Our life in public

WE need to give due attention to this aspect of our life.
Our life in public is an integral and unavoidable part of us.

            In the first place, to be born we need to have parents and
a family, then a community, a school, a market, a church, etc. We can
never be alone. Our life is at once private, individually ours, and
public, always with others, if not physically then at least
intentionally.

            Thus we need to know the purpose of our life in public,
what it involves, what it requires, what duties we have toward it,
what benefits it can give us and what dangers it can pose.

            I think that as we develop fast because of our
technologies, we have to know how to pull the many levers at hand to
reach our proper goal.

            For example, how do we handle the many inter-generational
and inter-cultural demands of our times? Our public and social life
now has certain complexities unknown before. It now is much more
diverse. And we need to master them, and not be their slaves or pawns.

            It’s a pity to see many people, especially the young,
getting lost in the dizzying swirl of our life in public. Many of us
are left badly equipped to tackle the intricacies involved. There’s
the pressure of the peers and “barkada,” the pull of the mob, the lure
of the entertainment world, the tricks and ambitions of business and
politics, etc.

            We often get stuck in the externals and appearances
without getting into the essence of things. Our reactions are mainly
knee-jerk and Pavlovian. We hardly think, we barely reflect and study
things.

            We generate a lifestyle based mainly on feelings and
impressions, often fleeting and unstable, rather than on one that has
a solid foundation, able to guide us consistently through the
different phases and situations of our lives.

            As a result, we enter into a spiral of a worldly way of
life with barely any soul in it. We begin to treat each other merely
as facades or masks, quite plastic. Pretensions and hypocrisy become
salient features of our society, begetting the other forms of deceit
and conceit.

            Instead of being persons, we become simply as actors,
performers or robots. Our heart is slowly turned from flesh to stone.
We become users, manipulators and exploiters of others. The others
become mere objects, products, statistics.

            Subjectivity, where respect for everyone’s spiritual
character and personhood should be enhanced, ebbs away. Instead,
objectification of persons takes place, drying us up to make us things
instead of persons.

            The dynamics created by this set-up allows people to swing
from self-absorption to self-assertion, from self-seeking to
self-promotion. Thus, the truly human ways to link us into communion
with others start to disappear. It’s all about the ego. The “we/us”
vanishes.

            The field gets littered with the remains of envy, greed,
lust, sloth and other capital sins. And, sad to say, there are many
exploiters and predators in this field who take advantage of the
situation and the vulnerability of the weak and the gullible. We need
to expose them and their tactics.

            We have to put a stop to this vicious cycle, and reverse
it to become a virtuous cycle. This will depend on whether we first
establish and strengthen our personal relationship with God.

            We have to be most wary of the rise of secularism and
relativism in society. They come as a result precisely of setting God
aside from our life in public.

            And so, we can see in many countries today delicate moral
issues that need to be resolved very clearly: abortion, confusion
about sexual identity and human nature, divorce, disconnection of
science and technology from morality, lack of respect for freedom of
conscience, questionable educational thrusts in schools, etc.

            These issues are slowly invading our shores, and we just
have to strengthen our faith, especially that of our leaders, for this
eventuality.

            Faith and religion are always involved in these issues.
While these issues have to be considered under many aspects, we have
to understand that the considerations of faith and religion, being so
basic in us, should be given priority.

           It’s in our faith and religion that the fundamental and
ultimate meaning of the issues are given. It’s where our ultimate
common good is determined. The practical, the legal, the social,
cultural and historical aspects have to somehow defer to them.

            Contrary to some views, being consistent to one’s faith
and religion in public office does not make him a fanatic, a
fundamentalist or detached from reality. Quite the opposite is true.

Our responsibility for our own sanctification

“Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock
and the door will be opened to you.” (Lk 11,9) With these words, we
are reminded that while our sanctity is first of all a fruit of grace,
and therefore of God’s work, it is also a result of our personal
effort. That’s why we are commanded to love God with all our might and
to love our neighbor as ourselves.

            We have to see to it that we correspond fully to God’s
grace that is abundantly given to us. We have to enter into the
dynamics of love where God’s love for us should also repaid by our
love for him. In this, we can never say enough.

            The language of love is such that you get what you give.
In fact, you get more than what you give, as attested by Christ’s
words: “The measure you give will be the measure you get, and still
more will be given you.” (Mk 4,24)

            Since Christ has given us everything already, it us up to
us to make use of what is made available for us to achieve our true
ultimate end and purpose in life—our own sanctification, our own
deification, since we are the image and likeness of God, and children
of his.

            That is why in the prayer that Christ taught his
disciples, he wants us to address God as Our Father. We need to feel
this filiation as deeply and as abidingly as possible so we can always
be motivated to sustain our effort to be holy, as our heavenly father
is holy. (cfr 1 Pt 1,16)

            Yes, the goal is God, the goal is supernatural, way above
our natural and human powers. But God has given us all the means for
us to be as we ought to be. But for that reason, we have to ask and
seek and knock, because otherwise we would not attain our true end.

            We have to contend with our natural limitations that are
already overwhelming when seen in the context of our supernatural end.
More than these, we have to grapple with our human deformations and
weaknesses due to our sins.

            This is not going to be easy, and yet Christ assures us
that “my yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mt 11,30) And the secret
to have this phenomenon is imitate Christ himself who said: “Learn
from me for I am meek and humble of heart.” (Mt 11,29)

            Meekness and humility are the crucial qualities we need to
face all the challenges we have to face in our effort to sanctify
ourselves and others. They effectively resemble us with Christ.

            With Christ, we should not worry too much about life’s
vagaries and challenges. Precisely when we feel pressured and weighed
down, he tells us, “Come to me…and I will give you rest.”

            Let us pay attention more to these words than to our human
standards and estimation of things that will always consider these
qualities as softness or meaningless passivity and defeatism, devoid
of fighting spirit.

            In fact, these words require a lot of strength and
forcefulness, for they have to be reconciled also with these words of
Christ: “The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are
taking it by force.” (Mt 11,13)

            The violence referred here is not about physical,
destructive violence aimed at others, but rather the forcefulness of
love, aimed first at oneself before it aimed at others, and that will
always be constructive, helpful, patient and understanding, not afraid
to suffer and to assume whatever burden comes our way.

            That is why Christ refers again to these qualities in the
beatitudes: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
(Mt 5,5) These are intriguing and mysterious words whose veracity and
wisdom can be proven in the life of Christ and those of all the
saints.

            In many instances Christ refers to this divine logic that
can appears to us as contradictory. “For whoever would save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
(Mt 16,25)

            Still, in another part of the gospel, Christ says:
“Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or
mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a
hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.” (Mt 19,29)

            We need to train ourselves to feel at home with this
divine indication that is meant for our redemption. We have to lose
the fear of suffering. We have to assume the mind of the sacrificial
lamb whose life-offering actually results in our own sanctification.

Filling the existential void

MANY of us are familiar with those famous words of St. Augustine: “Our
hearts are restless till they find rest in you.” These words indicate
that we are actually made for God who created us in his image and
likeness and to be children of his through his grace which he gives us
abundantly.

That’s why there’s actually a natural longing that we have for God.
Thus, the Catechism teaches that “the desire for God is written in the
human heart, because man is created by God and for God.” Besides, “God
never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the
truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” (CCC 27)

The problem is that we can tend to deceptively pacify that longing, at
least for a while, with our own versions of God or with a series of
worldly things. This is where we can talk about the so-called
“existential void,” that many philosophers and thinkers of our time
have already acknowledged and yet cannot be clear yet as to how it can
be filled. Only God can fill that void, God who is everything to us.

The problem is that in our effort to look for God, we find it hard to
have a God outside of ourselves, that is, a God who transcends our
senses, feelings and understanding. We want a God who is under our
power. If we cannot fully know or understand him, then he cannot be
God.

As a consequence, people who do not believe in God or who has another
god aside from the true God, behave in an alienated way. They can
entertain themselves with all sorts of earthly things, but joy and
peace will continue to elude them. They can fake that joy and peace,
but sooner or later, the falsity just cannot cope with the challenges,
issues, problems in life.

At least in ancient biblical times, the false idols were easily
recognized. They were clearly man-made, graven images that had mouths
that did not speak, ears that did not hear, eyes that did not see.
Though they managed to mesmerize people for a while, it did not take
long to expose them to be false.

Today’s gods are more subtle. They are not objects that one can see
and touch. They too appear to be spiritual. They seem to have mouths
that speak, ears that hear and eyes that see. But really, they are
nothing other than figments of our imagination, projections of what we
want. In short, today’s gods are we ourselves.

These gods can manage to engage us in some substantial dialogue.
Usually in terms of what is practical, what is popular, what brings
wealth, power and fame. The effect is that instead of going beyond
ourselves to look for the God who created us, we enter more deeply
into ourselves to make ourselves our own creator.

In short, we become more alienated from the true God who is our
Creator and Father. No matter what we do, what we accomplish, there is
still that existential void that will continue to haunt us.

But as our Catechism teaches:

“God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify
our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or
imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God—‘the
inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the
ungraspable’—with our human representations. Our human words always
fall short of the mystery of God.” (CCC 42)

We need to strengthen our faith in the fatherhood of God or in our
spirit of divine filiation. Again our Catechism teaches us that: “By
calling God ‘Father,’ the language of faith indicates two main
things—that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent
authority, and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care
for all his children.” (CCC 239)

Like a child who unquestioningly trusts his father though he does not
understand many things and how his father takes care of him, we should
have the same trust in God whose will and ways are both knowable to
us, at least in part, and mysterious on the whole. We just go with
him, doing what we can do but leaving everything in him because of
that filial trust.

As Father, God will never leave us alone. One of the consequences of
divine filiation is the guarantee that God will not permit anyone to
separate from him, as long as we don’t want to. On the contrary,
through his power and mercy, he will convert everything, including our
negative things, into something for the good of all.