Holiness in our helplessness

WE know that holiness is for everyone. That’s what God

wants us to be, since we are his image and likeness, children of his.

He wants us to be like him. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is

perfect,” Christ told us very clearly. (Mt 5,48)

             But we many times think that to be holy and perfect, one

should be spotlessly clean of any sin, defect and error. To be sure,

to be holy has aspects of these qualities. We have to try our best

that we be good all the time, productive and fruitful in our

endeavours, active in the service of God, the Church and society.

  

            But holiness should not be seen only in that light. Such

understanding of holiness would make it an achievable goal only for a

few. It becomes a concern only to the elite who happen to have

qualities favourable to these aspects. It can only become the domain

of the well-endowed, the strong-willed, and even the superheroes, if

not the superhumans.

  

            Holiness has another side. It can and should be achieved

in the middle of our weaknesses, our stupidities and follies, our

mistakes and sins, our helplessness, as long as we know how to relate

them to God.

  

            We cannot deny that in spite of our best efforts, which

actually can be a very relative thing since what is best to one is

only good to another, we many times find ourselves helpless in the

face of our own weaknesses and the strong temptations around.

  

            We cannot deny that in this world, no matter how brilliant

and gifted we are, we act like little children who really would not

know everything that affects him, much less, how to cope with the many

mysteries in life.

   

            Let us always remember that cry of St. Paul when he

noticed two conflicting laws raging within himself, the law of the

mind and the law of the flesh. (cfr. Rom 7,22-24) Many times, we find

ourselves in this situation, and we do not know exactly what to do.

  

            I would say that on these occasions, we just have to

suffer our weaknesses, and everything else that are allied to them—our

stupidities and follies, our helplessness, etc.—in the way Christ

suffered in his passion and death. On that occasion too, Christ made

himself helpless against all the malice of man, so he could teach us

how to deal with our own helplessness.

  

            We know that Christ made himself helpless to obey the will

of his Father for our own salvation. He bore all our sins. This should

be the mentality to have when we are reduced to our own state of

helplessness.

  

            We should not just suffer our own weaknesses, etc., alone.

We should suffer them with Christ, and in that way we convert them

into a real path to sanctity. In fact, we can say that the more we

suffer, the more chances we have of identifying ourselves more

intimately with Christ, who achieved our redemption through his own

suffering and death.

  

            Let us always remember that when we suffer and die with

Christ, we will also resurrect with him. (cfr. Rom 6,8) Suffering and

death do not have the last word in our life. It is redemption, eternal

life of bliss with God and with everybody else, that has the last

word.

  

            We need to give a full and more fair picture of how

holiness can be achieved both in good and bad times. We should not

focus on one without the other, because in that way we would be

distorting the true nature of holiness and debasing the power of God.

We need to be more open-minded about this issue and avoid stereotyping

holiness in some concrete form.

  

            Holiness can be achieved in many and even infinite ways.

The only thing necessary is to relate everything to God.

The devil and us

WE should never take the devil for granted. They are

always around, ever scheming and plotting against us in many, many

ways, and often in a manner that is so subtle that we may not even

notice him. As St. Peter would put in his first letter: “Your

adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking

someone to devour.” (5,8)

  

            We should never consider the devil as a myth, or as some

kind of literary device only to highlight a point in the drama of our

life. He is as real as you and me. Our problem is that we think

lightly or, worse, falsely of him. And so we become completely

unprepared to deal with his antics.

   

            But in spite of that unfortunate fact of life, we should

remember that the devil cannot do anything against us unless allowed

by God. And if allowed, it is because God in his mysterious providence

can always draw a greater good from any evil the devil may cause in

us.

  

            This is verified in the story of the trials of Job and

that gospel episode of the man possessed by a legion of devils. (cfr.

Mk 6,53-56) The devils, being fallen creatures of God, cannot help but

acknowledge the authority of God over them. So, we should not be too

afraid of the devil.

  

            We just have to learn how to cope with him. First we

should realize that any evil that befalls us, especially if it is

moral and not just physical or material evil, is always instigated by

the devil. Yes, we may have our own weaknesses and there also are many

worldly tempting allurements around, but these can hardly do us harm

unless stirred by the devil.

  

            Our problem is that we often attribute the cause of any

moral evil we commit to our human limitations alone and to the natural

temptations in the world. We hardly consider the role of the devil

who, being spiritual and supernatural, are far more superior to us in

terms of power. And so we fail to take the adequate means to avoid him

and to remedy the damage caused by him.

  

            Let’s remember that as St. Paul said, “Our struggle is not

against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the

authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against

spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Eph 6,12)

  

            We need to go to God to handle this lifelong predicament

of ours properly. Aside from the human means which, of course, we

should never neglect, we have to avail of the spiritual and

supernatural means. We have to pray, offer sacrifices, wage continuing

ascetical struggle, have recourse to the sacraments, develop virtues,

etc.

  

            In the meantime, let us also take note of the antics of

the devil. We need to know him well as our archenemy. In this, we

cannot be naïve. Especially with our more complicated times, it is

urgently imperative that we know the ways of the devil very well. We

should avoid dialoguing with the devil.

  

            We have to strengthen our faith in God and our complete

trust in the saving providence of God. We should not allow ourselves

to be dominated by the devil for long. We would know when are being

dominated by him when we let ourselves plunge into sadness, bitterness

and depression. God is always there for us. All we have to do is to go

to him.

  

            Of course, we have to understand that our sensitivity to

the presence and the ways of the devil and our power to avoid him or

to free ourselves from him once caught by him depends on our closeness

to God. In other words, the closer we are to God, the better for us

with respect to our power to cope with the devil.

God, not us, defines man

YES, indeed! Only God fully knows who man is, who we

really are. Being our creator, he is the only one who can capture our

entire essence, not only in the macro level but also in the micro, not

only in the general aspects of our humanity but also in the unique

individual and personal peculiarities of each one of us.

  

            The best thing that we can do to approximate who and what

we really are is to go to God who has revealed himself to us through

Christ who in turn has authorized the Church magisterium to teach us

about who we really are.

  

            We should try our best that we would feel the need to

refer ourselves to God through Christ and through the Church whenever

we try to ask or to understand the ultimate questions about ourselves,

like who and what we are, what the purpose of our life here on earth

is, why we should pray and offer sacrifices, etc.

  

            Given the temper of the times that usually puts more, if

not exclusive, reliance on our human estimations of things that can

come about in different ways—legal, political, sociological,

ideological, etc.—we have to give special effort to develop that sense

of our need to refer ourselves to God-Christ-Church everytime we try

to understand who and what we really are.

  

            This is no laughing matter anymore. Right now, we can see

all kinds of very questionable ideas, laws, practices, etc., and all

of them are mainly due to ignoring what God through Christ and the

Church is showing us. Thus, we have such things as abortion all the

way to birth, same-sex unions, euthanasia, test-tube babies, etc.

  

            Other than these, the growing alienation of a big sector

of the world population from God and the Church have occasioned deep

division among us, resulting many times in wars, terrorism and other

forms of killings.

  

            Of course, there are those who would question whether it

is practicable and useful to refer and to defer to God-Christ-Church.

Can we really know God, they would ask. Is Christ still relevant

today? And the Church, is it not just another human institution,

afflicted at the moment with scandals?

  

            I believe the only way to resolve all these questions is

to pray a lot, because more than reasoning and all kinds of

explanations, which of course should be done, it is faith that is

truly needed. Without faith, no amount of discussion can be of use.

  

            We are dealing here not only with natural realities but

also and mainly spiritual and supernatural ones. For us to effectively

grapple with that level of reality, we need faith and not only our

reason and intellect and our other human powers.

             Yes, it’s true that God and the reality of Christ and the

Church cannot be fully understood by us, but we have enough data, so

to speak, to enable us to enter into a meaningful relationship of

knowing and loving God and following his will.

  

            This condition of our relationship with God should not

stop us from actively knowing and loving God. On the contrary, it

should spur us to know and love him more and more, using all the means

that God himself has made available for us. And these means are

precisely in the Church.

   

            Oftentimes, we can only echo these words of Psalm 8: “What

is man that you are mindful of him, human being that you care for him?

You have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with

glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you

put everything under his feet…” (4-6)

  

            Yes, man is a deep mystery, but that condition should help

us to get closer to God, not farther from him.