AS priest, I get to see many people already on the verge of death. Their families invite me to give them the last sacraments of the anointing, communion or viaticum. If the patients are still able, I would hear their confessions.
But it’s the effort to convey the Christian meaning of suffering and death that I find most challenging. I’m aware of the different levels of faith that people have, and it’s in how to adapt the doctrine to their level, such that they get to appreciate it, that would leave me gasping for divine inspiration.
I just can’t dish out the teaching in the raw. I need to dress it up, using the appropriate words, tone, arguments and examples. I also need a good sense of timing, feeling the pulse of those around to see if my words are entering or not. A tricky affair, but all worth it. I learn something every time I do this.
But we actually don’t need someone to be dying to savor the tremendous truth about Christian suffering and death. Each day offers us many occasions to touch base with this crucial truth.
The other day, I was invited to the celebration of the 45th wedding anniversary of my husband-and-wife teachers in first-year high school back in Tagbilaran also 45 years ago. The woman was my English teacher, the man my vocational (electrical) subject electrical.
It was an intimate gathering of friends and relatives, and the occasion turned out to me as a good reminder precisely of the Christian meaning of suffering and death.
As different people were called to give some testimonials, I relished at the sincere expressions of what they saw and learned from the couple. I myself know them as a simple and sincere pair, to the point of being self-effacing, but truly hard working and cheerful. It’s a combination of traits that’s getting rare these days.
I was the first one to be called. I didn’t prepare anything for this occasion, but I found myself saying many things, since there were just so much to say and to thank for. To Ma’am, I said: “With your beautiful smile, I learned fast from you. That I could now speak and write in what may be called as passable English was because of you.”
To Sir, I said: “Thanks a lot for the electrical skills I learned from you. I’m not known for manual skills, but I must say that with my knowledge in electrical circuitry, my mother came to depend on me whenever we had electrical problems at home. I always became an instant hero whenever there was a brownout, since I could fix it.”
It was what the 5 children said that moved me a lot. They are now all professionals, married with children, looking happy and yet looking simple and unaffected. They talked about how they grew up under the close supervision of the parents who combined affection and discipline very well.
They were talking about how they had to study and work hard, and be quite demanding on their daily schedules, and go through hard times to be able to finish their studies and find work. In the end they all finished and found good jobs.
Their father was a working student himself, who finished his studies by being a handy man to the priests who ran the school. Part of his work was to teach some electrical skills to high schoolers like me. I remember spending a lot of time understanding and doing hands-on experiments in electrical matters.
A friend of his, also a working student, narrated that though he was not part of my teachers’ wedding entourage, just the same he helped a lot on that wedding day, because he was the cook and everything else for the couple. He said he and my teacher worked hard to finish their schooling.
I found the testimonials simple and springing fresh from the heart. The thought came to my mind that if we still have families and friendships like this, then our country has a lot of hope, in spite of the hard and complicating times. These are fountains of pure goodness that simply would produce wonderful effects on all of us.
I saw in them what one saint used to say—that we need to die a little everyday to ourselves, so we also live a little more in God everyday, like a grain that has to die on the ground to germinate and become a plant.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Simplicity and spiritual childhood
IF we are interested in keeping our humanity, or at least our sanity, it may be good to be reminded about the need for us to develop, keep and strengthen our simplicity and spiritual childhood. This integral part of Christian asceticism should not be forgotten as we progress.
With our neck-breaking pace of development, with its unavoidable dust cloud of complications, we need to realize more deeply that the way to go is not by being quixotic, tilting at windmills and grappling with phantoms, but by being simple.
The temptation to be quixotic can be strong, since we always feel we can handle things by ourselves. Our sense of freedom and responsibility often blind us to the basic truth that we need to be grounded on God always to be able to live properly, let alone, do things rightly.
This quixotic attitude can lead us to that situation of self-righteousness, denounced by Christ himself when he told some of the people’s leaders that “they have eyes, but don’t see, they have ears, but don’t hear…” It’s the wide, easy, seemingly practical road to perdition, mentioned in the gospel.
Simplicity is the way to objectivity, and to all the other values connected with objectivity. It keeps us in touch with reality, the one meant for us. We have to say this, because as human beings, we are capable of creating parallel realities. That’s our abiding problem.
Of course, our subjective world will always vary from person to person. But at least this variety can still be linked to an objective reality. Our predicament is that we can have a subjective perception of things that has nothing to do with the objective reality anymore. It can be propped up merely by a system of rationalizations.
In fact, even at this juncture, some of us can already question what this objective reality really is. This is the likely question of those who believe more in themselves than in God, of those who rely on reason while neglecting the faith.
For those who have faith, they can manage to escape the grip of their rational and sentimental subjectivity to go into an objective world outside of themselves. Without faith, one opens himself to the possibility of being invincibly imprisoned in his own world.
Simplicity helps us accept and live the faith. It’s what makes us children who accept things first, who allow ourselves to be guided and taught, before asking questions, not out of unbelief but rather for greater understanding.
Remember what our Lord said about the kingdom of heaven. He went as far as to say that it is for little children precisely because of their simplicity: “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me. For the kingdom of heaven is for such.” (Mt 19,14)
We need to devise an interior mechanism, more spiritual than material, to keep ourselves like children even as we grow in worldly knowledge and skills, and prone to thinking that we can already live by ourselves, independently of God.
This mechanism can include anything that fosters our presence of God all throughout the day, the practice of rectifying our intention and relating everything that we do to God. We have to break the barrier of awkwardness and incompetence in this regard. We actually have the means. What’s missing is our will to use this mechanism.
And lest we think simplicity is naivete, and gullibility, let’s remind ourselves of what our Lord said: “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10,16) Simplicity would not be true simplicity if it does not come with cleverness and shrewdness.
Our Lord himself, the epitome of simplicity, is also the epitome of shrewdness. Remember how he read men’s minds, and formed his statements according to what he knew!
That may be a difficult act to follow, but we can always try. We have life itself, with all its cultures, civilizations and our ever-expanding personal experiences, to teach us how to be both clever and simple as our Lord wants us to be.
But we should always be aware of our need to develop this virtue of simplicity. We cannot take this duty for granted, because the logic of our flesh and the logic of the world tend to complicate us.
The false glitter of the celebrity world, the escape mechanisms of sex and drugs, the anomalies of abortion, contraception, same-sex unions, etc., indicate the extent to which our complications have worsened. We are actually ripe for a disaster unless we change.
With our neck-breaking pace of development, with its unavoidable dust cloud of complications, we need to realize more deeply that the way to go is not by being quixotic, tilting at windmills and grappling with phantoms, but by being simple.
The temptation to be quixotic can be strong, since we always feel we can handle things by ourselves. Our sense of freedom and responsibility often blind us to the basic truth that we need to be grounded on God always to be able to live properly, let alone, do things rightly.
This quixotic attitude can lead us to that situation of self-righteousness, denounced by Christ himself when he told some of the people’s leaders that “they have eyes, but don’t see, they have ears, but don’t hear…” It’s the wide, easy, seemingly practical road to perdition, mentioned in the gospel.
Simplicity is the way to objectivity, and to all the other values connected with objectivity. It keeps us in touch with reality, the one meant for us. We have to say this, because as human beings, we are capable of creating parallel realities. That’s our abiding problem.
Of course, our subjective world will always vary from person to person. But at least this variety can still be linked to an objective reality. Our predicament is that we can have a subjective perception of things that has nothing to do with the objective reality anymore. It can be propped up merely by a system of rationalizations.
In fact, even at this juncture, some of us can already question what this objective reality really is. This is the likely question of those who believe more in themselves than in God, of those who rely on reason while neglecting the faith.
For those who have faith, they can manage to escape the grip of their rational and sentimental subjectivity to go into an objective world outside of themselves. Without faith, one opens himself to the possibility of being invincibly imprisoned in his own world.
Simplicity helps us accept and live the faith. It’s what makes us children who accept things first, who allow ourselves to be guided and taught, before asking questions, not out of unbelief but rather for greater understanding.
Remember what our Lord said about the kingdom of heaven. He went as far as to say that it is for little children precisely because of their simplicity: “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me. For the kingdom of heaven is for such.” (Mt 19,14)
We need to devise an interior mechanism, more spiritual than material, to keep ourselves like children even as we grow in worldly knowledge and skills, and prone to thinking that we can already live by ourselves, independently of God.
This mechanism can include anything that fosters our presence of God all throughout the day, the practice of rectifying our intention and relating everything that we do to God. We have to break the barrier of awkwardness and incompetence in this regard. We actually have the means. What’s missing is our will to use this mechanism.
And lest we think simplicity is naivete, and gullibility, let’s remind ourselves of what our Lord said: “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10,16) Simplicity would not be true simplicity if it does not come with cleverness and shrewdness.
Our Lord himself, the epitome of simplicity, is also the epitome of shrewdness. Remember how he read men’s minds, and formed his statements according to what he knew!
That may be a difficult act to follow, but we can always try. We have life itself, with all its cultures, civilizations and our ever-expanding personal experiences, to teach us how to be both clever and simple as our Lord wants us to be.
But we should always be aware of our need to develop this virtue of simplicity. We cannot take this duty for granted, because the logic of our flesh and the logic of the world tend to complicate us.
The false glitter of the celebrity world, the escape mechanisms of sex and drugs, the anomalies of abortion, contraception, same-sex unions, etc., indicate the extent to which our complications have worsened. We are actually ripe for a disaster unless we change.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Spiritual and moral auditing
AUDITING need not only be financial. More important than financial, it should be done to verify the spiritual and moral conditions of our life. Are we in good shape? Are we aware of the problems? Are we already thinking of the appropriate solutions and remedies?
This spiritual and moral auditing is done mainly through the examination of conscience, which we should try to do regularly, if not daily, just before going to bed. It will give us a good picture of our spiritual life, monitoring its developments and challenges, and defining its directions for growth and fruitfulness.
More importantly, it gives an occasion to say sorry to God, to patch up things with him and to begin again. It’s where the theories of spirituality are poised to practice, where desires are positioned to action.
The examination of conscience is a wonderful tool for our spiritual maintenance, where we do a little tweaking here and there, a little tightening and oiling of the different parts of our life, a little self-motivating exercise for our tired if not harassed selves.
We cannot deny the fact that even without major trials and sins, we need to do some regular cleaning of our spiritual life. Everything else needs that—our body, the car, the garden, our tables, our cabinets, etc. Without this frequent dusting and wiping, things just pile up into a mess. We always collect dirt all day long.
And these days when we are subjected to so many competing elements, we cannot deny the fact that we have to contend with an environment whose spiritual and moral ecology is complicated, if not downright polluted. Precisely, the complicated and confused air can unleash and create more deforming factors.
Even our most civilized methods of communication are swamped with twisted and distorted values. If we are not careful, we would unknowingly imbibe these contaminated values, slowly building up a disaster that can explode sooner or later.
We have to be more sensitive to our need for examination of conscience. In it, we put ourselves in the presence of God, who is a father to us, ever understanding and quick to forgive, and who gives us light to see things objectively.
When done well, we can see the roots of our problems, and can have an idea of what to do with them. We should never remain only in the level of symptoms. And solutions and antidotes, one way or another, are always available to our problems no matter how difficult they are.
It’s amazing that if through the examination of conscience we manage to micro-manage our spiritual life well, always coming up with prompt resolutions no matter how small they are, then we can really take giant steps in our spiritual life. Impossible dreams, like chastity, become a throbbing reality.
Truth is we just cannot allow ourselves to go namby-pamby in our lives, letting ourselves to drift to any direction our moods, feelings and instincts may take us. We need to be quite serious, putting reason infused by faith and charity as the lead agent of our life.
Obviously, this would need a certain discipline and training. And as they go, they will always require effort and a lot of sacrifices. We have to convince ourselves that these are important. They are indispensable. We need to rebel against that enveloping culture that makes us long only for the good time and rot in complacency.
Our true joy, our genuine liberation, as our Lord has told us, can only be attained through the cross. There’s no other formula. Our loving can only be put right, with the proper motive, content and direction, when purified by the cross.
We have to help one another learn this most indispensable skill. At the moment, most people are yet ignorant of this practice, and those who know are often stifled by awkwardness and sheer incompetence.
We need to know, more or less, the parameters involved in our spiritual life, so we would know how to develop it and not feel lost. For this, we need to study and get advice from experts and spiritual directors.
While the examination of conscience can always be done in simple ways, I think we also need to know some arts we can borrow from the fields of accounting, medicine and military science, like inventory reports, intelligence work, diagnosis, proper prescriptions of “pills,” special diets and regimens, etc.
With our challenging times, we cannot remain in the level of the “provinciano.” We have to be very literate in our spiritual affairs!
This spiritual and moral auditing is done mainly through the examination of conscience, which we should try to do regularly, if not daily, just before going to bed. It will give us a good picture of our spiritual life, monitoring its developments and challenges, and defining its directions for growth and fruitfulness.
More importantly, it gives an occasion to say sorry to God, to patch up things with him and to begin again. It’s where the theories of spirituality are poised to practice, where desires are positioned to action.
The examination of conscience is a wonderful tool for our spiritual maintenance, where we do a little tweaking here and there, a little tightening and oiling of the different parts of our life, a little self-motivating exercise for our tired if not harassed selves.
We cannot deny the fact that even without major trials and sins, we need to do some regular cleaning of our spiritual life. Everything else needs that—our body, the car, the garden, our tables, our cabinets, etc. Without this frequent dusting and wiping, things just pile up into a mess. We always collect dirt all day long.
And these days when we are subjected to so many competing elements, we cannot deny the fact that we have to contend with an environment whose spiritual and moral ecology is complicated, if not downright polluted. Precisely, the complicated and confused air can unleash and create more deforming factors.
Even our most civilized methods of communication are swamped with twisted and distorted values. If we are not careful, we would unknowingly imbibe these contaminated values, slowly building up a disaster that can explode sooner or later.
We have to be more sensitive to our need for examination of conscience. In it, we put ourselves in the presence of God, who is a father to us, ever understanding and quick to forgive, and who gives us light to see things objectively.
When done well, we can see the roots of our problems, and can have an idea of what to do with them. We should never remain only in the level of symptoms. And solutions and antidotes, one way or another, are always available to our problems no matter how difficult they are.
It’s amazing that if through the examination of conscience we manage to micro-manage our spiritual life well, always coming up with prompt resolutions no matter how small they are, then we can really take giant steps in our spiritual life. Impossible dreams, like chastity, become a throbbing reality.
Truth is we just cannot allow ourselves to go namby-pamby in our lives, letting ourselves to drift to any direction our moods, feelings and instincts may take us. We need to be quite serious, putting reason infused by faith and charity as the lead agent of our life.
Obviously, this would need a certain discipline and training. And as they go, they will always require effort and a lot of sacrifices. We have to convince ourselves that these are important. They are indispensable. We need to rebel against that enveloping culture that makes us long only for the good time and rot in complacency.
Our true joy, our genuine liberation, as our Lord has told us, can only be attained through the cross. There’s no other formula. Our loving can only be put right, with the proper motive, content and direction, when purified by the cross.
We have to help one another learn this most indispensable skill. At the moment, most people are yet ignorant of this practice, and those who know are often stifled by awkwardness and sheer incompetence.
We need to know, more or less, the parameters involved in our spiritual life, so we would know how to develop it and not feel lost. For this, we need to study and get advice from experts and spiritual directors.
While the examination of conscience can always be done in simple ways, I think we also need to know some arts we can borrow from the fields of accounting, medicine and military science, like inventory reports, intelligence work, diagnosis, proper prescriptions of “pills,” special diets and regimens, etc.
With our challenging times, we cannot remain in the level of the “provinciano.” We have to be very literate in our spiritual affairs!
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