and concerns. The art and skills that are appropriate for this need should be learned and adopted as early as possible. 

 Definitely, this challenge and task would demand a lot of requirements from us. But to be sure, we can say that the basic requirement is for us to be fully identified with Christ, “the perfect God and the perfect man” (perfectus Deus, perfectus homo). 

 He is the very personification of how to integrate the different aspects of our life so we can achieve a certain consistency and continuity that would pursue the ultimate goal of our life. 

 In this regard, we cannot overemphasize the need for us to have regular time for prayer and avail of a plan of continuing formation so that our relation with Christ would really become alive and in a way that can effectively guide us in our daily activities. 

 With Christ, we would know how to live naturalness as we pursue our supernatural goal in the middle of the world. It has something to do with how to handle our human condition considering what we ought to be and what we are at the moment. Fact is, we have a supernatural goal, nothing less than to be united with God, which we have to pursue in the context of our human and natural world. 

 Naturalness is about how to mix the spiritual and material dimensions of our life, our personal and social aspects, and other elements in our life that, given the way we are, appear to compete with each other. How to integrate and harmonize them is the task of naturalness. 

 Naturalness is a very active affair, lived day to day, moment to moment, as we grapple with the continuous flow of our concerns. It’s the front man who does the dirty job of the bigger virtues of discretion, prudence and ultimately charity, the foot soldier who does the hand-to-hand combat, the peddler who does the door-to-door selling. 

 It has to know when to push and when to pull, what to say and show and what to be quiet about and hide. Obviously, it has to follow a game plan, with a clear goal in mind and a detailed knowledge of all the elements it has to contend with. 

 It has to know when to be active and when to be passive, when to be aggressive and when to be patient and tolerant. Of course, in our spiritual life, these elements while initially contrasting, can be blended and lived simultaneously, obviously as an effect of grace and our cleverness. 

 It also has to know how to project oneself to the future, given the data of the present and of the past. It has to learn how to relate history and current events with eternity. It should know how to connect the mundane with the sacred.

Our morality depends on our spirituality

IT’S quite clear that the way we think, speak, react and behave in general is determined by the way we are. This is somehow encapsulated in that Latin expression: “agere sequitur esse” which means that how a thing acts, functions or behaves is fundamentally determined by what it is—its nature or essence. It means that actions reveal the inner nature of a being. 

 In short, we can say that our actions reflect our character. In our case, since we are not purely material beings but more of a spiritual one—given the fact that the spirit is one that gives life, not our bodily dimension—we can conclude that the quality of our behavior depends on the quality of our spirituality. 

 Yes, our Catholic teaching affirms that our morality is intrinsically dependent on our spirituality. That’s simply because, to put it bluntly, our moral life is not merely a set of rules but a response to God’s call. It’s a moral life that is rooted in faith, grace, and that call of God for us to be his image and likeness, i.e., to be holy as God himself is holy. 

 The morality that is proper to us can only be achieved if our human acts are ordered toward God by following his will. That is why, Christ who is the fullness of the revelation of God to us and who offers us “the way, the truth and the life,” clearly told his disciples and us that if we truly love him, we should keep his commandments. (cfr. Jn 14,15) 

 The “way, truth and life” Christ offers us provides us with all the means we need to keep our true identity and dignity as children of God. These are means that can tackle whatever conditions and circumstances we can find ourselves in, that can convert all situations, including the worst sufferings we can encounter in our life, into a path to be with God, to achieve the ultimate end of our life which is our holiness and redemption. 

 In other words, God is always with us, guiding us, protecting us, helping us in all our needs. That is what God’s providence is all about. We need to be aware of this basic truth of our life so we can live our life the way proper to our true identity as God’s children. 

 We have to be wary of certain questionable theories about human morality that would reduce it to mere utility, subjective preference, empirical observation or human autonomy. These theories cut our morality from its true source who is God and his law and grace. These theories fail to account for the spiritual dimension of the person we are, and would unavoidably lead to forms of relativism and the denial of intrinsic evils. 

 Thus, we can say that to have a good moral sense is none other than having an abiding awareness that all our human acts, starting with our thoughts and desires, and then our words and deeds, should be good in the sense that they ought to be inspired and oriented toward nothing less than love for God and for others. 

 That’s why St. Paul once said in his praise of charity (love of God): “If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 

 “And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 

 “And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing.” (1 Cor 13,1-3)

Expect all sorts of troubles in our life

CHRIST himself had already warned us about this. To his disciples, he once said: “They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the hour comes, that whosoever kills you will think that he is doing a service to God.” (Jn 16,2) 

 In another part of the gospel, he clearly said: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16,33) Yes, Christ is assuring us that we as his believers will inevitably face trials, suffering and difficulties in a broken world, but we should keep our peace and courage since Christ will take care of everything in the end. 

 Other verses that express the same warning are the following: 

 - “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Tim 3,12) 

- “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14,22) 

 We should not anymore make a big issue out of this fact of life. Rather, we should just strengthen our faith in Christ through prayer and the nurturing of the virtues like courage, fortitude, patience, cheerfulness, hope, etc. It would be helpful if we can develop a sporting and fighting spirit in this life. 

 Yes, we need a sporting spirit because life’s true failure can come only when we choose not to have hope. That happens when our vision and understanding of things is narrow and limited, confined only to the here and now and ignorant of the transcendent reality of the spiritual and supernatural world. 

 We therefore have to develop a strong spiritual sportsmanship in the tenor expressed in some words of St. Paul: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” (1 Cor 9,24) 

 Aside from a strong sense of self-discipline and submitting ourselves in a continuing training program, an indispensable ingredient of this healthy sporting spirit is the sense of acceptance and abandonment that we need to deliberately cultivate. This does not come automatically, as if it’s part of our genes. 

We have to develop them. We have to be sport and adventurous in facing the different conditions of our life. And it would greatly help if we too can have an abiding sense of humor. Otherwise, we would just easily fall into states of sadness, pessimism and despair which actually are unnecessary but are avoidable. 

 This we can do if first of all we have a strong and deep faith in God, our Creator and Father. If we have that faith, we know that God holds everything in order through his providence. He takes care of everything, irrespective of how things go. Ours is simply to relate everything to him and to go back to him everytime we go astray especially at the end of the day. 

 When we have this sporting and adventurous spirit, we, of course, would like to play to win and to get as much enjoyment as possible. We would give our best shot. But we also know that this is not going to happen all the time. There will be times when we lose in a game or when we get lost in our adventure. But regardless of how things go, we can always go back to God as we should, and everything would just be all right. 

 Thus, whether we win or lose in tackling life’s many challenges and trials, we can still manage to have fun and, more importantly, to learn precious lessons by getting to know more about ourselves and others, about our strengths and weaknesses, about the virtues we need to develop and grow, etc.

Our true hunger and genuine fulfillment

IN the gospel, Christ tells us about what is involved if we want to truly love him. “If you love me,” he said, “keep my commandments.” And he makes this promise: “And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever.” (Jn 14,15-16) 

 He further explained why the Paraclete or the spirit of truth is needed. “The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, nor knows him; but you shall know him because he shall abide with you, and shall be in you,” he said. (Jn14,17) 

 The question to ask is, how can we manage to comply with the condition of keeping his commandments to be able to love him, and in so doing, be guided by the spirit of truth in this very complicated and confusing world? 

 Given how demanding Christ’s teachings are, we would likely struggle to live up to them. Yes, Christ’s commands and the high standard of Christ’s teachings are so rigorous that we would be in a tough spot trying to keep them. 

 I believe the secret is found in what Christ himself had recommended. That is, that we do some fasting that would induce a special kind of hunger that is not only a hunger for natural food but rather a hunger for the ultimate spiritual and supernatural food that is God himself. 

 Said another way, it should be a natural hunger that should lead us to this spiritual and supernatural hunger, a hunger for God. We need to train our natural hunger to have the greatest longing for God. 

 In other words, it should be God whom we regard as the true satisfaction of our hunger. It is he who should give us the greatest joy and pleasure. We should not get stuck in the natural level of satisfaction, joy and pleasure only, the effect only of food and other natural things. But our craving for God, while eminently spiritual and supernatural, should first of all be felt in our body. 

 This way we can manage to keep the commandments of Christ no matter how tough, rigorous and challenging they are. And by keeping the commandments, we would feel the presence of the Paraclete, the spirit of truth, as promised by Christ, who will guide us and give us the proper direction in our life, marked as it is with chaotic conditions. 

 With this spirit of truth, we would not be trapped in our temporal world only, playing the game of self-indulgence and simply pursuing self-interest, unmindful of the spiritual, supernatural and eternal destination meant for us. 

 We would know how to relate our temporal affairs to our ultimate goal. We would know how to give the proper priority to all the elements in this life, and how to be firmly guarded against distractions. 

 We really should make this serious business of developing this true hunger a top priority among the things that we need to learn. We cannot take this duty lightly. We have to learn to live in the natural and temporal world while pursuing our supernatural and eternal goal. 

 As St. Paul once said: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Col 3,2) He was practically telling us that we should prioritize heaven, eternal values over temporary worldly pursuits. He was asking us for a shift in perspective to align our thoughts, actions and desires with the teachings and example Christ who shows us the way to heaven.

Synodality and the Church’s continuing mission

DURING the time of the apostles as they started to carry out the mission given to them by Christ, there, of course, were some problems and issues that needed to be resolved. One was when there were disturbances among the Gentile believers who were imposed with unnecessary burdens. (cfr. Act 15,22-31) 

 The apostles wrote a letter telling them: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.” (Acts 15,29) At this, they rejoiced. 

 Somehow, this episode illustrates the synodal nature of the early Church since it involved a kind of prayerful dialogue between the apostles, on the one hand, and the Gentile believers, on the other. More importantly, it involved a listening to the Holy Spirit that underscores that true decisions arise from listening to God through prayer and a constant commitment to conversion. 

 Pope Francis brought out this need for synodality as a way to listen to the Spirit’s voice that would promote a culture of encounter and co-responsibility. In this way, synodality can be great help in the Church’s earthly journey toward her heavenly destination, the journey of the Church Militant toward the Church Triumphant. 

 In other words, synodality guides the Church Militant toward the Church Triumphant by emphasizing mission through evangelization and spreading of the Gospel, thereby aligning the Church with its ultimate goal of unity with God. It also cultivates unity and love through dialogue and shared discernment. It encourages the need for continuing conversion. 

 This thrust on synodality has, of course, received both praises and criticisms. Those who praised it see it as a way to revitalize the Church’s mission, making it more inclusive, given the more active involvement of the laity in decision-making processes. It therefore promotes the idea of a certain co-responsibility between the hierarchy and the ordinary faithful but in different degree. 

 Those who criticized it worry that it would lead to confusion and to the watering down of doctrine that may lead to doctrinal ambiguity. Some critics expressed the fear that the process can be too focused on secular or worldly ideas at the expense of the traditional teachings. Still others fear that it would undermine the authority of the hierarchy since it can lead to the democratization of the Church. 

 I suppose that in any process there are always the good side and the not so good one, the benefits and advantages, on the one hand, and the dangers, on the other. I imagine that it will always be a matter of how to go about it with prudence. 

 To balance its benefits and dangers, I believe that the discussions should be rooted on Church teachings and Scripture to ensure alignment with core values. Everyone involved should really pray, earnestly seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance that would necessarily involve some conversion. Genuine dialogue should be fostered, encouraging respectful listening and sharing, valuing diverse perspectives while seeking unity. 

 Indeed, discernment, prayer and adherence to Church teachings can be good safeguards to keep this process of synodality achieve its real goal. So far, this process has expanded lay participation in Church governance, a fuller recognition of women’s role in the Church. It has also fostered better transparency and accountability in terms of finances and forms of abuses. 

 And yes, it has facilitated ecumenical dialogue, and hopefully, even inter-religious dialogue. It would be good if this process of synodality continues to be practiced as the Church continues with its mission amid fast changing developments in the world.

True love is always linked to sacrifice

THAT’S how true love is. Without sacrifice, love at best can only be apparent. For love to be true, it will always involve sacrifice and great effort, considering the way we really are as God’s children as well as the way we are now in our earthly condition, marked as it is by our woundedness. 

 Genuine love for one another will always involve sacrifice simply because it cannot avoid the certainty that it will always entail understanding, compassion, the willingness to bear the burden of the others, and ultimately to offer mercy and to forgive to anyone who may do us wrong. It will always involve a total self-giving that is not only gratuitous but continues to give and give even if it’s not reciprocated or, worse, contradicted. 

 For love to be true, it has to reflect Christ’s love for all of us, irrespective of how we are to him. And that’s simply because whether we are good or not to God, God will continue to love for the basic reason that we are all his children. 

 A hallmark of genuine love is when we are willing to give up our own interest for God and for everybody else, reflecting the ultimate expression of love of Christ to all of us when he made himself a sacrifice on the cross. 

 Yes, we can say that true love expresses itself in sacrifice. In other words, given our wounded condition here on earth, sacrifice is the very language of love. Love cannot truly be love without sacrifice. 

 This means that unless we love the cross, we can never say that we are truly loving. Of course, we have to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God wills it—the way Christ loved it—that we can really say that we are loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to limit our loving to ways and forms that give us some benefits alone, be it material, moral or spiritual. While they are also a form of love, they are not yet the fullness of love. 

 So, let’s be clear about this point. Love will always 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. That is why, he once said: “As the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love.” (Jn 15,9)

“Abide in me as I abide in you”

WORDS of Christ, addressed to his disciples and now to all of us, that clearly spell out how our ideal condition of our life here on earth should be. (cfr. Jn 15,4) They practically tell us how we can be truly fruitful in this life, and lead of life of purpose, joy and fulfillment. 

Truth is Christ is always with us. As our creator and the pattern of our humanity as well as the redeemer of our damaged humanity, he is always with us. We just have to learn how to be always with him too so we can be what we ought to be. 

This, in effect, can only mean that we should unite our will to God’s will, letting go of our own desires and plans. We should also stay rooted in God’s love and teachings as revealed to us in full by Christ, applying them in our daily life. 

Thus, we should continually ask ourselves: Are we truly abiding in Christ? Do we always give priority to my connection with him? This way, we can aspire to produce spiritual fruit like love, joy and peace. We can be sure that we are properly guided as we go through life’ challenges and trials, finding strength in our weakness and comfort in trials. 

And more importantly, by abiding always in Christ, we can have a clear and driving sense of purpose and direction. It is in this area where most of us fail, thereby giving an easy opening for our weaknesses and the temptations to dominate us. 

When we manage to abide with Christ, we would know and live by the real and ultimate purpose of our life. Such knowledge would help in giving the proper shape, direction and consistency to our life that is now being pushed and pulled in any which way by the many confusing elements in our life today. 

We have to realize the grave duty we have to know and live by this existential purpose of ours, since this will assure us that we are going in the right direction, even if we do it in different ways, paths, forms and manners. 

Especially these days when many people are confused and lost as to what really should be the ultimate goal of their life, we have to make this duty more known and appreciated. We cannot deny that many people do not have a clear purpose in life, or that their worldview is limited, distorted, if not wrong. 

And what is this existential purpose of ours? It’s none other than to give glory to God. It can be expressed also in many other ways. It’s about, as our Catechism would put it, knowing, loving and serving God. In fact, this is the very first point of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself,” it says, “in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength…” 

All this business of our existential purpose is lived and summarized by Christ himself, the son of God who became man to save us. He commanded us to love one another as he himself loved us, which he did to fully carry out the will of his Father. 

And so, it should behoove us to know more and more about Christ to such an extent that not only would we know his life, his teachings and example, but that we also would live his life, his teachings and example as well.

The real peace

THAT’S the peace that Christ gives to his disciples, distinct from the peace that the world may give. It’s a peace that serves as a constant consolation, amid understandable fears, to those who follow Christ on earth and continue with his redemptive mission. 

 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” Christ said. “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” he continued. (Jn 14,27) 

 This peace is not an effect of an absence of war. In fact, there is some kind of war involved because it can only be had when we struggle against our weaknesses and sins, when we try to become more and more like Christ, when we strive to enter deep into the spiritual and supernatural world of God where we will have our ultimate state in life. 

 This peace is not an effect of an absence of troubles and conflict in this life. We can have all sorts of difficulties, challenges and trials in this life, but the peace Christ gives us can hold on. In the midst of life’s storms, Christ’s peace can stand firm and unshaken. It can serve as a safe anchor. 

 Definitely, this peace is not simply a result of ignorance, indifference and death itself. No matter how deeply involved we are in the complicated drama of our life here on earth, we can still manage to be confident and hopeful, firmly convinced that we are all in the hands of God. 

 The peace Christ gives us is a kind of interior tranquility that springs from the divine order of things. It surpasses human understanding and is oriented toward our eternal goal rather than just some temporal security. 

 Obviously, this peace will require spiritual warfare and a strong relationship with Christ. It involves surrendering to God’s will and embracing Christ’s teachings. We therefore should know very well the real source of peace, giving priority to our relationship with God. 

 Thus, we need to be truly identified with Christ to have peace in ourselves. It is a peace that comes as a result of reconciliation. It therefore involves repentance, conversion, struggle, that Christ has shown to us by embracing the cross and dying on it. 

 The cross of Christ is all at once the summary of all our sins as well as the supreme act of love of Christ for us. It is both the tree of death and the tree of life. It’s where all the malice of man meets the tremendous mercy of God. Christ is asking us to carry the cross also with him. Only then can we have true peace that comes from Christ. 

 This is the peace that cannot waver even under the severe assaults of trials, difficulties and failures. It is the peace that involves a certain abandonment of everything in our life in the hands of God, even as we do our part of dealing with them. 

 We have to learn to receive and keep this peace that Christ gives us. We might have to pause from time to time to make this truth of our faith sink deeply in our consciousness and be the guiding principle of our life. 

 This is the peace that leads us to joy. They actually go together—“gaudium cum pace,” joy with peace, as one prayer in preparation for celebrating the Mass would put it.

The need for a daily agenda

LET’S hope that more and more people, especially the young ones, feel the need to have a daily agenda or a to-do list. This will assure us that, among many other things, we would be making good use of time, that we have a clear idea of the things we need to do, keeping us focused on our purpose and helping us to stay on the right track. 

 When we have this habit, we would be more likely to study and plan well the many things to tackle, thus enabling us to effectively prioritize what’s important. More than that, we would be more able to order them in such way that we not only pursue some immediate purpose but also, and more importantly, pursue the ultimate goal of our life which is to relate everything for the glory of God and for our sanctification. 

 Besides, this habit will give us more assurance of peace and a smooth work life even if there are unavoidable surprises along the way. We can feel a certain sense of dominion and an abiding sense of purpose. We would be more able to resist distractions that nowadays are getting plentier and more seductive. Yes, we would be more able to resist the usual dangers of idleness, laziness, loneliness, worries and the like. 

 And what kind of purpose can this be that would keep us going no matter what situation we find ourselves in? Of course, this could only be God, our love of God, from whom we come and to whom we belong. He is our beginning and end, our everything. 

 That’s why we need to sharpen our awareness of him, feel his presence and his abundant merciful love for us, learn to discern his will and ways in every moment, and know how to relate everything in our life to his ever-functioning Providence. 

 We need to strengthen our faith that only in God can we have the ultimate purpose in life. St. Paul said so: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31) 

 Before that, Christ himself told us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” (Lk 10,27) Nothing could be clearer than this as to what final purpose we have in life. All other goals and objectives we have in life should only be secondary and instrumental to this ultimate purpose of our life. 

 We need to find ways to correspond to this clear commandment of God to us. That effort will help us to broaden our mind, to continue making initiatives, to widen our perspectives, to deepen our hope and inflame our charity. It will help us to study things well, not only staying in the theoretical level but also going into the reality on the ground. 

 It will spur us to action always, not contented with knowing things alone or having some theoretical attitude in life. It will push us to develop a universal heart, capable of dealing with everyone and of reaching out to everyone, including the most difficult personalities and enemies. 

 It will enable us to have a sense of unity and continuity among the different elements and the different occurrences in our life, be they good or bad, favorable or unfavorable to us, etc. 

 When we have love of God as our abiding sense of purpose in our life behind our daily agenda, we would find it easy to go from one thing to another, no matter disparate they are from each other. We would find meaning in everything, including what we consider to be human disasters in our life.

Beware of certain “truths”

WE have to be careful with those truths in quotation marks. They may cite data and facts, they may even invoke some words of the Bible, but if they do not come from Christ himself, they can only give some appearance of truth, or some partial truths at best, that are mentioned mainly in pursuit of some self-interest, if not of deception and manipulation. 

 That’s simply because Christ himself said that he is “the way, the truth and the life” (cfr. Jn 14,6), the only one who can bring us to God. He is the only one that can provide us with the proper way to bring us to our definitive eternal life of perfect happiness in union with God himself. 

 Many people, especially many politicians and businessmen, can dish out a lot of verified facts and data. But this does not mean that they are leading us to the real truth and to God. Most of the time, they only lead us to their own interest and advantage. Yes, they can have some traces of truth, but that’s about it, that’s pretty much everything. Let’s neither forget that when the devil dared to tempt Christ, he also cited some scripture passages. (cfr. Mt 4,1-11) 

 To know the truth and to be in the truth are a matter of being discerning of what Christ in the Holy Spirit is telling and showing us. In short, we cannot know and be in the truth unless we follow what the Spirit tells us. 

 We just cannot rely on facts and data and a majority vote to be in the truth. Understanding truth that way, without the inspiration of the Spirit, would just lead us to be deceived in a way that can be most subtle and convincing. But the result or the effect of such misunderstanding of truth would only be greater division among us or some harm. 

 Somehow, we can verify the effect of such misunderstanding of truth just by looking at how there is now a lot of division and misunderstanding among ourselves in spite of the tremendous developments we have in the sciences and the technologies. We can have a glut of facts and data and we can make choices by majority vote, and still the truth would elude us. 

 Facts and data need a proper spirit for them to serve the cause of truth. We need to realize that truth in the context or setting of our human condition needs a proper spirit. Without considering the proper spirit, they can only be used—or misused—by all sorts of possible human motives that in the end may not be right for us, or may just be self-serving to some of us but harmful to others. 

 We have to realize that the pursuit for truth is a very tricky one. For that, we need to be familiar with the Spirit of Truth. He is the one who will show us the whole truth and not just some aspects of it. If we really want to be in the truth and not confused and lost in the many appearances of truth, we need to get in touch with the Spirit of Truth. 

 Christ himself said: “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (Jn 16,13) No one can ever say he has the whole truth until he reaches where the Spirit of truth would finally lead him, and that is when God becomes “all in all.” (cfr. 1 Cor 15,28)

How small ordinary things can be great

IT’S kind of amazing that in the gospel reading for the Mass of the Memorial of St. Joseph, the Worker, (cfr. Mt 13,54-58) celebrated on May 1, the figure of the foster father of Christ is just mentioned in passing, giving us the impression that he is no important character and that whatever he did was no big deal. 

 That’s when Christ went to his hometown and started to teach in the synagogue, astonishing the unbelieving townmates who could not help but say: “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son,” they commented. They did not even mention the name of Joseph who simply was referred to as a carpenter. 

 But to be sure the role of Joseph in the life of Christ and in the whole economy of salvation cannot be exaggerated. He played a very crucial role in taking care of Christ as a child and in giving us a clear example that one does not have to be a big, prominent man, humanly speaking, involved in some big things, again according to human standards, for him to do the things of God and thereby achieve his holiness and real greatness. 

 The great lesson we can learn here is that all our duties and responsibilities of whatever state in life we may have, whether we are married or single, father, mother, son, daughter, worker, or whether we are a lay person or a religious consecrated person, are our clear way to cooperate in God’s continuing and redemptive providence over us. We need to appreciate more deeply the significance of our ordinary duties which we often take for granted. 

 And this is all because we are all children of God, and as such, our life is always a life with God. Everyone of us has a vocation that gives meaning and purpose, color and direction to our whole life. 

 Whether we are prominent in society or just an ordinary guy, a big politician or a menial worker spending the day toiling in the farms, each one of us is called by God, i.e., is given a vocation and has a mission to carry out in this life. We have to be aware of this basic truth about ourselves and be most discerning as to what specific vocation God is giving us. 

 In the case of St. Joseph, he was called, almost from nowhere, to be the husband of Mary and the foster father of Christ. It would look as if he was just asked to play a cameo role, an extra in a story, some kind of a prop to complete the scene in a given play. And yet he did it very, very well! 

 He corresponded to his vocation as the foster father of Christ and as husband of Mary with all his heart, even going through heroic episodes when, for example, he had to gather Mary and the baby Jesus in the middle to the night to escape the murderous rampage of a mad king. 

 If we would just be faithful to our vocation, no matter how small or hidden it is, we would already be carrying out an important part of God’s providence! We need to set aright our attitude toward whatever condition and state in life we may have in this life. The ordinary little things that we handle everyday are first of all our way to show our love for God and to cooperate in his ongoing providence over us.