Disasters and calamities

I WAS actually having a seminar in Laguna the weekend Typhoon Ondoy came and dumped his ocean-sized rains. It started pouring Friday afternoon, gathering strength as hours passed by. The whole night, he turned into a lashing fury that kept me awake. When is he going to stop, I asked.

Saturday came and Ondoy became even nastier. The whole day, we were all kept indoors, held captive by him. Some of those expected to join in the seminar could not make it, obviously stuck in the halted traffic. Later we learned they spent the whole night on the road, unable to go back to their places.

We turned on the TV, then we saw the quickly spreading extent of the calamity, and the damage and misery it brought. Our jaws dropped and shock deadened us to the sound and fury outside.

We were frozen by the overwhelming images. The sensation was like being in a shipwreck. I’m sure that’s when we started to pray in earnest, and to think of what else to do.

I called some relatives in Manila. One said her basement was already filled with water. Another said she had to vacate her house. The rest said they were a bit lucky since their houses were on higher grounds, but that they were suffering for the others less fortunate.

We went to the Internet, and saw on YouTube the unfolding drama in many areas affected. This fueled wrenching feelings: pain, desires to be there with the people, to suffer with them, to help, to pray, to ask for forgiveness, and a blur of others.

Able to go back to Cebu on Sunday, I immediately noticed the muted suffering of everyone, visibly affected by the calamity. I was happy to note the genuine reaction of concern and generosity, the spontaneous show of basic humanity, fraternity and solidarity.

But more bad news came. Two more typhoons were expected to come in, like mines floating on air toward our direction. I received desperate requests for prayers, and for forming prayer brigades. I did what I could do.

One supertyphoon came but apparently only brushed us slightly. What a relief! Was it because of our prayer? I don’t know. What we know is that we prayed with all our heart and it just passed us by, despite the forecast.

Then there was this earthquake and tsunami in Samoa, then two earthquakes in Indonesia, leaving thousands of dead and unspeakable damage. What’s happening?

In the papers, views of people came in. Some started blaming the government and so on. Others started theorizing and speculating about the causes.

Some have again brought up the angle of the global warming effect. Fine. For sure, each one has a point or two to make. We are thankful and appreciative for all these, and we will evaluate them slowly and thoroughly in their own time.

There’s just one thing I would like to highlight in this absorbing development. While we can point to the natural causes to this drama, let’s not downplay, much less forget, the human and especially the spiritual and supernatural dimension that it clearly has.

We should not just stop at the level of the natural sciences, of the socio-political sciences involved. We have to take in the inputs of our faith and consider them the more crucial elements. These disasters are no mere natural events.

This is of course complicated, and we just have to be most careful and prudent in our considerations. What is indispensable to know is that God is our creator and our father. Everything depends on him, and his mysterious providence of love, justice and mercy is for always, not on and off.

We need to be on our knees, pray and do penance for our sins. These disasters and calamities can be a call for a deeper conversion on our part.

We cannot deny that crimes against God and against humanity continue to take place. In fact, just recently, I learned that our Congress is poised to approve the immoral Reproductive Health Bill.

For all its proclaimed advantages, this bill with its rotten spirit will bring our sinfulness to a deeper level, graver than all the corruption we have committed so far! This goes more directly against God than against the people.

We can do two things with disasters and calamities—either get stuck with their destructive nature or make use of them to effect conversion and transformation, like a seed that has to die on the ground in order to germinate.

Pundit vs. prophet

AN ad of one of America’s prestigious newspapers, The Washington Post, caught my attention recently. “Put your opinions to the test and compete for an opportunity to write a weekly column. Be America’s next great pundit!”

Immediately, I thought how nice for the States to have contests like this one. Even if they already have a surfeit of pundits, they are still looking for new ones, with new ideas, outlooks, perspectives, styles, etc. I suppose they want variety, more than anything else.

I tried to resist comparing, but I think it would not be a bad idea if we also can have more pundits in our midst, better qualified, selected and regularly rotated, instead of getting stuck with the usual ones whose views are already very predictable.

I can’t help but think that many of our pundits are over-exposed, their biases already quite well known, and more than insights we seem to be regaled merely with a play of words, and a sprinkling of irony, sarcasm, bombast, and other space-fillers.

They’re notorious for being more of an attention-grabber than a provider of thought food, or for just wanting to make points even at the expense of charity. They are geared more for action and practical purposes than for making people better persons.

I have reason to hope we can improve a lot in this regard. We have talents waiting to be discovered and given the proper breaks. Just look at the feedback sections of many papers. Besides I think we also have a growing and more discriminating audience interested in the art of punditry, for whatever it is worth.

But in a more serious vein, the ad triggered thoughts about the similarities and the differences between a pundit and a prophet. There are many areas where they overlap. But we have to be clear about where they differ from each other.

Both have something important to say. Both are interested in convincing others of certain things. Both can have a sense of vocation and mission. But they differ a great deal in many aspects, and even from the roots. One is a function of faith, the other of politics mostly.

Punditry is a purely human affair, made up of observations, opinions, facts, scientific data, guesses, etc. It can bring to play the cutting edge of our skills and arts of gathering data, interpreting them, expressing them with precise timeliness, style and flourish.

It usually focuses on social and political issues, hot buttons that always elicit strong reactions, mostly of the emotional type. Since it tries to convince and persuade people at all costs, it tends to exaggerate things and to dogmatize what actually are mere opinions.

Prophecy, on the other hand, is an affair all of us have with God. It’s our affair with the living word of God meant for the good of all, and not just for a few. Its ideal state is when we all can say together with St. Paul: “We do not adulterate the word of God, but with sincerity, we speak as from God, before God, in Christ.” (2 Cor 2,17)

This living word of God is found in the Church. More than a matter of predicting future events, prophecy involves upholding, defending and spreading the teaching of Christ and the Church. It involves making God’s living word also our own word.

So one can just imagine what it entails: studying the doctrine, assimilating it and converting it into virtues and other traits, giving catechism, applying it to all our concerns big and small, communicating it to others with gift of tongue, etc.

It involves everyone, and not just a few who have some talent and knack for it. Of course, different people have different ways of doing and living it, and there can be a kind of hierarchy involved among them. But on the whole, everyone is meant to be a prophet, one way or another.

Thus, prophecy is something done all the time. It covers all aspects of our life, and not just confined or focused on certain fields like business and politics, much less, on some controversial issues only. It is an abiding thing.

Though punditry and prophecy can share some areas, our problem today is many are hooked more on punditry than on prophecy. People prefer opinions over absolute truths, quick, pragmatic results over deep personal and social transformation long in coming. To change this temper is our challenge now!

When good is bad and vice-versa

OR when something true can turn out to be a lie. We need to be aware of these tricks that happen quite often, as in everyday and always.

This is because many of these claims for goodness and truth are not based on God, but rather on someone’s idea of what is good and true. This is never dependable.

With our own ideas alone, we can start playing games to serve our self-interest instead of the common good. And worse things can follow later, as in malice, greed, outright deception. The wiles of the flesh, the world and the devil himself can easily spoil what initially was good.

Or we can start with God, but get lost along the way. There are endless ways we can easily slip from God to our own devices. We have to be wary of our capacity to rationalize and self-justify. Thatś when evil can camouflage as good, falsehood as truth.

God, not us, is the source and the maker of truth and goodness. We can only receive, reflect and make use of God’s truth and goodness. This has to be said directly because there are many people now who think truth and goodness are just what we make of them.

What we need to do to stick to the truth and goodness up to the end is to continue dealing with God in prayer all throughout the day, knowing how to convert everything into prayer. This can be done. In fact, this should be done. And ways to do it are never lacking.

God is everywhere. Even in our darkest moments, he is there. There’s no point to think God is not accessible. More than the creator, he is a father to us who loves us no end. He will make himself available to us all the time, ever solicitous to our needs.

Remember the Psalms: “Where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I descend into hell, you are present. If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall your hand lead me.” (139,7-10)

We just have to find an adequate and constant way of getting in touch with him. For this, we have to ready to go all the way to the cross. Thatś the final test to see if weŕe still with God or already without him. Woe to us when we dare to separate ourselves from him, and just rely on our own resources.

We can try to live and think always in the presence of God, perhaps making use of human devices to remind us of him all the time. We have to learn the skill of rectifying our intentions many times during the day, since we know how fickle we can be. Our intentions are what direct us to God.

We have to know how to rev up our love for him, never allowing it to fade and die, because as St. Paul told us: ‘To them that love God, all things work together unto good…” (Rom 8,28)

And thus, we also have to know the correlative of this possibility of how something true and good can turn out to be false and bad. That is, it can also happen that something false and bad can turn out to be true and good.

How can this be? In the Catechism, we are told of why God allows evil to come to us. “He permits it, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it.” (CCC 311)

We have to remember that in the play of life, God always intervenes even if it seems he is absent. There’s such thing as providence which is God’s way of bringing all things back to himself. No evil, no matter how big, can stand in the way.

Thus, we read in the Catechism: “From the greatest moral evil ever committed—the rejection and murder of Godś only Son, caused by the sins of all men—God, by his grace that ábounded all the more,' brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good.” (312)

We have to be wary of the different wills at play in our life—Godś, ours and the devilś. We have to know how to play our part.