Prepping the kids for the future

SIMPLY looking around, one can readily conclude that the
future is going to be more complicated and more challenging. And one
worries about today's youth, about how they can cope with all these
complications and challenges.

            Let's hope and pray that families and schools and all
other entities, especially the faith-based groups like parochial
organizations and many others are up to all this. Yes, we have to
invest a lot of prayers and sacrifices for this intention, but these
should be matched by a more systematic way of imparting the youth with
the relevant attitudes, virtues and skills.

            Offhand, what I can say is that there should be an
effective mentoring system where the kids are more personally attended
to. Other than the formal classes and other collective means of
formation and education, there should be this more personal and
indivualized attention given to them, so that their peculiar
conditions can be better addressed.

            Yes, the formal and collective means should never be
sacrificed. They are always necessary and also need to be improved and
updated, attentive to new relevant developments, insights and lessons.
But the individualized attention is now urgently needed. There is
great need to enter into their minds and hearts, and to know their
character and temperament, their strengths and weaknesses.

            It cannot be denied that wide gaps now exist between what
are taught and encouraged in the collective means, on one hand, and
what is personally learned and lived, on the other. We should aim at
greater consistency between the collective and the personal means,
between what is taught and what is lived.

            Most important is that the kids should have the proper
priorities. They should know the value and the relation between the
material and the spiritual, the flesh and the spirit, the natural and
the supernatural, the technical and the essential, etc.

            In the area of attitude alone, a lot needs to be done. The
kids have to have a healthy attitude toward work in general, and
should know its proper role and purpose in their lives. They should
have the proper intention. It's amazing that many do not know what the
proper intention should be.

            In this regard, they need to acquire a more comprehensive
understanding of how their work relates to their spiritual life and
the supernatural goal of man. They have to learn how they can convert
their work into prayer, into a continuing dealing with God and with
others, as it is meant to be, and how their work actually reinforces
their dignity as a person and as child of God.

            In the area of virtues, again a lot needs to be learned.
First and the more immediate would be order—order in the way they
think, judge and evaluate things in general. Nowadays, because of the
many things coming out, there is a great tendency to create a lot of
clutter, not only in tangible things but also and most especially in
the intangibles—in their thoughts, plans, desires, etc.

            Of course, we need to see how they are developing all the
other virtues—humility, prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, etc.
This is going to be an endless task.

            As to skills, they need to be shown how to bolster their
strengths as well as how to deal with their weaknesses and
temptations. Nowadays, they have to learn how they can live out that
gospel indication of being “simple as doves and shrewd as serpents.”

            They should develop a keen sense of ethics and morality.
Since evil cannot be avoided and today's evil can be most deceiving,
they have to know up to what extent they can cooperate with evil
without compromising their spiritual and moral life. Yes, they have to
know how to develop a certain resistance and immunity in an
environment that can be filled with temptations and sin.

            They need to be encouraged to always to aim higher in
their personal goals, not out of pride and vanity but rather because
of love of God and others. Basic skills like the proper use of time,
money, talents and other resources need to be taught.

            There are a lot more that can be said in this issue. But
to conclude for now, what is important is that the mentors, be they
the parents, teachers, priests, friends, etc., should try to win the
trust and confidence of the kids. And they themselves have to be
demanding on themselves, since they cannot give what they do not have.

Advent and the sense of beginning

 With the celebration of the Solemnity of the Christ the

King, we ended another liturgical year. We are now beginning a new one
with the season of Advent, the proximate preparation for the birth of
Christ at Christmas.

            The immediate thought that comes to mind in this
transition of the old and new liturgical years is that while we should
have the mind of ending well and also beginning well, we should
neither forget that this cycle of life is meant to catapult us to the
eternal life where there will be no more changes of seasons and shifts
of days and nights.

            For this, a prayer that we need to retrieve from the
recesses of our memory can be very helpful. It’s the Glory Be, where
we find the words, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be
forever.”

            Let’s put our mind and heart into these words if only to
remind ourselves strongly that we need to have a good sense of
continuity and consistency between our beginning and end, between the
past, present and future, and between time and eternity.

            The words come after a previous part of the prayer where
we say, “Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” which
reminds us that the Triune God is the foundation of this continuity
and consistency. Otherwise, we would simply be dependent on our
estimation of things and our own powers, and would most likely get
confused, mistaken and lost.

            We need to develop a strong and correct sense of
beginning. At the moment, many of us seem oblivious to this need. We
appear to live only for the present. The past and the future are
merely given a lick and a promise, that is, a shallow and fleeting
consideration.

            It could be because our contemporary conditions often lead
us to act only for the moment. The problems and pressures of modern
life badger us to mind only what is at hand at present. They tend to
erode our sense of time. They seem to keep us narrow-minded,
short-sighted and Pavlovian in our reactions.

            It’s one of the urgent challenges nowadays to develop this
abiding sense of beginning. It’s what gives us a greater perspective
and depth in life, a guide to help us assess things properly as we go
on and encounter all sorts of situations.

            In fact, I would say that this sense of beginning should
be a crucial element in everyone’s character. All of us should have a
permanent, abiding sense of where we came from, for that would tell us
who and what we are, what our proper end is, how we ought to behave.

            In short, it’s important that we always have an
accompanying sense of the ideal goals we need to pursue. We just can’t
have an anything-goes, free-for-all attitude in life. Peculiar to our
human condition is the effort to conform our life to an ideal, no
matter how puzzling and difficult to get that ideal may be.

            We are not just what we are at the moment, as-is-where-is.
While there is something permanent in us, we also have something
dynamic that needs to be always worked out, defended, renewed, etc.
The sense of beginning imbues our life with meaning and direction.

            We have to exert no insignificant effort to develop this
sense of beginning, continuity and consistency since with our growing
power to dominate the world in all its aspects, we always have the
tendency to convert our legitimate autonomy due to our freedom into
total independence and separation from God, our Father and Creator.

            For this, we need to exert no insignificant effort to grow
deep and strong in humility, because pride can easily grip us and can
even trick us blind by appearing to us under the guise of
humility—false humility, of course. Without humility, the gift of
faith which we need cannot take root and function in us.

            It’s important that whatever we do here on earth, starting
with our thoughts and desires all the way to our big enterprises and
projects, should be developed and pursued always in the context of the
beginning of things, during the creation of the universe, with God as
the source and creator of everything.

            It’s there where we can find the pristine state of things
in general or the integrity of creation in its original state still
unspoiled by us with our sins. It’s there where we get to know the
nature of things and their purpose, where all the laws—physical,
natural and moral—can be gleaned.

Handling misunderstandings

THEY'RE unavoidable in our life. For a number of reasons. Between our
limitations with respect to making ourselves understood and for others
to understand us, an ocean of possible instances of misunderstanding
can occur.

This is not to mention that the world today is in a very toxic
condition that easily lends itself to misunderstandings among
ourselves. The rapid developments, considered as progress, is actually
creating a Tower-of-Babel effect where people, communities and
societies are increasingly fragmented insteading of being more united,
giving rise to all forms of animosities and discord.

People are hardening in their biases, preferences and peculiarities,
in their perceptions, views and opinions, and even in their core
beliefs, without the corresponding effort to understand those with
different positions.

Think about the general state of politics today. Objectivity,
fairness, patience and magnanimity are literally thrown out of the
window. Politics is not anymore so much about the pursuit of the
common good as the pursuit of self-interest.

People nowadays flaunt their status as having overcome the
narrowmindedness of the past generations and as being broadminded,
what with all the information overload they are now having, and yet
they are quick to judge rashly, gossip, backbite, and to disparage and
alienate others.

Most everyone thinks he is always correct and the others always wrong.
Yes, things have deteriorated so much that in spite of affirmations of
being tolerant to an increasing plurality of positions, people are
falling into a simplistic black-and-white outlook in life. Instead of
being slow to anger and quick to forgive, it's now the reverse: they
are quick to anger and slow to forgive, if ever.

We should not be surprised to experience all these. In fact, we have
to expect them and just be prepared for them, not wasting too much
time lamenting about this predicament. If Christ himself, dubbed as
perfect God and perfect man, suffered the gravest case of
misunderstanding, to the point of being crucified, who are we to
complain when these misunderstandings come our way?

In our case, many can be the reasons why we easily misunderstand
others and deserve also to be misunderstood. Let's not belabor the
obvious. We just have to focus on how to handle this predicament that
seems to get worse as we go along.

We need to look at Christ and follow his way of handling
misunderstandings. He was patient with everyone. Just imagine him
having to contend even with his closest friends—the apostles—who in
spite of their closeness to him did not understand him fully most of
the time.

He just went about preaching, not minding so much how the people
responded. There were those who immediately believed him, but there
were also others who were always suspicious of him.

We should not mind so much how others would react and correspond to
our views and positions. We should just focus first on thinking,
saying and doing things as rightly as possible, in truth and in
charity, as we are told by St. Paul. (cfr. Eph 4,15)

We have to learn to behave with extreme prudence, which should not be
a cover for cowardice, since there will be times when we have to act
with great courage even at the expense of extreme suffering. Part of
this prudence is the virtue of tactfulness, of a certain restraint and
moderation in our speech and actuations. We have to learn when to
speak and when not, and how to deliver our points.

We should avoid getting involved in petty controversies. Rather, we
should focus on issues and points that unite us rather than dwelling
long on those that divide us. Let our assertions and clarifications be
done in delicacy, which does not mean that we cannot be forceful.

For this, we need to be humble. A proud and conceited person, who
always wants to have the last say, cannot avoid getting into
wranglings. A humble person would be in a better position to see
things more objectively and judge them more fairly. He is quick to
correct himself when he is mistaken, and to forgive those who may
misunderstand him.

We should be magnanimous to those who misunderstand us. “If anyone
forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles,” Christ said. (Mt
5,41) We have to drown evil with an abundance of good.

We should be convinced that sooner or later some form of our
vindication will take place as well as the proper resolution of the
issues involved, if not here then in the hereafter. Let's just be
patient, just as God is patient with us!

-->