Passion for holiness and apostolate

“I HAVE come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it
were already blazing!” (Lk 12,49)

            With these words, Christ expresses the consuming passion
and zeal he has to carry out his mission on earth. It’s the same
passion and zeal that we should try our best to cultivate and keep.

            It’s what is proper to us. We are meant to be passionate,
because we simply have passions that need to be used to the hilt. They
just cannot be left idle and open to anything. They need to be
properly grounded and oriented.

            Reflecting Christ’s passionate character is what orders
and integrates into an organic whole all the other passions we will
always have, at one point or another, with respect to our human and
earthly affairs and concerns.

            This is the passion for holiness and apostolate that
actually is the be-all and end-all of our life here on earth. Let’s
never forget what God told Moses: “Speak to the whole Israelite
community and tell them, Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
(Lev 19,1)

            Christ reiterated the same message when he clearly said:
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” (Mt 5,48)
understanding ‘perfect’ as loving everyone with nothing less than the
love of God for us as lived and shown to us by Christ.

            In other words, the passion that we should develop should
be the passion and zeal for holiness and apostolate. This pair can
never be separated, since holiness by definition involves not only
loving God but also loving others with God’s love. Holiness will
always be apostolic. It necessarily involves entering into the lives
of others for God.

            And before we get some strange ideas about this truth of
our faith, like, it is too fantastic, undoable, if not inhuman, etc.,
we need to reassure ourselves that this is the passion that would
actually make us fully human, fully Christian, children of God,
perfect image and likeness of God.

            As to its practicability, we cannot have any doubt about
it, since God, for his part, is giving us everything for it to take
place. He has sent his Son who became man to us. And this God-man,
Jesus, died on the cross in his supreme act of self-giving to us.
Nothing is spared to make us to be what we ought to be.

            On our part, we have been wired and equipped for this
passion for holiness and apostolate. With our intelligence and will,
and always activated by God’s grace, we can enter into the life of God
himself, and the lives of others.

            While we retain our individual and personal identity, we
can get identified too with God and with others. This is the
tremendous wonder of our life—that in spite of our weakness, mistakes
and sins, we are still, as St. Augustine would put it, “capax Dei,”
capable of God. And if we are capable of loving God, then we too must
be capable of loving others.

            We just have to know how to integrate in that passion for
holiness and apostolate the indispensable role of the cross of Christ.
That cross is the necessary cure for our weaknesses and what would
make up for our mistakes, failures and sins. That cross is where we
can truly find Christ.

            When Christ said that he is the “way, the truth and the
life,” he must have the cross in mind, since in another part of the
gospel, he clearly said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny
themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mt 16,24)

            We have to learn to make the cross, in whatever form it
comes, an integral and essential part of our daily life. We should not
wait for it to come. We have to look for it everyday, and in every
circumstance. We actually need it more than we need air.

            And when it comes without our looking for it, let’s be
quick to identify it with the Cross of Christ. Let’s not waste time
suffering our life’s crosses purely on our own. We need to suffer them
with Christ. Everything needs to be referred to Christ on the cross.

            Then there would be nothing in our life that would prevent
us from pursuing holiness and apostolate with passion. Not even our
sins can weaken that passion. When referred to Christ’s cross, our
mistakes, failures and sins can become tremendous spurs to get us
closer to God and to others.

            But we also need to live this passion with naturalness…

The poor as the new elite

WE have to be most careful that in our laudable effort to

love the poor, we end up making them the new elite, and the rich guys

end up prematurely judged and condemned, ostracized and left to rot

here on earth even before hell.

             This can happen when our understanding of the poor is

mainly if not solely keyed on material poverty. Thus, we consider as

poor those with hardly any money, or those whom we generally describe

as having less in life, be it in terms of material possessions and

wealth, health, fame, talents, etc.

 

            The problem with this idea of poor is that we tend to

exaggerate things and fall to making unnecessary if not illegitimate

distinctions among people. We end up unnecessarily discriminating

against some people who are rashly judged and classified simply and

recklessly according to their economic status, etc.

             This has happened among those who blindly follow the

so-called “Liberation Theology” that while having good and valid

points, end up following a certain earthly ideology instead of

Christianity.

 

            In fact, back in 1984, the Vatican issued a document

entitled, “Instruction on certain aspects of the Theology of

Liberation,” precisely to clarify what the good and safe points of

such theology are, and what the unsafe and dangerous ones are.

             The poor is actually all of us, since all of us are in

need of God. That’s how poverty should be understood in its strictest

sense. That’s why Christ put as the first beatitude those who are

“poor in spirit” because they are the ones who acknowledge their

poverty with regard to God and are longing to be with God.

 

            If we understand “the poor” in this way, it can happen

that the poorest of the poor can in fact be the richest man in the

world, in terms of material wealth, because that man may be farthest

from God and may not be doing anything to solve his predicament. It

can happen that the poorest of the poor is not in the peripheries and

fringes of our society, but is right in the middle of society’s

mainstream.

 

            Now that we are in the Year of the Poor, we need to be

clear about this point, before we fall into the subtle trick of the

devil who can mislead us in our attitude toward the poor.

 

            Let’s remember that the weed can actually look like the

real plant, and the devil can present himself as an angel of light. We

have to be most discerning. We should not be naïve, especially

nowadays when many confusing and albeit attractive ideologies about

the poor are bombarded on us.

 

            It’s true that we have to give a kind of “preferential

option” to those who are materially poor, precisely because their

needs may be immediate. We cannot deny that there will always be some

kind of social inequality that causes this kind of poverty. Thus,

Christ told us: “You always have the poor with you, but you will not

always have me.” (Mt 26,11)

 

            Such inequality should trigger the dynamics and initiative

of concern and help. St. John in his first letter tells us: “If anyone

has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his

heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (3,17)

  

            We also cannot deny that there are instances when we find

ourselves at a loss as to how to help the poor in immediate material

needs. Many times, we can only cry and suffer in silence, praying hard

and thinking deeply as to how to restructure things that give rise to

this kind of social poverty. Let’s be ready for these occasions and

exert effort not to fall into despair. There’s always hope in the

mysterious ways of God.

  

            But this particular concern for the poor in immediate

material need, however, should not distract us from the ultimate

concern for the poor in the strictest and universal sense. We should

not forget that the ultimate concern is how to resolve the spiritual

and moral poverty of the people, i.e., how to combat temptations and

sin.

  

            This is where the real battle is. It is how to convince

the rich young man in the gospel (cfr Mt 1916-30), who actually

represents all of us, to go sell everything that he has and follow

Christ. It is how to undo what Christ said: “It is easier for a camel

to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the

kingdom of God.”

 

            We can only do this if we have the right poverty of spirit

as described in the beatitudes.

Everything is relatable to God

THIS we should remember always. Everything in our life, in

the different aspects and dimensions of our life, and in the different

possibilities and scenarios our life can take, irrespective of whether

they are good or bad humanly or naturally speaking, or even

spiritually and supernaturally speaking, can and should be related to

God who knows what to do with them.

 

            We should avoid the pitfall of thinking that there are

certain things and situations, certain concerns, issues and affairs in

our life where God has no role to play. God is in everything. His

interventions in our life are constant and abiding, and are meant to

lead everything to him who is the beginning and end of all things.

 

            His providence is both immediate and eternal, direct and

transcendent, and as such, he infuses his wisdom and power, his truth

and justice, his mercy and compassion, etc. into everything in our

life.

 

            Our part is at least to be aware of this reality and to

cooperate with his providence as much as we can, since we are his

image and likeness. We need to spark our faith into action and to keep

it working as much as possible, because only through faith can we

enter into this sublime reality and play the role proper to us.

 

            As Creator, God cannot withdraw his presence and

governance in all of his creation. And that’s simply because as

Creator, God gives and keeps the very existence of everything he has

created.

 

            He does not only make things and then leave them behind,

as if these things can have their independent existence, as happens

when we make things. God as Creator cannot leave us, since he is the

very source, support and end of our existence.

             Without him, we revert to nothing. And if we think we can

be on our own without God, then we would just be left to our own

devices, and our estimations of what is true, good and beautiful in

life, of what is the source and purpose of our life would actually

have no objective and radical basis. Everything will be subjective.

 

            We have to learn to detect the presence of God, to know

his will and to cooperate with his ways. We have to learn to look for

him and find him, even in the most ordinary things in our life.

             As St. Josemaria Escriva once said: “There is something

holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it

is up to each of you to discover it.” God is everywhere. A psalm

describes this truth well: “If I go up the heavens, you are there. If

I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” (139.8)

             We cannot say that in our intellectual and creative work,

for example, when we do a lot of discoveries and inventions, God is

not there. Neither in our business and politics, in our sports and

entertainment, could we say God is not there.

             The independence and autonomy we enjoy in our earthly

affairs does not mean that God is not involved in them. God is the

author and the lawgiver of our independence and autonomy, and he is

right in the middle of all these affairs.

 

            The least thing we can do in this regard is to acknowledge

God as the ultimate author of what we discover and invent, and of what

we get involved in, and then to thank him for them.

             And from there, we can try to discern the purpose God has

in our discoveries and inventions, and in all our earthly and temporal

affairs. Otherwise, we would just end up misusing and abusing them. We

end up corrupted and corrupting others.

             Especially in situations of crisis, challenges, issues,

and yes, grave mistakes and sin, we need to realize more deeply that

we have to relate them to God. Doing so will make us see the objective

picture of these things, and would enable us to grapple with them

properly.

             He has the ultimate answer to all our questions, the

ultimate cure to all our disorders, the ultimate mercy to all our

mistakes and sins. What we cannot solve humanly speaking, God always

can, in his own way.

 

            So, instead of keeping to ourselves when these

predicaments come our way, we should rush to him, not to renege on our

duties, but rather to be where the ultimate solution can be found.

 

            Our mistakes and sins should no alienate us from God. With

humility, with sorrow, they should occasion the need for us to go to

him.