THERE’S a story in the life of Christ with his apostles that exposes an anomaly that can lurk even in the hearts of good people. It’s in Matthew 20,20-28. The mother of James and John made a special request to Jesus—that her sons would sit one at his right hand and the other at his left in God’s kingdom.
Christ gave a most gentle excuse that it was not his to grant that request. “It belongs to those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” That’s when the other disciples became indignant at the two brothers. And so Jesus made the following remark:
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. Not so is it among you. On the contrary, whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, even as the Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
We can term this moral abnormality, this attitudinal glitch that can come to us in very subtle and beguiling ways as careerism. As defined in some dictionaries, it is the “practice of advancing one’s career at the expense of one’s personal integrity.” It can also be an overwhelming desire or urge for professional advancement.
It corrupts one’s proper attitude to work and serve, and whatever is legitimate in one’s natural desire for professional growth. It’s a terrible illness that has spoiled many people who started to work well and to be properly motivated, but something went wrong along the way.
It can have a very complicated network of root causes. But the real viruses are found in the spiritual and moral aspects. One can readily see traces of pride, egoism and vainglory, disordinate attachments to worldly things, ignorance, error and confusion in relation to the true nature and purpose of work, service and authority, etc.
It develops in a heart that is anemic due to lack of spirit of prayer and sacrifice. And if this is reinforced by a morally sick culture and environment, where the proper values are lived only in the exterior but not in the interior, then we can have quite a pandemic.
Sad to say, signs of these irregularities are getting aplenty these days. It does not require much skill to discern that many people are afflicted with this illness, no matter how much they try to cover it.
It can be gleaned in their attitudes, in their views and reactions to things, in the questions they ask, the interests they pursue, the behavior they project in private and in public. It can be seen in their eyes and faces, the kind of smile they put on. It can be felt in the tone of their voice and the trajectory of their words.
On the other hand, there’s also a lot of “lording it over” around us that tends to cultivate this fixation on careerism. People in position like to show off their power, to flaunt their privileges and all the glittery trappings of their office.
Boasting seems to have found a niche in society. And the corresponding practices of flattery, bootlicking adulation and exaggerated, fawning complaisance are gaining foothold in people’s culture.
We need to go back to what Christ said about just wanting “not to be served but to serve.” We need to generate and develop a strong culture inspired by this attitude. We should be happy to work and serve wherever we may be, whether up or down, front or back, in the city or in the barangay, in public or in private.
Truth to tell, I had the luck of witnessing this kind of culture for a number of times already. And it always makes me happy to see these genuine manifestations of unselfish dedication and service, leaving me truly edified and inspired, and wishing I too could be that way.
When you see people working from the heart, unmindful of what position they have and of the advantages and disadvantages of their condition at the moment, I’m sure you will be moved.
I’ve seen persons who one day were presidents and heads of some groups and then the next day became clerks and assistants and still doing their work with gusto. It’s truly a marvelous experience.
What matters actually is the love one puts in his work. It’s not the position or prestige or privileges. Love equalizes and elevates everything.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Drowning evil with good
WE have just celebrated the feast (April 29) of St. Catherine of Siena, the 14th-century gutsy Dominican tertiary credited for bringing back the Pope from Avignon, France to Rome, and for establishing peace among the warring Italian city-states then.
She was the 25th child of an Italian wool dyer. Poor, she hardly had any education. She was practically unschooled. But by a special grace of God, she enjoyed such great knowledge and wisdom as to become a philosopher and theologian. The Catholic Church even proclaimed her doctor of the Church in 1970.
She knew how to argue and convince, using both homespun, commonsensical arguments and sophisticated theological reasoning. A brave woman, she was not afraid to face anyone to transmit what she thought ought to be told to that person, be he the Pope or any public official.
Opus Dei founder, St. Josemaria Escriva, made her intercessor for the apostolate of public opinion, precisely because of her feats. To me, she is worth emulating. A devotion to her that includes being inspired by her example is what we badly need these days, because we too are gripped in a similar terrible crisis.
There’s a lot of doctrinal ignorance, error and confusion around. Aggravating this is the moral and ethical anomalies that are slowly hardening up into the attitudes, mentalities, lifestyle and cultures of people.
Just visit some of the blogs in the Internet these days. You´ll immediately have an idea of the runaway, wild and rotten ideas many people, even the young, are having. There´s a lot of verbal rage. Not knowing spiritual and supernatural realities, many roar into mockery, the mockery of the impious, complete with obscenities and vulgarities.
Sad to say, this gutter level of opinion-making is daily reinforced by a subtle but powerful air of secularism, materialism and the like. Just read the papers, look at the billboards, watch the movies and TV, etc.
People are incessantly bombarded with purely worldly values, locking them with exclusively materialistic and temporal messages that are blind and deaf to faith and religion, to the things of God.
Their sensibilities are so constantly titillated as to inure them to mundane pleasures, while their spiritual faculties are left to hang in the air. People do not know anymore to relate whatever they are doing to God and to others. They are increasingly held captive in their own world, intoxicated by their own aroused passions.
Those who manage to extricate themselves from the grip of passions and start to use their intelligence, yet short of faith, can come out with brilliant ideas and even with practical initiatives that pose a greater danger to their spiritual lives.
Here, the predicament sinks into a deeper level, harder to handle and resolve. This is where people start to rationalize in the wide sea of relativism and secularism, paving the way to atheism and agnosticism. They only have space in their head for their ideas. Faith is not welcome. In fact, it is often hunted and attacked.
We can go on and on in describing this horrifying scenario we are seeing in the world today. But we cannot remain in that stage only, let alone, in simply lamenting. We have to recognize the challenge and be prepared to tackle it. We need to drown evil with an abundance of good.
There´s a great need to wage an unrelenting apostolate of public opinion. Everyone has a role to play in this effort. We need to get our act together, consolidating first our spiritual life and then going all out to master the doctrinal aspect so as to enter into a meaningful dialogue and debate in today´s many Areopagi.
The search for truth and justice, as dramatized in the many issues that confront us today, cannot and should not be limited to purely human reasoning alone. We need to bring in the light of faith, the designs of God in these issues.
To be sure, these questions are not simply earthly affairs with exclusively temporal dimensions and effects. In spite of their autonomous character as human affairs, they have deep relation to faith and to God himself. They do possess eternal effects and cosmic dimensions.
This is what we need to highlight these days. The prospect, of course, is truly daunting, but that is just how the ball bounces. We need to acknowledge this reality and start to act accordingly.
We can ask St. Catherine of Siena to intercede for us. She was literally a nobody who made a big impact in history.
She was the 25th child of an Italian wool dyer. Poor, she hardly had any education. She was practically unschooled. But by a special grace of God, she enjoyed such great knowledge and wisdom as to become a philosopher and theologian. The Catholic Church even proclaimed her doctor of the Church in 1970.
She knew how to argue and convince, using both homespun, commonsensical arguments and sophisticated theological reasoning. A brave woman, she was not afraid to face anyone to transmit what she thought ought to be told to that person, be he the Pope or any public official.
Opus Dei founder, St. Josemaria Escriva, made her intercessor for the apostolate of public opinion, precisely because of her feats. To me, she is worth emulating. A devotion to her that includes being inspired by her example is what we badly need these days, because we too are gripped in a similar terrible crisis.
There’s a lot of doctrinal ignorance, error and confusion around. Aggravating this is the moral and ethical anomalies that are slowly hardening up into the attitudes, mentalities, lifestyle and cultures of people.
Just visit some of the blogs in the Internet these days. You´ll immediately have an idea of the runaway, wild and rotten ideas many people, even the young, are having. There´s a lot of verbal rage. Not knowing spiritual and supernatural realities, many roar into mockery, the mockery of the impious, complete with obscenities and vulgarities.
Sad to say, this gutter level of opinion-making is daily reinforced by a subtle but powerful air of secularism, materialism and the like. Just read the papers, look at the billboards, watch the movies and TV, etc.
People are incessantly bombarded with purely worldly values, locking them with exclusively materialistic and temporal messages that are blind and deaf to faith and religion, to the things of God.
Their sensibilities are so constantly titillated as to inure them to mundane pleasures, while their spiritual faculties are left to hang in the air. People do not know anymore to relate whatever they are doing to God and to others. They are increasingly held captive in their own world, intoxicated by their own aroused passions.
Those who manage to extricate themselves from the grip of passions and start to use their intelligence, yet short of faith, can come out with brilliant ideas and even with practical initiatives that pose a greater danger to their spiritual lives.
Here, the predicament sinks into a deeper level, harder to handle and resolve. This is where people start to rationalize in the wide sea of relativism and secularism, paving the way to atheism and agnosticism. They only have space in their head for their ideas. Faith is not welcome. In fact, it is often hunted and attacked.
We can go on and on in describing this horrifying scenario we are seeing in the world today. But we cannot remain in that stage only, let alone, in simply lamenting. We have to recognize the challenge and be prepared to tackle it. We need to drown evil with an abundance of good.
There´s a great need to wage an unrelenting apostolate of public opinion. Everyone has a role to play in this effort. We need to get our act together, consolidating first our spiritual life and then going all out to master the doctrinal aspect so as to enter into a meaningful dialogue and debate in today´s many Areopagi.
The search for truth and justice, as dramatized in the many issues that confront us today, cannot and should not be limited to purely human reasoning alone. We need to bring in the light of faith, the designs of God in these issues.
To be sure, these questions are not simply earthly affairs with exclusively temporal dimensions and effects. In spite of their autonomous character as human affairs, they have deep relation to faith and to God himself. They do possess eternal effects and cosmic dimensions.
This is what we need to highlight these days. The prospect, of course, is truly daunting, but that is just how the ball bounces. We need to acknowledge this reality and start to act accordingly.
We can ask St. Catherine of Siena to intercede for us. She was literally a nobody who made a big impact in history.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The listener’s duty
THERE’S a passage in St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians that reminds us of the listener’s duty in any process of communication. This, to me, is crucial at the moment, since we seem to lose the proper sense of listening. We prefer to be on our own, with our own ideas, our own world. We are self-absorbed.
“When you heard and received from us the word of God, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but, as it truly is, the word of God.” (2,13)
The whole burden of responsibility in any communication does not lie solely on the speaker. A lot also depends on the listener. No amount of good quality of a speaker can guarantee success in any communication if the listener does not do his part.
In fact, if the listener is good, the speaker can be bad and still the communication can attain its goal. We need to pay greater attention to training ourselves to be good listeners. It seems this is largely neglected.
In some clergy gathering I attended, for example, I get the impression that listening is not done properly. In spite of the regularity of the activity—a monthly affair—I notice that there’s always a new speaker, with new ideas, with new gimmicks, etc.
I understand that we need to know new things, and to be entertained also as we listen. The problem is that we seem to get stuck in that level. We hardly move forward to really fathom the spiritual and supernatural content of the message made.
In the gospel about the Good Shepherd (Jn 10), Christ defines the sheep that belongs to him as the one who listens to him. “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
All of us actually belong to him, because all of us come from him. We are his creatures, the masterpiece of his creation. But our belongingness to him also depends on us, on whether we choose to belong to him, to listen to him and follow him.
Otherwise, we will nullify the original design God has for us. We are capable of doing that, because of our intelligence and will, because of our freedom. Paraphrasing St. Augustine, we can say that God may have created us without us, but he cannot save us without us. We need to do our part to go to him, to belong to him and follow him.
Listening to God’s word is not a completely passive affair. It also requires a very active effort. That’s why St. James, for example, told us not only to be hearers of the word of God, but also doers.
We have to look for it, love it, and act on it. We have to understand that in the end it’s God’s word that contains all the wisdom of the world. Our sciences, our arts, our philosophies and ideologies should spring from it and lead toward it. We have to convince ourselves that they can only have true life if they are inspired by God’s word.
Obviously, the great challenge is how to discover and articulate the connection between God’s word and our human sciences. This area of concern is barely worked out, even if a good amount of effort has already been made in this direction.
Alas, nowadays, many people have arrived at the point of questioning and rejecting the role of the word of God in our pursuit for knowledge and wisdom. It seems the world is fiercely defiant of God. They are rationalizing abominable immoralities like abortion and so-called reproductive health that are fully against God’s commandments.
We have to recover our proper bearing and start to make appropriate effort to listen more intently, more actively to the word of God. Reading the Gospel and meditating on it should be a habit that should lead us to enter into intimate relationship with Christ.
We need to internalize God’s word, to the point that they become our own, and the abiding light in everything that we do. We have to outgrow the wrong notion that only a few people are meant to take God’s word seriously. God’s word is meant for everyone of us.
That’s why, we should also realize that we have to help one another to develop a burning love for the word of God. In this regard, we should not remain in the amateur level. We have to go professional and real experts in handling and transmitting the word of God to others.
“When you heard and received from us the word of God, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but, as it truly is, the word of God.” (2,13)
The whole burden of responsibility in any communication does not lie solely on the speaker. A lot also depends on the listener. No amount of good quality of a speaker can guarantee success in any communication if the listener does not do his part.
In fact, if the listener is good, the speaker can be bad and still the communication can attain its goal. We need to pay greater attention to training ourselves to be good listeners. It seems this is largely neglected.
In some clergy gathering I attended, for example, I get the impression that listening is not done properly. In spite of the regularity of the activity—a monthly affair—I notice that there’s always a new speaker, with new ideas, with new gimmicks, etc.
I understand that we need to know new things, and to be entertained also as we listen. The problem is that we seem to get stuck in that level. We hardly move forward to really fathom the spiritual and supernatural content of the message made.
In the gospel about the Good Shepherd (Jn 10), Christ defines the sheep that belongs to him as the one who listens to him. “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
All of us actually belong to him, because all of us come from him. We are his creatures, the masterpiece of his creation. But our belongingness to him also depends on us, on whether we choose to belong to him, to listen to him and follow him.
Otherwise, we will nullify the original design God has for us. We are capable of doing that, because of our intelligence and will, because of our freedom. Paraphrasing St. Augustine, we can say that God may have created us without us, but he cannot save us without us. We need to do our part to go to him, to belong to him and follow him.
Listening to God’s word is not a completely passive affair. It also requires a very active effort. That’s why St. James, for example, told us not only to be hearers of the word of God, but also doers.
We have to look for it, love it, and act on it. We have to understand that in the end it’s God’s word that contains all the wisdom of the world. Our sciences, our arts, our philosophies and ideologies should spring from it and lead toward it. We have to convince ourselves that they can only have true life if they are inspired by God’s word.
Obviously, the great challenge is how to discover and articulate the connection between God’s word and our human sciences. This area of concern is barely worked out, even if a good amount of effort has already been made in this direction.
Alas, nowadays, many people have arrived at the point of questioning and rejecting the role of the word of God in our pursuit for knowledge and wisdom. It seems the world is fiercely defiant of God. They are rationalizing abominable immoralities like abortion and so-called reproductive health that are fully against God’s commandments.
We have to recover our proper bearing and start to make appropriate effort to listen more intently, more actively to the word of God. Reading the Gospel and meditating on it should be a habit that should lead us to enter into intimate relationship with Christ.
We need to internalize God’s word, to the point that they become our own, and the abiding light in everything that we do. We have to outgrow the wrong notion that only a few people are meant to take God’s word seriously. God’s word is meant for everyone of us.
That’s why, we should also realize that we have to help one another to develop a burning love for the word of God. In this regard, we should not remain in the amateur level. We have to go professional and real experts in handling and transmitting the word of God to others.
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