Sans charity, nothing is of value

OF real and eternal value, that is. At best, one can only
enjoy some passing benefit or advantage that can usually have a double
effect of good and bad, depending on how one carries out a particular
human act. It’s charity that makes even the most ordinary activity
acquire tremendous, eternal worth.

            This can easily be gleaned from some words of St. Paul.
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift
of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am
nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to
hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1
Cor 13,1-3)

      Further down, he reiterated the same idea. “Where there
are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be
stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in
part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in
part disappears.” (1 Cor 13,8-10)

            Yes, charity or love is the ultimate value that we have to
aspire for. It is the fullness of Christian life. With it, everything
else is subsumed. Even our mistakes and ignorance, if done with love,
can somehow acquire eternal value. Apropos to this, St Paul testifies:
“In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have
been called according to his purpose.” (8,28)

            We cannot deny that we many times get contented only with
some worldly value to motivate our thoughts, words and deeds. It can
be effectiveness, efficiency, profitability, popularity, etc.

            While these motives are good in themselves, they can turn
bad if not infused with the spirit of charity. As can be easily
verified in numberless cases, they can occasion dishonorable motives
like greed, envy, lust, sloth, love for power, etc. That would be a
pity because with all the apparent goodness these motives can effect,
they still fail to reach the ultimate goal meant for us.

            We need to see to it that charity is at the beginning and
end, as well as in the in-between of our every act, be it a thought,
an intention, a word or a deed. We need to train and discipline
ourselves strictly in this, since it is very easy for us to be carried
away by merely human and worldly values and motives.

            In this, we have to look closely at Christ who as God is
the very essence of love himself, the very source, power and pattern
of love. And as our Redeemer, Christ clearly commanded us to love one
another as he has loved us.

            And so, we need to look at one another and to do things
always from the perspective of Christ’s love for us. Nothing that we
do, even the most impressive act we do, can have real value if not
inspired by Christ’s love. On the other hand, if Christ’s love
motivates us, even the most ordinary and insignificant act we do can
have eternal value.

            We have to exert great effort here, since we have to
contend with a tremendous environment that ignores Christian love as
motive for our actions, while revering worldly values to stimulate our
actions.

            This does not mean that we retreat from the world in order
to be filled with the love of Christ. This is a mentality that has
gone out of date, though many are still hooked to it. Our worldly and
temporal affairs are no obstacles and hindrances in putting Christian
love into the real world.


            We just have to cultivate a kind of contemplative spirit,
proper of persons immersed in the world, to be able to see God in
everything and to be moved by love in his every activity.

            As Christ himself said, we might be in the world, but we
are not supposed to be worldly. St. Paul said something relevant: “Set
your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Col 3,2) This
simply means that while we have to do our temporal affairs, we should
offer everything to God as an act of love.

            It’s actually when we offer things to God that these
things can also be of great and real benefit to others. We have to
rectify our intentions then, and avail of a spiritual plan which would
enable us to be with God always even in our most mundane affairs.

Righteous, not bitter, zeal

YES, we are meant to be zealous in our life, to be driven
in anything that we do. Things have to be done with gusto, with the
abiding mentality to “carpe diem.” Away with passivity, with
complacency, with just mindlessly flowing with the tide. But we have
to make sure that our zeal is righteous, not bitter, with clear sense
of purpose, not just aimless.

            Righteous zeal is always respectful of legal, juridical
and most importantly of moral standards, especially that of charity
and mercy. Bitter zeal wants instant results while ignoring legal and
moral requirements. It may pursue a valid cause, working for truth and
justice, but without taking care of the appropriate means.

            Bitter zeal makes a person hasty and reckless in his
assessment of things. It makes fail to consider all angles, to listen
to both sides, so to speak. He is prone to imprudence.

            Inflammatory, incendiary words are his main weapons. Being
belligerent is his style. He relishes in rousing controversies and
sowing intrigues. He’s actually not as interested in looking for the
objective truth and justice as carrying out his own personal cause.

            This concern is very relevant these days, since with a new
administration that prides itself to effect drastic changes in our
country, we just have to make sure that the changes that have to be
pursued with zeal, are the good ones, proper of us as persons and
ultimately as children and people of God.

            We just cannot make illegitimate and immoral shortcuts,
that can give us some instant benefits but leave us with greater
damage whose effects we can feel only later. To the point, there is
growing concern and sense of alarm over the increasing number of
killings of people suspected to be involved in the drugs menace.

            While it’s true that we should try our best to minimize
and even to eliminate criminality in any form in our society, we
should also see to it that such otherwise very legitimate concern be
pursued with legal and most especially moral means. We just cannot go
on with summary killings no matter how deserving a criminal may be of
death.

            That kind of attitude, and worse if made as an official
policy, is a dangerous one whose short-run benefits can never outweigh
the long-run damage it will surely cause. The end, no matter how
lofty, cannot justify the means if it is illegal and immoral.

            With this kind of attitude and/or policy, we will be
creating a culture of death. Our respect for life would be eroded
drastically. Now we can eliminate criminals. But sooner or later, that
attitude can deteriorate further into eliminating anyone who can cause
any kind of trouble to us. This is when abortion can come in and get
legalized, and euthanasia would not be far behind.

            And many other bad things can easily ensue, because while
a radical good can generate more good, a radical evil can also
generate more evil. Good and evil things do not come alone. They
always come with a large company of their kind. What one sows, he
reaps. What is sown in evil is reaped also in evil.

            It’s true that we have a terrible drugs problem in our
country. Some people have already considered us as a narco-state which
means that “the illegal trade in narcotic drugs forms a substantial
part of the economy.” We have a big problem to solve, indeed, but
again this does not justify the recourse to illegal and immoral means.

            Some may argue that in fighting evil, we have to use evil
means also. They believe the crisis situation with respect to our
drugs problem has gone beyond the normal legal and moral standards.
They say that it has to be dealt with in its own terms, that is, using
evil means also.

            I don’t know where they get that principle, but it
certainly is not human, much less, Christian. It’s a principle, I
believe, that betrays a certain kind of profound desperation,  and a
sense of righteousness that definitely is not from God but from one’s
own version, or what is known as self-righteousness.

            It’s taking the law, both the juridical and moral, into
their own hands. It implicitly tells us that the good and the moral
has to surrender to evil and the immoral.

            Others may still argue that following the normal legal and
moral recourses are bound to fail because they do not teeth enough to
tackle this problem. But that’s the challenge. We can always toughen
up our juridical and moral systems to cope with this crisis.

Faith and suffering

            SUFFERING, in any form, has to be viewed from the
perspective of faith. It should be taken out from an overly human
outlook that restricts it to its purely negative, painful and
destructive character. There’s a lot more to our suffering than what
our senses and our reasoning unaided by faith can cope and discover.

            When we suffer, let’s be quick to see and go through it
with Christ, who said that “if anyone wishes to come after me, he must
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Lk 9,23)
With that outlook, we are convinced that any suffering is always for
our own good—for our purification, strengthening, conversion, etc.

            First, we have to understand that our suffering was not
meant for us in the beginning of our existence. Nor is it meant for
our end. It came about as consequence of our mishandling our freedom,
that supreme gift God our Father and Creator endowed us with at our
first creation in Adam and Eve.

            We have to make that qualification of “first creation,”
because our creation is actually an ongoing affair that is played out
in stages all throughout time.

            There’s the first creation by God the Father of Adam and
Eve, endowing us with the best of gifts like our freedom, then our
second creation in Jesus to introduce the crucial correcting element
of the cross in our life once we misuse our freedom, and the third
stage which is our personal sanctification through the work of the
Holy Spirit.

            The business of creation takes the whole of time and, in
fact, covers the entirety of our existence, since it involves our very
existence itself. For as long as we exist, our creation continues to
take place.

            From the point of view of God who lives in eternity, this
whole process is just but a blink to him. “One day with the Lord is as
a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Pt 3,8) Of
course, from our point of view, all this process covers the whole of
time.

            Back to our freedom, we have to understand that it’s that
gift that makes us image and likeness of God. Together with our
intelligence, it enables us to mirror God’s greatness is us. With
God’s grace, it lets us enter God’s life itself, sharing that divine
life and perfecting our ultimate identity.

            We are not mere creatures like the others that come from
God and belong to him, but do not participate in the very intimate
life of God. We are the masterpiece of his creation, charged to be
stewards of the whole of creation.

            But all the goodness that our freedom gives us turned sour
when we abused it. As a consequence, the good things are now replaced
with bad things that make us suffer. This is the origin of our
suffering that continues to grow, morph and spread in ways we cannot
account anymore.

            Still, God has not abandoned us, and instead has
undertaken a very complicated plan to recover us, sending his Son to
become man and effect our own redemption through the Cross.

            With the Cross, he has made the very cause of our downfall
also as the very means of our salvation. The Cross is where sin is
transformed to grace, death to life, darkness to light.

            And thus, now with the help of the Holy Spirit, we have to
understand the true value of our cross—all the sufferings we have to
endure in this life. Let’s not waste too much time figuring out why we
suffer and how we can overcome it. These we will always do somehow,
but we should not stop there.

            Every suffering we have should be an invitation for us to
go back to Christ, to be converted again, that is, to identify
ourselves with him through the work of the Holy Spirit, so we can
effect in our mortal flesh that very transformation that took place in
Christ, who died and rose from the dead.

            This is the challenge we have—how to go beyond mere human
considerations of our suffering so as to savor its ultimate religious
value. We need to develop the skill to escape from the self-focusing
dynamics of suffering that only leads to a dead-end when considered
only humanly, to be able to hitch ourselves with the saving dynamics
of Christ’s suffering.

            Are we just contented with complaining and groaning and
moaning when we suffer? Or do we start as soon as we can to enter,
through faith, into the more glorious dimensions that our suffering
offers?