DEVOTION to the Santo Nino is happily widespread in our country. Wherever we
go, we always see forms of this devotion acted out usually by our simple folks. I must say that this is a tremendous asset we have.
Aside from this, we also give popular cult to Our Lady, St. Joseph, the saints, and even our dead. I believe that it is in these spontaneous pious exercises that our soul as a people can truly be seen. We are fortunately a deeply believing people.
We don’t merely stop at the level of the sensible, the earthly and temporal. We don’t simply rely on the practical, the intelligible and reasonable. We go beyond these dimensions, and enter into the world of faith, developing a piety to go with it.
Thus, thanks to God, we Filipinos possess a deep treasury of piety which we live not only in a personal capacity, but also in a social and popular way. I believe this is a great blessing that helps to keep us one and united as a people in spite of our divisive shortcomings.
It is also for this reason that I would dare to say that if we really want to resolve our unavoidable differences and conflicts as we look, as a nation, for our progress and development, we should purify and strengthen our faith and piety.
I believe this is where we can find those ultimate unifying elements we need as a country, even as we consider different options, conflicting views and positions in our inescapable temporal affairs like our business and politics.
I don’t believe this claim is baseless. I’ve seen it heavily validated by experience. I’ve witnessed many instances when clashes are softened and even agreements and reconciliations reached as long as parties and people pray.
I’ve met people who, even if their defects seem be more than their virtues, manage to make progress simply because they pray a lot. I’ve also met people who, because they don’t pray, cannot help but create problems even when there should be none.
I believe that the many forms of popular piety we have are a manifestation of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They amply capture our people’s deepest yearnings, anxieties and concerns. They become a powerful prayer linking us with God.
But, yet, it cannot be denied that they need to be purified, regulated and strengthened. We need to find out if they properly inculturate the faith. That’s a very delicate task, needing profound and comprehensive study and keen discernment.
They have to be purified from superstitious elements and the illicit sense of magic that somehow manages to seep in and distort them. These things are like parasites that spoil otherwise good developments in our collective spiritual life.
Popular piety should also be properly focused and made to grow to maturity, freeing them from the tendency to shallow sentimentalism and self-seeking aims and self-serving maneuvers.
They have to be soundly grounded on doctrine and adequately regulated by competent Church authorities. These days, they should help us in tackling our social concerns properly.
Thus, there is a great need for some systematic plan of catechesis. Forms of popular piety should improve not only our relation with God, but also our relation among ourselves, which can be seen and measured in concrete terms.
Also, that delicate task of harmonizing popular piety with the Church’s entire liturgical life should be undertaken. This should pose as a real challenge to the competence of our Church’s authorities.
Someone has told me, rather lightheartedly, that we Pinoys don’t really have serious doctrinal problems. Our problems are more of the disciplinary kind. We tend to get wild and unruly as well as too sentimental and passionate for law and order to take full effect.
Just the same I believe there has to be a more systematic plan to deepen the doctrinal formation of the faithful, whether of the simple or the sophisticated type, especially these days when good and bad elements come together in society.
This should be done in the field of popular piety.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Christian materialism
“WE can therefore rightly speak of a Christian materialism, which is boldly opposed to those materialisms which are blind to the spirit.”
These were words of St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, in a 1967
homily. They are most relevant today as more people ask if it’s possible for us to be “spiritual” in our material world.
In defending that point, St. Josemaria said:
“What are the sacraments, which people in early times described as the footprints of the Incarnate Word, if not the clearest expression of this way which God has chosen in order to sanctify us and to lead us to heaven?”
In Christian belief, the material and the spiritual are not incompatible and need not be in conflict, since both come from God. Whatever deformity matter has absorbed because of our sin, Christ has purified it with his death and resurrection.
Besides, since the material world is part of man’s life, Christ has made it as man’s instrument not only for his human needs, but most especially for his spiritual needs and supernatural calling.
More from St. Josemaria:
“There is only one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is that life which has to become, in both body and soul, holy and filled with God. We discover the invisible God in the most visible and material things…
“Our age needs to give back to matter and to the apparently trivial events of life their noble, original meaning…It needs to spiritualize them, turning them into a means and an occasion for a continuous meeting with Jesus Christ.”
With these words, millions of people all over the world have suddenly discovered a deeper meaning in their material, temporal affairs, including the little things of everyday. They are not just realities confined to a strictly material world.
St. Josemaria described it this way:
“When a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God…
“The Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday live…”
We all need to develop an authentic spirituality that has a correct understanding of the material dimension of our life. It should be a spirituality that respects the nature and autonomous ways of the material world.
The dilemma faced by many before was either to be spiritual or to be material. The schools of spirituality in the past often had an exaggerated negative attitude towards the material world. These two aspects made war with each other.
History is witness to tendencies that erroneously veered toward one extreme to the other, toward being too spiritualistic or too materialistic.
Among the too spiritualistic are Manicheans who held matter to be intrinsically evil; the Puritans who practiced scrupulous moral rigor hostile to social pleasures; the Stoics who were indifferent to joy, grief, pleasure and pain. They lived much by themselves.
You also have the quietists who lived a mysticism involving passive contemplation and destruction of the will; the rationalists who used reason as prime source of knowledge, rejecting empirical data, authority and faith.
Among the too materialistic are the atheists, communists and socialists. hey generally believe that reality is purely material. There’s nothing spiritual or supernatural.
You also have the hedonists and Epicureans who held that sensual pleasure
is the greatest good. There’s also the naturalist who said everything can be explained by nature alone and nothing beyond that.
We have a crying need for a spirituality that embodies a sense of Christian
materialism. It should be a spirituality that has a healthy love for the world and everything the world contains.
It should be a spirituality that gives Christian value to the different fields of work—intellectual or manual, in business, politics, academic, etc. It should incorporate properly the Church’s social doctrine.
It’s a spirituality that helps one live a greater unity of life, extending
the coverage of his spiritual life to include everything.
These were words of St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, in a 1967
homily. They are most relevant today as more people ask if it’s possible for us to be “spiritual” in our material world.
In defending that point, St. Josemaria said:
“What are the sacraments, which people in early times described as the footprints of the Incarnate Word, if not the clearest expression of this way which God has chosen in order to sanctify us and to lead us to heaven?”
In Christian belief, the material and the spiritual are not incompatible and need not be in conflict, since both come from God. Whatever deformity matter has absorbed because of our sin, Christ has purified it with his death and resurrection.
Besides, since the material world is part of man’s life, Christ has made it as man’s instrument not only for his human needs, but most especially for his spiritual needs and supernatural calling.
More from St. Josemaria:
“There is only one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is that life which has to become, in both body and soul, holy and filled with God. We discover the invisible God in the most visible and material things…
“Our age needs to give back to matter and to the apparently trivial events of life their noble, original meaning…It needs to spiritualize them, turning them into a means and an occasion for a continuous meeting with Jesus Christ.”
With these words, millions of people all over the world have suddenly discovered a deeper meaning in their material, temporal affairs, including the little things of everyday. They are not just realities confined to a strictly material world.
St. Josemaria described it this way:
“When a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God…
“The Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday live…”
We all need to develop an authentic spirituality that has a correct understanding of the material dimension of our life. It should be a spirituality that respects the nature and autonomous ways of the material world.
The dilemma faced by many before was either to be spiritual or to be material. The schools of spirituality in the past often had an exaggerated negative attitude towards the material world. These two aspects made war with each other.
History is witness to tendencies that erroneously veered toward one extreme to the other, toward being too spiritualistic or too materialistic.
Among the too spiritualistic are Manicheans who held matter to be intrinsically evil; the Puritans who practiced scrupulous moral rigor hostile to social pleasures; the Stoics who were indifferent to joy, grief, pleasure and pain. They lived much by themselves.
You also have the quietists who lived a mysticism involving passive contemplation and destruction of the will; the rationalists who used reason as prime source of knowledge, rejecting empirical data, authority and faith.
Among the too materialistic are the atheists, communists and socialists. hey generally believe that reality is purely material. There’s nothing spiritual or supernatural.
You also have the hedonists and Epicureans who held that sensual pleasure
is the greatest good. There’s also the naturalist who said everything can be explained by nature alone and nothing beyond that.
We have a crying need for a spirituality that embodies a sense of Christian
materialism. It should be a spirituality that has a healthy love for the world and everything the world contains.
It should be a spirituality that gives Christian value to the different fields of work—intellectual or manual, in business, politics, academic, etc. It should incorporate properly the Church’s social doctrine.
It’s a spirituality that helps one live a greater unity of life, extending
the coverage of his spiritual life to include everything.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
The Christmas spirit
IN spite of varying times and climes, favorable or unfavorable, the Christmas spirit thrives not only in the hearts of children and the simple, but also in those of mature men and women, wearied, hardened and even jaded by ugly worldly affairs.
It’s a spirit of joy, bred by faith, which cannot be simply kept inside. It has to show itself externally, generating a beautiful gust of popular piety that boosts the faith, whether sagging or vibrant, of people both young and old.
“A child is born for us, a son given to us; dominion is laid on his shoulder, and he shall be called Wonderful-Counsellor.” (Isaiah 9,6)
Though repeated countless times through the ages, every time they are spoken, in faith, on Christmas Day, these words of Scripture leave an electrifying effect, mysteriously evoking an undeniable truth and an unspeakable joy that only our heart, made by God and for God, can relish.
Whatever they say, there is in man an inherent goodness that readily recognizes the spirit of Christmas. It’s a goodness that frolics with the good news of Christ’s birth, it sings and dances no matter what adverse circumstances there may be.
Of course, our theology deepens this truth of faith by telling us that with Christ’s birth, God becomes man to save us, and eternity re-acquires our errant time and world and sets them in their proper course. A very beautiful truth we are celebrating in Christmas!
This irreducible and inalienable goodness in us simply shows that in spite of our weaknesses and failures, in spite of some weakening of faith or whatever, we somehow understand we are meant for the eternal, for the infinite.
We are not simply earth-bound or time-bound. Our true dignity seeks a much higher level of existence. We may not be very aware of this, but we actually
yearn for this goal.
Our natural goodness makes us discern where our true home is and what our true happiness really is. It makes us realize that we are meant to live on beyond this life and time, and beyond this world.
This innate goodness, I like to think, is the original language that unites us with our Creator, before other layers of languages come between God and us. If taken good care of, it’s a language that can lead us to loftier realities about ourselves.
We are not mere creatures who try our best to make the most of what we have in this world. We are something much more, a lot more. We are God’s children, meant to participate in his very own supernatural life.
Christmas brings this phenomenon about. There is something in it, regardless of the contamination of commercialism, paganism, etc., that causes this sublime realization to surface.
Yet, despite this mysterious law, it is incumbent on us to exert all we can to purify the way we celebrate Christmas. In this duty, we cannot be passive.
There can be many things to take care of, but I’d like to reiterate what a Church document wants us to pay special attention to during Christmas. This is to keep the celebration from falling into becoming too emotional and shallow. These points can be:
- all manifestations of popular piety should be linked and harmonized with the liturgy, which is the official prayer of the Church, the prayer of Christ himself with all of us. Popular piety should climax in the liturgy;
- the “spirituality of gift,” proper of Christmas, should be highlighted, based on the truth that “a child is born for us, a son is given to us” (Is 9,5), and God “so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3,16);
- to convey the message of solidarity, also proper of Christ, since with Christ’s birth God lives solidarity with sinful man and the poor;
- Christ’s birth should also stress the sacredness of human life, now threatened gravely in many places;
- also to emphasize the spirit of simplicity and poverty, humility and trust in God so conspicuous in Christ’s birth and so direly needed by us today.
It’s a spirit of joy, bred by faith, which cannot be simply kept inside. It has to show itself externally, generating a beautiful gust of popular piety that boosts the faith, whether sagging or vibrant, of people both young and old.
“A child is born for us, a son given to us; dominion is laid on his shoulder, and he shall be called Wonderful-Counsellor.” (Isaiah 9,6)
Though repeated countless times through the ages, every time they are spoken, in faith, on Christmas Day, these words of Scripture leave an electrifying effect, mysteriously evoking an undeniable truth and an unspeakable joy that only our heart, made by God and for God, can relish.
Whatever they say, there is in man an inherent goodness that readily recognizes the spirit of Christmas. It’s a goodness that frolics with the good news of Christ’s birth, it sings and dances no matter what adverse circumstances there may be.
Of course, our theology deepens this truth of faith by telling us that with Christ’s birth, God becomes man to save us, and eternity re-acquires our errant time and world and sets them in their proper course. A very beautiful truth we are celebrating in Christmas!
This irreducible and inalienable goodness in us simply shows that in spite of our weaknesses and failures, in spite of some weakening of faith or whatever, we somehow understand we are meant for the eternal, for the infinite.
We are not simply earth-bound or time-bound. Our true dignity seeks a much higher level of existence. We may not be very aware of this, but we actually
yearn for this goal.
Our natural goodness makes us discern where our true home is and what our true happiness really is. It makes us realize that we are meant to live on beyond this life and time, and beyond this world.
This innate goodness, I like to think, is the original language that unites us with our Creator, before other layers of languages come between God and us. If taken good care of, it’s a language that can lead us to loftier realities about ourselves.
We are not mere creatures who try our best to make the most of what we have in this world. We are something much more, a lot more. We are God’s children, meant to participate in his very own supernatural life.
Christmas brings this phenomenon about. There is something in it, regardless of the contamination of commercialism, paganism, etc., that causes this sublime realization to surface.
Yet, despite this mysterious law, it is incumbent on us to exert all we can to purify the way we celebrate Christmas. In this duty, we cannot be passive.
There can be many things to take care of, but I’d like to reiterate what a Church document wants us to pay special attention to during Christmas. This is to keep the celebration from falling into becoming too emotional and shallow. These points can be:
- all manifestations of popular piety should be linked and harmonized with the liturgy, which is the official prayer of the Church, the prayer of Christ himself with all of us. Popular piety should climax in the liturgy;
- the “spirituality of gift,” proper of Christmas, should be highlighted, based on the truth that “a child is born for us, a son is given to us” (Is 9,5), and God “so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3,16);
- to convey the message of solidarity, also proper of Christ, since with Christ’s birth God lives solidarity with sinful man and the poor;
- Christ’s birth should also stress the sacredness of human life, now threatened gravely in many places;
- also to emphasize the spirit of simplicity and poverty, humility and trust in God so conspicuous in Christ’s birth and so direly needed by us today.
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