TAKING A CUE FROM HISTORY: THOUGHTS CONCERNING AN ANALYSIS ON THE RH BILL DEBACLE.

The past weeks of final examinations seem to have overexcited my neurons and had pushed me to be especially fertile and productive in the literal sense. The analysis offered by Armando Doronila in the Philippine Daily Inquirer ("The RH Bill Debacle", December 20, 2012 issue) has piqued my curiosity and has set my thinking gears turning. It’s strange to note that precisely in a time when everything seems to settle down for a well-earned respite from intellectual work after the exams, the brain starts to function.

The Doronila’s article provides an analysis concerning the outcome of the recent debate on the Reproductive Health (or otherwise, Responsible Parenthood) bill, which I think would be remembered in Philippine contemporary history as one of the most divisive in society. Centering on the clash between the Catholic Church and the bill’s proponents in the legislature, not only does it recount the facts about the final stages of the debate, but in order to reinforce the author’s point concerning the   ideological conflict between both, Doronila goes back in history, and points out the actuation of both parties in the debate concerning the legislation allowing for the compulsory reading of Rizal’s Noli and Fili in Philippine schools way back in the late 1950’s. In this debate, the Church (vehement against its application in the Philippine educational system) lost the debate, and the novels became part of the school curriculum. But as Sen. Joker Arroyo mentioned in his intervention during the Senate voting on the RH bill, in this 1956 debate, nobody lost face, neither the Church nor the politicians who sponsored the bill.

Doronila also mentions another episode in which the Church took a crucial part, and this was in ousting Marcos from power, effectively ending a twenty-year old regime. Here, the memorable role of the late Cardinal Sin was crucial in calling all Filipinos to the streets, a decision which was not done in the spur of the moment, but something that was taken after intense hours of prayer.  Referring to this episode, the author of the article concludes that “in this role, Church intervention in state affairs was at its best and most welcomed by the Filipino people. It was the height of the influence and power of the Church in the development of democracy”.

He goes on, winding up a rather insightful analysis, commenting on the fact that since then, the Church’s influence has waned, and could not be regained by interventions related to population and its implications related to economic growth and poverty.

Doronila begins with what amounts to a general assumption: “the Roman Catholic Church suffered its most crushing defeat in its collision with the Philippine state in 13 years when Congress decisively voted on Monday to pass the Malacañang-certified reproductive health bill  providing government funding for contraceptives and sex education in schools.” I would say that this could be taken as an apparent assumption, and this could be interpreted in many ways, depending on the perspective from which one may prefer to look at it.

Basically this was one statement that set me thinking. Certainly the votes of the anti-Rh legislators, backed by the bishops and the Catholic laity, were outnumbered by a comfortable margin by the pro-RH camp and the bill’s authors. Tactically, numerically and apparently, the outcome transformed the parties in the debate, turning it from a debate between pros and antis into one between the gleefully victorious and the defeated.

The day the results were officially made known to the public, placing the bill one step ahead into legality, many people expressed their dismay and their sadness on the outcome. Both news reached me as I surveyed the world in the internet. I guess the latter’s expressions of sadness and dismay personally irritated me more than the victory of the Pro-RH camp in the bicameral vocations,  though their reaction is perfectly understandable. The day the results went out, I didn’t have that sense of defeat, personally because it don’t see it as such. To express it more exactly, the legislators contrary to the bill lost in the votation; they may have been on the same side that the Catholic Church was championing, but it was the anti-RH votes that lost (as a parenthesis, I congratulate these legislators for being heroic in standing their ground, as much as I respect the rest of the other legislators in the other camp).

I don’t feel that there should be talk of the Catholic Church being defeated as yet, for the simple reason that the law still has to prove itself capable of bringing what it was supposed to bring on. It’s too premature to celebrate. I would grant victory to the supporters of the RH bill as a law if it has indeed been able to make true its provisions, and has uplifted the poor, helped in defending the rights of women, and aided in the true education of the youth. But the mere fact of it’s being passed into law is no guarantee that it will work. I’m not saying that it won’t work, it could be effective…but as the Holy Writ would express it, it would only be through the fruits that we would be able to see the true victory of this bill once enacted into law, and this will not happen at the spur of the moment.

I don’t think the Church has suffered a crushing defeat; a setback in its hold and influence (as the Inquirer would put it) perhaps, but a humiliated  Church, I don’t think so. In the academic jests that we would throw at each other in the residence where I live in, we would debate upon the excellence of our fields: Canon lawyers would pit themselves jokingly against dogmatic theologians, moralists against philosophers, each saying their field is better and the studying the rest is an absolute waste of time. One day they turned to me, the only historian in the residence (there aren’t much of us in the Faculty of Theology, there are only about six of us, and I’m the lone Filipino) and asked me in jest concerning any importance my field would have. I replied smugly, “I don’t need to answer that question. I just have to direct you to the fact that chapter one in all of your respective textbooks would talk about the history of your specializations. Go and deduce the answer for yourselves. We historians cannot enter into your debates; transcending such conflicts, we have the duty to be observers of everything that takes place in time and space”. Message relayed ad verbatim. I suppose I felt smug like Buddha or some other oriental sage, because my companions backed a hasty retreat and went for another to pounce on.

There is a lot to be learned in history, and in a way, it gives you a perspective that helps orient things, and it is only when things are in place could one be at peace. The outcome of the RH bill debate, its impact on the Church and upon its public image in Philippine society, and the analysis afforded by Doronila brings be back to the case of the Protestant Reformation. The Reform wrought by Luther had huge consequences in European history. It was a tragic episode with respect to the history of European unity, as with the Reform movement, that millenary political, cultural and religious unity termed as Christendom was irreparable shattered. The revolution instigated by Luther’s defiance to authority, no matter how corrupt, started a long period of wars, which culminated in the rise of modern states, each with its own handling of religion. Far from being a principle of unity, it shattered it.

For the Church, the Reform brought heavy consequences. It was a huge blow, and perhaps historically, it was the greatest crisis that the Catholic Church had ever faced since the Great Schism in the fifteenth century, since it constituted a scandalously huge rift within the Church itself, that mystical body termed by saints and Christian thinkers as that “seamless robe of Christ”, which the Protestant Reform had torn apart.

The Catholic Church was down, evidently…but that painful episode brought immediately brought forth one of the greatest moments of splendor that the Church has ever had in terms of art, intellectual science, administration, and most important of all, sanctity. The succeeding period brought forth a rich harvest of examples of  lives that mirrored the holiness and the love of God. above everything, this is the victory that crowns them all. The seventeenth century, heir of the woes of it turbulent predecessor, was a moment of unparalleled glory in many aspects of the Church’s life.

I don’t feel defeated in any way, nor do I think that the Church in the Philippines should feel otherwise…aside from the reasons that I’ve expressed above, whatever low moments we may find ourselves in, the Church must always see as opportunities to rise. To feel sad at an apparent setback is an error which the Catholic Church in the Philippines does not have the luxury to commit at this point in time. Her critics and detractors are right when they say that this marks a new period for the Church, and they are equally right when they say that it is time for a humbler Church.

I think that it is time for the Church in the Philippines to let go of any triumphalist tendency that it may have inherited from its colonial past. It is a triumphalism that we have inherited from the times when bishops and priests, religious and wealthy lay people WERE the Church. This triumphalism has given birth to a certain clericalism that does not speak true of the Gospel of Christ in contemporary Filipino society. True, the people don’t listen anymore to bishops and priests pontificating in their pulpits. But they cannot resist in listening to Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. People have that erroneous image of the Church as being merely the bishops and the priests and religious. No, they are not the Church. The lay people in themselves  aren’t the Church either. We may sometimes have forgotten that the Church is neither of these. The deepest truth about the Church is that it is the mystical Body of Christ; not just any mere human institution with its own aims and history. Many people wouldn't care to realize that The Church is of God, Christ is its head, and only if we let this word of Christ shine more brilliantly in the foreground, with us priests and bishops and lay people forming the mere background, wouldn’t the people listen more?

The RH Bill debates have merely set, with respect for the Church, the fertile ground upon which to grow stronger, by allowing it to see that its force is not in the numbers that it muster, but in the Truth that it needs to proclaim. For it to proclaim it as such, it needs to humble. Yes, humble, but not humiliated, as the Church’s detractors would have her. A humble Church in the Philippines will speak out all the more, forcefully than ever. A Church that does not base her power in a system of privilege, but on the Gospel of Life, a Church that is prophetic in its denunciation of evil, and active in works of charity in truth, both of which are the only driving force behind any initiative that can truly uplift the Filipino, especially the poor, the women, and the youth.

This is the Church that we are called to be with the help of God’s grace, one which our country needs. And I believe optimistically, that the odds are helping us in achieving that.

Perhaps now you may understand why I don’t think of it as a defeat.

Gaudete Sunday: TRUE JOY

(I'm offering the English translation after the Spanish version)

Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete!

Avanzamos en nuestro camino hacia la fiesta de la Navidad, plenamente conscientes de que este tiempo preparatorio de Adviento es un espacio verdaderamente de penitencia. Y así hemos comenzado y vivido estos días. En el domingo pasado hemos escuchado las palabras del profeta Isaías que dijo: Preparen el camino del Señor, hagan rectos sus senderos. Estos palabras  constituyen el corazón del mensaje de san Juan Bautista, el precursor de nuestro Señor. Efectivamente, al rectificar nuestros caminos, rellenando las valles de nuestra ignorancia, rebajando las montañas de amor propio y la soberbia que estan en nuestros corazones, estamos respondiendo a la llamada de la conversión. Es una llamada perenne, de toda la vida, pero que se revista con especial urgencia estos días.

El tercer domingo de adviento, el domingo Gaudete, nos muestra a su vez que el fruto de la verdadera penitencia y conversión no puede ser otra cosa que la verdadera alegría. El apóstol san Pablo nos exhorta de estar alegres siempre, porque siempre estamos en camino de la conversión. En cuanto nos pongamos en este camino, respondiendo fielmente a esa llamada a la conversión, nos acercamos continuamente al Señor, cuya presencia entre nosotros y en nosotros es fuente de toda alegría: Dominus enim prope est. El Señor está cerca.

La liturgia nos muestra, pues,  que la alegría cristiana no es la mera alegría de un animal sano, que se pone a reír y alegrarse  porque se está físicamente bien: come bien, duerme bien, se divierta. No, la alegría de verdad brota y cunde de la presencia del Señor al que hemos dado la bienvenido en nuestro corazón, en nuestra vida. Es una alegría que vemos evidente en la vida de los santos, primeramente de María nuestra madre santísima, que a pesar de las fatigas, reveses y contradicciones de la vida, están llenos de alegría serena. Es una alegría que se tiene que propagar; una que tiene que contagiar a los demás en el alrededor.

La liturgia del domingo Gaudete nos enseña también que la alegría que tenemos en este vida no es definitiva, sino que llegará a su plenitud con la venida definitiva del Señor. Hace cinco años, en un domingo de Gaudete tal como hoy, celebré solemnemente por primera vez la Santa Misa, y a pesar de las grandes ganas que tenía de entonar el himno gozoso de la Gloria, no pude, porque no estaba previsto por las rubricas. Nosotros cantaremos la Gloria definitiva en el final, pero se trata de un himno de alabanza que esta ya incoada en nuestros corazones, manifestado en nuestra vida. El Gaudete nos orienta para ver que esta vida con sus alegrías no es definitiva, y que por lo bonita que sea, hemos de mirar hacia la gran fiesta que está por llegar con nuestra unión con Dios en el cielo.

Termino con unas palabras de un gran pensador, Juan Escoto Eriugena: “No se debe desear otra cosa sino la alegría de verdad, que es Cristo, ni evitar otra cosa sino estar alejados de él, pues esto se debería considerar como causa única de tristeza total y eterna. Si me quitas a Cristo no me quedará ningún bien, y nada me asustará como estar lejos de él. El mayor tormento de una criatura racional es estar privado de él o lejos de él”. Que estas palabras nos ayuden en nuestro empeño de estar más cerca de Cristo, única fuente de nuestra alegría. AMEN.

(The English translation)

Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete!

We are moving forward on our way towards the great feast of Christmas, fully aware of the fact that Advent is also a time of true penance. As such we have started this season and we have lived all throughout this time. Last Sunday we heard the words of the prophet Isaiah who said: prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. These words are at the heart of the message of St. John the Baptist, the forerunner of our Lord. Truly, when we make straight our path, filling up the valleys of our ignorance and apathy, and allowing the mountains of our pride and self-love made low, we are responding to the call of conversion. It is a call that is being made out to us always, but which we could hear with special urgency in this season of advent.

The third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, allows us to see as well that the fruit of true penance and conversion is true joy. The apostle St. Paul exhorts us in his letter to the Philippians to be joyful always, and this is because we are on the road of conversion. Inasmuch as we faithfully respond to the call of conversion, we draw nearer always to the Lord, and the Lord makes himself present in our lives. His presence is precisely the cause of true joy in our lives and in our hearts: Dominus prope est, the Lord is near.

The liturgy shows us therefore, that true Christian joy is different from just being that of a healthy animal, one that laughs and is happy because it is physically well. No, true joy springs from the presence of the Lord, whom we have truly welcomed in our hearts and in our lives. It is a joy that is most evident in the lives of the saints, especially in that of Mary, our mother; despite of the sufferings and contradictions that life held in store for them, they were able to go through all of it serenely, in joy. This is the gladness that we need to have, and that which we need to spread, wherever we may find ourselves in.

The liturgy of Gaudete Sunday also teaches us that whatever joy we may have is never definitive, but rather that which will reach its fullness only when the finally comes. Five years ago, in a Gaudete Sunday such as this, I solemnly celebrated for the first time the holy Mass, and despite of the great urge to intone that joyful hymn of the Glory, I couldn’t, simply because it wasn’t prescribed by the rubrics, it being a Sunday of Advent. We shall definitively sing the Glory in the end, when we come face to face with God in heaven. But this song of joy has already begun in our hearts, and is present already in our lives. Gaudete Sunday directs us in order to see that even the positive joys of life are not lasting, that this life is not definitive, no matter how beautiful it may be. We need to look forward, turning our eyes towards the great feast that is yet to come, the feast of our perfect union with God in heaven.

I would like to end with these words of a great Christian thinker, John Scotus Eriugena: “One ought not desire any other thing than true joy, who is Christ, and avoid anything else but be far from him, because this is what ought to be considered as the only cause of true and total sadness. If Christ were to be taken from me, this would be really unfortunate; nothing would make me fear than being far from him. The greatest torment any rational creature could have is to be deprived of him or be far from him”. May these words help us in our effort to be closer to Christ, the only true source of our joy. AMEN.

LOVE IS NOT MY RELIGION

To say LOVE IS GOD and GOD IS LOVE is not the same: as two paths, one leads to the abyss, the other leads to self-realization and salvation. To make LOVE one’s religion is to succumb to the merciless dictatorship of the sentiments and rosy—but empty—concepts, concepts that cannot save man from the specter of emptiness. Such is a love that does not distinguish between anything, since it is formless, without foundation. In such a love there is no future. But to submit oneself to a GOD  who is LOVE, made flesh and taking part in human history, is to open one’s horizon to the infinite eternity of a LOVE who has a name and a face, and who can give me LIFE UNLIMITED.

LOVE IS NOT MY RELIGION; rather, I worship a GOD whose love allows me to touch and embrace him through the HUMANITY that HE shares with me, from the moment that he accepted the “yes” of a humble Virgin. It is a humanity which I fervently hope he would eternally glorify in me when the EVERLASTING DAY comes at last.

PALO: OF DIAMONDS AND GRACES...

A simple video I made to celebrate the seventy-five years of grace that has been granted to the Archdiocese of Palo. 

SOLEMNITY OF CHRIST THE KING: THE PEACE OF CHRIST IN THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST!

The liturgy of the past days has been leading up to this point. After painting for us a truly apocalyptic picture of the end times, we come to realize once again that, frightening though it may seem, the end turns out not to be a simple end after all, but rather a climax, a fulfillment, a culmination. In this feast that we are celebrating this Sunday, we gaze upon Christ in whom—as the opening prayer of the Mass tells us—the Father’s will to restore all things is accomplished. The solemn feast of Christ the King allows us to reflect once again that human history—and that of creation—ends in the same place from where it started: in the loving hands of God, a God whom man has come to love and embrace in Christ.

This is a positive thing, and this teaches us that the Christian, the child of God, has nothing to fear of the future, because though things may seem to fall apart, we will still fall into the hands of our Father God, to whom we approach in Christ.

The feast also allows us to contemplate the face of Christ. This is a face that we have adored as an infant in Bethlehem, as a man in his prime; one that has left us speechless as we gazed upon it, disfigured, bruised, bloody as he hung on the cross. This was the face that the disciples had seen glorified after the resurrection.

Once again we fix our gaze upon it, a face that is majestic and full of glory. It is precisely this that the readings of the liturgy would like to direct us to: the glory of the Son of Man, majestic, kingly, exercising dominion and authority over all creation, over the universe, over the cosmos. This is not merely the majesty of some great king, but one who has the very characteristics of God: in the vision of the prophet Daniel in the First Reading, we see the one like a Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, who received dominion, glory and kingship. The same is said in the book of Revelation, in the Second Reading, which speaks to us of Jesus Christ,  coming amid the clouds, to whom has been given glory and power forever and ever. To walk among the clouds is characteristic only of God, and the liturgy is clear in pointing out that this kingship is something that Jesus has received not from any earthly power, but one that has been granted to him by his heavenly Father.

My kingdom does not belong to this world, we hear Jesus responding to Pontius Pilate in the Gospel. That Jesus is king is not based on any human conquest nor lineage by blood, but on divine love, a love that has been manifested to a supreme degree on the cross. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever.

Our Christian response, which is fruit of our prayer and after having received his Word, is to place ourselves authentically under the rule of such a mighty king. Throughout the history of grace, which is something that could be said of the two thousand years of the Church of God here on earth, thousands upon thousands of saints have placed themselves under the sweet yoke of this king. How do we live this feast fruitfully in our present situation as Christians?

My kingdom does not belong to this world, the Lord says; this kingdom does not recognize no other boundary than that which has been established by our heart. This is precisely the place where Christ would want to reign. Jesus Christ does not wish to rule on governments, in parliaments or in monarchies: he wishes to rule in each of our hearts. Acceptance of his kingship entails the acceptance of his word, of his law of Love. Submission to Christ means being serious in the constant battle against sin in our life. Conversion to Christ is the necessary and primary consequence of having accepted Christ as our Lord and King, he and none other.  Conversion entails diving head on into the battle against everything that keeps Jesus from taking total possession of our lives, of our very being; it means that we have to be radical in our struggle to reject sin. In the end, the Lord knows his true followers: to those who have persevered in being faithful to him he would grant the prize reserved to victors; those who had not been true servants of his, an eternity of anguish and torment separated from him, in hell.

My kingdom does not belong to this world: this, nevertheless, does not mean that our submission to this great king has nothing to do with how we live our lives in society, in relation to the world around us. Enthroning Christ in our lives and in our hearts should not only serve to transform us from within, but also be agents of this transforming grace in society ourselves, To have Christ as king means committing ourselves to promoting the peace of Christ (which is the only true and lasting peace) in society. Such peace is not possible in a society where God is ignored, where his “rights” are denied and suppressed, when people are made to live as though he did not exist, and as a consequence, no true human and religious values are made to flourish.

POPE PIUS XI

The feast of Christ the king is one whose spiritual message has social consequences in the modern world. When Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) established it for the whole Church, he was addressing a world which had just suffered the devastating conflict of the First World War; it was a world that was trying to rebuild itself from the ruins. Pius—whose motto was Pax Christi in regnum Christi, the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ—believed that for a humane society to rise from the ashes of the war, it must be rebuilt upon the values that are deeply founded on the Gospel of Christ. These are values that are in favor of the dignity of the human person, because they hold in consideration the creator of man, God himself, from whom true justice and peace spring. From the start of his pontificate, the Pope made extended to the whole Church two great feasts that correspond to the divine mercy and the divine kingship of Christ: the feast and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the feast of Christ the King.

These were established as a response to the events that had just taken place in Europe, and a warning as well: against the horrors of war and crimes committed against humanity, the Pope urged devotion to the humanity of Jesus, honored in the devotion to his Sacred Heart; against the budding totalitarian ideologies of Nazism, communism and fascism, he reiterated that only the dominion of God in men’s hearts can save the human race, and not any ideology. Anything else would end in disaster and carnage. The subsequent outbreak of the Second World War—more terrible than the first—proved the wisdom of Pius XI.

We cannot accept Christ as king and be quiet about it with our neighbors and in society at large. The example of the Mexican martyrs of the 1920’s teach us that there is only one way to proclaim the kingship of Christ in the world: shouting it out with courage. In their cry “Viva Cristo rey!” we learn that we cannot keep the news of Christ’s kingship to ourselves, but it is something that we have to proclaim to the world for its own good, most especially in ensuring that the voice of God is heard in society, and in the halls of public debate.

When we live our Christian vocation faithfully in the silence of our ordinary life, we shout out this truth. When we give testimony to Christ by our constant decision to live in a way pleasing to God, a moral life, we shout this out. When we lend our voice with courage in defense of the truth about life from conception to natural death, about marriage between man and woman, about the family, we show that Christ—and not mere public opinion or consensus—is King.

 Each one of us will have to come up with firm resolutions of how to live this kingship of Jesus Christ in our lives. The one thing that we have to keep in mind is that the acceptance of Christ as king has its inevitable consequence: our personal conversion from sin and rebirth in God’s grace, a real transformation. Furthermore, it means that we cannot stand by with arms crossed; we must realize that we have the commitment to spread the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ, to use that favorite phrase of Pius XI. This means that we have to work for peace and justice as well in our present society in everyway possible. this can only be done by basing ourselves upon the Truth, of which God is the first guarantor. AMEN!

AMALAYER GOT ME A-THINKING

As the AMALAYER phenomenon, one of the hot trending topics during these couple of days, gradually slides into collective oblivion, I think it’s a subject worthy of being given one last look. The collective memory of the netizens (and people at large) seem to have a very short memory (I’m talking about Filipinos, but then, it could as well apply to anyone else). Mostly, intelligent conversation in cyberspace (which at times may only have the appearance of intelligence) depend on the topics that are trendy, and it seems to me that these don’t last very long in their respective places on the charts; people prefer to talk about that which is as the moment the most popular topic, but then with this I digress.

The phenomenon that has taken society by storm has made me reflect about certain things. First, there seems to be this phenomenon on the rise, one that has these elements: an aggressed party who happens just to be doing his job, not usually a high-paying one but rather humble (a security guard, a reporter, a traffic enforcer, to mention an example), an apparent aggressor (usually an educated person, from the higher strata of society or who pretends to be such, but whose manners belie such high, well-schooled breeding. They are usually fluent in English, and are of what tagalog slang would call coño, which is just about everything that I have said earlier).

I must add two other elements: a brash encounter that soon turns into a heated argument, with its inevitable result (usually a blow, a shove, a slap or a sharp phrase), and—of course—a recording device, usually a camera.

In many, if not all, of the cases, the story is basically the same: the humble worker chances upon the “educated” person (or vice-versa), there is a tussle between human rights and laboral duty and obligation, the episode becomes ugly and it happens that someone is always there to record the scene, whether overtly or otherwise. Then the video gets to be uploaded on the Internet, where it is received by netizens who rain righteous anger on the coño aggressor. Less than an hour or two later, humorous memes, photos and jokes surface in the social networking sites, adding fuel to the fire. As a trend in the internet, it may last for 24 hours or if its good enough, it may even be there for days. The aggressor becomes the aggressed party, and is subject to public ridicule; the aggressed worker is hailed as a hero of humble occupation.

In the media limelight, the now aggressed party, tarred and feathered and chastised, apologizes publicly; everybody is content that “they” have taught him or her a lesson. The public is appears smug and secure in the tribunal into which they have established themselves in: as judges of good and right. The fire having burned out, they move to the next trend, leaving the new victim’s reputation—and self-confidence—in shreds. The once-proud eagle has been crushed to the ground; it’s time to move to the next trending topic.

This phenomenon, which is getting repetitive, has shown me two things. I shall start from the positive side. From the point of view of our workers in a more humble position—janitors, traffic enforcers, security guards—at least they’re getting more the respect that they deserve, and the public is getting more aware of the value of the service that they are doing in favor of the larger community. Another thing is that nobody is ever above the law of civility and respect, both based on Christian charity. Nobody could ever press to have more claims over anybody just because they have received more education. In fact, the more well-off a person is, whether socially or in terms of educational attainment, the more the person should be more prudent, educated, and restrained.

On the negative side, the phenomenon has shown the public to be more pharisaical than ever, and a pharisaical judge at that. Much as such arrogance moves us to righteous indignation, such indignation does not give the public the right to subject the person to public ridicule, with the risk of committing the same mistake as the offender.

On certain occasions, it would be a merit to let the public know of an injustice done, but when we divulge an image or a video into the public domain, we have to be responsible for the consequences that our action may unleash.

Looking at what had taken place from the positive side, it shows that we are more sensitive to issues of justice and the respect for the rights of persons. But on the other hand, the same subject has raised a warning for us with a specter: the specter of a nation of sensationalist voyeurs, waiting to pounce on the mistakes of other people other than ourselves, in order to judge them with the hypocritical pointed finger, and gloat over the public ridicule that our pharisaical thirst for sensationalist “justice” has provided as the fitting sentence.

The words of the Gospel, “Let he who has no sin cast the first stone” (Jn 8:7), ought to serve as criteria in matters such as these. Safeguarded by these words, correction becomes based on the understanding that all of us have ugly moments, and that these need to be addressed in all justice, one that is based on charity. Justice based on charity doesn't mean closing one's eyes to the evil done; it rather means--among other things--passing the sentence that would make the offender grow into a better version of himself. Tearing him to shreds in public obviously doesn't accomplish this. This is an antidote to the sensationalism and hypocrisy that is one of the ills of our society today.

JUST A THOUGHT. 

30th Sunday: TO BELIEVE IS TO SEE!

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging.

This Sunday allows us to consider the story of one of the most fascinating characters of the Gospel. Of Bartimaeus, we don’t know much, except that he was blind, and that he is identified only in relation with his father, Timaeus. The episode of this Sunday’s Gospel affords us with a lot of avenues for contemplation, doors through which we are able to encounter Christ and listen to his words, and allow our daily lives to be transformed by his Word. Nobody may know exactly who Bartimaeus was, how he was before Christ walked into his life that day as he sat in his usual place outside Jericho. What we know certainly, however, is that in his story we see our own reflected. For though all of us are able to see and are well off because of it, nevertheless, we know that we too are handicapped at some point. Looking deep into our personal life, we can see that we ourselves are in darkness; there are some dark areas of our life which we dare not enter, areas which are touched by our rejection of God’s love. We know all to well that our lives are painfully touched by sin, by that darkness that comes from our willful rejection of God’s love and his plan for our life. it is a darkness that blinds us to what is true, that which is truly good, truly beautiful.

But we too are aware that like Bartimaeus, we are identified because of our relationship with our Father, whose name is beyond any other, and whose face shines in the human face of Jesus. Thus, the person of the blind man of Jericho brings out to us two important things about ourselves: our personal blindness and our need for light, for someone to take us by the hand, and the fact that our personal identity is marked by our relationship with our Father.

In Bartimaeus, this need for healing, this need for freedom from the darkness that enfolds him pushes him to cry out: Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me! Having heard of Jesus’ approach, the blind man saw in his heart that it was precisely this person who could save him from his darkness. Looking back into our own lives, the consideration of our own wretchedness, of our own sinfulness, of our own darkness, should not push to despair and self-pity; rather, the knowledge of our sinfulness should push us to conversion, to tend toward Christ, to ask for his divine mercy, to grasp his hand, asking him to make us whole. The blind man was not content to remain in his blindness; we should not be complacent in our own sinfulness. This is true even when the world, the “crowd” pressures us to shut up, to desist in our struggle to respond to the call to conversion, to give up in our tending towards God. Bartimaeus was told to shut up by the crowd, but far from doing what they wanted him to do, he cried out all the more, calling out to the One who could save him: Son of David, have pity on me!, clearly alluding to his firm faith than the one who stood before him was the Christ, despite of the fact that he could not see Jesus.

The attitude of the blind man should inspire us to cry out, even though circumstances (and even persons) would tell us to give up. The chief enemies of our move towards holiness (the world, the flesh and the devil, and, also most often, the “old man” in us) would tell us that everything is futile, resistance to the force of gravity (that pulls us to the depths of our sinfulness) is useless. Sometimes we may even consider that they’re right, because we don’t seem to see Jesus with us. We might think that there’s no point in smiling on a cold, rainy day; why should we, since the sun hadn’t come out anyway?

But then the truth is, the Lord hasn’t abandoned us to our darkness. This is the same Lord who in the First Reading we see delivering his people, gathering them from the ends of the world, with the blind and the lame in their midst. He is the God of Israel consoles and guides them, leading them to brooks of water, and leading them on a level road, so that none shall stumble. This is the same Lord who says: For I am a father to Israel. How can he not hear the cry of the heart that is crushed by its sins, the cry of the sinner who has placed himself at the Master’s feet, asking for freedom? When Jesus asks the blind man what was it that he wanted, was it because he didn’t know? What more could a blind man ask, but that he be delivered from his blindess? What more could we ask from the Lord, but that we be brought back from the darkness of sin into the light of day, Jesus, the Day that knows no night?

The blind man pushes forward in his desire, despite of the fact that he does not see. This is what faith means: to move forward, not because we see clearly and are convinced of the way, but because we trust in the hand and in the voice that leads us on. What moves us to believe is not the fact that the revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe “because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who neither deceive nor be deceived” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 156). In the end, it was the faith of the blind man that allowed him to recover his sight. Faith is the condition that allows the grace of God to enter into our lives, transforming it, filling it with life. As the letter of the Holy Father at the start of the Year of Faith would suggest, faith is a door (porta fidei) that allows us to feel the caress of God. It is the sine qua non, that without which we cannot have a relationship with God. In the end, what is true is that to believe is to see, and not much seeing in order to believe.

The experience of Bartimaeus, and the incidence of this Year of Faith, invites us once again to be well-grounded in our faith in Christ. It is through faith that we are able to touch the face of God in Jesus Christ; it is through faith that we are able to see and contemplate the loving smile of the Father, through the human face of Jesus. It is only through faith that we can show it likewise to the world, in much need of the new evangelization.

In the Gospel we hear the words of the crowd surrounding Jesus: “Take courage, get up, Jesus is calling you”. We too have the responsibility of inviting those around us to see Jesus, that they too may be touched by his grace. This is what our role in the new evangelization entails: to show that face of Jesus, to encourage others to come into contact with him, and to live with the very life which the Lord gives as a gift. But this is only possible if Jesus has touched us ourselves. We can only make Jesus transparent to others, if our own eyes have seen him.

May Mary, Queen of the Holy Rosary, who constantly gazes on her Son, help us to be renewed by the freshness of the Gospel, so as to be evangelizers in this modern age, as each of us need to our part in the new evangelization. AMEN!