THESE past few days in that exotic island called Bohol, some kind of fever
is gripping everyone. The reason is because they are organizing a so-called general reunion of Boholanos from all over the world, or 'Tigum Bol-anon sa Tibuok Kalibutan' (TBTK).
Being a Boholano myself (we call ourselves 'sano', short for 'paisano' or fellow countryman, for we consider our island as some kind of independent republic), I was flooded with frantic invitations by texts, emails, etc., from classmates, friends and relatives.
I had to gently and patiently beg off, a mortal sin I think, because my schedule just would not let me. A joke has it that in heaven St. Peter hastily ties up the Boholanos during the fiestas since they would escape to Bohol on those days. That's how 'bad' this thing is with us.
Of course, I go to these fiestas and reunions in my heart. It's something that is part of our human nature, or our being inherently a social being, which always feels the need to be with others, especially friends and relatives.
No man is an island, no matter how much of a loner one is. He will always need someone else, if not physically then morally or spiritually. We somehow feel incomplete if in our heart we find no one else except ourselves. We are always in need of God and of others.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “The human person needs to live in society. Society is not for him an extraneous addition but a requirement of nature.” (1879)
While this social nature of ours can be expressed in many ways, I would like to give special mention to class reunions, especially when held really far from the time the classmates were together.
These are reunions full of memories, good memories always even if particular events in the past were not exactly nice. Time and life have a way of softening whatever negative things took place before. We always have a chance to learn, to purify, to rectify, etc.
They remind us that we are creatures of memories and intentions. Our sociability is never confined to the physical. It becomes more meaningful and more intense when expressed in our memories, in our intentions and in our other moral and spiritual faculties.
These reunions connect us to our years of childhood and youth, when we were still quite raw and green, quite thoughtless and senseless. And yet now we are convinced that in spite of those conditions some significant things were developing and shaping up imperceptibly.
I have no doubt that all my classmates, however we were, even if we caused some pain, were actually blessings and God's precious gifts to each other. We might have laughed a lot, or fought and cried, but I have no doubt we were helping each other in some mysterious ways when we were making those awkward first steps toward growth and development.
I believe that mistakes, gaffes, failures are excellent teachers. They wake us up to certain realities we surely would ignore if these mistakes did not happen. If they managed to teach us humility, then the road to a good transformation was laid open.
I believe we learned more from those mistakes than from the good deed we made. The latter often led us to vanity and pride that were sweet and intoxicating in the beginning but were terribly poisonous later on. Life can spring very surprising lessons.
I believe reunions highlight the fact that life is a continuity. An invisible hand is directing it. The so-called disruptions and mutations in our experiences do not destroy this continuity. They can always be made use of, one way or another.
There is God, and he is never passive in his providence. Now I seem to see
how God played with us to lead us to some measure of sensibility and rationality, and later hopefully, to faith and charity.
God can write straight with crooked lines. He certainly made use of our childishness and all our other forms of foolishness and weakness to make something useful to us. I just hope we did not give him a really hard
time.
Of course, the process continues. The room for improvement is the largest room in any house of life we build. It never gets finished. I have reminded my classmates of this, to warn them also of the ever-present danger of complacency.
Lastly, i would like that these reunions would always be open to life, to whatever challenges it gives. This is because we need to attain a better communion we should have with God and among ourselves. In the end, reunions are for that purpose.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Saturday, September 16, 2006
New evangelization
The expression, “new evangelization,” has been around for quite some time
now. Pope John Paul II in his 26-year pontificate had been talking a lot about it, and, mind you, he was not the first one to do so.
It’s not new anymore. It’s rather old and, in my view, even tired. But the concept will always remain new and relevant. There’s no doubt about that.
Jesus Christ, who is at the center of it all, can never become obsolete. He is the one who will make everything new. He can even make the dead rise to life again. So, relax, there’s no reason to despair, no matter how bad the picture may look.
The problem is us. We are not doing what we ought to do about it. There is so much laziness, ignorance, lukewarmness, doctrinal confusion. There is mad pursuit for earthly pleasures, a veritable systematic effort to “protect” oneself from God. It’s today’s version of people building their own Tower of Babel.
And if there is some flicker of interest, it is promptly spoiled by petty quarrels, envies and a strong crab mentality, if not by sheer incompetence and naked pride and vanity. It’s really a shame.
The truth is evangelization will always be an activity of the Church, a duty of every Christian faithful, that is, the clergy, the laity and the religious. But how many realize this, and how seriously do we take it?
As St. Paul once said: “Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel!”(1 Cor 9:16). Pope Paul VI paraphrased this by saying: “Evangelization is the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.”
When Pope John Paul talked about the new evangelization, he wanted us, both clergy and laity, to find a new fervor, new methods, and new expressions in proclaiming and giving witness to Christ, given the rapid flow of developments nowadays. But what have we done about this indication?
The first thing to remember is that this new evangelization can only be done as a result of a vibrant spiritual life of intimate, personal relationship with Jesus. This is indispensable. There’s no other way.
How can we talk about God and his things if we don’t talk to him and earnestly assimilate his teachings?
Modern man especially has developed the knack to distinguish what is authentic from what is not, given the amount of sales talk he is exposed to these days. So we need to be authentic evangelizers, who first live by what we preach before evangelizing.
All effort at evangelization has to start with prayers, with serious study. It has to be nourished by a life of sacraments and continuing ascetical struggle, developing virtues and assimilating values in their proper hierarchy.
This is the only way to acquire some traces of credibility and to convince others that we are not simply transmitting our own ideas, but the teachings and even the very life of Christ.
Just as Christ said that anyone who sees him sees his Father who sent him, we should so live and act that anyone who sees and hears us can see and hear Christ who asks us to evangelize.
All the creativity needed in this task in the present context can and should flow only from such fount. Otherwise, all efforts will just go to waste. They cannot be expected to last nor to bear much fruit, etc.
The challenge here is how to make people feel the presence of God and realize the command of Christ. The laity especially should more keenly feel their duty to participate more actively in this task of evangelization.
In this regard, the lay people who are immersed in the world are especially expected to bring the message and spirit of Christ to all the corners of the world. That’s why they have to be truly adept in this task. That’s their challenge today.
They are especially crucial in evangelizing marriage and the family, the educational world, culture and entertainment, business and politics in all levels, from the local to the national and the international.
Aside from praying, studying and really trying to be holy, they need to know very well the social doctrine of the Church, which is that aspect of the Christian faith that impacts with man’s life and responsibilities in the world.
now. Pope John Paul II in his 26-year pontificate had been talking a lot about it, and, mind you, he was not the first one to do so.
It’s not new anymore. It’s rather old and, in my view, even tired. But the concept will always remain new and relevant. There’s no doubt about that.
Jesus Christ, who is at the center of it all, can never become obsolete. He is the one who will make everything new. He can even make the dead rise to life again. So, relax, there’s no reason to despair, no matter how bad the picture may look.
The problem is us. We are not doing what we ought to do about it. There is so much laziness, ignorance, lukewarmness, doctrinal confusion. There is mad pursuit for earthly pleasures, a veritable systematic effort to “protect” oneself from God. It’s today’s version of people building their own Tower of Babel.
And if there is some flicker of interest, it is promptly spoiled by petty quarrels, envies and a strong crab mentality, if not by sheer incompetence and naked pride and vanity. It’s really a shame.
The truth is evangelization will always be an activity of the Church, a duty of every Christian faithful, that is, the clergy, the laity and the religious. But how many realize this, and how seriously do we take it?
As St. Paul once said: “Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel!”(1 Cor 9:16). Pope Paul VI paraphrased this by saying: “Evangelization is the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.”
When Pope John Paul talked about the new evangelization, he wanted us, both clergy and laity, to find a new fervor, new methods, and new expressions in proclaiming and giving witness to Christ, given the rapid flow of developments nowadays. But what have we done about this indication?
The first thing to remember is that this new evangelization can only be done as a result of a vibrant spiritual life of intimate, personal relationship with Jesus. This is indispensable. There’s no other way.
How can we talk about God and his things if we don’t talk to him and earnestly assimilate his teachings?
Modern man especially has developed the knack to distinguish what is authentic from what is not, given the amount of sales talk he is exposed to these days. So we need to be authentic evangelizers, who first live by what we preach before evangelizing.
All effort at evangelization has to start with prayers, with serious study. It has to be nourished by a life of sacraments and continuing ascetical struggle, developing virtues and assimilating values in their proper hierarchy.
This is the only way to acquire some traces of credibility and to convince others that we are not simply transmitting our own ideas, but the teachings and even the very life of Christ.
Just as Christ said that anyone who sees him sees his Father who sent him, we should so live and act that anyone who sees and hears us can see and hear Christ who asks us to evangelize.
All the creativity needed in this task in the present context can and should flow only from such fount. Otherwise, all efforts will just go to waste. They cannot be expected to last nor to bear much fruit, etc.
The challenge here is how to make people feel the presence of God and realize the command of Christ. The laity especially should more keenly feel their duty to participate more actively in this task of evangelization.
In this regard, the lay people who are immersed in the world are especially expected to bring the message and spirit of Christ to all the corners of the world. That’s why they have to be truly adept in this task. That’s their challenge today.
They are especially crucial in evangelizing marriage and the family, the educational world, culture and entertainment, business and politics in all levels, from the local to the national and the international.
Aside from praying, studying and really trying to be holy, they need to know very well the social doctrine of the Church, which is that aspect of the Christian faith that impacts with man’s life and responsibilities in the world.
Saturday, September 9, 2006
The one thing necessary
By some fluke, I have been a recipient through these past few years of a number of modern gadgets that drastically facilitate my work. They open for me a bigger, wider, and definitely more exhilarating window to the world.
There’s of course the computer with its connection to the internet and other functions. Then you have the personal digital assistant (PDA) that allows you to virtually carry a whole library of books and documents in your pocket.
Then there’s the laptop and the flash drive or USB (universal serial bus) hat enable you to do instant research, study and writing practically everywhere and even in those odd moments in-between appointments and activities.
I’m left with a raging sense of gratitude to God and to many kind-hearted donors for all these. All of sudden I find myself paddling in a much bigger ocean of data and information. As they say, these indeed take my breath away.
But they also come with a price, even an exorbitant price. If we are not careful, we can lose our soul. I’ve seen cases of people falling into some kind of invincible obsessions and hard-to-cure addictions because of these gadgets.
Like any instrument, these gadgets are good to those who are good, and bad
to those who are bad. Their morality depends on their users. For one, while with them many good things are made accessible, temptations also proliferate.
Then we have to trade in our intellectual paddles with much stronger and swifter thinking tools. This is not easy to do, especially if we are already of a certain age. The capacity to upgrade our skills and to adapt to new things becomes harder by the year.
What seemed enough for us for many years, and served us quite well in our work so far, suddenly appear puny in the face of the tremendous possibilities these gadgets provide.
This is where we can stir certain dormant potentials we didn’t realize we had. We know that not all of them are good. Many need to be purified. When awakened, they need to be restrained and somehow regulated, otherwise we can get into trouble.
This is where the need to be more discriminating and to be more dominating of oneself becomes keener, because it’s very easy to get lost in the world these gadgets offer, and even to be enslaved in ways that are most subtle.
Yes, it’s quite easy to be sucked into a frenzy of curiosity and activism and to be so absorbed by them that we can easily forget our other duties, even the more important ones like praying and eating and resting.
These gadgets seem not to run out of images, icons, ideas, sounds, etc., to engage both our senses and faculties. They can knock us out, completely leaving us beaten and helpless.
The pursuit of knowledge can be so intoxicating that we can ignore what St. Paul once warned us: “Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies.” (1 Cor 8,1) We need to constantly rectify our intentions as we plunge into the ocean of possibilities these gadgets give us.
We should not lose our sense of priority. This should be shown in the way we plan and budget our time. This is a crucial aspect of the matter. Order should be a permanent concern, because disorder can just come spontaneously. No need for invitation.
In the end, there’s only one thing that is truly necessary in our life. Let’s remember what our Lord told Martha who was doing quite well by fussing about household chores but complained about her sister, Mary, who was simply listening to our Lord.
“Martha, Martha, you are troubled about many things. But one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her,” (Lk 10,41-42) he said.
We need to see that all this facilitated and accelerated pursuit of knowledge afforded by these gadgets truly brings us closer to God and to others. Knowledge is worthless and can be dangerous if not driven by charity and if it does not lead us to love—God and others.
There’s of course the computer with its connection to the internet and other functions. Then you have the personal digital assistant (PDA) that allows you to virtually carry a whole library of books and documents in your pocket.
Then there’s the laptop and the flash drive or USB (universal serial bus) hat enable you to do instant research, study and writing practically everywhere and even in those odd moments in-between appointments and activities.
I’m left with a raging sense of gratitude to God and to many kind-hearted donors for all these. All of sudden I find myself paddling in a much bigger ocean of data and information. As they say, these indeed take my breath away.
But they also come with a price, even an exorbitant price. If we are not careful, we can lose our soul. I’ve seen cases of people falling into some kind of invincible obsessions and hard-to-cure addictions because of these gadgets.
Like any instrument, these gadgets are good to those who are good, and bad
to those who are bad. Their morality depends on their users. For one, while with them many good things are made accessible, temptations also proliferate.
Then we have to trade in our intellectual paddles with much stronger and swifter thinking tools. This is not easy to do, especially if we are already of a certain age. The capacity to upgrade our skills and to adapt to new things becomes harder by the year.
What seemed enough for us for many years, and served us quite well in our work so far, suddenly appear puny in the face of the tremendous possibilities these gadgets provide.
This is where we can stir certain dormant potentials we didn’t realize we had. We know that not all of them are good. Many need to be purified. When awakened, they need to be restrained and somehow regulated, otherwise we can get into trouble.
This is where the need to be more discriminating and to be more dominating of oneself becomes keener, because it’s very easy to get lost in the world these gadgets offer, and even to be enslaved in ways that are most subtle.
Yes, it’s quite easy to be sucked into a frenzy of curiosity and activism and to be so absorbed by them that we can easily forget our other duties, even the more important ones like praying and eating and resting.
These gadgets seem not to run out of images, icons, ideas, sounds, etc., to engage both our senses and faculties. They can knock us out, completely leaving us beaten and helpless.
The pursuit of knowledge can be so intoxicating that we can ignore what St. Paul once warned us: “Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies.” (1 Cor 8,1) We need to constantly rectify our intentions as we plunge into the ocean of possibilities these gadgets give us.
We should not lose our sense of priority. This should be shown in the way we plan and budget our time. This is a crucial aspect of the matter. Order should be a permanent concern, because disorder can just come spontaneously. No need for invitation.
In the end, there’s only one thing that is truly necessary in our life. Let’s remember what our Lord told Martha who was doing quite well by fussing about household chores but complained about her sister, Mary, who was simply listening to our Lord.
“Martha, Martha, you are troubled about many things. But one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her,” (Lk 10,41-42) he said.
We need to see that all this facilitated and accelerated pursuit of knowledge afforded by these gadgets truly brings us closer to God and to others. Knowledge is worthless and can be dangerous if not driven by charity and if it does not lead us to love—God and others.
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