Politics and charity

GETTING into this topic, I know, is like pushing a lamb
into the company of wolves. Implausible as it may seem, we just have
to pray that the lamb can survive by following what Christ indicated:
be shrewd like serpents but innocent like doves.

            Truth is, politics has to be humanized and Christianized
through charity. It just cannot be left alone, fully at the mercy of
our passions, brute force and worldly elements. It too can and should
be a way to our sanctification. Yes, I mean that seriously.

            Politics ought to be pursued always in charity. It cannot
be any other way, since charity is the mother of all virtues and good
values. If we want justice, truth and fairness, charity has them all.
If we want competence, order, discipline, etc., again charity has
them. If we want objectivity, charity has it. Charity covers all our
needs.

            Politics is a human necessity. As social beings who have
to take care of one another, we need to undertake a continuing process
of organizing ourselves so that we can attain our common good. For
this, we have to activate the social principles of solidarity and
subsidiarity as best as we could, a tricky task, to say the least.

            That’s why we have a government and many other structures,
social, cultural, economic, etc., to attend to our different needs,
and we elect leaders and officers to run these organizations. This is
the nature, purpose and mechanics of politics.

            But just like anything human, we will always have some
problems. It seems that we like to create problems, which should also
not be viewed exclusively in a negative way, since these problems only
show we are humans, and they point to us where our weaknesses are and
where we should improve. They are a golden opportunity for God’s grace
to descend on us. So, let’s just be sport in all this.

            Our main problem at the moment is that the lofty nature of
politics is often corrupted and its objective frustrated by the ugly
workings of the otherwise legitimate pursuit for power, an integral
part of politics.

            Now that election time is coming, we are at present
confronted with the raw shenanigans of politicians. All of sudden, we
seem to have a storm surge of mudslinging, demolition jobs,
orchestrated p.r. campaigns to practically canonize a politician and
demonize another.

            The spectacle is actually very funny and ridiculous, but
it continues even up to now in spite of all the advances in our
sciences, arts, technologies and communication. It seems that in the
area of political culture, we continue to lag behind, to hardly emerge
from the savagery of the Stone Age.

            Instead of being discerning, prudent and nuanced in our
judgments and assessments of politicians, we readily fall into
simplistic, black-and-white ways of thinking and reasoning. We tend to
dogmatize and absolutize our preferences and opinions, hardly giving
any credit to the opposing positions of the others.

            In short, we tend to listen only to ourselves. Reckless
generalizations and labeling are made. Some, for example, blame the
‘masa’ for being unthinking in their choices. But I have also listened
to the so-called intelligentsia and in many instances have also found
their conclusions overworked and unfair.

            I suppose that to be realistic we have to consider all
politicians to have something good to offer and also some baggage that
they suffer. Let’s just sort things out slowly and calmly, weighing
them carefully, hoping to make a workable, fair balance.

            Let’s remember that as one movie blurb put it, every saint
has a past, and every sinner has a future. We are always a work in
progress. We can go either up or down, though we should always hope
and work together that we always go north rather than south.

            Let’s avoid getting wild with our judgments, practically
getting mad with praises for the favored politician or running amok
with burning hatred for the unfavored. Let’s play it cool

            We have to look first at the competence of the politicians
to deliver the goods we need, since this is the immediate expectation
we have from them. We have to see that they are capable of good
governance, even if they continue to be sinners as we all, in varying
degrees, are.

            As to their moral life, let’s just help them to be upright
and to always feel the need for conversion. As to their legal
problems, let us have our legal system take care of them. As much as
possible, we avoid media circus because of these.

The Year of the Poor

THE Church, through our bishops, has declared 2015 the

Year of the Poor. It’s part of grand 9-year plan of new evangelization

in preparation of the celebration of the fifth centenary of the

Christianization of the Philippines in 2021.

            We should do all we can to promote this ecclesial thrust

for the year to come, keeping in mind the over-all idea of the plan so

that we can develop the proper spirit, attitude and skills needed to

undertake the many activities involved.

            For this Year of the Poor, we just have to make one

crucial clarification though. While it’s very understandable that the

immediate concern is what to do with those living in some form of

human misery, we should never forget that there is such thing as bad

poverty as well as good poverty.

            We should not just jump into the Year of the Poor doing

all sorts of works of charity and mercy without making this

distinction, because bad poverty can only be solved, or at least, to

be realistic, relieved to a great extent if the good poverty is

developed and lived well.

            In short, if there is no good poverty, we cannot expect to

do much about bad poverty. We would just be indulging in showy but

useless sloganeering and other mechanical and soulless programs

composed of modules, talks and p.r. campaigns, complete with photo

ops.

            At worst, we would just be going through the motions

without the substance. High-class hypocrisy, in other words, a kind of

new pharisaicalism—good and attractive more in words than in action,

more interested in looking good than in delivering. Sad to say, this

is an image that has been hounding the Church for long, and we need to

correct that drastically.

            Bad poverty is the one that dehumanizes us, that

diminishes our dignity and reduces us to mere objects or animals, that

disables us to do our functions as persons and as children of God.

            As a way of describing them journalistically, our bishops

refer to them as “the unwashed, the oppressed, the scorned, the

powerless, the miserable and the outcast.” But I’m sure there are

still other forms of bad poverty that are so subtle as to escape these

categorizations.

            We need to be more aware and wary of these trickier forms

of bad poverty that can manage to appear “rich” according to our

purely human standards and estimations. Sad to say, this kind of bad

poverty is spreading rapidly, and is affecting our millionaires and

billionaires and the powerful of this world.

            Such awareness would lead us to tackle the challenge of

tackling bad poverty more realistically and seriously, and would help

us to avoid falling into simplism that would divide the rich and the

poor according to mere economic or social measures.

            Good poverty, on the other hand, is the one exemplified by

Christ himself who, as St. Paul said, emptied himself all the way to

offering his very own life on the cross. He is the model to follow,

the template to reproduce in our life, the paradigm to go through.

            This is the good poverty referred to in one of the

beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom

of God.” It’s the poverty that means one has a true and abiding hunger

for God, a hunger that involves total detachment from the things of

the world insofar as these things become a hindrance to live genuine

charity or love for God and for others.

            It does not mean that we should reject the things of this

world. Good poverty is not averse to having things, since as human

beings, we are always in need of material things. We just have to see

to it that everything is used for God’s glory and for the common good,

a continuing struggle for us given our weakened human condition.

            When we have this good poverty in place in our heart, then

it would be easy to truly love others, to sympathize and empathize

with them, to the point of sharing what we have with them and even

giving all that we have, in imitation of Christ, who gave his very own

life for us.

            Obviously, in this we have to start to small things,

making use of those daily ordinary events that ask of us to be

detached from things so we could love Christ more and serve others

better. If we persist in this, we can be ready for the bigger

challenges of good poverty.

            Let’s hope the Year of the Poor brings our life of good

poverty to a higher level.

With the end in mind

 IT’S understandable that with the approach of the

celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King on November 23, the

readings of the Masses these days bring us to consider the end of

time, judgment, heaven and hell.

            The Solemnity of Christ the King marks the end of the

liturgical year. And we would begin another one with the onset of the

season of Advent, the proximate preparation for Christmas, the birth

of Christ, our Redeemer.

            It’s good that we have the mind to consider this reality

so that we would know how to behave in time while we are still here,

doing all sorts of things. The consideration of the so-called “last

things” would give us a global picture of our life that actually spans

even beyond time itself.

            It will help us to distinguish between what is essential

and what is not, what has absolute value and what only has a relative

one, albeit also important. The relativeness of a thing does not

exclusively mean it is unnecessary. It can also be indispensable, but

only relative and subordinated to a higher, absolute value.

            This is not to scare us, but rather to remind us that

there is such a thing as the end of things, whose consequences and

implications we often take for granted or fail to correspond properly.

            In our earthly life, there is always a cycle of beginning

and ending that only shows the transitoriness of our life here on

earth. Let’s hope that we do not get lost or entangled in our earthly

affairs that actually have important bearing on our life after death.

            At the same time, this cycle of beginning and ending

highlights the reality that we actually long for a life that has no

end. We have the desire to leap from the transience of our time here

to the permanence of eternity.

This yearning for an eternal life, which of course can be

ignored and distorted, has basis in the fact that our soul, the

principle of life of any living being, is not merely a plant or animal

soul, but a spiritual soul. It has the capacity to subsist despite the

deterioration and death of our corporeal organism.

            We have to learn how to handle the unavoidable tension

between the here and now and our final end, between time and eternity,

between the relative character of our earthly, temporal life and the

absolute value of our eternal life, between the material and spiritual

dimensions of our life.

            More than handling the tension, our duty is actually to

know how to develop the proper relation between the two dimensions of

our life, since these two are supposed to form just one unity or one

life. There is indeed distinction between the two, but they actually

form just one whole life.

            Obviously in this matter, what should guide us should be

our Christian faith, and not just any science or ideology. It’s our

faith, a very precious gift from God, that gives us a complete picture

of reality. It probes deep into a reality that no human science can

reach, since it tackles mainly the spiritual and even the supernatural

dimensions of our life.

            We should see to it that as soon as we realize this, we

start to form and strengthen our conviction to be guided by our faith,

more than anything else, in dealing with the real purpose of our life

here on earth.

            In the meantime, it would be good that as early as

possible, even at the stage of childhood, everyone should be taught to

be mindful of the end, purpose or objective of anything.

            A child, for example, should be taught that everything has

a reason and a purpose, so that he can easily be weaned from a

mentality and a behavior that is stuck only on what is here and now,

what is simply pleasing to the senses, etc. He can be trained to see

beyond the externals and the incidentals and start to be interested in

the essentials.

            Of course, this has to be done gradually, as in on an

inclined plane, but this should be pursued consistently. An

appropriate structure, like family practices and tradition, social

culture, scholastic formation, should be in place to put the child on

the right track.

            The development of the child should be closely monitored

to see if there is real progress and that whatever deviation is

promptly attended to. He should be taught to wean himself from too

much dependence on feelings, and to start using more of reason and

then the faith.