IT’S not to be self-righteous, nor to impose things on others. That’s not being Christian. To be Christian is rather the opposite—loving, understanding, compassionate, respectful of freedom, forgiving. In short, to be like Christ who loves us till death on the cross.
There’s a crying need for be consistent in our Christianity, since what we usually have around is a watered-down version, showy on the outside but empty in the inside. We have many Christians in name only, but not in substance.
This can easily be shown in the public discussion of social or political issues. The controversy over the RH Bill has surfaced this kind of sad phenomenon.
Just the other day, I was floored when a young man, otherwise articulate and intelligent, brazenly said that in the discussion of the RH Bill issue, Church people should not be allowed to participate, and questions of morality should not be included.
When asked how it can be democratic and open if such exclusions were to be made, he launched on an explanation of a strange political theory that says Church people and moral aspects do not have a role to play in such public debate. Church-state separation was invoked. And he said he was a Christian!
Unbelievable! So now, to be a priest or an active member of the Church disqualifies him to take part in the public discussion of issues? To input spiritual and moral considerations based on faith is to corrupt the process beyond repair?
What kind of ideology is this that is afflicting the world today and is affecting even our very brilliant minds?
There is a lot of ignorance, confusion and errors in the basic aspects and dimensions of our life. It’s not anymore only the so-called global warming or the now emerging pharmaceutical and electronic wastes that really bog us down. It’s ignorance, confusion and errors in the fundamental things of life.
We have to work on the consistency of our Christian identity. To be sure, it’s not only faith that is involved here. Faith has to be go together with reason. Neither should reason, in all its forms and levels, be the sole guide for us. Much less, the emotions and passions.
Faith and reason have to be inseparable. One cannot be without the other, because the very nature and dignity of our humanity require it. We are not only rational beings, but also beings of belief.
We are neither pure matter nor pure spirit. We are both at the same time. And we live in a world that is neither purely material nor intelligible, but also spiritual that opens us to the supernatural world of God, grace, faith, religion.
Also, Christianity is not only a personal or individual affair. It has a social dimension whose proper institution is the Church. It inheres in all natural levels of social life we have—from the family to schools to civil society to different fields of human endeavors to state to world organizations—but it goes beyond them.
Thus, to be Christian entails keeping the mind of the Church too, and not only our own personal religious thoughts and experiences. So we need to be aware of our duties toward the parish, the diocese and the universal Church in the end.
These duties include nourishing our Christian life within the Church—through God’s word, liturgy and hierarchy—because the abiding presence and action of Christ in the Spirit resides in the Church. No one is a Christian independently of the Church. He necessarily belongs to it and is part of it.
One’s personal encounter with Christ always takes place in the Church, precisely because the Church has been established by Christ for that purpose. He came to save and perfect us individually and collectively.
These truths of faith, of course, are not to be imposed on others. But they simply have to be proclaimed, otherwise, other “truths” deriving from some inadequate ideologies or merely personal thoughts would just prevail over us.
The truths of faith never infringe on freedom. They actually nurture our freedom that can easily be distorted and abused by us. They have an inherent forcefulness and attractiveness that is respectful of freedom.
We need to be clear about these basic truths about ourselves, because for so long now, we have been dominated and enslaved by a certain world ethos that marginalizes if not excludes God, faith, Christianity, etc.
It’s an ethos that leaves us to our own devices, unavoidably leading us to abuses of power, then to injustice and inconsistent Christianity.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The cultural front
WE need to be aware of this human need. We have to take care of our culture. If we want to grow and develop as authentic human beings, culture is both unavoidable and indispensable in our life.
Can we really say that we are conscious of our duties and responsibilities toward our culture? Do we know what are involved in this task? In our life's continuing struggle for meaning, culture is one of the main fronts to attend to.
A cursory look around would indicate that there's hardly any deliberate effort to take care of our culture. It is somehow presumed that we have a culture, but we are quite ignorant of how caring for it has to be carried out.
First of all, we need to understand its nature and character. It has both objective and subjective dimensions, spiritual and material aspects, global and local scope, etc. More importantly, it has both passive and active parts, and we need to know how to handle its many requirements.
We cannot be totally passive in our attitude toward it, though we cannot help but be receptive to it in our daily life. That's because culture is like the air we breathe. This time, though, we need to realize that we also have a role to play in creating that air, or at least in purifying it and putting it in conditions proper to us.
We just cannot allow culture to grow on its own. It needs our intervention. We have to understand that culture, like everything else in our life, is both a gift we receive and a project we have to do and develop.
Especially these days when the pace of development is getting faster and more complex, there's now a greater need for us to take fuller responsibility over it. We have to do things in such a way that we can say we make our own culture, even if culture also to a certain extent makes us.
Our problem now is that we seem to be falling for a mindless lifestyle of activism, guided mainly by values that are not deeply rooted enough on our true human dignity. In fact, this reference of what our true human dignity is has become impertinent to many people.
For many of us, the main principle that shapes our lifestyle seems to be pragmatism, and all its cohorts—popularity or fame, wealth and power, vanity and pride, etc. The inputs of faith and religion, so indispensable in figuring out who we really are, that's supposed to be basis of our culture, are hardly considered.
We need to correct this anomaly. We have to dismantle the so-called tyranny of relativism that a priori disposes anything that has to do with religion. That's unfair. That's completely undemocratic.
With this defective attitude, we cannot help but generate a thoroughly secularized culture that is allergic to spiritual and supernatural realities. That would compromise the flowering of a culture that is proper to us.
That is why these days, many people find it hard to relate what they are doing professionally, socially, politically, etc., to God. Their activities do not bring them closer to God. In fact, the reverse is true. Their activities bring them farther away from God.
There ensues a growing awkwardness in our relation with God. Religion becomes frozen in some formalistic rituals and customs, emptied of its vital substance.
With that predicament, what can we expect? For sure, the temptations to deception, injustice, etc., cannot be avoided. The stronger ones in worldly terms simply dominate the others. Our weaknesses, like our laziness and our concupiscence, cannot be properly addressed and healed. They tend to fester.
We need to create a culture that is proper to us as persons and ultimately as children of God. It is a culture that embraces both the spiritual and material dimensions of our life, our temporal affairs and eternal goal. Nothing less is needed.
For this, we need to help one another. The creation and development of culture is a universal concern. It has to involve all of us. Thus, we need to be more aware of what we call here as the cultural front of our life's struggles. We should avoid being indifferent to it.
At the moment, we can ask for example if we know how to place this new phenomenon of the Internet technology in the pursuit of developing a culture proper to us. Has our fascination for it led us closer to God and to the others? Has it built up more solidarity, justice, and charity?
Can we really say that we are conscious of our duties and responsibilities toward our culture? Do we know what are involved in this task? In our life's continuing struggle for meaning, culture is one of the main fronts to attend to.
A cursory look around would indicate that there's hardly any deliberate effort to take care of our culture. It is somehow presumed that we have a culture, but we are quite ignorant of how caring for it has to be carried out.
First of all, we need to understand its nature and character. It has both objective and subjective dimensions, spiritual and material aspects, global and local scope, etc. More importantly, it has both passive and active parts, and we need to know how to handle its many requirements.
We cannot be totally passive in our attitude toward it, though we cannot help but be receptive to it in our daily life. That's because culture is like the air we breathe. This time, though, we need to realize that we also have a role to play in creating that air, or at least in purifying it and putting it in conditions proper to us.
We just cannot allow culture to grow on its own. It needs our intervention. We have to understand that culture, like everything else in our life, is both a gift we receive and a project we have to do and develop.
Especially these days when the pace of development is getting faster and more complex, there's now a greater need for us to take fuller responsibility over it. We have to do things in such a way that we can say we make our own culture, even if culture also to a certain extent makes us.
Our problem now is that we seem to be falling for a mindless lifestyle of activism, guided mainly by values that are not deeply rooted enough on our true human dignity. In fact, this reference of what our true human dignity is has become impertinent to many people.
For many of us, the main principle that shapes our lifestyle seems to be pragmatism, and all its cohorts—popularity or fame, wealth and power, vanity and pride, etc. The inputs of faith and religion, so indispensable in figuring out who we really are, that's supposed to be basis of our culture, are hardly considered.
We need to correct this anomaly. We have to dismantle the so-called tyranny of relativism that a priori disposes anything that has to do with religion. That's unfair. That's completely undemocratic.
With this defective attitude, we cannot help but generate a thoroughly secularized culture that is allergic to spiritual and supernatural realities. That would compromise the flowering of a culture that is proper to us.
That is why these days, many people find it hard to relate what they are doing professionally, socially, politically, etc., to God. Their activities do not bring them closer to God. In fact, the reverse is true. Their activities bring them farther away from God.
There ensues a growing awkwardness in our relation with God. Religion becomes frozen in some formalistic rituals and customs, emptied of its vital substance.
With that predicament, what can we expect? For sure, the temptations to deception, injustice, etc., cannot be avoided. The stronger ones in worldly terms simply dominate the others. Our weaknesses, like our laziness and our concupiscence, cannot be properly addressed and healed. They tend to fester.
We need to create a culture that is proper to us as persons and ultimately as children of God. It is a culture that embraces both the spiritual and material dimensions of our life, our temporal affairs and eternal goal. Nothing less is needed.
For this, we need to help one another. The creation and development of culture is a universal concern. It has to involve all of us. Thus, we need to be more aware of what we call here as the cultural front of our life's struggles. We should avoid being indifferent to it.
At the moment, we can ask for example if we know how to place this new phenomenon of the Internet technology in the pursuit of developing a culture proper to us. Has our fascination for it led us closer to God and to the others? Has it built up more solidarity, justice, and charity?
Sunday, May 8, 2011
My Blessed Pope John Paul the Great
I WAS in the spring of youth, at age 26, when a Polish Cardinal became Pope John Paul II in October 1978.
That election electrified the world. He was the first non-Italian Pope after so many centuries. He came from behind the then Iron Curtain. He was relatively young as a Pope. He exuded a magnetism that attracted everyone instantly, honed in part by his background in the theater.
As a consequence, he approximated the status of a rock star, adored by legions. All these qualities were amply backed by a solid theological and spiritual formation, forged to a large extent, especially at the start of his vocation, in secrecy and hard labor. His pastoral exposure was vast and deep.
He was the right man to be in a communist country. When made a Pope, few doubted that he was the right man to deal with a world that at that time was in some kind of freefall to all sorts of anomalies and irregularities.
There was the tension between the West and the East, the so-called free world and the communist states that was reaching breaking point. The world was wallowing in worldly mire, not anymore knowing how to extricate from it.
Within the Church, the problems and challenges were no less daunting. Confusion, abuses and errors erupted after Vatican II in the fields of doctrine and practice. Vocations hit bottom, threatening effectivity in Church functions.
On one side, many churchmen turned left and experimented on the so-called Liberation Theology that tried to hybrid Marxist principles with Christianity. On the other side, a good number also turned too far right, sticking to rigid traditionalism and dogmatism.
In the Philippines, martial law reigned, enforcing an artificial system of peace and order, and economic prosperity and political stability. We all knew it was not going to last. The bubble would soon burst.
In all these, I was just like everybody else, trying to make do with the status quo, contented with what I had at hand, which was already quite a bit then. More tellingly, I practically had no idea how to go forward other than just flowing with the tide.
Somehow, the seeds of change and transformation were sown the day Pope John Paul II presented himself to the world for the first time. He looked great, even gorgeous, if that term can be used.
He threw a challenge, something like opening the doors of the world to Christ. I’ve heard that line before, but at that time it had a different ring. It fell on a ground that surprised me because the soil took it very seriously.
So I followed him closely, at first, very discreetly, then later on, more energetically. I noticed how he used to the hilt all his God-given gifts of intellect, charm, prudence and fortitude. I feasted on his writings, which came copiously and all hard-hitting.
A friend of mine used to joke that the Pope wrote faster than we could read. And I agreed, because trying to digest his words and thoughts was like swallowing a brick.
But the moment, I managed, I felt greatly rewarded, as a new, strong light would be shed, clearly identifying my errors and ignorance and expanding my views and knowledge significantly. With those experiences, I understood more why love necessarily involves suffering.
Then the Pope came to the Philippines in 1981. My excitement was indescribable. I did everything to get close to him. I made myself part of the press team, though I was not into writing at that time. Together with others, I filled the streets of Manila with the banners carrying his motto, Totus tuus, All yours.
Then finally came the encounter. It was in Baclaran Church, the first stop the Pope made after his arrival. I placed myself right behind the chief security officer assigned to him by Marcos.
When he stood up and made his way to shake hands with some people, I made sure I was one of them. And I got it. I’m usually blasé with personalities and celebrities, but at that moment, I practically melted. I could not forget his gaze on me. It spoke volumes.
That sealed my attachment to him. I obviously had to purify it and put it in its proper place, but I knew it was like a pump that made me going and going until I finally got ordained a priest by him in Rome in 1991.
I consider that a miracle because I never thought I would become a priest.
That election electrified the world. He was the first non-Italian Pope after so many centuries. He came from behind the then Iron Curtain. He was relatively young as a Pope. He exuded a magnetism that attracted everyone instantly, honed in part by his background in the theater.
As a consequence, he approximated the status of a rock star, adored by legions. All these qualities were amply backed by a solid theological and spiritual formation, forged to a large extent, especially at the start of his vocation, in secrecy and hard labor. His pastoral exposure was vast and deep.
He was the right man to be in a communist country. When made a Pope, few doubted that he was the right man to deal with a world that at that time was in some kind of freefall to all sorts of anomalies and irregularities.
There was the tension between the West and the East, the so-called free world and the communist states that was reaching breaking point. The world was wallowing in worldly mire, not anymore knowing how to extricate from it.
Within the Church, the problems and challenges were no less daunting. Confusion, abuses and errors erupted after Vatican II in the fields of doctrine and practice. Vocations hit bottom, threatening effectivity in Church functions.
On one side, many churchmen turned left and experimented on the so-called Liberation Theology that tried to hybrid Marxist principles with Christianity. On the other side, a good number also turned too far right, sticking to rigid traditionalism and dogmatism.
In the Philippines, martial law reigned, enforcing an artificial system of peace and order, and economic prosperity and political stability. We all knew it was not going to last. The bubble would soon burst.
In all these, I was just like everybody else, trying to make do with the status quo, contented with what I had at hand, which was already quite a bit then. More tellingly, I practically had no idea how to go forward other than just flowing with the tide.
Somehow, the seeds of change and transformation were sown the day Pope John Paul II presented himself to the world for the first time. He looked great, even gorgeous, if that term can be used.
He threw a challenge, something like opening the doors of the world to Christ. I’ve heard that line before, but at that time it had a different ring. It fell on a ground that surprised me because the soil took it very seriously.
So I followed him closely, at first, very discreetly, then later on, more energetically. I noticed how he used to the hilt all his God-given gifts of intellect, charm, prudence and fortitude. I feasted on his writings, which came copiously and all hard-hitting.
A friend of mine used to joke that the Pope wrote faster than we could read. And I agreed, because trying to digest his words and thoughts was like swallowing a brick.
But the moment, I managed, I felt greatly rewarded, as a new, strong light would be shed, clearly identifying my errors and ignorance and expanding my views and knowledge significantly. With those experiences, I understood more why love necessarily involves suffering.
Then the Pope came to the Philippines in 1981. My excitement was indescribable. I did everything to get close to him. I made myself part of the press team, though I was not into writing at that time. Together with others, I filled the streets of Manila with the banners carrying his motto, Totus tuus, All yours.
Then finally came the encounter. It was in Baclaran Church, the first stop the Pope made after his arrival. I placed myself right behind the chief security officer assigned to him by Marcos.
When he stood up and made his way to shake hands with some people, I made sure I was one of them. And I got it. I’m usually blasé with personalities and celebrities, but at that moment, I practically melted. I could not forget his gaze on me. It spoke volumes.
That sealed my attachment to him. I obviously had to purify it and put it in its proper place, but I knew it was like a pump that made me going and going until I finally got ordained a priest by him in Rome in 1991.
I consider that a miracle because I never thought I would become a priest.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)