Fickle and fragile

LET´S look into this unpleasant side of our life. I can
assure you that it is not going to be a completely depressing
experience. The sadness or disappointment such effort can bring cannot
erase the fact that it will also occasion in us, if we put ourselves
in the proper disposition, a gush of divine grace, a way of our own
redemption.

            Remember St. Paul´s ¨It´s when I am weak, that I am
strong.¨ That´s the attitude to take here. May we know the practical
consequences of such Pauline wisdom, and the requirements it asks of
us!

            We need to extricate ourselves from the stranglehold of
our poorly-lit human reactions to our mistakes, failures and
omissions, to our miseries, our fragility and fickleness, that tend to
plunge us into desperation and helplessness.

            Let´s allow our faith to flower into hope and then into
charity where we can share the triumph of Christ, and where there can
only be true and lasting joy and peace. Yes, God, and we with him, can
spring victory from defeat, light from darkness, life from death.

            First, we need to acknowledge our weaknesses and problems.
These days, many of us often fail in this basic requirement. Like
ostriches, we hide from them, deny their existence, and even act out
an elaborate act of pretension and hypocrisy to cover them.

            Worse scenarios follow, as we undertake a shameless effort
of rationalizing our negative side, and with a mere act of our
personal will, and sometimes with the collaboration of some consensus
of like-minded people, we now say what is actually wrong as right,
what is sinful as virtue.

            St. Paul´s lament, expressed in the Letter to the Romans,
gives us a glimpse of the reasons behind: ¨Though they knew God they
did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile
in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.

            ¨Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or
animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among
themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a
lie...”(1,21-25)

            This latter ugly turn of things is now even supported by a
vast complex of ideologies with a worldwide network of financial and
propaganda machinery. Now we see vanity, pride, arrogance, greed,
deception in person, in the flesh, not anymore as ideas or
possibilities.

            The idols of the ancient times that had eyes but could not
see, had ears but could not hear, now seem transformed into articulate
and glib salesmen of their treacherous doctrine and products. They now
seem to be active and effective agents most able to contrive a
lifestyle of their own making. They are now the gorgeous models for
everyone else to follow.

            Standards and criteria have been altered not only in
things peripheral but right down there in the roots. There´s no more
God. We are just on our own. We don´t depend on absolute truths, but
merely on personal ideas and consensual positions. Morality in all its
levels, from the personal to the social and global, is now unhinged
and is drifting aimlessly...

            We need to be converted from this horrible state that can
appear to us as sweet and nice, most reasonable and practical. For
this to happen, we need to be humble, since humility is the way to the
truth, to objectivity. It´s what enables us to go beyond the confines
of the many conditionings working on us. It´s what prepares the ground
for grace to take root in us.

            Humility is a necessity for us. We are supposed to live it
to the full since it has been meant for us since our creation, and
more so, in our re-creation or our self-redemption with Christ.

            We should not be deceived by its apparent debasement and
its requirement of self-emptying, since these can only mean we are
preparing ourselves to be filled up by nothing other than God himself,
his wisdom and power, his everything.

            That´s the most wonderful deal we can ever have, as
expressed in that beautiful hymn of the Easter Exsultet: ¨Father, how
wonderful your care for us! / How boundless your merciful love! / To
ransom a slave, you gave away your Son. / O happy fault, O necessary
sin of Adam, / which gained for us so great a Redeemer!¨

            Yes, our weakness indeed can attract God´s love and power!

From written to living word

THIS is the challenge all of us have to face and tackle.
How do we turn the written word of God into the living word that it is
and should be?

            For sure, the word of God is not just a set of letters,
nor an idea, nor a stream of thought, no matter how brilliant they
are. It is nothing less than the Son of God, the second person of the
Blessed Trinity who is the self-knowledge of God himself, perfect,
alive and consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, all of
whom form one God.

            This truth of our Christian faith may still be confined
and languishing in some ivory tower, but we have to understand that it
is meant for all of us, and not just to priests, nuns, monks and other
consecrated persons. God’s Word (this time with a capital W) is, in
fact, the very pattern of our creation, through whom everything is
made.

            In our case, that is, the case of man, since we have been
made in God’s image and likeness and therefore somehow aware and
responsible for our own continuing creation, he is sent by the Father
to perfect and complete our creation with us cooperating in it.

            This perfecting and completing of our creation in Christ
involves the re-doing or retreading of our nature wounded by the mess
we have made with the abuse of our freedom. Christ is the Word who
became man to save us, to bring us back to where we really belong, to
offer us the way to recover our lost dignity and reunite us with God.

            Christ did this ultimately through his passion, death and
resurrection that summarized all that he said and did to save us, and
now made alive and always available to us through the Spirit.

            This Spirit is now what animates the Church that Christ
established. The Spirit makes Christ alive and transmits him vitally
to the people of God that is the Church mainly through the sacraments,
especially the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

            But the Spirit also transmits the living Christ through
the one faith that is authoritatively taught by the hierarchy headed
by the Pope and the bishops, successors of Peter and the apostles who
were made by Christ as the rock and the pillars of the Church.

            This is where the written word of God, or the Sacred
Scripture or the Bible, comes to the picture. Together with the living
tradition and the power of the Magisterium or teaching office of the
Church occupied by the Pope and the bishops, the Sacred Scripture is
where we have this faith articulated.

            But we have to understand that the Bible, especially the
gospel part, is not just a written record of the past. Since it
involves Jesus, who is God and man, who is forever alive and
redemptive and perfective of us, the Bible just cannot be considered
like another book that has a shelf life or expiration date.

            The Bible will always be relevant to us as can be gleaned
in these words of the Letter to the Hebrews: “The word of God is
living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edge sword, and
reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints
also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of
the heart.” (4,12)

            Our attitude toward the Bible, especially the gospel part,
should be that it is not just a written word, but a living word.
Reading it is listening to Christ in real time. That happens when we
read it properly.

            Through the ages, saints and holy men and women have
developed the techniques of converting the written word into the
living word of God. One such method is called the “lectio divina,”
that involves several stages.

            There’s the “lectio,” which means reading, so we know what
the biblical text say in itself. Then “mediatio,” which asks: what
does the text say to me? Then comes “oratio,” or prayer, which is what
we say to God in response to his word.

            As consequences, we have “contemplatio,” which involves a
conversion to conform our outlook to God’s vision of reality. Then
lastly, “actio,” which should move us to make our life a gift for
others in charity.

            The “lectio divina” is just one method among many other
possibilities for making the written word the living word of God. It
also has to be done within the context of the Church’s faith,  liturgy
and life itself.

Ejaculatory prayers

THESE are short, spontaneous prayers that come out of our
heart in love with God. We need to cultivate the practice of making
these prayers so we can always be with God, keeping our faith, hope
and charity for him and for others alive and burning, whatever
situation we may find ourselves in.

            We need to realize that our mind and heart need to be
pumped and revved up by their proper fuel. And in the end, it’s not
just things around nor some abstract theories and ideals that fill
them up. It’s God who gives himself completely to us through his gifts
of faith, hope and charity that he gives so abundantly.

            While there are special moments when we can be
particularly close to God in some intimate prayer and mutual
immersion, as when we do our mental prayer, meditation, day of
recollection, days of closed retreat, etc., we have to realize that in
the ordinary flow of the day, we are constantly keeping that intimacy,
this time through these short, spontaneous ejaculatory prayers.

            Otherwise, we will always be prone to ignore and forget
God, and from there start the deviation that can really end with a big
disaster, as when we develop anger and hostility toward God, or total
indifference to him.

            Let’s remember what happened to Christ when he returned to
his hometown. His town-mates could not believe they had a neighbour
who could speak and do things Christ did. They found him too much for
them, and they finally fell to fault-finding. (cfr Mt 13,54-58)

            This is a typical example of how familiarity breeds
contempt that, sad to say, is rampant even today when we are supposed
to be more educated and civilized. Christ himself, the very God who
became man, could not help but say, “No prophet is not without honor
except in his own country, and in his own house.”

            We always have the tendency to take God for granted. This
is something we have to be most aware of and to be properly prepared
to tackle and resolve. That is why we need to make these ejaculatory
prayers all the time so that our immersion in the things of the world
would also immerse us more and more in God.

            We have to make many acts of faith, hope and charity
during the day. We can repeat as often as we can prayers like, “I love
you, Lord,” “I believe in you, Lord, help my unbelief,” “I trust you
and hope in you who are my sure rock and refuge,” etc.

            Or we can say, “Thank you, Lord, for this and for that,”
“Sorry, Lord, for this and for that,” “Help me, Lord, in this
endeavour, in this trial, in this need and difficulty,” etc.

            During extraordinary times, when we are specially high or
low, let’s flow with these ejaculatory prayers to keep us close to God
and not lose our proper footing amid the strong impulses of our
emotions.

            And during ordinary times, when things appear normal and
even humdrum, we should manage to keep intimacy with God. We have to
avoid feeling empty and just drifting along what our senses and
feelings would lead us. The spiritual life of faith, hope and charity
has to be vibrating.

            We may have to make use of some human devices as reminders
and triggers for us to make these ejaculatory prayers. For sure, all
these will be all worthwhile. With these ejaculatory prayers, we can
maintain a spiritual and supernatural outlook toward life in general,
and even to draw God to do miracles with us.

            These prayers do not hamper our ordinary work, nor would
they lead us to be up in the clouds. On the contrary, they will help
us to be more realistic and more attentive to what is truly essential
in any situation that can be swamped with many incidentals. They are
good guides in our often-tumultuous journey in life.

            More than these, these ejaculatory prayers help us to keep
distance from temptations and dangers. And if we find ourselves in
those situations, these prayers help us to be resistant, because they
will always keep in touch with God who is our strength and salvation.

            Obviously, we have to learn how to be natural and discreet
in doing this. Christ said that when we pray, we should not show off
that we are praying or fasting, to grab the attention of others. We
have to appear natural and even cheerful.

            We have to make ejaculatory prayers an integral part of
our life. Right at the beginning of the day, we should already start
making ejaculatory prayers.