The state of our soul

WE need to take care of our soul. We have to learn how to do that in a day-to-day manner, even moment-to-moment. We have to remember that it is the soul, more than the body by itself, that gives and sustains us in life.
     
      But how do we take care of our soul? What criteria can we use to determine whether our soul is healthy or not, in good state or not? And how can we distinguish between the soul and the body? Many of us ask those questions, if not explicitly, then implicitly. That’s why we need to know more about this most basic and crucial aspect of our life.
     
      We have not much problem with respect to our body or our physical and biological organism, since a lot of sciences are dedicated to that. But dealing and caring for our soul is another story. It’s a very tricky affair indeed.
     
      Our soul is spiritual. We can say so because we are capable of spiritual operations, like thinking, knowing, learning, wanting, choosing, loving, etc. We consider these operations as spiritual because even if they make use of some organs and senses and other material things, in the end these operations make use of ideas, judgments, reasoning that are immaterial or spiritual.
     
      In short, we take care of our soul by taking care of our thoughts, desires, preferences, choices, loves, etc. The quality of our thoughts, ideas, judgments, conclusions, etc., determines the quality of our soul.
     
      The questions to ask are: where do our thoughts, judgments and reasonings, etc., begin and end? Where are they founded or grounded? What motivates and moves them? Where are they oriented?
     
      Our problem is that we are not quite aware of our duty to engage and focus these spiritual operations properly. We just allow them to be moved by what we consider as “what comes naturally,” that often is nothing other than the impulses of the flesh, world trends, and other material and external things that hardly capture the essence of things.
     
      Worse, we have come to a point where many of us are influenced by schools of thought, philosophies and ideologies that are inspired by these impulses of the flesh, world trends and other material and external values.
     
      Among these questionable ideologies are some, not all, brands of liberalism, capitalism, communism, modernism, traditionalism, liberation theology, socialism, naturalism, etc. It might be good to know these isms and acquire the skills of discerning their different manifestations and expressions, many of them subtle and very deceiving.
     
      These ideologies certainly contain many good things. They cannot stand and prosper if they don’t have good, beautiful and true things. But we just have to be wary of the subtle distortions, errors, confusing elements and the rotten spirit that may inspire them.
     
      Our thoughts, desires, judgments, reasonings, etc., should be fundamentally based and ultimately oriented toward faith, hope and charity, the theological virtues that are divine gifts meant to connect us with God as we go through the different stages and situations in our life.
     
      God is everything to us. He is much more than the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water the drink. He is everywhere and governs all aspects of reality, since he is the creator of all. Obviously, we as creatures, even if we have been created in his image and likeness, cannot expect to know everything about him. But we have to realize that we need to be with him all the time.
     
      We have to train our thoughts and desires, our loving and all the other spiritual operations we do to spring from faith, hope and love of God and to orient everything to him. We have to be wary of our tendency to get entangled with simply human and natural aspects of our life.
     
      These human and natural aspects, if not vitally linked with God, would have no other way but to go haywire sooner or later. And that’s what we are seeing these days. In fact, that’s what we are seeing since the fall of our first parents in Paradise.
     
      We need to do something about this, starting with our own selves. One thing we can do is to make a daily examination of conscience just before going to bed. Let’s see to it that we end the day reconciled with God in our mind and heart, irrespective of how the day went.
     
      Then let’s train ourselves to refer everything to God, whether they be good or bad, humanly speaking.

Sharpening our charity

“I DID not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Mt 1,13) That’s quite clear. Christ came to save all men. That’s what’s always in his mind. While not neglecting anyone, he however gives some special attention to the sick, the weak, the sinners.

            It’s an attitude that we should also have. We cannot think that we can just get contented with loving a few people, or even a lot, but not all. We have to love everyone if we want to be consistent with our Christian identity. We even have to love our enemies, as Christ himself commanded us.

            Love has a universal scope. And it’s given without measure. We can never say enough of it. These are truths that we need to chew on slowly and deliberately, for many are the elements in us and around us that would tend to undermine them.

            We always have preferences and biases. We have pet peeves. We are always subject to certain conditionings, cultural, social, political, that somehow put limits in our concern for the others.

            These are natural things that are unavoidable. But it doesn’t mean that we just get stuck there. We have to go beyond them, or above them. And we can do that because our spiritual nature and the grace of God allow us to go beyond these conditionings.

            It would be good to acknowledge as clearly and as strongly as possible these conditionings, but we should also as clearly and as strongly do something so that we can go beyond them. Insofar as God’s grace is concerned, it will never be lacking. What is needed is our generous correspondence to this grace.

            Thus, we need to consciously sharpen our charity, using all the means—material, human, spiritual, supernatural—to make it reflect and act out God’s very own love. Remember that Christ himself gave us the new commandment, which serves as the summarizing and perfect commandments, to love our neighbour as he loves us.

            And how does he love us? Aside from creating us and endowing us with the best of things—we have been created in his image and likeness and, with his grace, adopted children of his—he has given us his mercy in return to our disobedience and sinfulness, a mercy he acted out by offering his life on the cross.

            That’s the supreme act of love, for Christ himself said that “No man has greater love than he who lays down his for his friends.” (Jn 15,13) And that love abides, because that life-offering kind of love is made a sacrament that he himself commanded us to renew till the end of time.

            How important therefore that we be theological in our attitude toward this duty. We cannot rely simply on our emotions and other external factors and conditionings. Neither can depend solely on our own will. We have to have the force of grace that made available in the doctrine of our faith and in the sacraments.

            We need to be more serious with our duty to love. We have to make it more specific, more direct, more refined, more enduring. It has to be more and more universal.

            Yes, we do it in stages, going through the stages of eros, filia and agape, and starting with those close to us and radiating to ever widening circles of people, but we just have to be persevering in it, even if it suffers variation of pace and even if it strays from its proper path from time to time.

            What can help is to assume a pro-active attitude toward this duty to love. We should not wait for some inspiration, nor for the others to prove that they deserve our love. We have to love them a priori, and all the way, putting more impulses to make that love always active. We need to reinforce it with an endless supply of theological motives.

            Imagine how the world would be if we just put our mind and heart toward this duty to love, which actually summarizes all our duties and responsibilities toward everybody.

            We need to overcome that primitive thinking that being serious with charity would make us soft and mushy and all that. The contrary is true. Love would make us strong as it demands us nothing less than willingness to be patient and tolerant, to suffer, to forgive, to reconcile, to step on our own ego, the logic of our flesh and the false values of the world. It’s not afraid of death.

            Let’s always sharpen our charity.

Regular maintenance

JUST as we need to daily eat, drink and rest to keep us going for the day, we also need to daily nourish our spiritual life to keep us alive and effective in the many spiritual and moral challenges we have everyday.

As we all know, our life is not just a series of physical activities, or merely social, economic, political affairs, etc. Underlying all these things is the spiritual and moral dimensions that spring from our own very nature as man, as persons, as children of God.

Just as we need to regularly recharge our new gadgets to keep them functioning for a period of time, we also need to recharge ourselves spiritually to keep ourselves fit for the many tasks we need to do our whole life through.

We have to be more aware of this need to pray, offer sacrifices, avail of the sacraments, develop virtues and the skill to tackle our weaknesses and repel the temptations, since these are the means to keep ourselves spiritually and morally capable, strong, resistant.

At the moment, I feel that we need to issue a kind of general alert regarding this crying need, because it has been for too long neglected. As a consequence, we now have a great majority of the populace all over the world starving, emaciated and weak spiritually and morally, even as they may appear to be physically strong, and socially and professionally well-placed and successful.

Let’s start with prayer. We have to spend some time everyday doing serious prayer, which is an effort to consciously connect ourselves with God. This is what gives us an eminently spiritual and supernatural tone to our thoughts and desires. Otherwise our outlook will mainly be worldly and temporal.

Prayer enlarges and deepens our vision of things, since being a conversation with God, prayer would make us tend to see things the way God, the creator and ultimate lawgiver of the universe, sees them.

Daily periods of serious prayer would therefore ground us firmly on our true nature and dignity which is often swept and carried away by all sorts of currents of conditioning we have in the world, be they social, economic, political, cultural, etc.

Let’s remember that our life always has to contend with several conditionings. We cannot avoid them. They are part of our human situation, what with all the limitations we have.

These conditionings are actually meant to facilitate the attainment of our true end. But we need to be careful with them, since if indiscriminately used, they can compromise even our very nature.

Daily periods of serious prayer give us a sense of purpose, meaning and direction and a sense of unity in our daily activities. Otherwise, we tend to be “torn between two lovers,” as a song would have it, or even a multiplicity of lovers, such that we become promiscuous and fidelity would have no attraction to us anymore.

The general problem we have right now is precisely about this lack of sense of purpose and unity, this lack of commitment and fidelity, and at the same time, a surge of promiscuity, etc. We tend to be short-sighted and narrow-minded, perhaps fit only in some aspects of our life, but not in all, and especially in what is most important about us.

At best, many of us simply rely on our common sense, on our knowledge of the sciences and arts, and on other resources, privileges and advantages that we may enjoy at the moment. But we fail to rely on the one who is the source of everything.

We have to spread the good news about prayer more widely, more systematically, more effectively. We have to explain a lot about it, to draw out its sublime beauty and our extreme need for it.

More importantly, we need to be practicing models of prayerful souls, by whom the others can get inspired and moved to pray. Especially in the context of the family and homes, the parents should lead their children by example on how to pray.

In the schools, the same thing should happen. Teachers should teach children how to pray both in words and in action. In the offices too and other places of work, the role of prayer should be given its due emphasis. To be sure, prayer enhances rather than impedes our work.

We just have to learn how to organize ourselves better to be able to integrate all our concerns, both spiritual and material, in their proper hierarchy. Our daily prayer should help us find ways of how to sanctify every part of our day.