Our daily resurrections

OUR Christian faith teaches us that there will be the

resurrection of the dead at the end of time. That’s what we profess in

the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church,

the communion of saints, the resurrection of the body, and life

everlasting. Amen.”

            This truth of our faith is supposed to be the consequence

of the resurrection of Christ which signifies the completion of his

redemptive work on our behalf. We too are supposed to take part of

this resurrection, as long as we also take part of Christ’s death.

            St. Paul teaches that to us very clearly: “If we be dead

with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ.”

(Rom 6,8)

            This truth is not meant to take place only at the end of

time. What is implied is that we need to live it in a daily basis. We

can make use of our usual drama in life as a way to live out the very

passion, death and resurrection of Christ.

            In other words, our earthly day-to-day life becomes the

precious time of rehearsal for the final and crucial moment of our

death. Our death should be a dying with Christ so that we too can rise

with him.

            We need to be aware of this very important significance

and purpose of our life here on earth, and to act on it accordingly.

Everything that happens in our life can and should be related to this

significance and purpose of our life. Nothing in our life, whether

humanly good or bad, right or wrong, is irrelevant to our life’s

purpose.

            We should be wary of our tendency to degrade our life’s

true and ultimate meaning and purpose. That happens when our

understanding of our life’s purpose and our reactions to the different

events of our life are derived simply from our human estimations of

things, as from our senses and emotions alone, or from some sciences

or philosophies or ideologies or superstitions.

            With these attitudes and frame of mind, we put ourselves

vulnerable to despair and helplessness, since we would not be able to

cope with all the trials and challenges of life. We would be tying the

hands of God who knows how to resolve even our most unsolvable

predicaments.

            We have to strengthen our faith, deepen it such that it is

gives shape and direction to our thoughts, desires, words and deeds.

Our faith is the beginning of God being with us, sharing what he knows

and what he has with us, like the power to suffer all the consequences

of sin including death, and to rise from the dead.

            This great gift would be useless if we do not make use of

it. Let’s be aware of it, study it and start to make use of it.

            Our daily resurrections can be in the form of making many

acts of contrition, of atonement and reparation. That is a way of

dying to our sin in Christ, and therefore setting us to participate in

the resurrection of Christ also. This cycle of dying and rising should

be a permanent feature of our life.

            It can also take the form of that attitude of simply

having to begin and begin again in life, knowing that falls and

failures are inevitable in life in spite of our best intentions and

efforts. We should just have that holy stubbornness that would enable

us to move on despite some persistent misery that can afflict us.

            We should have the conviction that God is giving himself

completely to us. There is nothing in our life that God in his

all-powerful and merciful providence cannot make use of to attain his

divine will for us, which is to bring us back to him.

            All that we need to do is to open ourselves to God’s

abiding interventions in our life and to cooperate with his work as

best as we can. We may still have our limitations, we may still commit

errors, but if everything is done in good faith, God our Father, ever

loving and merciful to us, would know how to bring us back to him.

            We therefore have every reason to be hopeful, to be at

peace and to be cheerful. When we find ourselves sad and seemingly

lifeless, it could mean that we have no faith in God, or nor living

that faith to the full. It could mean we are not willing to die with

Christ daily so as to rise with him also daily.

Attracted by sin

YES, in a sense we need to be attracted by sin. But not in

the sense of committing it nor of approving or enjoying the perks that

it gives. As much as possible, we should avoid sin like the Ebola

plague. And if there’s anything that gives us a good reason to

practice hatred, sin is it!

            Better said, we have to be attracted by sin not because of

it, but rather because of the sinner, who is still a child of God, a

brother or sister of ours, who always deserves to be loved, pardoned,

served, rescued.

            Sin, together with all the forms of evil that it produces,

should simply be the occasion to love others more, to be more

thoughtful and concerned of them. It should not be the cause and

object of our attraction.

            We have to love the sinner but hate the sin. And since the

two are together, at least for the time being, we need to be prudent,

discreet and discerning so as not to get confused and carried away by

the forces of evil rather than of the good.

            To be sure, this is the attitude of Christ himself whom we

should follow. All his teachings which he practiced all the way to the

cross consistently point to this truth. He was merciful of the

sinners, and gave special attention to them. And that’s practically

all of us since we are all sinners.

            We need to be clear about this point and skilled in

handling this situation among ourselves. Sin, because of the sinner,

should attract us if only to arouse in us desires to help, and to

trigger the appropriate action. It should not turn us off.

            In this context should we lose the fear of sin. That’s why

we have to be strong and resistant to temptations and scandal, and

properly inoculated, so to speak, so as not to be unduly affected by

sin. We have to learn how to bear all the suffering and inconveniences

involved here.

            We have to willing to get wet and dirty in our effort to

help others without compromising our spiritual life. If we have to

follow the example of Christ, then we should be willing to go to the

very gates of hell to save a soul. For this, we have to willing also

to be ‘crucified.’

            We have to see if we are developing the proper attitude,

understanding and skill in attending to this need. It can happen that

instead of growing in our concern for the others, especially in their

great moment of need as when they are in sin, we run away.

            We can rationalize that by getting involved in the

problems of others, we would unduly complicate our life. This is a

false reasoning. Complicating our life for the sake of saving a soul

would actually unleash the merciful power of God through our hands. We

would become instruments of divine mercy and at the same time would

benefit greatly from it personally.

            We just have to have faith in the all-powerful mercy of

God, and play the little part Christ would be asking us to do. We have

to keep that faith from being contaminated by the mere human

estimations of things. Let’s always remember that what is impossible

with us is always possible with God, who is also very respectful of

our freedom.

            Let’s see to it that we don’t get trapped by our initial,

spontaneous reaction of anger, repulsion and complaint whenever we see

or, worse, are affected by the sins of the others. We should try as

quickly as possible to replicate Christ’s attitude of patience,

compassion and mercy.

            For this we need to practice magnanimity, a bigness of

heart that not only can take on anything but also would motivate us to

willingly suffer for the others. For this, we have to go beyond the

limits of justice which, in the first place, cannot be perfect in our

life here on earth. It will always be in need of charity and mercy.

            All this can easily be done if we abandon ourselves

completely in the hands of God, just as Christ abandoned himself to

the will of his Father and faced his passion and death on the Cross

with equanimity. This is how to think, reason and act with faith as

primary principle, and not just with our human estimations of things.

            Whenever we see sin and evil around, and unless prudence

dictates otherwise, we should not run away, but rather face them for

the sake of the souls involved.

Changing gears

THE way things are now, what with all the glare, blare and

rapidity of modern, highly technological life, we need to re-study how

to change gears not only in our whole life in general, but also in our

day-to-day routine. What we of the older generation used to know and

use about this skill may not be helpful anymore now with the

Generation Y.

            At least, we need to tweak it a little, if not do some

major changes, adjustments and adaptations, or we may need to

completely reinvent ourselves. This seems to be the call of the times.

Yes, there are things that should not change, but we cannot deny there

also are many things that need to change.

            Virtues will always be virtues, and vices will always be

vices. But the way they are established, expressed and developed have

changed quite significantly. The terrain is now very different from

what it used to be.

            We have to be most wary of the almost irresistible pull of

the modern technologies. They tend to rivet us to a particular field

of interest, confining us there often with the sensation we are doing

all right. We fail to realize we are neglecting other aspects that are

even more important and fundamental in life.

            This is when we can unwittingly fall into some bad habits

and even addictions. We lose the proper sense of objectivity and get

more buried under an increasingly invincible subjectivism, often

driven and dominated by the blind impulses of the flesh and the

passing values of the worldly spirit.

            We have to update our skills in changing gears. We have to

learn how to differentiate, blend and practice in their proper places

and times our meditative and active modes, our prayer, work, study,

hobbies and rest, our family, social and professional obligations, our

private and public lives.

            We have to learn how to pay due attention to our spiritual

and material needs, our practice of the theological virtues of faith,

hope and charity as well as the human cardinal virtues of prudence,

justice, fortitude and temperance. This should be given more teeth and

made real, and stop being a mere theory and dream.

            We have to be more discerning of the many facets and

aspects of our life and to give the proper attention to each one of

them in a healthy hierarchy of values that reflects our dignity as

persons and citizens, as image and likeness of God, and as children of

God.

            In this regard, what is most helpful is for us to make use

of some workable plan of life, a dynamic, living structure that puts

some order into the many elements of our life as well as being open to

new, unexpected developments that can come along.

            Basic to this plan is to give due time to our need to

pray, study, work and rest. We need to further specify how to go about

these fundamental activities so we can truly say that they are

functional and are clearly helping us in pursuing our ultimate

objective of loving God and loving everybody else, whoever and however

he may be.

            What is also helpful is to continue purifying and

disciplining ourselves so that we can avoid being held captive by mere

sensations and emotions, or by mere trends and fads. That’s precisely

why Christ told us that if we want to follow him, we need to deny

ourselves and carry the cross.

            So we should have no doubt about the essential role that

the spirit of sacrifice, mortification and penance plays in our life.

When we are not open to this spirit, when we tend to shy away from it,

let’s be convinced that we would be disabling ourselves to change

gears properly and promptly.

            The skill of changing gears in our life is ultimately a

matter of our constant awareness that God is always with us, is always

intervening in our lives, is speaking to us through all the events of

our life.

            It is therefore also a matter of always recognizing the

presence of God in everything, and of discerning what is trying to

tell us at every moment and situation. This will require tremendous

faith and a strong, vibrant piety, which hopefully would be nourished

by that plan of life we referred to earlier.

            Let’s be convinced that being aware of God’s presence all

the time, and actively corresponding to his will and ways is really

what matters in our life after all is said and done.