Newness of life

THIS is what we can expect with the celebration of Easter. We are made new! We have a new life. We are actually made a new creature. The old man in us is buried. A new man is formed in each one of us!

            This is because Christ has risen. With his resurrection, he has conquered sin and death. He died for us, so we can rise with him. The sting of our death has been taken away, and is replaced with the saving resurrection of Christ who shares it with us. That’s the marvelous exchange we sing about in the Easter hymn of the Exsultet.

            Thus, if we unite ourselves with him and die with him—a dying that can take many forms before it takes on the ultimate form—we will also rise with him. Everything, in the reality presented to us by our Christian faith, will be new.

            It’s a beautiful truth that should be engraved deep in our mind and heart “I make all things new,” (Rev 21,5) Let’s be reassured of this very consoling truth of our faith. The same truth is reiterated by St. Paul: “If any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away. Behold all things are made new.” (2 Cor 5,17)

            We may not know the mechanics of how this is to take place, but this is what our faith tells us, and so we believe. It’s a mysterious gift from God, first of all, and being a gift, we usually do not bother ourselves about the technical details about it. Ours is simply to receive it, ever grateful and seeing to it that we take care of the gift.

            This does not mean that we have nothing to do with this affair. Though gratuitous, this tremendous gift of a new life ought somehow to be deserved. Christ himself said so in so many words: “New wine is not put into old wineskins…new wine is put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Mt 9,17)

            We would do well to really live in intimate union with Christ. That is how, as a love song beautifully expresses it, we can keep the music playing, how we can keep the song from fading too fast, how we cannot run out of new things to say.

            St. Paul puts it very bluntly in his Letter to the Romans. “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste.” (1 Cor 5,7) In the mind of St. Paul, this is how we may be like the “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

            This can mean many things. Among them, the effort to truly understand others in spite of and even because of their defects, because this is how Christ deals with each one of us.

            Recently, I watched two movies that wonderfully dramatized how understanding others in spite of their very obvious defects can make a lot of difference. One was “Saving Mr. Banks” and the other was “In front of the class.” In both movies, the main characters had very irritating defects. In the former, the defect was psychological, and in the latter, physical.

            We should realize that every one of us is a child of God who, even if one has lost his goodness, is still loved and redeemed by Christ. This is the basic and constant assumption we should have when dealing with others.

           

            And so when we see the defects of others, especially those defects that would really bother us, we have to think that there is a reason behind them. We need to know where they are coming from.

            And then putting ourselves in the dynamics of Christ’s universal love for us, and never without it, let us try to deal with them kindly and patiently. This is how we can understand everyone, including ourselves, with all that we have, both the good and the bad things in us.

            It is only this love that is capable of understanding everyone and everything, warts and all. It is this love that can cure and transform people. It is this love that makes everyone new again. It is this love that is able to forgive everyone, including ourselves.

            We need to learn to develop and live this love, starting with our own personal selves through our personal prayers and other forms of personal relationships with our Father God through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

            Then let us pass this on to those in our families. Then let’s do everything that this kind of love is taught and lived actively in schools and everywhere else.

One note samba

THAT’S, of course, the title of a song, a beautiful one by the Brazilian Antonio Carlos Jobim who composed many other wonderful songs that have made many of my generation swoon in dreamy delight.

            That’s how I feel about his songs like “Quiet nights and quiet stars,” “Meditation,” “Waters of March,” and many others. I must confess that the first time I heard “One note samba” decades ago, I immediately fell in love with it and had been singing and dancing it, but only mentally. I could not act it out due to physical and social constraints.

            But the more serious reason was that I also felt a little discomfort about it since its beat and lyrics were kind of sensuous, and if I were not careful I was sure I would end up with some unwelcome thoughts and feelings.

            I was certain the composer had lovers in mind when he made it, and so I felt I could not do full justice to it unless I had a girl in mind with whom I was supposed to be madly in love. And I had none, even in my wildest and most carefree years of youth, long before I ever thought of becoming a priest, celibate and all that.

            It was not until I read something by Pope John Paul II, who will be a saint by April 27, who said to the effect that no matter how wrong or defective things are, there must be something right and good in them, otherwise these wrong things cannot stand and attract us.

            He said that we need to be quick to identify these good and true elements, sifting them from the errors, and make use of them to transform what’s wrong with a particular statement, philosophy or ideology.

            And so I thought why not apply this principle also to songs that have given me conflicting feelings. And true enough, I discovered that there are hidden gems embedded in “One note samba.” It was just a matter of purifying it and orienting it properly.

            So, instead of a girl as the one simple and root note referred to in the song, I would just think of God, then the song becomes perfect and safe. Its sensuousness poses no more danger but rather would help me enter into a more sublime reality.

            This is not to say that to fall in love with a girl is wrong in itself. What is wrong is when one falls for her when he is not meant to do so, or when such falling leads to certain aberrations.

            With these clarifications in mind, then one can sing songs like the One Note Samba without guilt feelings. And the lyrics in fact become very meaningful.

            “This is just a little samba / built upon a single note…” This line can mean we are starting an interesting affair with God as the seed, a thought that is reinforced by the next line: “Other notes are sure to follow / but the root is still that note.”

            “Now this new note is the consequence / of the one we have been through / As I’m bound to be / the unavoidable consequence of you.” These are beautiful words, loaded with meaning referring to how we and our thoughts and actions ought to be organic reflections and extensions of God and his power and love, etc.

            “There’s so many people who can talk and talk and talk / and just say nothing / or nearly nothing.” This presumes that when one is not with that one note, God, he can say many things and yet not mean anything or hardly anything.

            This is reinforced by the succeeding line: “I have used up all the scale I know / and at the end / I’ve come to nothing.”

            Then the coup the grace: “So I must come back to my first note / as I must come back to you. / I will pour into that one note / all the love I feel for you. / Anyone who wants the whole show / re mi fa sol la si do / will find himself with no show / better play the note you know.”

            The song is actually a tremendously irresistible appeal to come back to God who is the source of everything—of love, unity, truth, goodness, etc. When we have these thoughts, we should not be afraid anymore to give our heart to samba songs or anything in the world!

            In these times of rapid worldly developments, this should be attitude to have.

The Passion

NOW that we are in Holy Week, it’s good to remind ourselves of how important it is to meditate on the Passion of Christ. It’s the culminating act of his redemptive mission that covers his whole life here on earth. Everything that he is as the Son of God who became man, everything that he said and did for our salvation is contained there.

            We have to understand, on the basis of our Christian faith, that the Passion of Christ is an organic whole that includes his death on the Cross and his resurrection. It is also organically linked to everything else about him.

            Nothing in his life is irrelevant or unnecessary in his Passion. It should not be considered in isolation. It’s good that we realize this truth of our faith more deeply and more practically, so that we don’t develop an unnecessary distorted attitude toward it that often translates itself into a certain dislike for it.

            The Passion, in spite of its ugliness, pain and gore, is actually a beautiful, desirable event that we should get attracted to. In the first place, it is an essential and necessary element in our life. We cannot avoid it without compromising our eternal destiny.

            And being God and not only as man, Christ makes his Passion take place live every time the liturgy of his Passion is celebrated. This is highlighted precisely during this Holy Week, but is actually presented to us also every time the Holy Mass or any liturgical act is celebrated.

            And so, when we participate in that celebration, we are actually, through the sacramental economy, living witnesses of the event, even if only in a sacramental way. We become contemporaries of Christ in his supreme act of love for us.

            Therefore, while involving extreme suffering that a man can experience, the Passion actually is also a joyful event of a victory, a conquest over what is most harmful to us—sin, and with sin our eternal death.

            We should train our mind and heart to capture this wonderful reality, presented to us by our Christian faith, and to react accordingly, that is, to enter into the very dynamics of loving, and thereby bringing our fondness for loving to its ultimate level, extricating it from the low, base and often fake and deceptive forms of love.

            In the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ, we see in action those very consoling words of Christ: “Greater love than this no man has, that a man lays down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15,13)

            What actually takes place there is Christ, being sinless, assuming all our sins and dying to them so that we may have a way to resurrect from them through his own Resurrection.  This is the ultimate of love!

            This much the Letter to the Hebrews affirms: “Christ offers himself only once to take the faults of many on himself, and when he appears a second time, it will not be to deal with sin but to reward with salvation those who are waiting for him.” (9,28)

            This is what supreme love is all about. It is not contented with wishing others well or sharing things with others. It will go to the extent of suffering for the others, making as one’s own the burdens of the others, even if the others would not correspond. It is a love that is fully given and completely gratuitous.

            Thus, when we meditate on the Passion of Christ, we have to realize the love that drips copiously. We should not forget that sin is what causes it, and therefore, we should do everything to avoid sin.

            It’s good to develop a healthy hatred of sin as well as a certain dominion over it, such that as much as possible we do not allow it to affect us badly. If ever, it should make us intensify our love for God and others, giving ourselves more and more in a crescendo typical of love.

            We have to be very generous in our self-giving and continuing effort of sanctification, both personal and social. We have to be ready to carry out this task competently.

            And since we cannot avoid sin, the meditation of the Passion should reassure us of the infinite mercy of God. We have to be very generous in our spirit of penance, always seeking conversion, renewal and the many forms of atonement, reparation and purification.

            Special attention has to be given to the sacrament of confession, that wonderful tribunal of divine justice and mercy. We need to love it deeply by resorting to it regularly.