Put God in politics

OUR times, I believe, call us to be tough yet flexible, tolerant yet
discerning. And now that we are in an election season, these qualities
are in great need.

    To be sure, the only and best way to acquire these seemingly
contrasting traits is to be with God, to have a living relationship
with him, where an intimate and ongoing conversation between him and
us takes place.

    Some people are questioning the feasibility of such a situation, that
is, to be able to talk with God. I don’t know where they get that
idea, since as far as I as well as many others are concerned, God is
everywhere and he wants us to talk to him.

    We need to reinforce our belief that only in God can we have
everything. Let’s be wary of suggestions, now becoming very popular,
that there are things in which God has absolutely nothing to say or
contribute and that we are just on our own to think, say and do
whatever we want.

    A passage from the Psalms can remind us of this need for God. “The
Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. My God is my
helper, and in him will I put my trust. My protector and the horn of
my salvation, and my support.” (18,2)

    Sad to say, there are now a rising number of politicians who not only
put God and his Church aside, but also mock and openly attack him and
the Church. Or to be politically correct, they also make appeals to
God but a God according to their own terms, a god and church of their
own making.

    Some have gone to the extent of saying that this business of
including God in politics, for example, hinders their freedom and
effectiveness. In short, that God is a spoiler.

    And they can be Catholics who pride themselves to be good Catholics
because according to them, they do this and do that, just like any
fawning politician would parrot, and yet they go against Church
doctrine.

    They even dare to say that the Church should change, otherwise it
will be depleted of members, and that there would be a mass exodus of
faithful to other sects, etc.
   
    I would say, no problem, since the Church has always experienced this
mass exodus in the past and it will still continue to have such thing
in the future. Remember that even in the time of Christ, massive
defections already took place, and in spite of the systemic
persecutions through the years, it is still around.

    That thinking of some of our Catholic politicians or politicized
Catholics only show their poor and politicized understanding of what
it means to be in the Church. It would indicate they think of the
Church as a kind of prison such that they now are threatening a
massive jailbreak. Well, they can go ahead. No one is preventing them.

    With moral issues now becoming more and more political, we have to
make sure that God is in the middle of politics. Of course, there is
such thing as autonomy of temporal matters like politics and business,
and the often-misunderstood doctrine of the separation of Church and
state, but all this does not mean God has no place in politics.

    Quite the contrary. If God is not in our temporal affairs, then those
temporal affairs would be harmful to us. They would not be ruled by
truth, justice and charity, mercy and prudence, but merely by human
calculations that will always benefit the strong, the powerful, the
rich more than everybody else.

    If we still want our country to be God-fearing, then we have to be
wary of candidates peddling platforms that not only are alien to faith
but are in open war against God and his Church.

    There are now initiatives started by some lay people, perhaps with
some inspiration from Church leaders, to precisely put God in
politics. That thing about the Team Buhay vs. Team Patay is one of
them. I hope there be more.

    I am thinking of some groups vetting all the candidates as to their
position about moral issues. Obviously, all this should be done in
great delicacy and respect, with courteous dialogue and positive
explanations made rather than indulging in gutter language and logic.

    Also, that all this should be done with clear delineation as to what
properly falls to the clerics to do and what the lay faithful ought to
do. May God bless us all!

Gearing up for the future challenges

 WE have just been reminded about the parable of the barren fig tree

(Lk 13,1-9). The obvious lesson to derive is that we should never
waste time and that we should try our best to be as productive and
fruitful as possible.

    This might already sound like a trite reminder, but then again, given
our culture of self-indulgence and complacency, the warning actually
continues to be current and urgent.

    That’s because our tendency to take things for granted is simply
limitless, especially when we are in our comfort zones, like when we
are at home, or alone, or simply pursuing personal hobbies and
interests.

    We obviously need to know when to be serious and when to relax, but
the latter should not be taken to mean that we can forget the more
serious concerns of our life. If ever there’s any value to our rest
and recreation, it is to refresh us so we can go back to our weighty
concerns and challenges in life.

    Otherwise, our rest and recreation can be harmful to us, as they can
only give us means of escapism, thereby nurturing our dissipation and
intemperance.

    We should be wary of our tendency to break the link between our work
and rest, our business and recreation, just as we should avoid
breaking the connection between our work and prayer, our temporal
affairs and our spiritual activities.

    We only have one life, though with many aspects and needs. We have to
learn how to integrate and blend them well to strengthen the unity of
our life. And this task can be challenging, since these aspects and
needs can compete with each other. We have to learn the necessary
skills and competence for this.

    That is why, even as we pursue with our rest, recreation and fun, we
should never forget that their purpose is to make us more able to face
the serious matters of life. And these days, the challenges can be
daunting.

    The developments all over the world have become fast-paced and
complicated, leaving in their trail a lot of questions to answer,
issues to resolve, and new skills to acquire. We should avoid being
blind to these concerns, otherwise we will just find ourselves in a
deeper mess in the future.

    Just the same, we should never forget that the way to tackle the
future challenges is to strengthen and not to weaken, much less,
neglect, the basic structures of our life—our own personal spiritual
and moral life, our family, our work, and the  responsibilities we now
have due to our current state and condition in life, etc.

    With respect to our spiritual life, we need to fortify our faith in
God. Especially these days when ideologies with their corresponding
lifestyles are questioning the validity of faith, the existence and
providence of God, etc., it’s important that our faith should stand
firm, strong and fruitful.

    That’s why, we really have to make our prayer real prayer, not just
mumbling of words or a surge of sweet religious feelings, but one
where we engage God in a serious father-and-son conversation where we
bring up and sort out our concerns with him.

    God is everything to us. We should never forget that. We should
rather trust in him and in his ways, even if sacrifices and
inconveniences are involved, rather than get taken in by the
allurements of some quick-fix philosophies not founded on God but
rather on our human estimations of things alone.

    As to the family, we need to see to it that the family is bright,
cheerful and vibrant, with the interrelationships within it
functional. Parents have the grave duty to form their children well
humanly, spiritually, morally, doctrinally, etc.

    The parents should be quick to recognize the problems and issues
affecting every member of the family, and to start resolving them.
That’s why the parents also need to be strong and always abreast with
the developments of the times.

    Subsidiary entities, like schools, parishes, clubs, etc., should be
established and enhanced, and their relation with the families and
individuals, especially the children and weaker members of society,
should be clearly defined and strengthened.

    I feel this is the way to brace for the future challenges. No matter
how complicated they are, these challenges can always be manageable if
we take care of the basic and fundamental aspects of our life.

    We would be in a better condition to face these challenges.

Going eschatological

WE have to be familiar with this term, and more importantly, we need

to develop its appropriate sense. It’s a necessity in our life, since

it gives a bigger, if not complete picture of our life. It enables us

to go beyond the here and now to enter into the world beyond death.

Eschatology is that part of theology concerned with death, judgment

and the final destination of the soul and humanity itself, that is,

heaven or hell, or the so-called the Last Things. It may sound scary

at first, but it actually is very helpful. We just have to make the

necessary adjustments in our attitude toward it.

So, it’s a part of theology and not a merely empirical science. We

need to have inputs of faith which actually play a directing role in

the study. We cannot simply rely on so-called observable data,

material or sociological, that by definition cannot fathom the

spiritual and supernatural dimensions of our life.

References to this concern in the Bible are many. Among them is the

parable about the rich man and the poor man, Lazarus, recorded in

gospel of St. Luke (16,19-31).

It shows us that how we live our earthly life has eternal effects on

our afterlife. We have to learn how to life our earthly with the view

of our eternal and supernatural destination.

This concern is expressed in one of the prayers during Lent: “You have

given your children a sacred time for the renewing and purifying of

their hearts, so that freed from disordered affections, they may so

deal with the things of this passing world as to hold rather to the

things that eternally endure.”

That’s the challenge we have—how to be renewed and purified of earthly

attachments so that we can see and prepare ourselves appropriately for

our eternal life, hopefully in heaven. We need to learn how to relate

what we are having and doing now with our eternal destination.

At the moment, we are afraid of death and we refuse to consider the

importance that the considerations of judgment, heaven and hell have

on us. We get so attached to the here and now that we become blind to

our life beyond.

It’s a challenge that definitely invites us to live by faith, hope and

charity, the theological virtues or gifts that God gives us so we can

have basis for making our earthly affairs, our temporal concerns

acquire an eternal, supernatural value.

These virtues are God’s ways of sharing what he has with us, such that

what takes place in our life can actually participate in the life of

God in whose image and likeness we are.

This ideal of a life of faith, hope and charity is made available to

us through Christ who is the Son of God who became man, and who

continues to be with us till the end of time through the Church in its

doctrine, sacraments and hierarchy.

We need to see these linkages clearly to realize more deeply that

being with God even now or being able to relate our here and now with

eternity, etc., is possible, and in fact is made available to us if

only we know how to avail ourselves of it.

In other words, we need to learn how to pray, study and assimilate the

teachings of Christ, now transmitted to us through the doctrine of the

Church, then avail of the sacraments, and make ourselves faithful and

obedient subjects of the hierarchy of the Church, in order to have

this eschatological sense.

In other words, we need to sanctify ourselves daily, making use of the

means made available to us and the events of the day to have a

personal and collective encounter with God.

We need to see things at this level. Our usual problem is that we tend

to keep ourselves at the low and shallow levels, and we hardly make

any effort to extricate ourselves from that predicament, if ever in

the first place we consider such situation a predicament.

We need to pray and meditate a lot, to be able to fathom the richness

of the means—doctrine, sacraments, hierarchy—given to us to enter the

spiritual and supernatural reality.

Many times, we prefer to get entangled with the human imperfections

that also accompany these means. We like to find fault, rather than

focus on the real substance that these means offer.

Another helpful exercise in this regard is to make daily examinations

of conscience where we can see more clearly if we are on the right

track.