WITH Ash Wednesday, we enter a new season of Lent. In spite of the gloom and austerity usually associated with it, there’s actually something new and bright to it. That’s because Lent involves a certain dying to ourselves so we can be born again in Christ.
That’s the plain truth about Lent. All the sacrifices, mortifications and penance, the fasting and abstinence, are meant to cure us of our old man so we can be a new man in Christ.
Remember St. Paul to the Ephesians: “Put off…the old man…and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.” (4,22-24)
We need to proclaim this truth of our faith more widely and vigorously these days. Even if, thank God, we can still count on a large number of Christian faithful who still retain this understanding of Lent, we cannot be blind to a growing sector that seems oblivious to this reality.
To a certain extent, this truth is facing the possibility of an endangered species, what with all the secularizing elements around us now, the consumerism, the hedonism and greed, etc.
Our evangelization about Lent has to reach further than the usual traditional areas. It now has to enter deep into cyberspace, and has to tango and tangle hand-to-hand with current issues in the different fields of human affairs—business, politics, sciences, etc.
We have to find ways to make this truth shine out in all its glory. For, indeed, Lent is good news, not bad news. We need to show the whole happy truth about it, without avoiding and without getting entangled with its essentially penitential character.
With gift of tongues, with elegance and naturalness, let’s tell everyone we need to embrace the cross, the Cross of Christ, to be able to resurrect from our damaged, sinful nature.
Obviously, for this we have to recount the whole truth about ourselves. I know that there are all sorts of ideologies and isms about what and who we really are. We should not hesitate to offer the Christian view, using the appropriate terms and arguments to transmit it as integrally as possible.
Of course, we have to respect everyone’s views. No matter how different and even conflicting these views may be, let’s continue with an abiding dialogue in search for the whole truth about ourselves.
Toward this end, let’s foster friendship and mutual trust always. Truth should always be pursued in charity. Its search should not be just a matter of who is right and who is wrong, but more of growing in our love for one another, since it’s love that ultimately makes truth come out.
This is the “game plan” lived by Christ himself even offering his life on the Cross for it. With it we can hope to soften the rough and sharp edges of our differences, paving the way for true unity among ourselves.
We ought to be one since we are all children and people of God, and we are all brothers and sisters, regardless of our differences.
Lent should put our full attention to the necessity of the Christ’s Cross in our life. It is what re-creates us. It perfects the precarious condition of our first creation, when we only knew how to enjoy the good but would not know what to do when we get into the ways of evil.
The Cross brings us to Christ. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mt 16,24) This is actually a formula we should always engrave in our hearts.
The Cross teaches us the true and complete ways of love. We often have our own ideas of love that are usually sweet and sugary, but actually incomplete, even twisted and detached from its true source and pattern.
The Cross extends the dimensions of our life, going beyond our natural limits so it can merge with God’s own life. We are meant for this. We have been designed for this.
That we have the senses, that we have intelligence and will, that we have been given grace—all these are meant to enable us to enter into communion with God and with everyone else. They are not for us to enjoy by ourselves.
It’s the Cross that makes all these feasible. And Lent is there is to remind us of it, and to rehearse and prepare us for it.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Productivity unbound
WHENEVER we talk about productivity, we almost always frame it in the context of management, business and economics. Actually there’s nothing wrong there, as long as we don’t stop there either.
Productivity in those terms alone looks interested only in the fruits without its roots, the end result without looking into the effort it needs, and its ultimate sources and purposes.
It’s notorious for its being measured always. It’s helplessly bound to the external and material aspects of things. It seems averse to any entanglement with its internal and spiritual requirements.
It diminishes our personhood and tends to convert us into automatons. It shuts out our spiritual self and just builds up our material and economic self. This is, of course, impoverishing us.
With this frame of mind our own work becomes a hindrance to our own proper development, even if we only consider the human side of our development. It can bear fruits that can taste sweet but actually are poisonous.
We thus need to unbind our idea of productivity from that very restrictive understanding. Truth is productivity can only have its ultimate source and objective in God.
This reality is not meant to hamper economic productivity, but rather to enhance it, purify it and put it in its proper orbit. Far from undermining the practical and immediate requirements of productivity, this truth of faith enables us to understand and live them better.
God can only be the source and purpose of our productivity, since everything comes from him and also belongs to him. Even our talents and other endowments that allow us to be productive ultimately come from him and belong to him. We have to acknowledge this truth always.
For this, we need to live our faith, and consistently apply it to all aspects of our life, including our professional life and the endless little and ordinary things that make up our daily life.
We need to overcome the initial awkwardness involved in living this reality. Given the temper of the times and the character of the current culture we have, we may have to exert some effort to recover the original role this truth of faith about our productivity plays in our life.
It’s time we relate our interest in productivity with our faith. This particular aspect has long been neglected. It’s usually taken for granted, then set aside, and then rejected and ridiculed. We need to correct the situation.
With this underlying understanding of our productivity, we expand its coverage not only in the area of business and economics but also in all aspects of our life—when we are alone or with others, when we are at home, in the office or with friends, when we have difficulties or when we enjoy a good time, etc.
Let’s remember what St. Paul said: “I know how to live humbly and I know how to live in abundance (I have been schooled to every place and every condition), to be filled and to be hungry, to have abundance and to suffer want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4,12-13)
We are told also that it is God who really knows how to guide us always, including in our work, because he knows what is best for us. “We know not what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself asks for us with unspeakable groanings.” (Heb 8,26)
We should try to keep this truth in mind always, but especially in our work, making the necessary adjustments and adaptations so that even in our mundane activities, we can always remember it and allow it to shape the way we work.
This truth can even greatly help us when we have to tackle with difficulties and our own weaknesses plus the temptations around. It will keep us going in spite of whatever, and doing it with gusto and sense of purpose, understanding why things are the way they are.
For example, with respect to our weaknesses and temptations, this truth will tell us that these events and elements in our life actually indicate where we have to struggle.
Putting us to the edge, they actually invite us to go beyond ourselves and to always go back to God. We should never depend on ourselves alone. We are nothing without God. These weaknesses and temptations, in fact, are clear occasions when God tells us he is very close to us.
This truth about the real source of productivity will help us to be serene and cheerful always, optimistic in spite of whatever.
Productivity in those terms alone looks interested only in the fruits without its roots, the end result without looking into the effort it needs, and its ultimate sources and purposes.
It’s notorious for its being measured always. It’s helplessly bound to the external and material aspects of things. It seems averse to any entanglement with its internal and spiritual requirements.
It diminishes our personhood and tends to convert us into automatons. It shuts out our spiritual self and just builds up our material and economic self. This is, of course, impoverishing us.
With this frame of mind our own work becomes a hindrance to our own proper development, even if we only consider the human side of our development. It can bear fruits that can taste sweet but actually are poisonous.
We thus need to unbind our idea of productivity from that very restrictive understanding. Truth is productivity can only have its ultimate source and objective in God.
This reality is not meant to hamper economic productivity, but rather to enhance it, purify it and put it in its proper orbit. Far from undermining the practical and immediate requirements of productivity, this truth of faith enables us to understand and live them better.
God can only be the source and purpose of our productivity, since everything comes from him and also belongs to him. Even our talents and other endowments that allow us to be productive ultimately come from him and belong to him. We have to acknowledge this truth always.
For this, we need to live our faith, and consistently apply it to all aspects of our life, including our professional life and the endless little and ordinary things that make up our daily life.
We need to overcome the initial awkwardness involved in living this reality. Given the temper of the times and the character of the current culture we have, we may have to exert some effort to recover the original role this truth of faith about our productivity plays in our life.
It’s time we relate our interest in productivity with our faith. This particular aspect has long been neglected. It’s usually taken for granted, then set aside, and then rejected and ridiculed. We need to correct the situation.
With this underlying understanding of our productivity, we expand its coverage not only in the area of business and economics but also in all aspects of our life—when we are alone or with others, when we are at home, in the office or with friends, when we have difficulties or when we enjoy a good time, etc.
Let’s remember what St. Paul said: “I know how to live humbly and I know how to live in abundance (I have been schooled to every place and every condition), to be filled and to be hungry, to have abundance and to suffer want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4,12-13)
We are told also that it is God who really knows how to guide us always, including in our work, because he knows what is best for us. “We know not what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself asks for us with unspeakable groanings.” (Heb 8,26)
We should try to keep this truth in mind always, but especially in our work, making the necessary adjustments and adaptations so that even in our mundane activities, we can always remember it and allow it to shape the way we work.
This truth can even greatly help us when we have to tackle with difficulties and our own weaknesses plus the temptations around. It will keep us going in spite of whatever, and doing it with gusto and sense of purpose, understanding why things are the way they are.
For example, with respect to our weaknesses and temptations, this truth will tell us that these events and elements in our life actually indicate where we have to struggle.
Putting us to the edge, they actually invite us to go beyond ourselves and to always go back to God. We should never depend on ourselves alone. We are nothing without God. These weaknesses and temptations, in fact, are clear occasions when God tells us he is very close to us.
This truth about the real source of productivity will help us to be serene and cheerful always, optimistic in spite of whatever.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Low population causes recession?
THAT was the drift of an article I read recently. The president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, aka Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, claimed that bankers are not the cause of the current global economic crisis, but rather the low birth rate obtaining in many countries these days.
“The true cause of the crisis is the decline in the birth rate,” he said. The cause is ordinary people who do not “believe in the future,” and have few or no children. The bankers and other economic players are only agents and tools of an ailing social structure that needs to be transformed.
The Vatican economist said that since people are not anymore interested in having children, we are creating a negative economic context that can only lead to recession.
He noted that in Western developed countries, the birth rate has fallen to 0%, i.e., 2 children or less per family. This can only mean impending disaster to said countries.
I personally feel there is at least a correlation between low birth rate and recession. I won’t go so far as to affirm a cause-and-effect link, since there are just so many factors affecting the dynamics to isolate low birth rate as the cause of recession.
But I also believe that low birth rate is a significant factor, if not the defining one. We in the end are the ultimate resource responsible for our economic growth. Of course, it’s not just numbers that matter, but also the quality. Just the same, all things considered equal, the more we are the better we are going to be.
We just have to make the necessary investment, the necessary sacrifice, trying to make it effective and productive, so that we can put everyone in his best condition to be assets not liabilities to our economic development, as well as in the other aspects of our growth. Education and continuing formation should be a prime concern.
My exposure to different families leads me to conclude that the bigger family more than the smaller one is better able to fend off all sorts of difficulties and to tackle all sorts of challenges.
Of course, this is easier said than done. In real time, the dynamics can be so complicated to dare to simplify it with some theoretical guidelines. For sure, there are moments, when a smaller family would have the advantage over the bigger one.
But we can’t stop there. There are short-term and long-term considerations to be made, and a proper blending and scheduling of these aspects is important. In any event, some amount of sacrifice is unavoidable, and we should be ready for it.
To me this question of the relationship between population level and our economic status should not be framed only within purely economic and financial terms. That would impoverish the analysis of the issue.
We always have to consider the moral and spiritual dimension, since we are not only economic entities, but firstly and lastly, moral and spiritual persons. Much of the economic crisis we are suffering can be traced to moral and spiritual causes—vices, laziness, greed, lack of care for the others, and worse, lack of faith and charity.
There are now many studies that reinforce the thesis that in the end the main cause of our current global crisis is precisely our crisis in the spiritual and moral life. We are spending more than we earn. There’s a lot of imprudence in our spending behavior, focusing more on instant comfort and pleasure than on productive investments, on self-seeking than on solidarity.
What happened in the States regarding the sub-prime crisis, what is happening in Dubai and in Greece now, are all indicative of a lifestyle that is more wasteful than productive. Perhaps, we can say they are getting what they deserve, a comeuppance they have been building up themselves.
It’s a lifestyle that is afraid of the authentic responsibilities and sacrifices in life. It tends to create a fictional world, its own version of the land of milk and honey. It luxuriates in consumerism and all forms of hedonism and intemperance. It is allergic to having children, to caring and bringing children up to maturity. They even kill babies.
It is this sick mindset that needs to be broken and replaced with a healthy one. Now, do we like to get into that anti-life culture? Let’s be very careful with things like the RH bill. Let’s elect leaders who are truly competent, with integrity and pro-life, pro-God, pro-country.
“The true cause of the crisis is the decline in the birth rate,” he said. The cause is ordinary people who do not “believe in the future,” and have few or no children. The bankers and other economic players are only agents and tools of an ailing social structure that needs to be transformed.
The Vatican economist said that since people are not anymore interested in having children, we are creating a negative economic context that can only lead to recession.
He noted that in Western developed countries, the birth rate has fallen to 0%, i.e., 2 children or less per family. This can only mean impending disaster to said countries.
I personally feel there is at least a correlation between low birth rate and recession. I won’t go so far as to affirm a cause-and-effect link, since there are just so many factors affecting the dynamics to isolate low birth rate as the cause of recession.
But I also believe that low birth rate is a significant factor, if not the defining one. We in the end are the ultimate resource responsible for our economic growth. Of course, it’s not just numbers that matter, but also the quality. Just the same, all things considered equal, the more we are the better we are going to be.
We just have to make the necessary investment, the necessary sacrifice, trying to make it effective and productive, so that we can put everyone in his best condition to be assets not liabilities to our economic development, as well as in the other aspects of our growth. Education and continuing formation should be a prime concern.
My exposure to different families leads me to conclude that the bigger family more than the smaller one is better able to fend off all sorts of difficulties and to tackle all sorts of challenges.
Of course, this is easier said than done. In real time, the dynamics can be so complicated to dare to simplify it with some theoretical guidelines. For sure, there are moments, when a smaller family would have the advantage over the bigger one.
But we can’t stop there. There are short-term and long-term considerations to be made, and a proper blending and scheduling of these aspects is important. In any event, some amount of sacrifice is unavoidable, and we should be ready for it.
To me this question of the relationship between population level and our economic status should not be framed only within purely economic and financial terms. That would impoverish the analysis of the issue.
We always have to consider the moral and spiritual dimension, since we are not only economic entities, but firstly and lastly, moral and spiritual persons. Much of the economic crisis we are suffering can be traced to moral and spiritual causes—vices, laziness, greed, lack of care for the others, and worse, lack of faith and charity.
There are now many studies that reinforce the thesis that in the end the main cause of our current global crisis is precisely our crisis in the spiritual and moral life. We are spending more than we earn. There’s a lot of imprudence in our spending behavior, focusing more on instant comfort and pleasure than on productive investments, on self-seeking than on solidarity.
What happened in the States regarding the sub-prime crisis, what is happening in Dubai and in Greece now, are all indicative of a lifestyle that is more wasteful than productive. Perhaps, we can say they are getting what they deserve, a comeuppance they have been building up themselves.
It’s a lifestyle that is afraid of the authentic responsibilities and sacrifices in life. It tends to create a fictional world, its own version of the land of milk and honey. It luxuriates in consumerism and all forms of hedonism and intemperance. It is allergic to having children, to caring and bringing children up to maturity. They even kill babies.
It is this sick mindset that needs to be broken and replaced with a healthy one. Now, do we like to get into that anti-life culture? Let’s be very careful with things like the RH bill. Let’s elect leaders who are truly competent, with integrity and pro-life, pro-God, pro-country.
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