Charity amid political differences and conflicts

WE should never think that charity is the odd man out in
the field of politics. Precisely because politics is fast becoming
like a contact game, sportsmanlike charity should be the main
character in it.

            Charity and politics are not meant to fight each other.
They need each other. Charity should be the soul of politics. And
politics, given our social nature, should be one of the best occasions
where charity can be developed and lived fully. It provides an
excellent test to see if charity is authentic.

            Charity is what makes us to be real men and women, not
human caricatures stretched and warped by our petty shenanigans. It’s
what we need to live and have, if we want to keep our humanity, sanity
and sanctity intact. It’s what leads us to truth and objectivity,
freedom, justice, fairness and mercy, especially in our politics.

            And so we just have to learn how to keep our emotions and
judgments in control, and to be quick to rectify our instinctive or
spontaneous reactions. Charity needs to spring first from the heart,
mind and will that should be vitally linked to God, and then packaged
with the best refinement we are capable of. Again, especially in our
politics.

            We have to disabuse ourselves from the thought, sadly
quite common these days, that in politics some exceptions from charity
can be tolerated and even expected. We can feel free to insult,
attack, even make up charges, indulge in some below-the-belt gimmicks…
No, that’s not true at all.

            The real test to see if we are doing politics truly proper
to us is when we manage to live charity even in the midst of the
dizzying variety of possibilities and conflicts politics can occasion.
It’s when the heat generated by politics also fans the flames of love
for God and for the others.

            One time, I felt so gratified when I happened to take
dinner in a private setting with, among others, two politicians who
were supposed to be at odds with each other, at least in the papers.
At that time, they were chummy and exchanging jokes, and they
refrained from talking politics in my presence.

            What we should do in politics, whether we are politicians
or ordinary citizens and voters, is first of all to pray and offer
sacrifices, to see to it that our spiritual life is strong and healthy
before we enter into the intricacies of our unavoidable politics.
Never ignore this requirement. They are what will link our politics to
the very providence of God.

            Then we have to know and study the issues well. In this
regard, we have to be open-minded and willing to listen to all sides
as much as possible. We should try to make a conscious effort to
reject biases and prejudices that we find to have no good basis.

            Dialogues are crucial in this area. Thus, they should be
conducted in the most charitable way, always respectful of everyone no
matter how much we disagree with them. We should avoid inflammatory
rhetoric, rash judgments and tactless statements.

            We should just stick to the objective points of our views,
letting them swim or sink on their own merits in the ocean of opinions
that can be floated by others. We need to be highly sport here, seeing
to it that an atmosphere of civility and good spirit pervades.

            That the others do some anomalies is no excuse for us to
do the same things. Remember that charity “is patient, is kind, it
does not envy, does not deal perversely, it is not puffed up, is not
ambitious…it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things
and endures all things.” (1Cor 13,4-7)

            Then we have to know and study the politicians and
candidates. This is the most tricky part, but we just have to try our
best to get a good picture especially of their integrity and
competence, the two basic elements to know about them.

            Again here, it’s more of establishing the positive aspects
rather than of the negative side of the personalities involved. We
have to be careful to distinguish the traits that we think can serve
the needs of our political life, from the personal defects that should
not be put out in public unless they have some bearing in public life.

            Then we have to really understand the essence of freedom
which should infuse every step of our political exercises. Freedom and
charity go together always, and they give more importance to the
persons than to the issues. Our attitude to politics should have this
basic orientation.

Vigilance of love

THE essential part of our being social creatures is that
we have to love each other, care for each other, feel responsible for
one another. Failing in this could only mean we are failing in our
humanity.

            That’s why we have to keep a constant vigilance of love on
the others. It’s not spying on them and to plunge into rash judgments
and fault-finding. It’s simply exercising what is proper to all of us.
We therefore have to be wary of the many things that tend to undermine
this wonderful responsibility.

            First, we need to outgrow the natural stage of childhood
of our human development that understandably tends to make us
self-centered. Babies, toddlers and little children always need
attention, but as they grow, they need to be more thoughtful of the
others.

            They have to be taught how to assume more and more
responsibilities as they grow, giving them some job assignments
appropriate to their condition. The other day, I was impressed to see
a family of three in the airport. The toddler, who must have been not
more than 3 years old, carried an empty big paper bag, imitating his
parents who were carrying all the luggage. I thought that was a good
way of teaching a tot some sense of responsibility.

            Unfortunately we can still see many people who are stuck
in the childhood stage. At 40 or 50, they still think and behave like
little children who always want attention from others and who shy away
from responsibilities. They want to be served, rather than to serve,
contrary to what Christ himself said.

            Of course, when we are with such persons, we have to care
for them, showing them the appropriate attention and affection, but
never giving up in teaching them to grow toward human and Christian
maturity.

            But the more challenging part is how to contend with the
strong wave today in our culture that would pressure us to be
self-centered, self-absorbed and self-seeking. We have to learn how to
handle the allure of the new technologies, the tension involved when
facing problems, crises, issues, or otherwise, intoxicating successes
in life.

            We have to learn how to have a certain detachment from
these gadgets and issues if only not to lose sight of the more
important duty to think of the others. It’s not a matter of rejecting
the amazing gadgets and ignoring the issues of the day. It is more of
subordinating them to our duty to be most mindful and thoughtful of
the others.

            It’s actually when we care for the others when we achieve
the progress and development proper to our own life. It’s not in
pursuing our own interests, with the others serving only as props to
our self-seeking pursuits. It’s rather when we care for the others
that we become Christ-like and attain our human maturity.

            Caring for the others goes all the way to being
compassionate with them. That is to say, we have to learn to enter
into other people’s lives, into their mind and heart, to such an
extent that we experience, feel, enjoy and suffer what they themselves
experience, feel, enjoy and suffer.

            In this regard, we can make a fine distinction between
simply being merciful and being truly compassionate. A merciful person
may not be compassionate. He may even be hateful, as when he forgives
someone simply because he wants to do away with that disturbing or
irritating person.

            A truly merciful person is first of all a compassionate
person. Genuine mercy can only sprout from the soil of compassion.
Without the latter, the former can only be at best apparent, false,
deceptive and dangerous. The former can only be harmful.

            In our examinations of conscience, we need to ask whether
we are progressing in the virtue of compassion. Do we have a growing
interest to know others more and more? Are we acquiring the skills to
be more adaptable to their conditions and more available to their
needs?

            For all these, it is important that we have a clear idea
of what is objectively good for everyone. Thus, we can only be
vigilant out of love, mercy and compassion when we are vitally united
in Christ.

            This condition is, of course, always a work in progress.
But as long as it is nourished without let-up, we can be sure that we
will be doing things together with Christ even if there is always the
possibility that we ourselves commit mistakes, since we can always
misread God’s will in spite of our best efforts.

            The vigilance of love for others depends on our vigilance
of love for God.

Works of mercy

 IT’S good to be reminded about these very basic practical
expressions of authentic charity especially since we are now in the
Jubilee Year of Mercy. Our Catechism tells us that “the works of mercy
are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in
his spiritual and bodily necessities.”

            I know that in the current play of things, these works of
mercy have been practically exiled to the backburner such that hardly
anyone, especially those in very good positions in life and even the
so-called well-educated, cares for them. That’s the sad reality today!

            Ask people in random about “works of mercy,” and most
likely you’ll get a blank stare. Same with the Ten Commandments. Ask
them about these divine precepts, so fundamental in our lives, and
you’re likely to meet a primitive ignoramus.

            Sometime ago, I was referring to the sixth and ninth
commandments in a talk, without specifying what they were, and many
asked me later what I was talking about. And these were already
professional men, some of them alumni of Catholic schools! I almost
had a cardiac.

            Of course, that might be a harsh way to describe the
situation now. I know that even without being aware of them, one way
or another, people manage to do something with respect to the “works
of mercy” and the Ten Commandments.

            But we need to put more teeth into the observance of these
works of mercy. That’s because they are the ones that keep us grounded
in our humanity and fraternity, before they get spoiled with all sorts
of rationalizations that we can now easily make.

            Without this grounding, we tend to get self-absorbed,
building our own world and fantasy, and so propped up by a systematic
web of justifications that we would become totally blinded by our own
self-generated self-righteousness. That’s when we would need a
first-class disaster to wake us up!

            This is the ticklish predicament we usually meet in our
daily life today. It’s true that we have to be prudent and discreet,
knowing that the world is full of tricks. But prudence and discretion
should never be an excuse for us not to meet the basic demands of
charity as encapsulated in the works of mercy.

            I refer to that automatic, mindless law that prohibits
giving alms to beggars in the streets. Of course, I know the reasons
and assumptions behind that law. They have their proper weight.

            But that law, purely human and crafted for purely
practical ends, does not take away, nor even diminish, our duty to
take care of those who truly are in need. Its legitimate rationale,
which should be given due attention, cannot erase the fact that there
are people who are in great need of help on a daily basis.

            What we need to do is to be discerning every time we meet
a beggar, and to always favor the demands of charity and mercy when
our prudence and discretion cannot clearly establish the reason not to
give or share something.

            We just cannot, as a principle, refrain from giving alms
to street beggars. That would be undermining the proper functioning of
our heart, that is meant for love and caring for one another.

            The errors of prudence that we can commit in this area do
not justify risking the deformation of our heart in this way. We have
to trust that with God’s grace and ways, even our own errors,
committed in good faith, can work for the good in some way.

            And lest we think that these works of mercy should be done
only in a passive way, that is, waiting for the opportunities to do
so, we should understand that by Christ’s command, these works have to
be done in an active and even aggressive way.

            We need to do them in season and out of season, because
they are the way to make us like Christ who identifies himself with
anyone who is in need of something, either spiritually or corporally.

            The works of mercy can truly indicate if we are living the
very life of Christ, and not just a caricature of it.

            Our Catechism says: “Instructing, advising, consoling,
comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing
wrongs patiently. The corporal works consist in feeding the hungry,
sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and
imprisoned, and burying the dead.” (2447)

            “Among all these, giving alms to the poor is one of the
chief witnesses to fraternal charity.”

            Let’s always do works of mercy!