The cross and the fullness of love

WE have to understand this very well. Unless we love the
cross, we can never say that we are loving enough. Of course, we have
to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God
wills it—the way Christ loves it—that we can really say that we are
loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love.

            We have to be wary of our tendency to limit our loving to
ways and forms that give us some benefits alone, be it material, moral
or spiritual. While they are also a form of love, they are not yet the
fullness of love.

            They somehow are forms of love that have traces of
self-interest. They are not total self-giving, completely rid of
self-interest, which is what true love is. And if they are not
corrected, if they are not oriented towards the fullness of love, they
can occasion a lot of danger and worse anomalies.

            Loving the cross the way Christ loved it is the ultimate
of love. It is the love that is completely deprived of selfishness. It
is total self-giving, full of self-abnegation. St. Paul described this
kind of love in Christ when he said:

            “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not count
equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking
the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being
found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto
death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2,6-8)

            The cross, which is the symbol of all our sinfulness and
the death that is the consequence of our sin, has not led God to hate
us and to condemn us forever. Rather, it has moved God to love us with
a love greater than that of creating us to be his image and likeness.

            Yes, there is justice also involved, and there is
punishment, divine anger and retribution always in play. But in the
end, God is always moved to mercy and compassion for us, and this is
actualized and personalized in God becoming man, Jesus Christ, who in
the end offered his life on the cross as a supreme act of love for us.

            That’s why he said, “Greater love has no one than this: to
lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15,13) From these words we
can derive the conclusion that Christ’s embracing his death on the
cross is God’s supreme act of love for us.

            And if we want to love the way God loves us, just as
Christ commanded us to do in his new commandment, we cannot help but
involve the cross, as symbol of our sinfulness and death, in our
loving.

            In short, to love as we should, to love with the love of
God, with the fullness of love, we have to look for the cross always,
and not just wait for it to come. It’s in this context that we can
understand why Christ told us: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must
deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mt 16,24)

            These words are actually a most welcome piece of good
news. They are not meant to be inhuman, to simply give us problems.
They are meant to give us our true liberation, our true joy, given our
wounded condition. They are meant to lead us to the full range of
love—the love of God and not just any form of human love that is not
inspired by God’s love.

            We need to make some drastic adjustments in our
understanding of love, in our attitudes, and the relevant practices
and skills involved in this divine love. We should not be afraid of
the cross. On the contrary, we have to look for it, in all its forms
and expressions, with eagerness.

            Loving with the cross of Christ makes our love spiritual
and supernatural, a love that leads us to our eternal destination. It
extricates our loving from the mere play of our passions and urges. It
purifies and elevates our love without annulling its human, natural,
physical and emotional dimensions.

            If we find this love hard or seemingly impossible to do,
then let’s go to Christ himself who said: “Come to me, all you who are
weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11,28)

            We have to strengthen our faith that insofar as God is
concerned, he already has given us everything we need to be able to
love the way he loves us through the cross.

Self-made subjective Christianity

THIS is not going to be easy to explain. First of all, because
religion, while it concerns God, also has us, the ever fickle-minded
man, as its integral element, since religion is about us and our
relation with God.

    So, while man is basically a religious being, always looking and
yearning for God, there´s always that possibility, for a number of
reasons and factors, of us making our own God, and failing to hit it
off with the real One.

    This has happened in abundance in the history of man. There were
people who worshiped the sun as their God. Others the moon, or the
wind. Still others carved some idols as their deity.

    We are a religious being. Our Catechism says so. ¨The desire for
God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and
for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself.¨ (27)

    Even those who profess themselves to be atheists (non-believers)
and agnostics (doubters) cannot avoid having some aspects of religion,
because if it is not a spiritual, supernatural God they believe in,
they must believe in something else—their own reason and ideas, for
example, or simply their own selves.

    This challenge of how to put our religion on its proper course
has been hounding us since time immemorial. And though the problem is
huge, and the efforts to resolve it through the centuries have been
hard and tumultuous, we just have to have faith and hope that we can
resolve it.

    The basis for that faith and hope is actually with us and all
around us. No matter how imperfect our efforts may be, we cannot deny
the fact that there must be a God—if not something or someone outside
us, then one inside us.

    I don´t know much about other religions, but Christianity is
about a God who reveals himself to us, who comes to us, who makes
himself like us, and leaves us with instrumentalities that continue
his presence and redemptive or perfective work on us up to now till
the end of time. The initiative comes from him, before we are asked to
correspond.

    Obviously, all religions must contain elements of truth and
goodness, since any effort to deal with a God, even in the atheistic
or agnostic context, cannot help but possess some of these elements of
truth and goodness. Nothing can stand or even exist if no element of
truth and goodness is present.

    We just have to embark on a lifetime task of determining the true
religion, the one initiated by God, and not any that we start or
invent. For this, we need to be humble and empty ourselves, like what
Christ did to become like us, so that we can be filled with God´s
grace, with God himself, and from there start our relation with him.

    Our big problem now is that we seem to be making our own
religion. We may start with corresponding to God´s initiative, but
somewhere along the way, we break off from him and go on our own.

    Even among Christians and Catholics, this problem is very real.
During the RH debate, I realize more sharply that there are Catholics
who think religion is simply  a matter of one´s conscience, with
hardly any relation to duties to Church, to abide to a certain
doctrine of faith, to resort to the sacraments, etc.

    In fact, there were a lot of anti-Church and anti-religion
sentiments. It seems these have been festering in the minds and hearts
of many people for ages. These biases proliferated in the RH debates
in different forums, often with venom vomited out quite freely, and
claws, fangs and hackles menacingly shown.

    Many, even among the educated and professional classes, could not
understand why the Church has to be heard about the morality of the RH
issue. What role does it play in this issue, they ask. Why not simply
what comes to one´s conscience or at least what is agreed upon by the
consensus of the majority?

    Some traces of Christianity can still be detected in many of the
views expressed, but a Christianity very badly understood and
digested, much less, lived. Many still claim they are Christians or at
least adhere to some religion, but it is quite clear that it is more a
man-made religion, a man-made Christianity that is referred to.

    This is, of course, a big challenge for the Church which will not
run away from it. But it will have to retool itself significantly.Self-made subjective Christianity

 ntly.

Activating our spiritual life

WE need to be wary of our tendency to confine our spiritual
life to the equivalent of the comfort zone. This happens when we
equate our spiritual life with taking care simply of our personal
affairs, concerns and problems.

          In short, we think of God and go to him only when we have
personal predicaments to sort out. We forget about what God really
wants from us. We forget about what the others expect from us.

          It´s notoriously one-way, highly localized instead of going
global, self-centered instead of strengthening one´s relation with God
and others that underlies it. It is shallow, narrow, vulnerable to all
sorts of dangers like superstition, complacency, heresies, etc., and
incapable of facing problems and fullfilling the other Christian
duties.

          This is a common phenomenon that we need to be more aware
of, since it has become so ordinary like air that we hardly give any
attention to it, much less, feel some concern over it. It doesn´t give
us even the slightest jolt.

          Our Lord himself was faced with the same phenomenon even
among those close to him, his apostles. Many times he had to correct
them, expand their faith and understanding of things, and even scold
them.

          Remember the time when the apostles were arguing who among
them was the greatest. Then the mother of James and John simply wanted
to have her sons seated by the side of our Lord in heaven.

          Philip also asked Christ to show them the Father, which
provoked our Lord to tell Philip, ¨After I have been with you all this
time, you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the
Father.¨ (Jn 14,9)

          Then Peter received a strong rebuke when he attempted to
dissuade Jesus from going to Jerusalem to face his death. ¨Get behind
me, Satan, you are a scandal to me...” (Mt 16,23)

          There´s a strong tendency for people to simply go
individualistic in their spiritual life. It´s true that the spiritual
life is always personal, but it also has other dimensions. When people
only talk about their problems and fail to enrich their spiritual life
with the other elements that go into it, we have a problem.

          People often fail to realize that many of their weaknesses
and failings persist because they do not allow their spiritual life to
take on the other fundamental elements. They may pray, but they don´t
deepen their faith. They like to develop virtues, but they don´t like
to exert effort, to offer sacrifices and to be tempted and tested.

          They want to be holy, but they don´t take care of their
ongoing formation, nor submit to a plan of a life of piety. They want
to be generous, but they don´t want to be demanded upon or to be told
or to be given problems and challenges. They want to be
contemplatives, but they neglect their duty to be active in their
secular responsibilities.

          We need to demolish this kind of mentality that sadly seems
to be mainstream nowadays. We won´t progress spiritually that way. On
the contrary, we can go deeper into trouble and yet thinking that we
are still ok.

          This is the unkindest cut we can suffer when we have a
spiritual life that is revolving around ourselves. Let´s remember that
pride, error and blindness can take on the appearance of holiness. If
not corrected, that predicament can become invincibly unsolvable.

          St. Paul always encouraged that we try to pursue Christian
maturity, to the point that God becomes ¨all in all,¨ and that we
become ¨a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of
Christ.¨ (Eph 4,13)

          For this, we should know some fundamental and indispensable
aspects of Christian life, like the truth that Christian life is a
participation in the Trinitarian life of God who is one yet three
persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

          We need to develop a sense of our filiation to God the
Father, the urge to follow and imitate Christ who is the perfection of
our humanity, the skill to deal with the Holy Spirit who is our
sanctifier, the divine gift that brings God to us here and now.

          We need to develop the sense of the ecclesial and secular
dimensions of the spiritual life, keenly aware of our duties in the
Church and in the world, evolving a sense of the relationship between
time and eternity, the material and the spiritual, the world and
heaven.

          Filling out and activating our spiritual life is an endless,
exhilarating affair!