JUST attended a graduation rite of seminarians. It moved me to see a good number of young boys dreaming of becoming priests one day. I consider it a miraculous phenom, since who in the world today, in his right mind, so to speak, would like to become a priest?
Priesthood is nothing less than hard, thankless labor from Day 1 up the end. There´s celibacy, there´s endless requests for this and that, duties and responsibilities far outrun rights and comforts.
Priests are supposed to be everything for everyone, for they are meant to embody no less than Christ himself, and not just any Christ, but Christ as head of the Church. The distinction is fine but crucial, involving a whole world of practical consequences.
As such, we, priests, should understand that we are the first to be addressed by Christ when he said: ¨If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.¨ (Lk 9,23) Any understanding of the priesthood that does not have this indication as an essential element is simply wrong.
So we, priests, should understand that we are always at the crossroads. Depending on what we choose—since things also depend on us—we can either be on the side of the perks and privileges that go with priesthood (and they can be a lot), or on the side of suffering and even of a daily crucifixion as Christ clearly spelled it out.
All of us, Christ´s faithful in the Church, really need to pray a lot and exercise faith and hope all the time, because for priests to be truly priests, and not just looking and acting like priests, but priests who fully correspond to the demands of their vocation and of their sacred order, nothing less than a first-class miracle is needed.
Like any human being, priests also have to contend with the usual enemies of God and of our souls—our own flesh, the world and the devil. In fact, given our delicate position, our struggles can be more daunting and tricky. The demons are real, mind you, and not theoretical or a mere ascetical device.
Besides, concupiscence, laziness, complacency are very much embedded in our system. Then, there´s vanity and all forms of pride and conceit. Then, there´s hypocrisy and pretension. We can always do a Judas anytime. Or a Dorian Gray or a Jekyll-and-Hyde. In fact, recent history is mired by all sorts of clerical scandals that lend credence to this point.
And the world! One would be stupidly blind not to see the many temptations and occasions and structures of sin around, all oozing with almost irresistible allurements.
The formation of priests should be thorough and never-ending. Of course, it has to start in the family, the primal seedbed of vocations, but it really has to go systematic, serious and on-going in the seminaries and other Church structures meant to help priests in this regard.
Indeed, the whole people of God in the Church should somehow feel the responsibility of helping priests, especially in their spiritual and moral needs, much than their material needs. A culture that hesitates to correct priests when we clearly are taking the wrong path is not a good culture.
Priests should never be left alone, especially in their spiritual and moral life, which is the very foundation of their priesthood. Those who don´t realize this can practically show they may not meant for the priesthood.
No one becomes a priest on his own, but rather because he is called. The nature and character of the priesthood is God-given, through Christ in the Holy Spirit, and in the Church. To live it, no one can just invent his own way. He has to realize he always needs God, the Church, and others to help him.
The distinctive, even unique way one lives it should not nullify the fact that it has to be lived as Christ wants it, and as the Church now regulates it. This is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
We should always pray for our priests, and take care of them. We should also give due ongoing attention to how seminarians are prepared for the priesthood and how priests are sustained in their priestly life and ministry. There will always be new ideas and timely initiatives in this regard.
It may sound like an exaggeration, but it´s undeniable that we priests ought to be no less than Christ himself, head of the Church. Anyone who sees and listens to a priest should see and hear Christ.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Fugitives and exiles
IN a certain sense, that´s what we all are. We are fugitives and exiles from God, from our true and ultimate dignity as children of God, because of our sins, infidelities and other forms of human miseries.
Like our first parents, Adam and Eve, banished from Paradise after committing the original sin that we now all inherit, and Cain who after slaying his own brother Abel was condemned to a life of a runaway, we too have been alienated from God with all the consequences that such alienation entails.
As such, we lost the state of original justice and the many preternatural gifts that went with it. We are now subject to death, pain and suffering. Our faculties have been damaged such that instead of pursuing what is true and good, we now go after something else.
As such, we tend to have some guilt feelings, and with that condition, we can weave a variety of possible reactions. We can feel bad, insecure, afraid, ashamed. Pristine joy and peace flee from us too. We can be on the run, homeless, hiding, or when that is not possible, we can wear guises, and play all sorts of tricks and games to cover ourselves.
Yes, we can also go to great lengths to sweeten, rationalize and forget our state of separation from God. We can even choose to go against God and decide instead to create our own reality—a fantasy or illusion actually—according to our own designs and specs.
This was done in the episodes of the Tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah. And the crazy drama continues up to now, reprising the same theme of rationalization and self-justification under different forms and ways. Sad to say, we can use our God-given endowments of creativity and invention for this purpose rather than for going back to God.
In all these wretched situations, let´s never forget that God continues to love us and will do everything, including sending his Son to us and that Son offering his very life for us, to bring us back to him. In fact, that´s the only way we can go back, because on our own, we simply could not. On our own the only thing possible is sustained separation.
This abiding love of God that intensifies further the greater our sin is, is a truth of faith dramatized in the life and death of Christ. It´s a truth that should become, with God´s grace and our effort, an invincible conviction in us, regardless of the buffeting trials, doubts, fears that can come to our mind and heart.
We need to strengthen this conviction daily and try to live out its consequences as faithfully and promptly as possible, because first of all it is a genuine truth, not a sweet-lemoning, and second, because it truly helps us in our daily struggles.
We need to be extra confident of the effectiveness of this truth. God never abandons us. It´s rather us who can abandon him. We need to avoid falling into that latter state in spite of what we may consider strong reasons to think so.
Yes, in spite of our continuing miseries and infidelities, God is most willing to bring us back to him. Never forget the parable of the prodigal son. On our part, let´s try to be simple and humble, to act like a child who in spite of breaking a house treasure always knows his parents will understand him.
God, in fact, gives special attention to those who love him less. Because as Christ said: ¨Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to rise upon the good and bad, and rain upon the just and the unjust.¨ (Mt 5,45-45)
Never entertain the idea that God will not forgive us nor love us, or worse, that he does not exist. We have to insist on our faith that strengthens our hope and shapes the way we think and react to events in our life.
In this, we have to remember that our spiritual life is a matter of having to begin and begin again, because to fall, to commit a mistake, to fail to fully correspond to God´s goodness, to doubt and fear, are a predicament we are most prone to have.
Though we may feel like fugitives and exiles in the world, be convinced that God continues to be close to us.
Like our first parents, Adam and Eve, banished from Paradise after committing the original sin that we now all inherit, and Cain who after slaying his own brother Abel was condemned to a life of a runaway, we too have been alienated from God with all the consequences that such alienation entails.
As such, we lost the state of original justice and the many preternatural gifts that went with it. We are now subject to death, pain and suffering. Our faculties have been damaged such that instead of pursuing what is true and good, we now go after something else.
As such, we tend to have some guilt feelings, and with that condition, we can weave a variety of possible reactions. We can feel bad, insecure, afraid, ashamed. Pristine joy and peace flee from us too. We can be on the run, homeless, hiding, or when that is not possible, we can wear guises, and play all sorts of tricks and games to cover ourselves.
Yes, we can also go to great lengths to sweeten, rationalize and forget our state of separation from God. We can even choose to go against God and decide instead to create our own reality—a fantasy or illusion actually—according to our own designs and specs.
This was done in the episodes of the Tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah. And the crazy drama continues up to now, reprising the same theme of rationalization and self-justification under different forms and ways. Sad to say, we can use our God-given endowments of creativity and invention for this purpose rather than for going back to God.
In all these wretched situations, let´s never forget that God continues to love us and will do everything, including sending his Son to us and that Son offering his very life for us, to bring us back to him. In fact, that´s the only way we can go back, because on our own, we simply could not. On our own the only thing possible is sustained separation.
This abiding love of God that intensifies further the greater our sin is, is a truth of faith dramatized in the life and death of Christ. It´s a truth that should become, with God´s grace and our effort, an invincible conviction in us, regardless of the buffeting trials, doubts, fears that can come to our mind and heart.
We need to strengthen this conviction daily and try to live out its consequences as faithfully and promptly as possible, because first of all it is a genuine truth, not a sweet-lemoning, and second, because it truly helps us in our daily struggles.
We need to be extra confident of the effectiveness of this truth. God never abandons us. It´s rather us who can abandon him. We need to avoid falling into that latter state in spite of what we may consider strong reasons to think so.
Yes, in spite of our continuing miseries and infidelities, God is most willing to bring us back to him. Never forget the parable of the prodigal son. On our part, let´s try to be simple and humble, to act like a child who in spite of breaking a house treasure always knows his parents will understand him.
God, in fact, gives special attention to those who love him less. Because as Christ said: ¨Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to rise upon the good and bad, and rain upon the just and the unjust.¨ (Mt 5,45-45)
Never entertain the idea that God will not forgive us nor love us, or worse, that he does not exist. We have to insist on our faith that strengthens our hope and shapes the way we think and react to events in our life.
In this, we have to remember that our spiritual life is a matter of having to begin and begin again, because to fall, to commit a mistake, to fail to fully correspond to God´s goodness, to doubt and fear, are a predicament we are most prone to have.
Though we may feel like fugitives and exiles in the world, be convinced that God continues to be close to us.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Our fragility and fickleness
LET´S look into this unpleasant side of our life. I can assure you that it is not going to be a completely depressing experience. The sadness or disappointment such effort can bring cannot erase the fact that it will also occasion in us, if we put ourselves in the proper disposition, a gush of divine grace, a way of our own redemption.
Remember St. Paul´s ¨It´s when I am weak, that I am strong.¨ That´s the attitude to take here. May we know the practical consequences of such Pauline wisdom, and the requirements it asks of us!
We need to extricate ourselves from the stranglehold of our poorly-lit human reactions to our mistakes, failures and omissions, to our miseries, our fragility and fickleness, that tend to plunge us into desperation and helplessness.
Let´s allow our faith to flower into hope and then into charity where we can share the triumph of Christ, and where there can only be true and lasting joy and peace. Yes, God, and we with him, can spring victory from defeat, light from darkness, life from death.
First, we need to acknowledge our weaknesses and problems. These days, many of us often fail in this basic requirement. Like ostriches, we hide from them, deny their existence, and even act out an elaborate act of pretension and hypocrisy to cover them.
Worse scenarios follow, as we undertake a shameless effort of rationalizing our negative side, and with a mere act of our personal will, and sometimes with the collaboration of some consensus of like-minded people, we now say what is actually wrong as right, what is sinful as virtue.
St. Paul´s lament, expressed in the Letter to the Romans, gives us a glimpse of the reasons behind: ¨Though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.
¨Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie...”(1,21-25)
This latter ugly turn of things is now even supported by a vast complex of ideologies with a worldwide network of financial and propaganda machinery. Now we see vanity, pride, arrogance, greed, deception in person, in the flesh, not anymore as ideas or possibilities.
The idols of the ancient times that had eyes but could not see, had ears but could not hear, now seem transformed into articulate and glib salesmen of their treacherous doctrine and products. They now seem to be active and effective agents most able to contrive a lifestyle of their own making. They are now the gorgeous models for everyone else to follow.
Standards and criteria have been altered not only in things peripheral but right down there in the roots. There´s no more God. We are just on our own. We don´t depend on absolute truths, but merely on personal ideas and consensual positions. Morality in all its levels, from the personal to the social and global, is now unhinged and is drifting aimlessly...
We need to be converted from this horrible state that can appear to us as sweet and nice, most reasonable and practical. For this to happen, we need to be humble, since humility is the way to the truth, to objectivity. It´s what enables us to go beyond the confines of the many conditionings working on us. It´s what prepares the ground for grace to take root in us.
Humility is a necessity for us. We are supposed to live it to the full since it has been meant for us since our creation, and more so, in our re-creation or our self-redemption with Christ.
We should not be deceived by its apparent debasement and its requirement of self-emptying, since these can only mean we are preparing ourselves to be filled up by nothing other than God himself, his wisdom and power, his everything.
That´s the most wonderful deal we can ever have, as expressed in that beautiful hymn of the Easter Exsultet: ¨Father, how wonderful your care for us! / How boundless your merciful love! / To ransom a slave, you gave away your Son. / O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, / which gained for us so great a Redeemer!¨
Yes, our weakness indeed can attract God´s love and power!
Remember St. Paul´s ¨It´s when I am weak, that I am strong.¨ That´s the attitude to take here. May we know the practical consequences of such Pauline wisdom, and the requirements it asks of us!
We need to extricate ourselves from the stranglehold of our poorly-lit human reactions to our mistakes, failures and omissions, to our miseries, our fragility and fickleness, that tend to plunge us into desperation and helplessness.
Let´s allow our faith to flower into hope and then into charity where we can share the triumph of Christ, and where there can only be true and lasting joy and peace. Yes, God, and we with him, can spring victory from defeat, light from darkness, life from death.
First, we need to acknowledge our weaknesses and problems. These days, many of us often fail in this basic requirement. Like ostriches, we hide from them, deny their existence, and even act out an elaborate act of pretension and hypocrisy to cover them.
Worse scenarios follow, as we undertake a shameless effort of rationalizing our negative side, and with a mere act of our personal will, and sometimes with the collaboration of some consensus of like-minded people, we now say what is actually wrong as right, what is sinful as virtue.
St. Paul´s lament, expressed in the Letter to the Romans, gives us a glimpse of the reasons behind: ¨Though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.
¨Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie...”(1,21-25)
This latter ugly turn of things is now even supported by a vast complex of ideologies with a worldwide network of financial and propaganda machinery. Now we see vanity, pride, arrogance, greed, deception in person, in the flesh, not anymore as ideas or possibilities.
The idols of the ancient times that had eyes but could not see, had ears but could not hear, now seem transformed into articulate and glib salesmen of their treacherous doctrine and products. They now seem to be active and effective agents most able to contrive a lifestyle of their own making. They are now the gorgeous models for everyone else to follow.
Standards and criteria have been altered not only in things peripheral but right down there in the roots. There´s no more God. We are just on our own. We don´t depend on absolute truths, but merely on personal ideas and consensual positions. Morality in all its levels, from the personal to the social and global, is now unhinged and is drifting aimlessly...
We need to be converted from this horrible state that can appear to us as sweet and nice, most reasonable and practical. For this to happen, we need to be humble, since humility is the way to the truth, to objectivity. It´s what enables us to go beyond the confines of the many conditionings working on us. It´s what prepares the ground for grace to take root in us.
Humility is a necessity for us. We are supposed to live it to the full since it has been meant for us since our creation, and more so, in our re-creation or our self-redemption with Christ.
We should not be deceived by its apparent debasement and its requirement of self-emptying, since these can only mean we are preparing ourselves to be filled up by nothing other than God himself, his wisdom and power, his everything.
That´s the most wonderful deal we can ever have, as expressed in that beautiful hymn of the Easter Exsultet: ¨Father, how wonderful your care for us! / How boundless your merciful love! / To ransom a slave, you gave away your Son. / O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, / which gained for us so great a Redeemer!¨
Yes, our weakness indeed can attract God´s love and power!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)