When in the brink of despair

WITH all the intense pressures, challenges, trials, not to
mention, grave problems and crises we meet these days, the likelihood
of teetering into discouragement, if not despair, is quite high. This
is when we need to fortify our hope, learning how to look beyond what
is here and now to see the hand of God behind everything.

            We need to acquire this skill, always asking first for the
grace of God. In this way, we don’t suffer unnecessarily, and if we
have to suffer, we don’t suffer uselessly. We should strengthen our
faith and hope, feeding them with the charity of God, and disabuse
ourselves from relying completely on our reason and other human
powers. These definitely cannot cope with everything that we have to
face in this life.

            As the Catechism teaches, our human reason, our most
powerful faculty, while capable of knowing God’s will and ways, is
hampered “not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination,
but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of
original sin.” (CCC 37)

            We need to cultivate humility deeply so we can learn to be
trusting in God’s providence even if we cannot fully know and
understand his will and ways. Let’s always remember that God is our
father who will always love us no matter what. He is full of goodness
and mercy.

            Being omnipotent, he knows how to derive good from evil
that is caused directly by us and allowed by God in deference to our
freedom. But he can write straight with crooked lines. And if we put
ourselves in sync with God’s will and ways, we too could derive good
from whatever evil may befall on us.

            We really have no reason to fall into discouragement, much
less, despair, no matter how grave and ugly our predicament can be.
And that’s because God has given us everything to resolve our problems
in his own terms while also respecting our human condition.

            Even in the worst scenario when death appears inevitable,
things can still turn out for our own good, because with Christ’s
redemptive work, the sting of death has been removed.

            Thus, we can repeat what St. Paul used to say: “I have
learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be
abased and I know how to abound. In any and all circumstances I have
learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I
can do all things in him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4,11-13)

            There’s really no reason for us to fall into some morbid
fear or helpless self-pity. We just have to learn how to suffer. And
this is always possible as long as we are willing to unite ourselves
with Christ in his patience.

            Let’s remember that God does not exempt us from falling
into some serious, and sometimes insoluble predicaments. That’s
because he will always respect the limitations of our nature that can
sometimes lead us to some trouble, not to mention, our own freedom
that we can always misuse and abuse leading us to sin, the worst evil.

            And even if personally we have not sinned or do not seem
to deserve a particular burden, we all suffer just the same, due to
the sins of men, ours and those of others. We should not be surprised
by this and waste time complaining about it.

            In fact, it can happen that those who suffer the most are
the saintly ones who are especially chosen by God to bear the
consequences of the sins of all men. Those who are more Christ-like
will certainly share more in the redemptive suffering of Christ. The
reverse is also true. One becomes more Christ-like the more he
suffers. In a sense, suffering is a blessing, a privilege.

            For sure, the saints are saints precisely because they
have taken the same path of suffering that Christ took. Indeed,
suffering can be a clear sign of God’s predilection for us, as it has
been with Christ who suffered the death on the cross in obedience to
his Father’s will.

            So, if our predicaments and suffering lead us to a state
of helplessness, whether they are physical, financial, or even moral
due to our sin, we need to adopt the mind of Christ and the saints and
the other characters in the gospel who did all they can to get close
to Christ, asking for help. Christ certainly listens and knows what to
do. He knows how to convert evil into good, suffering into glory,
death into life.

Let's learn to be contemplatives

YES, let's learn to be contemplatives since we actuallyl
are meant to have contemplative life. It’s not only nuns and monks
hidden and sunk in prayer in convents and monasteries who need to be
contemplatives. Contemplative life is for all of us!

            Contemplative life is a great need for us since it
represents the fullness of our consciousness. And as our radical
connection with the very foundation of reality who is God,
contemplative life is indispensable to us.

            That we are conscious of ourselves and of the world means
we are made for contemplation. It’s the seed that needs to grow,
blossom and bear fruit. It’s the seed that needs to realize its full
potentials. Let’s not frustrate or abort it.

            We are equipped for it because we have the spiritual
faculties of knowing and loving, our intellect and will, that go
beyond the appearances of things, beyond the sensible aspects of
things.

            With our intellect and will, we penetrate into the very
essence of things, establish relationships and form and develop our
life according to what we choose to know and love. We need to realize
more deeply that our most important relationship is that with God. All
other relations should flow from that.

            We need to learn how to blend our active life with a
contemplative lifestyle as well. To be sure, this combination
corresponds the fullness of our humanity. We are meant to be both
active and contemplative. It’s a both/and not an either/or affair.
These two basic dimensions of our life should work in tandem rather
than at odds with each other.

            Of course, if we have to study the history of the
different schools of spirituality, we can notice not only a
distinction but a division, a split between active life and
contemplative life, life in the world and life away from it.

            One either has to be a layman, which for quite a time, was
considered a second-class citizen in the eyes of the Church, or be a
priest or nun or a consecrated person if he wanted to be serious with
his spiritual life.

            I suppose that’s an understandable consequence of our
human condition that has to develop in stages. We tend to be quite
simplistic and black-and-white in mentality in the beginning, until
after some time, when we know things better and have gained more
experience, that realize we have to be more nuanced and more
integrative of elements formerly thought as contraries.

            Especially today, when we are in a better position to
consider the full range of our human needs and aspirations, we have to
realize that we cannot afford to continue with this dichotomy between
active and contemplative life. We have to learn to be both. We have to
learn how to be immersed in the world and be with God at the same
time.

            As a corollary to that, we need to know how to distinguish
and at the same time link the material and spiritual aspects of our
life, the natural and the supernatural, the mundane and the sacred,
etc.

            This, of course, will require a lot training, which should
be pursued on the assumption that we always ask for the grace of God,
for nothing prospers without asking for his grace.

            For one, we need to learn this skill of turning our work,
both big and small, into prayer and an abiding conversation with God.
If we are to be consistent to our faith that our life is supposed to
be a life with God, then we have to know how to make our daily affairs
an occasion for keeping a living relationship with God.

            There should be a streaming awareness that we are with God
even when we are doing the most mundane activities. This is the goal
that we should try to reach, overcoming what separates our life from
the life of God. While it’s true that there is distinction between the
two, there’s supposed to be unity between them.

            This affirmation has basis. It’s not gratuitous. It is
founded on the truth that God made us his image and likeness, and
children of his, meant to participate in his very own life. That’s his
will. That’s the reality.

            In the first place, God is everywhere. We don’t have to
look far to find him, since he is at the very core of our being. If we
keep ourselves humble and simple, allowing the faith to work in us, we
will realize that even in our inmost thoughts and feelings, we will
always find him. We may not totally understand him, but we know he is
with us.

The gratuity of grace

THAT may be a redundancy, since grace by definition is
always gratuitous. It is something given to us at the sheer initiative
of our creator. It is something that we have no right to claim, but is
given to us just the same.

            And that’s simply because God, our Creator and Father, out
of pure goodness and love, wants it that way. He wants that we
participate in his very own life by making us his image and likeness
and, in fact, children of his.

            And in spite of our sin, God still wants to give it to us.
That’s how much he loves us as shown by Christ, the son of God who
became man to be our redeemer, who assumed all our sins by dying on
the cross and then resurrecting.

            As the Compendium of the Catechism would define it, grace
is “the gratuitous gift that God gives us to make us participants in
his Trinitarian life and able to act by his love.” (423) We cannot
love as we are supposed to do unless we have this grace.

            This grace is more properly called as the habitual or
sanctifying or deifying grace because “it sanctifies and divinizes us.
It is also called supernatural because it depends entirely on God’s
gratuitous initiative and surpasses the ability of the intellect and
the power of human beings. It therefore escapes our experience.” (423)

            Aside from this sanctifying grace, there also are the
actual graces which are meant for specific circumstances, sacramental
graces which are proper to each sacrament, and other special graces or
charisms that are intended for the common good.

            Among the charisms are the graces of state that accompany
the exercise of Church ministries and the different states and
responsibilities of life. (cfr. 424) Examples would be the charism of
being a founder of a spiritual group, a leader of a nation, etc.

            We have to be aware of the role of grace in our life and
activities, since grace is what makes everything that we are and do
pleasing to God. Though its presence and action in us is beyond our
perception, it would help greatly to be aware of it so we can
cooperate with it as much as we can and should.

            Most importantly, grace enables us to earn merits before
God for any good action that we do, since this action would be united
with the most pleasing sacrifice of Christ to his Father.

            Such awareness would lead us to be most thankful to God
and to do everything with rectitude of intention, that is, with
humility, with desire to do things as best as we can, with deep
understanding of the twists and turns, the ups and downs of our life.
It endows us with a sense of purpose in life. It prevents us from
getting lost in life, or confused and swept away by worldly forces.

            With such awareness, we would know that we are never alone
in our life, that the source of everything good is God always and not
just ourselves or some natural resources. It makes us objective and
realistic, not simply subjective and inventive, and much less, up in
the clouds.

            The nature of grace is such that, given our human
condition as God’s children, we need to ask for it and merit it even
if it is God’s pure initiative to give it to us gratuitously.

            This aspect of grace in relation to us is not easy to
understand, because we can always ask why should it be merited if
after all it is given to us gratuitously and freely? To this question,
a number of possible answers have been offered, ranging from the
extreme of pure gratuity without merit at all to the other extreme of
pure merit and thus undermining the gratuity of grace.

            The Catholic teaching upholds that grace is a gratuitous
gift of God that at the same time enables one to earn merit or
recompense for the good that he does. It is a gift that definitely
shows itself in some good fruits in a person and thus enabling us to
earn merit.

            That sense of merit that one gains and develops as a fruit
of grace is expressed not in a proud or vain way, but rather always in
a humble way. It’s a sense that would drive one to do more good deeds.
In fact, it would drive him to do endless good deeds, because it
causes Christian love to spring and grow, a love that knows no limits.