WE have to be more aware of our spiritual life, and even more so with respect to our abiding responsibilities toward it.
Our problem is that we tend to take it for granted, attending to it only on certain special occasions. And this latter we do more for show than for truly living and developing it. We need to improve our grade in this area.
Though many are now questioning it, the existence of our spiritual life cannot be doubted. Our Lord himself told his sleepy disciples during his agony in the garden: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26,41)
And even without getting very scholarly, we all know that there’s something spiritual in us because we can do spiritual operations. We think, we choose and love, we reason, discover things and an endless etcetera of acts that can be abstracted from our material dimension.
A philosophical principle, formulated more through common sense than through labored thinking, tells us that “Operare sequitur esse” (operation follows being). A thing acts according to what and how it is. Applied to this case, if we can do spiritual operations, it’s because there’s something spiritual in us.
To repeat, we have to be more aware of our spiritual life. We need to go past the awareness of only our physical, psychological, intellectual, social conditions, etc. If we need to take care of these aspects, we need much more to take care of our spiritual life.
This is because our spirit is actually our principle of life, unity and direction. It’s not food, air, water, etc. that give us life and sustain us in it. These too are necessary, but only insofar as our physical organism and natural life are concerned. The body without the soul cannot live, is helpless and clueless.
It is our spirit that brings us to look endlessly for the truth and for happiness. Our body simply enjoys them, but does not look for them. It’s our spirit, through its faculties, the intelligence and will, that looks for them.
Pertinent to this point, the Compendium of Social Doctrine teaches: “Through his spirituality man moves beyond the realm of mere things and plunges into the innermost structure of reality.” (128)
Our spirit has the natural tropism for this. Thus, this tendency has to be reinforced always, seeing to it that it does not get frustrated by getting entangled with merely material things and external impressions, nor even earthly truths and goods.
Samples of the merely material things are when we allow ourselves to be dominated by our senses, by our feelings and emotions. Sad to say, many do not anymore distinguish between what is emotion and what is intelligence.
Samples of earthly truths and goods are the worldly elemental forces involved in “feng shui”, geomancy, divination and horoscope. Or the sophisticated, esoteric knowledge derived from the human sciences and arts. Our spirit goes beyond these.
Ergo, while it can be assisted by our senses and faculties, our spirit should not be allowed to be dominated by them. It has to soar toward its infinite possibilities, toward the purely spiritual world.
We should try not to interrupt this process or course. Rather we should foster it. Thus, we need to adapt the appropriate attitudes and acquire the relevant skills. We need to learn the art of praying, of meditating and contemplating. These are the best acts of our spirit.
Ultimately, it is our spirit, with the help of grace, that allows us to be elevated to the supernatural order, to a sharing in the life of God. This is our spirit’s proper and ultimate object.
In this respect, the spirit has to be freed from the clutches of the flesh.St. Paul has this to say about this point: “Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” (Gal 5,16-17)
With our praying, meditating and contemplating, we hope to deepen our faith, hope and charity, our wisdom, understanding and knowledge, that will enable us to achieve communion with God while on earth, and with everybody else.
This is the beauty of taking care of our spiritual life.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Reading the signs of the times
THIS task already had its tricky parts since time immemorial. But compared to present conditions, the past was rather a very simple and easy task to carry out.
Given the multiplying forces and influences that go into our current culture, reading the signs of the times has become a formidable task that approaches the level of a nightmare.
And precisely because of our complex, intricate and puzzling world, this task has become more necessary. We need to stay away from the grip of ignorance, confusion, error, the ingredients of perdition.
Still, not everything is lost and beyond hope. The amount of information, given our ever-developing technologies, is not only massive and profound but is also much easier to access now.
Besides, we are never lacking of people with great potentials to effectively undertake this delicate task. We just need to discover them and inspire them.
What we needed at present is the discipline to have an abiding concern to read the signs of the times. This is no simple thing, since it’s not just a matter of attitude, habits and skills, though they figure prominently in this task.
Yes, we need to learn how to collect data, compare notes, dialogue with different parties, consult experts, study, reflect, make conclusions and plan, etc., but all these are not enough.
Rather, this discipline in the end depends on our living contact and relationship with what we consider as our God, what we regard as our ultimate source of light and understanding.
This is where the main problem comes. Many of us still rely almost exclusively on our own devices, our own natural endowments. Many still have not managed to link our best resources with an objective and transcendent God.
Instead, many of us still feel our high intelligence, our cleverness, our increasing scientific expertise are enough. It is as if these can be equivalent to God. Thus, we fail to realize that our sophistication can turn into naivete.
Remember St. Paul saying: “The foolish things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the wise. The weak things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the strong.” (1 Cor 1,27)
Many of us still don’t realize that this objective and transcendent God, completely supernatural to us, makes himself accessible to us in ways that are revealed as well as established by him, with our cooperation.
There are the doctrines, the sacraments, the Church, etc. that can truly connect us with this living God. What’s needed is that we have the necessary dispositions, and from there, the appropriate practices and virtues, to keep this bond alive and abiding.
With these prerequisites, we can aspire to read the signs of the times. We can penetrate the externals and appearances, expose the ethos animating our society, and monitor its development—from gestation to maturity and decay.
With these prerequisites, we can have the needed criteria for judgment, and keep distance from shallow and narrow perceptions. We would have a running account of how things are evolving in the different areas.
We have to acquire the expertise of identifying the significant elements of our current culture, and to articulate what is good and bad in them, what is right and wrong. Only then can we attempt to come up with the appropriate remedies. And I believe that there always are cures for our problems.
These days, for example, the Pope has warned us about the dangers of relativism, both in belief and in morals. We need to be familiar with its nature, ways and manifestations.
There are other disturbing isms affecting us today, like individualism, hedonism, positivism, etc. We need to know them and see how they are affecting us.
From there, we can try to clarify matters, pointing out their lack of basis, their inherent contradictions, and the unavoidable dead ends that they lead to. Of course, we have to do all this with utmost charity, shunning unnecessary frictions with other people.
We have to outgrow whatever hesitation we may have with respect to this responsibility. Sometimes, we think this is too cerebral, too abstract and not relevant, since its need and effects are often not directly felt.
Given the multiplying forces and influences that go into our current culture, reading the signs of the times has become a formidable task that approaches the level of a nightmare.
And precisely because of our complex, intricate and puzzling world, this task has become more necessary. We need to stay away from the grip of ignorance, confusion, error, the ingredients of perdition.
Still, not everything is lost and beyond hope. The amount of information, given our ever-developing technologies, is not only massive and profound but is also much easier to access now.
Besides, we are never lacking of people with great potentials to effectively undertake this delicate task. We just need to discover them and inspire them.
What we needed at present is the discipline to have an abiding concern to read the signs of the times. This is no simple thing, since it’s not just a matter of attitude, habits and skills, though they figure prominently in this task.
Yes, we need to learn how to collect data, compare notes, dialogue with different parties, consult experts, study, reflect, make conclusions and plan, etc., but all these are not enough.
Rather, this discipline in the end depends on our living contact and relationship with what we consider as our God, what we regard as our ultimate source of light and understanding.
This is where the main problem comes. Many of us still rely almost exclusively on our own devices, our own natural endowments. Many still have not managed to link our best resources with an objective and transcendent God.
Instead, many of us still feel our high intelligence, our cleverness, our increasing scientific expertise are enough. It is as if these can be equivalent to God. Thus, we fail to realize that our sophistication can turn into naivete.
Remember St. Paul saying: “The foolish things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the wise. The weak things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the strong.” (1 Cor 1,27)
Many of us still don’t realize that this objective and transcendent God, completely supernatural to us, makes himself accessible to us in ways that are revealed as well as established by him, with our cooperation.
There are the doctrines, the sacraments, the Church, etc. that can truly connect us with this living God. What’s needed is that we have the necessary dispositions, and from there, the appropriate practices and virtues, to keep this bond alive and abiding.
With these prerequisites, we can aspire to read the signs of the times. We can penetrate the externals and appearances, expose the ethos animating our society, and monitor its development—from gestation to maturity and decay.
With these prerequisites, we can have the needed criteria for judgment, and keep distance from shallow and narrow perceptions. We would have a running account of how things are evolving in the different areas.
We have to acquire the expertise of identifying the significant elements of our current culture, and to articulate what is good and bad in them, what is right and wrong. Only then can we attempt to come up with the appropriate remedies. And I believe that there always are cures for our problems.
These days, for example, the Pope has warned us about the dangers of relativism, both in belief and in morals. We need to be familiar with its nature, ways and manifestations.
There are other disturbing isms affecting us today, like individualism, hedonism, positivism, etc. We need to know them and see how they are affecting us.
From there, we can try to clarify matters, pointing out their lack of basis, their inherent contradictions, and the unavoidable dead ends that they lead to. Of course, we have to do all this with utmost charity, shunning unnecessary frictions with other people.
We have to outgrow whatever hesitation we may have with respect to this responsibility. Sometimes, we think this is too cerebral, too abstract and not relevant, since its need and effects are often not directly felt.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Knowledge and its pursuit
A PRAYER struck my attention recently.
“Grant us the gift of knowledge,” it said, “to make us understand properly what created things are, and what they ought to be according to the divine plan of creation and elevation to the supernatural order.”
It was a prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit who gives us the seven-fold gift of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord. But it reminded me of what knowledge is all about.
The pursuit of knowledge should always be understood as an effort that is linked with God, with his will, plans and designs for us, with the fact that we and everything we know and discover are meant for a supernatural life.
It should not be done independently of God, and much less contrary to his laws. We should never think the knowledge we accumulate, no matter how mundane, has no relation to God.
This is because everything comes from God and belongs to God, and everything is under a divine plan that is of course completely mysterious to us. Yet, in spite of the mystery, we are capable of knowing and understanding at least parts of it.
Our problem, of course, is that we often pursue knowledge fully at our own designs, with our own motives and purposes. We hardly relate it to God and his plans.
We sometimes even go to the extent of thinking that God has no business in this effort, or worse, that there’s really no God, and that we are just on our own to know and discover whatever we want and whatever we can.
In this kind of set-up, we make ourselves prone to all sorts of dangerous possibilities—vanity, pride, greed, sensuality, exaltation of pleasure and earthly power, etc.
And the knowledge we accumulate is of the distorted and corrupted kind. Legal knowledge becomes legalism, the sciences develop without ethics, and the arts and entertainment easily succumb to immoral pragmatism.
The higher knowledge of philosophy and theology cannot help but get entangled with the allures of relativism. They transform into ideologies with extremist and fundamentalist molds, or with lax and happy-go-lucky tendencies.
Thus we need the constant effort to remind ourselves of relating our work and knowledge with God. As much as possible, we should articulate this link personally. We have to develop the habit of asking ourselves what relation any piece of information and knowledge we get, has with God.
The ideal is that we automatically become conscious that what we are doing and knowing are directly related to God and his plans, and that our knowledge of earthly things brings us closer to God.
This, of course, is not easy to achieve. We have to contend with so many difficulties. First, there are our weaknesses, like our laziness and our attachment to worldly things. They hinder us in our effort to connect our knowledge of things with God
There also are temptations from the devil and the world itself that seek to bind us to our own world, keeping us quite egotistic and increasingly unmindful of God and of others.
Besides, the objective connection itself between our knowledge and God is charged with mysteries that can easily lend itself to confusion and indifference. It can lead us to get discouraged at the dark prospect of ever knowing it clearly.
But if our mindset is to know and discover this connection and relation, sooner or later we will see it more and more clearly. Obviously, we have to be patient, pursue the effort without let up, and use all the means to make this possible.
We, for example, need to reflect and pray. This practice has to be deeply ingrained in us. Our problem is that very few people realize this need. Many prefer simply to be very active and to enjoy things.
Then, we need to know more about God’s doctrine, fully revealed by Christ and now taught by the Church, so we can begin to be familiar with God’s will and ways.
We also have to develop virtues that conform us more and more with God. Hopefully, with these things, we can readily see the connection between our knowledge and God’s will, between the events of our life and God’s providence.
“Grant us the gift of knowledge,” it said, “to make us understand properly what created things are, and what they ought to be according to the divine plan of creation and elevation to the supernatural order.”
It was a prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit who gives us the seven-fold gift of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord. But it reminded me of what knowledge is all about.
The pursuit of knowledge should always be understood as an effort that is linked with God, with his will, plans and designs for us, with the fact that we and everything we know and discover are meant for a supernatural life.
It should not be done independently of God, and much less contrary to his laws. We should never think the knowledge we accumulate, no matter how mundane, has no relation to God.
This is because everything comes from God and belongs to God, and everything is under a divine plan that is of course completely mysterious to us. Yet, in spite of the mystery, we are capable of knowing and understanding at least parts of it.
Our problem, of course, is that we often pursue knowledge fully at our own designs, with our own motives and purposes. We hardly relate it to God and his plans.
We sometimes even go to the extent of thinking that God has no business in this effort, or worse, that there’s really no God, and that we are just on our own to know and discover whatever we want and whatever we can.
In this kind of set-up, we make ourselves prone to all sorts of dangerous possibilities—vanity, pride, greed, sensuality, exaltation of pleasure and earthly power, etc.
And the knowledge we accumulate is of the distorted and corrupted kind. Legal knowledge becomes legalism, the sciences develop without ethics, and the arts and entertainment easily succumb to immoral pragmatism.
The higher knowledge of philosophy and theology cannot help but get entangled with the allures of relativism. They transform into ideologies with extremist and fundamentalist molds, or with lax and happy-go-lucky tendencies.
Thus we need the constant effort to remind ourselves of relating our work and knowledge with God. As much as possible, we should articulate this link personally. We have to develop the habit of asking ourselves what relation any piece of information and knowledge we get, has with God.
The ideal is that we automatically become conscious that what we are doing and knowing are directly related to God and his plans, and that our knowledge of earthly things brings us closer to God.
This, of course, is not easy to achieve. We have to contend with so many difficulties. First, there are our weaknesses, like our laziness and our attachment to worldly things. They hinder us in our effort to connect our knowledge of things with God
There also are temptations from the devil and the world itself that seek to bind us to our own world, keeping us quite egotistic and increasingly unmindful of God and of others.
Besides, the objective connection itself between our knowledge and God is charged with mysteries that can easily lend itself to confusion and indifference. It can lead us to get discouraged at the dark prospect of ever knowing it clearly.
But if our mindset is to know and discover this connection and relation, sooner or later we will see it more and more clearly. Obviously, we have to be patient, pursue the effort without let up, and use all the means to make this possible.
We, for example, need to reflect and pray. This practice has to be deeply ingrained in us. Our problem is that very few people realize this need. Many prefer simply to be very active and to enjoy things.
Then, we need to know more about God’s doctrine, fully revealed by Christ and now taught by the Church, so we can begin to be familiar with God’s will and ways.
We also have to develop virtues that conform us more and more with God. Hopefully, with these things, we can readily see the connection between our knowledge and God’s will, between the events of our life and God’s providence.
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