Selflessness and Purgatory

And then came the time in late adolescence to watch all the TV series that cannot be missed before life comes to an end. Of course the list is subjective and mine goes like this: One Tree Hill, The Wonder Years and Lost. There are others too lest the one’s I mentioned lose their distinctness. These TV series consume a lot of time as they span for an hour or less. I joined the TV series bandwagon very late. For me, it meant finishing a whole season or two in a fortnight if I ever want to finish the six to eight seasons that have lapsed in the month. This meant watching episodes back to back on DVD or on the computer.

My life was filled with The Simpsons or some movie or a TV series. When I observed many others who joined associations and did other work, I didn’t think that they were selfless but rather viewed them of not being passionate about what had got me heating my computer chair. Little did I think any TV series, movie or music of popular fame is enjoyable even to others and perhaps what they do (in their associations) is not their passion that they are gifted with but a much nobler thing like responsibility.

And then one day, I took up responsibilities for myself. Soon, I got so preoccupied with it that I hadn’t time for my TV Series. Formerly, I hadn’t time for anything to do with others but only to know what turn of events will transpire in the next episode? Later, these TV Series turned passé. I couldn’t afford an hour a day much less a week to watch them go on slowly, often dragging along. Sometimes a classic book could be more fun than watching people sleep with each other and break other people’s heart. I also began to detest the whole idea of watching run of the mill TV series. I began to have a sound judgment on things that formerly enslaved me. They got lesser and lesser priority in my life and soon left my life entirely as if an addict had been completely rehabilitated and got the toxics out of his system.

What really happened is the operation of Grace. The sooner I set my mind on things above, that is, eternal; I chose something that will be meritorious for my redemption. Of course, it is no surprise now as it was no surprise then, that my salvation won’t be from watching TV series and having a scholarly idea of who was adulterous in this episode and what was the most uncanny episode of the season.

Watching movies all day isn’t exactly heaven-deserving material to indulge with. But there wasn’t any inclination to understand that anything nobler or richer could be aspired for. I wonder if I could have pleaded ignorance or was it negligence. And of course, God helped me to make that choice. I wouldn’t know that shakily, with less courage and much persuasion to volunteer to teach a few kids, I was choosing redemption. God is slow, only Moses was unlucky. I didn’t even know I was choosing it while I made that choice. I can love God now as God loved me first when I didn’t understand what I was choosing and going to begin loving. How true is St. John indeed!

And that is the operation of Grace. The moment I chose something that is without me, these material indulgences no good to anyone but my lethargic body and shallow mind within me, began to snap one by one. I couldn’t snap them myself as I was too deep into them. It took many instruments of God to ask me to volunteer for a responsibility. It took my own pride to think I am doing something good and in that process, led me to mercy by repenting for that pride and then realize there are so many things worth our life than often our own passing fancies.

The point of this blog is not so much what selflessness can teach you as much as what happens in purgatory. That’s right; this article’s real motive is to explain Purgatory. Mark Shea, an eminent online Catholic Writer writes in Catholic Exchange that we will be cleansed of all those things that kept us from choosing the real Joy, Jesus Christ and the love of God.

Our understanding of Purgatory only pervades to the extent that Confession forgives our guilt and Purgatorial cleansing is a cleansing to purify the soul of all its injury through all the sins that have been committed and that it is only divine justice that we pay for them on our way to Heaven. Somehow, every sin, every act of greed, lust, sloth, envy departs from the true nature of the soul and hence injures the soul. This has to be undone so that we are able to recognize purely what love is.

And this is where the lesson I learned in Selflessness is at the heart of the understanding of Purgatory. Somehow, I can now understand how the testimony of holiness in the Church which the monasteries, convents bear witness to everyday will lead them to suffer less in purgatory. It is because they perhaps have to snap fewer chains tying them to this world. They are in the world and yet already out of it, preparing their journey to the real world. While we enjoy, things of this world, we create so many indulgences tying us down that often the paradox is that our preparation for the world to come is more in snapping those attachments that takes us away from the idea of the Kingdom of God.

It is a paradox because while the nuns and monks sow to reap their treasures in heaven, we first take out the weed that we have sown and the new seed of life gets a chance to grow. And just taking up one responsibility, doing something for the world outside of me taught me to snap a few chains tying me to the passing world of TV Series. At least one, from a host of things for which I may not have to be cleansed in Purgatory but we all have a whole list of items, Haven’t We?

I don’t mean the only way to enter our glory is to keep suffering in the world. I didn’t mention that I enjoyed my responsibility, did I? It made me the person I am today. The choices make us suffer, for our nature is inclined to choose pleasure and rebel against work. All things are created good. We have to sanctify them too and use it for the glory of God. Snapping ties doesn’t mean to have no ties at all but to have those that don’t hurt charity that is due to God and Man. Selflessness helps us untie those attachments that don’t help us transcend. We have to tie ourselves to those things that only help us give glory to God for all the things he has provided that can truly make us happy and truly acknowledge in gratitude, the love that God has showered on his Children.

We are all afraid

I have a friend who is struggling with joining the priesthood. He has had an encounter that makes him echo the same feelings I do often

Amazing Grace how sweet they sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but not am found, was blind now I see

The friend is great with girls. And he often wonders how he could picture himself as a priest without all the love he could have with a girlfriend or a wife. He hasn’t any ill-intentions with women only difficulty in discernment whether God requires him to live sanctity with a family and i.e with women and children or sanctity as a priest, with entire family of God.

What is my friend’s problem really? He is afraid. He is afraid whether he would be happy responding to the call of God, whether he can take a leap of faith, whether he can plunge into the water without knowing if it’s cold. When he pictures himself with a girlfriend, he pictures security and self-assuredness. He is assured of love.

But living in obedience to the will of God is much more than being assured let alone the danger of our own understanding and limitations of assuredness. It is about what is right. How can he ever know if he will be happy? All he can do it trust in God that He will take care of him. Somewhere deep inside he fails to trust God. There is a lacking of faith.

We are all afraid though. My friend shouldn’t be singled out though his problems are more tumultuous in proportions. We are all afraid of not being happy in life. Hence we choose things that fit our ‘idea’ of assuredness of happiness. In doing this, we take refuge in our own limited understanding of scheme of things.

Often we know some things are more right than others or nobler or more righteous. But this world has so skewed our standards of defining happiness that we are afraid of doing now what our hearts are inclined to. When we choose things that fit the ‘understanding of peace’ that this world has to offer, the assuredness, we often abandon the idea that God is really the source of all joy because we have gone with what we already have as opposed to choosing what are struggling with.

We are afraid we may not find joy by our choices and it presupposes a lack of faith in the belief of another world. We choose as if this world is all we got and our choices are not changing us according to our real purpose that finds its fulfillment in another world, the world to come. So we go with what is safe than what is courageous. We go with timidity rather than conviction. We go with natural rather than being supernatural.

The choices we make when we are afraid tell us so much of our real faith in God. It tells us where we stand in the scale of humility. As a child cries in the dark and runs towards his mother, our choices show what we think of ourselves, whether we truly believe we know very little, we are very little and completely depend on God and hence affirm our humility or whether when having to make these decision we run in apprehension to assuredness the world has to offer.

A mother loses her son and wonders if she can continue life without him. A man who is afraid of losing a job or quitting one as it is bereft of meaning. Parents have to live with dissenting children or betrayals. We all have something to be afraid of. We can have faith that this world is not where happiness lies so let us not pretend that we can find it if we try unless God wills to give.

We can go against the currents of this world filled with imperfections and an endless pursuit of self-assuredness. Or we can go with life as if we are sailors trying to rescue the sea of life. We may try to hold everything within our clasp but the nature of this world is such, it is going to perish, the sea will slip away from our fingers. Every choice made for worldly things or purposes will inevitably fade away along with its pleasures, comforts and fancies. But if one makes a choice contingent on faith, the hope that one day knowledge will replace this faith and with trust that is moved with love, these will remain¹

1 Corinthians 13

How God chose Bethlehem over every other civilization

Of course, humility has been the hallmarks of the Gospel message. What with God taking on the form of man and living among them, being born in a manger, allowing his own creation to crucify him. God idea of humility is that he was ready to humiliate himself for the sake of love such. The other places he chooses humility was in choosing shepherds as the first to have a glimpse of Him. Choosing a woman as the first to see him after he resurrected.

We also forget that God chose from all the civilizations in the world, a lowly village of Bethlehem to break into history. This is what Mark Shea says in his article Promise Fulfilled

Consult any history book and the author will point you to the great centers of civilization in antiquity: Rome, Athens, Tenochtitlan, the Indus River Valley, China. Nowhere in any ancient estimation would it be said that the fulcrum of the world was to be found in a hardscrabble little village of washed-up dreams out on the eastern fringe of Augustus’ realm. Bethlehem had had its little moment in the sun, politically, a thousand years before, because it was the birthplace of David (an obscure Semitic monarch who meant a great deal to one of the insignificant little ethnic groups that buzzed like flies somewhere on the borders of Roman political consciousness). But let’s face it: Jewish nostalgia for David had about as much to do with hope as some tribe of Bantus dream of achieving world military domination. So why did the Jews hang on? Because God promised. And tonight, against all hope, the promise came true. The King was born.

Why the Church glorifies God through paintings and sculpture

A snippet from the site, way of the (Church) Fathers

Some Church Fathers called Christmas the Feast of the Incarnation.

Incarnation comes from a Latin word that means “enfleshment.” What sounds to English-speakers like a rarefied theological term is really just a statement of fact: God took on flesh. When that happened, flesh itself became something holy, something to be celebrated with paintings and statues and Christmas cards.

Yet in the eighth century, a faction arose in the Church calling themselves “Iconoclasts,” Greek for “picture-smashers.” The iconoclasts tried to “purify” and “spiritualize” Christian life by obliterating all artistic representations of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. They seized and destroyed most of the religious images in the Eastern Roman Empire, and they cut off the hands of those Christians who would not part with their icons. God, they said, could not be represented in a picture; any attempt to do so was rank idolatry. But this is how St. John of Damascus answered them: “In former times, God, being without form or body, could in no way be represented. But today, since God has appeared in the flesh and lived among men, I can represent what is visible in God. I do not worship matter, but worship the creator of matter Who became matter for my sake . . . and Who, through matter, accomplished my salvation.”

In other words, the Incarnation makes art, too, a holy thing, just as it made the body a holy thing. The artists who have painted the Nativity throughout the centuries were not creating idols. Their visible representations are hymns of praise to the invisible God made visible.

Look at any of the classic Nativity paintings and marvel at the care taken with the tiniest details. Every animal in the stable is an individual creature; every straw in the manger seems to be drawn with infinite care. Of all the biblical scenes artists have loved to paint for centuries, the Nativity is the one that seems to provoke the most thorough delight in the simple pleasure of drawing things. It seems as if God is in every detail.

How celebrating Christmas protected the doctring of the Church of God becoming Man -Incarnation

This is a snippet from the site, way of the (Church) fathers

In the earliest days of the Church, Christmas was not one of the important feasts. Jesus’ life was still a living memory, and His extraordinary resurrection rightly occupied the central spot in the calendar. But as time went on, false teachers began to deny the fact of Jesus’ humanity. They claimed that Jesus’ body had been an elaborate disguise, that, in reality, God had never debased Himself by taking on human flesh. Later heretics denied also that Mary gave birth to the Word: instead, they said, she gave birth to a “vessel” into which the Word was later poured. Still other heretics believed that the Son was a subordinate being — divine, but not coeternal with God the Father.

All these heresies had one thing in common: an unwillingness to face the apparent foolishness of the Incarnation. Arius, the founder of the Arian heresy, was an eminently reasonable man. He denied the doctrine of the Trinity because, he said, three cannot be one; that’s elementary arithmetic. The infinite God cannot become finite man; that’s elementary philosophy. Therefore there could be no Incarnation.

Heretics like Arius wanted to spare God the unreasonable indignity of being corrupted by too close an association with humanity. It was the same problem the Pharisees could not get over: If this Jesus is so good, why does He associate with sinners and tax collectors? In fact, though the heretics would have insisted that they were defending the perfection of the Deity, they were actually denying the perfection of God’s love. Love, after all, can seem unreasonable. Anyone who values another as much as oneself seems entirely unreasonable.

It can hardly be coincidence that the celebration of the literal, historical birth of Jesus the carpenter’s son began to take on more importance just when the true faith was most dangerously beset by these flesh-denying errors. The scandalously human birth of the Son of God was the very thing that separated orthodoxy from heresy. Celebrating that Nativity committed the Church to a clear statement of principle.

Taking Christ out of Christmas

My friend over at Random Thoughts seems weary of the materialism and stripping Christ out of Christmas. I share in her grief. we all have to rechristianize the present times. If we don't non-Christians who love santa claus will paganize it

We have to be leaven in the dough. We are the salt of the earth and if salt loses its taste, what use is it?
I think if each one of us tries, we can in our own way rechristianize the culture. Cakes, Trees, Creches are all important to make this culture christian. It is the popular culture of Santa Claus and red caps that we have to wary of.

This time, I put up a tree for the first time. I put two gifts under the tree for my family.

The whole point is the love that shows through your efforts. You clean your house, you put up a tree, you make a crib, all this because you care about Christmas and to invite Christ into your house. But this is secondary to the grace we ought to receive by preparing all Advent through reflection on scriptures, Regular confessions to make His paths straight as John the Baptist proclaimed.

I think Christmas becomes Xmas when people simply want to drink or party without thinking that Jesus is the reason of this season. When Jesus is the reason of this season, all things fall in place and get a perspective. The tree symbolizes love, goodwill togetherness, guiding star,ringing bells. The star symbolizes the star that guided the kings, the crib helps us contemplate on the nativity. A defenseless baby a sleep in a manager who controlled the stars in the universe. (Archbishop Fulton Sheen)

When Christ is kept in Christmas like you said, all other things are for glory of God. Perhaps the pagan culture we have to take caution of is people simply waiting for Christmas for just another party with Santa Claus, red costumes, snow, snowmen et cetera. But moved with the joy of Christ, Santa can be a great way to gift your family and enjoy a cake ;-)

December 24, 2009 11:27 PM

What makes us Human

I was speaking to some good men on a train. They were speaking about how the terrorists who have killed innocents should be hanged. One of them argued, "Why the formality of having them undergo a trial procedure" We have all seen them shoot people ruthlessly without any sign of remorse or guilt. We can just execute them without the whole thing wasting time in court procedure"

I said to them that "each individual has a right to a fair trial". Some of them looked at me in disbelief. One of them said that they [terrorists] were not humans but animals if they could kill innocents. And animals didn't deserve a trial. These men in my company didn't perceive the terrorist as men like the rest of us. Somehow they are ignorant of the extent of evil. The extent of evil that man is capable of because of the reality of evil and not so much because of the reality of the nature of Man

While I could easily argue the popular defense that if we execute them without determining their motive for their crime and offering them a right to their defense, there is no difference between us and them. If they are animals for taking away something of us without rhyme or reason, we are no different from them who have snatched away their chance to defend themselves because we are angry they have taken away our life without asking us.

Life is very sacred but we are guilty of defiling its sanctity too when we have no value for their lives simply because they don't have any for ours. We can change the way they think but in case if we are unable to, do we believe any less in the value of human life to take their lives away because a few don't agree with us on the sanctity of life and have turned into terrorists claiming many more lives than we will ever be taking by a few executions that we will eventually deem as righteous actions?

And why do their lives still hold any value that we are to respect them and consider them our equals, those that kill without reason while even killing with a reason wasn't bad enough?

Somewhere deep inside this brings up the question: what makes us human? Is it to share? Why even animals in a community often do that? Is it to love? Why even animals love their offspring and caress them. Although animals have a share in this nature to love and share, there is something distinctly radical about what makes us human. And this is the ability to be compassionate, to feel guilty and to repent. It is our ability to ask for forgiveness, mourn for our wrongdoings and seek to make amendments where we depart from animals.

And therefore, a criminal no matter how ghastly his crime can be sentenced to life imprisonment or even capital punishment due to various reasons according to the degree of his crime or his presence as an endangerment to society. But he ought not to be executed on the grounds of ceasing to be a human. Who decides when a terrorist ceases to be human? What is the measure for inhumanity? A thousand lives? Ten Thousand lives? Is it a measure of numbers?

For until the last breadth of his life, there remains a chance for him to repent and to feel human again contrary to what his crime makes him believe. And human as we are too, we cannot extinguish the hope that he may, for all the crimes he has committed, for all the bloodshed, for the torment, for the cruelty, still seek his conscience and repent and establish what makes us human.

The annual visit to Confession

It is time for Christmas. A week more and the waiting for the new born king will come to an end and the festivities of Christmas, starting with the Midnight Mass will take its culmination. It is also time for confession for many who have this idea of confessions ‘twice a year’. They blatantly say that they go for confession twice a year as if people in a club who share how often one frequents the parlor or a market in a far away town. It is their souls that are at stake.

I have always been amazed at what possible good can a ‘twice or once a year’ confession do to one’s soul? Sure, the absolution is granted because a person has decided to come for confession. The person has gained much in mercy but how much has the soul to gain in holiness to elevate the state of the soul. I look at it as a small worker who works carrying boxes in a company always reminding himself that one day he will command and direct others to carry the same boxes. He will be great. He will prepare plans and charts where the boxes will go. A soul that goes for confession sparingly much to the persusion of others is like that soul which never turns great, which neither becomes a saint and sapped of all its strength without grace, nor can it aspire for sainthood. It remains cut off from the grace that God can fill in order that it can be heroic.

And what does a Person remember in a 3 minute confession? There are men and women who visit the confessional once in a week or fortnight. I wonder if they are voracious sinners compared to the annual visitors. Quite to the contrary, These are men and women who are more sensitive to the understanding and reality of Sin. They realize that the devil is hidden not in fairy tale epics and fables but in the ordinary events of everyday life. He is hidden in the intemperance shown in food or the charity deprived to one’s neighbor or the sloth shown during work or at home.

I find it hard to recollect what has transpired in the month, in what I have done and what I have failed to do, that I have to now prepare a memo on things that I know I have done wrong in case I want to do a confession and don’t have the time to introspect. Who wants to leave the salvation of my soul to the mercy of a general introspection just before entering the confessional? Unless one does a minute of examination of conscience everyday

What guilt has the person taken to confession if he cannot remember sins? The annual visitor simply starts with ‘I lied I hurt I have been bad I this I that’. I wonder how much guilt remains of the sins to experience an honest act of contrition in order to reform. My point is not that sins are not absolved. I am not questioning the authenticity of the absolution. I am questioning the authenticity of the principle elements of Confession: contrition

If you may have observed how Man is oriented towards sinfulness and pride, you would also know that it so happens that after a year you either feel the one you wronged deserved it or that you didn’t do any wrong at all after what so many others around you are doing. So the objectivity of the sin is ripped apart and cases are built by the mind. What does an annual confession really involve? Sure, I will remember my mortal sins. Does the person deprive himself of communion every day until he does his annual confession and he is free from the guilt of mortal sin? A year comprises months and weeks and days which have a hundred little moments of spite, anger, deceit, selfishness, bitterness, accusations and excess? How do we feel alright about receiving communion everyday while we continue to plunder our soul of its sanctity and leave our hearts farther away from charity?

What about those who have not committed any explicitly mortal sin like Adultery or Murder or skipping Mass et cetera? What guilt are they taking to confession if their souls have become so insensitive to sin that they don’t realize what is a sin and otherwise. Pope John Paul II warned us of this saying the greatest sin of the 21^st century is the loss of sense of sin. A person who has lost the sensitivity to sins against the virtues of charity, faith, hope and justice among others, what guilt can he take to confession when he visits the confessional once a year, far removed from the little accounts of depravation and failings. Everything then becomes simply a recital of the catechism: I lied, I this, I that…

Lastly, Confession is the measure of many things. In today’s material world, where one doesn’t have time apart from Television, books, gadgets and other worldly commitments. A person who goes for a confession sparingly knows where he stands in the realm of things. He knows where he stands in the war between the material and spiritual between things of the world and things divine. When one sparingly visits confession, it indicates how much a soul seeks forgiveness of sins. Thus, it also shows how much the worries of the world consume his heart and hence does not give him an opportunity to seek to clear the clutter and dirt of attachments and excesses.

A person who receives the sacrament of confession regularly knows that he understands that all things will pass away for these things are temporal and come and go. But what will remain is the treasures that we store up in heaven. Perhaps we are busier, sadly, this Christmas, like every Christmas buying trees, Christmas sweets, Cribs, Decoration, Clothes and gifts. If Christmas is separated from the message of Christ-Repent for the Kingdom of God is near, then even a Christianizing culture of Trees and gifts can turn but a popular culture of opportunities to have fun. A world of people who simply wish to have fun and Christmas has slowly now become Xmas or Season’s Greetings: Their way to have it.

Smaller and Bigger Joys

It is better to have little joys than to know how transient the passing, pleasures are. When we have huge expectations from bigger joys, they come,serve and go away leaving you desiring to be filled again. When I wished to buy a bike, everyday there was excitement. I reassured myself that when I get my bike, all of life's problems will be solved. Although it has done a great deal of good, It hasn't solved much. The bike has its place but the pleasure has passed like the wind.

They leave you more empty than what you were but smaller joys give you something to live for, to fight for. They continue the various touches and interruptions of God's timely graces when we least notice or expect. While the bigger joys often are so filled with our desires, indulgences and excesses and aspirations that we thrust too much on it, too much is at stake, too much of emotional baggage.

We shudder fearing what would happen if we lose it. We are afraid if anyone will come before us and take it away or having someone to compete with. We are afraid if the ambition of the bigger joy is quashed and our time is wasted or the deadline has collapsed and everything will have a domino effect. Life is turned into an investment plan.

The big expectations may be fulfilled but often at the expense of smaller one's. All the time we are overwhelmed with the anxiety of big aspirations that we forget to stop by and smell the roses. We then fail to appreciate a cup of tea, a kiss of the breeze, a window seat, a sweet melody and a bright morning.

Our eyes are fixed on bigger and more practical things. We smile and excuse ourselves always consoling ourselves that this sacrifice is worth the pain because the bigger joy will bear more fruits than the passing consolation of the smaller joy that was offered. The smaller joys of little daily reprieves like a bus that came on time or a mysterious stroke of luck- Such things have no place in our lives. But these smaller joys change who we are.

The bigger joys may give us a larger meal. The smaller joys infuses peace and the peace may help us make do with a smaller meal. The anxeity of a bigger joy may cost us our courtesy and to forget the journey and only be concerned about the end. Whether it is a small noble thing or a get-together, a friend, an article, a little time off, showing gratitude to others, or atoning for some setbacks- everything is sacrificed. We have no time for these courtesies of 'returning gratitudes' because bigger joys have oriented our thinking and give us a clear, horse straight vision.

We assure ourselves that all will be fine when we reach our end and all the atonement can be done after our ends have met. The smaller joys remember to thank the clerk's guidance or for the taxi driver's directions. The bigger joys drowns these all and only parties in the end hoping that all that he sacrificed will reach its fruition in his final revelry

To Love is to Forgive

Lawyers love building a good case. That is essentially their job. While we build cases to defend ourselves and are thrilled when the case we build is iron-cast. No refutations can break it. But it only takes a clear conscience to build the noblest case, one also that no accusation can dampen.

We have a human tendency to defend ourselves and prove our innocence. Somewhere deep inside of us we wish to be called good and to be acknowledged that we fight the good fight, seek the truth and live in honesty. We may be very dishonest most of the time but the fact that we always have an excuse or a case to defend ourselves shows how much we believe in living by rules, fulfilling promises and being moral.

Often our last resort on being accused of immorality is not to repudiate any allegiance to morality but to claim that everyone around is living an equally depraved life. Observe that we do not say that "I don’t believe In morality at all so don’t bother me". Rather, deep inside, we still believe that morality is a good thing, untouched and unstained by the world’s cruelty and worth fighting for. Only that I don’t wish to fight now as no one around me is going fighting either.

Talking about building cases reminds me of forgiveness. Mother Teresa once said that we don’t have to go on proving to the world that we are upright or doing the right thing. Either they understand or they don’t. If they don’t, in heaven we will receive our vindication.

A few days ago, my I accused my friend of not devoting any time to me and being a big hypocrite talking about love and sincerity and yet not discerning his duties to friendship. Later, I learned that my friend was busy opening and closing his fathers bank account through a complex process, preparing some documents for his sister that was really urgent, helping out another guy with his and other little details.

I wished he could have told me all this notwithstanding that these reasons then would still sound like excuses to me. But the truth being I didn’t wish to listen or hear his story. All I wished to do was tell him how I wasn’t made happy, how he didn’t look out for me and what a hypocrite he was. It is one thing to demand from a friend and later realize that one was unworthy of demanding explanations. It is another to accuse a friend and later find out that he was innocent. The guilt just stifles and creates a tumult of anguish. You feel like you cannot be forgiven

He certainly must have felt like a lawyer wishing to build an unimpeachable case in his defense. But he knew that would leave me ashamed and guilty. I would feel embarrassed and think that I can never be forgiven. He did not wish that his friend go through this angst. He did not wish to make me feel so silly that I hang my head in shame. And so he never built any case and forgave me.

Jesus didn’t stop loving Man while he was on the Cross. He prayed that His Father forgive those who did not know what they were doing. He could forgive because He could love. He realized, that having full knowledge that He was the Son of God, they would have been ashamed to death unto their acts. So He chose to forgive rather than build a case through scriptures on how they got it wrong and leave them shame-faced.

And so he let humiliation crash down upon him for a few moments. He forgave not because he is overtly inclined to forgiveness but because of applying the compassion that if I had full recourse to his plan of day, I would have never cast any judgments. It was not an act of mercy but more an act of love. My friend loves me and didn’t wish that I feel ashamed of myself. Mercy emanates out of love. We all think of ourselves as fine individuals, caring and kind and lovely. That all, perhaps we are. But If we cannot forgive, it is a measure of our love.

The Question of Authority

As a kid, I had friends who always told me, "Good Friday to Easter Sunday does not add up to three days" or "the Gospel of St. Matthew says one thing and that of St. Mark say another and the book of Genesis contradicts how we understand the world”. I recall being disturbed about these judgments not to mention experiencing a waning of my faith like the Sower who sowed good seeds and the birds came and ate it away. The bird of ‘pride and reason’ wishing to topple the humility and serenity of faith and childlike reliance. I could never be a child. But I want to be now.

The more I understand the Bible, the more I come to understand why we require say the authority of a Church as one that can interpret that what is given qualifies as revelation such as the Bible which is the revealed wisdom of God. Just as a judge cannot dispense justice until it is firmly established what exactly is justice, or of the theologians, of hermeneutics, of the allegories, imageries and many things in the Old Testament finding its fulfillment in the New Testament. The more I am left like a child in wonder. How can a child not need a mother? How can I not require a friend? How can I not require an instructor or a lawmaker a hydraulic Engineer or an Architect? They all are authorities in their respective fields.

We put our faith everyday in ordinary matters on the mechanic who says the car part has gone bad and we will never know if he is lying and wants to make a buck or telling the truth. However, we can either spurn his counsel or run from pillar to post because we don’t trust him. The fact that I run from pillar to post presupposes that I have some knowledge that such a part cannot so easily go bad or that I have reasons to distrust him again presupposing that I know that his price quotation is disproportionate.

What do I do when I have no presuppositions? I have to take a leap of faith else my suspicion about the character of the mechanic can never teach me to trust people even if the suspicions are true and I stand to lose.

Today, we don’t know whom to put our faith in. Who has authority and where lies the truth? In such a crisis of trust which is really a crisis of belief is misconstrued as the crisis of truth. No truth remains but the individual’s own biased often uninformed or even whimsical search for truth and what he makes of things around him leading to some rejecting the very existence of Truth. What then remains of Truth is but what we make of it. Can there be a thousand truths?

Coming back to the Bible, time and again being heckled for antagonizing Science as if the Bible which is the wisdom and revelation of God tries to compete with Science which is the revelation of Man through reason. That science should be the revelation of Man through reason is something God wills and is the source of that reason and Man can access science simply because God has allowed him is something people don't comprehend. Pope Benedict XI has always maintained that Science is the discovery of God’s creation.

Science discovers nothing new from what God has readily made available. When Science finds out water on the moon, Science did not create the water or put it there. Either God has a plan for Man as we can see since the beginning of the Human race wherein Man has overcome certain disasters and periods of agony much because of the advancement of Science. Or God does not have a plan for Man and one virus or another will eventually overpower the greatest powers endowed to Science to serve Man and unveil slowly God’s creation, its complexity and intricacies. The point is, not whose wisdom is better or has more Authority, what the Bible says about Creation or what Science says?

The real question is whether we should look for scientific truths in the Bible. Is the Bible God’s Medical Journal? Applying the same standard, should we look for answers of greatest philosophical and theological questions from Scientists and Mathematicians? Shouldn’t the same apply to them? Their competence in one field does not entitle them to competence in another say, what Einstien has to say on God or what Hawkins has to say on the metaphysical question of the Universe cannot qualify as a philosophical or theological authority over what St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine have thought throughout the ages. By the same token, I don’t think many people would pay much heed if St. Thomas Aquinas would deem one painting better than the other simply by preferring one color over another or one style of painting over another. It remains simply his opinion even if he were to write or sing paeans of it. And yet we see this bias in the media which happily would try to dwell more on the insights of Einstein mulling on the existence of God or lack thereof than even inquire on St. Thomas’s five arguments for the existence of God that has made apologists and theologians expound and build their cases on it down the centuries.

And this is what Ronald Knox says on the Holy Spirit inspiring the writers of the Bible

"What do we mean when we say that any book of the Old Testament was inspired? That the Holy Spirit helped the writers, watched over the process and saw they did it right; That doesn’t necessarily mean that every word in the Old Testament, taken quite literally, is infallibly accurate. You find it stated in the Psalms, for instance, that God has made the round world. And when Galileo, or rather, first Copernicus and then Galileo, produced the idea which we all believe in nowadays, that the earth travels round and round on its own axis; that the sun doesn’t really "set ", when that idea was produced, a lot of people, chiefly Protestants, said, "That’s heresy! The Bible tells us that the earth can’t be moved, and here are these people wanting us to believe that it’s speeding round and round like mad!" But of course that was idiotic of them.

The Psalms weren’t written to teach us lessons in geography; they were poetry, and the person who wrote that verse was just talking in the ordinary language of his time. So you can’t be certain that every word of the Old Testament is literally true. But you can be certain that the theology of the Old Testament, once you have understood it properly and made allowances for the Hebrew way of saying things, must be true; because when it was written the Holy Spirit was at work to see that the thing got done right."

We require theologians to understand the truths communicated to us by God. If God is the source of all intellect, sure the Bible is not going to be a walk in the Park. If we require a journalist to place the facts and figures in an appealing way or a teacher to impart knowledge in an interesting way or a doctor to heal without skepticism, we ought to require theologians to understand the Bible. The question is of authority and obedience to people of authority whether it is of a local man giving you directions because you are foreign to a place or of a nutritionist advising you to stop eating burgers. Nothing becomes truth because it receives print space in the media. But truth ought to receive print in the media.

Often we question the bible not because it is not true but because we don’t wish to understand it. we are rather ok with what the local journalist has to say on the bible and his gibe makes more sense to us than what perhaps a priest has to say. We don’t wish to understand it because we don’t wish to recognize any other authority but ourselves. When an authoritarian wishes to dispense truth, we want to believe, “Now that is your version of truth. Who gave you the authority to claim it as truth”?

Well, if everyone’s opinion were equally good, it is goodbye to teacher’s doctors, scientists, mathematicians, politicians, lawmakers. But because we have all of these, we presuppose that some people have better opinion than others. Some people’s opinions are closer to truth than others and hence have more authority. And lastly, because not all the people in the world can invest all their time to determine whether Abortion is wrong or otherwise lest they all suspend their lives and professional work until they have come to the truth, a search that may never even end.

That is why we have ethicists, or perhaps to illustrate, the echoing and bellowing of one such authority as the Catholic Church that in recent time since the blatant pro-abortionist era, has vociferously opposed Abortion. No one asks or tries to inquire on how the Church has come to believe what she believes. In such matters, wherein lies the faith of over a billion Catholics lies the sound judgment of hundreds of moralists, theologians, bioethicists, and philosophers. A lawmaker can get it wrong if all that he has with him is his thumping fist or lobbying majority.

A weak or humbug authority only gives diktats and imposes itself on others by use of force. But a sound authority engages itself with the intellectuals and other authorities of the respective domains and lays its life down for its beliefs. They neither dilute them nor disown them. An authority is known by its conviction not by intimidation or power.

The forsaking of authority and to choose whom to give the same is really the problem of a breakdown of freedom. We are all confused to our limits to freedom and the purpose of individuality and liberty. I have liberty to live they way I want but not to change the truth of life itself. Such a liberty roots from pride of ‘my life my rules’ but if such an ideology is true, I wonder how a reader would determine which magazine is better than the other, which writer is better than the other. If there are no rules, there can be no game. Each can do as they think and there is no point of having a referee. For a referee establishes that a game can be enjoyed and played because each one has consented to accepting certain rules which are fair. So is life with its truths.

The nature of Asceticism

Yesterday, my friend wanted a tool to do some work. He could do work without the tool but with it, life would be really simplified. He was making a call to me and I was in the Gymnasium. Later on, when I reached home, I told him, “you knew where the tool was, you could have just picked it up. He only smiled and said, ‘It is alright. I did fine without it”

I realized later his real philosophy. Often we get all we want by a simple request or a difficult one. We are averse to bothering ourselves but will go out of our ways to make that last desperate phone call to get what we want. Why inconvenience ourselves, is our reasoning.

But somewhere deep inside just a plain ‘it will be more convenient with the shampoo, with the bike ride, with the pen, with the envelope, with a new phone” is another mindset, a fear active-how can I do without it?

Whether finding out there is little water left to take a bath or there is not much rice left for two to eat, there is always this gnawing fear ‘can I survive this bath without enough water? Can this rice be enough? Should we make some calls or set out to buy more rice? Deep inside the frantic calls or always getting what you want, is a view of being unable to trust God that we would be alright if we choose to do without them. Sure, we feel relieved when we make a call or ask a friend or roommate to go out of their way or use their service and consequently only thank God for working through them. But this is the paradox of asceticism.

The mortal searches the ends of the earth driven by fear and is filled with gratitude after his ends have been met. The ascetic is filled with peace first, for he believes God takes care of all and he needn’t tear himself if he has to do without enough bread or without the AC working and he will survive. He searches God because he is alright if he is deprived of many a things. if he can only receive peace from God instead. The mortal man searches all the ends to receive what he desired if only he can drive away his worry.

One seeks peace; the other seeks to banish worry. One wishes to know what it is to do without things and fulfilling all desires and to only cling to God. The other dreads a day that he would have to do without these things and his desires and clings to anyone or anything that could get him his heart’s desire. One realizes that things bring peace but things are of this world and the peace they bring is also of this world only to vanish away until another thing grips his heart. So he rather have the peace that has God as its source in practicing poverty in order that he can embrace whatever is the reality of his being. The other is harrowed by not having enough and it presupposes a difficulty in trusting God that all will be fine or that we can survive it without great tumult in our soul.

If only we first cling to God in the definitive moment of making a choice whether to do without it or get what we desire that now seems like a spiritual warfare of loyalty to things eternal or things worldly. Of course, our desire to always get what we want and its consequent fulfillment establishes that in this spiritual warfare of choice, choosing whether we can trust God and drive out the fear, mostly our loyalties go with the things of this world. That is why our peace is also momentary. It flees.

This is also the paradox of peace in everyday difficulties. When we drive out the fear because we trust God and take a leap of faith, we are at peace. The fear will be lesser every next time. But there will be a next time and a faith to show. it will keep coming. When we think that all our heart desires should be granted which presupposes a fear that ‘life cannot go on without it’. It is subject to the nature of solutions your friend or any other has to offer like a little water instead of a lot or cold instead of hot. When you still don’t get what you prefer(say in this case more water or hot water respectively), the worry is not perfectly quelled and the sadness remains. We are still vulnerable to sadness. The worry is banished but the worry increases every next time it comes. There will be a next time. Our faith will be measured. It will keep coming too.

The Everyday truth of Friendships

There is a great joy in the little things of everyday friendship. My friend had to buy a camera yesterday and we went around from shop to shop trying to find him exactly what he wishes. Most of our friendship was lived on the way to these malls, on the sidewalk while starting the bike or while exiting a shop and infusing hope that the next shop would hand us what we desire.

After we bought the camera, we wanted to celebrate over dinner. I fancied this one hotel and two of my friends favored another. I tried my best using coy arguments to win them over. Eventually I chose friendship and their joy of desiring me to see what they see in the other hotel. I died unto my desire for my own joy over their hope of my joy after I come to believe what they believe

We lived so many little moments of friendship in numerous little things that it is hard to tell one from the other. If anyone were to ask me why I had a great time, it would be hard for me to explain how exactly that came about without a movie or sports or a party night.

I believe God often touches us in little things of love than show us friendships made of grandeur and show. If we are not able to encourage our friends in their little joys and be joyous ourselves, I see little possibility of we being able to grasp a nobler truth of a friendship with God.

For a friendship with God is discerning his hand and touch of love in the little things of everyday life. Without the grace to feel God's presence in our joys and pain, our life would remain but a random day of luck or error. We would neither be able to recognize the love of our really true Friend nor be able to live a friendship with Him who is the source of all our friendships, all our love. Life without finding love of God in little things would be merely an investment plan where one day we lose thousands and another day gain thousands.

But with God, the troubles of life are like walking over hilly areas in order to meet our friend who knows it is difficult to live friendship on His terms. And for all that, God rewards us with little joys of our life which are like resting on the greens of the valley. Without these bouts of love in little things, we lose the supernatural dimensions of our lives. Little things in friendship and the gratitude for love in them teaches us that peace in friendship is more wealthy than a life lived alone within our fantasies and dreams.

Seeking Perfection

My friend recounts a story of a girl he met who was very pretty, very sweet and innocent. Often, these 3 traits suffice to melt any man’s heart. It is true. Although, we tried hard putting him on and harrowing him that she has been brought up in a different culture, that he is a devout Hindu and she, with western tendencies, Church going girl and it won’t work out, he couldn’t resist her idiosyncrasies.

Yet, he returned every evening often sharing many woes about how she is. Beyond the sweetness and beauty laid an imperfect girl. She had issues, many impulses, temperamental and quick to anger. People might say who is not haunted by these shortcomings? Another group might say love conquers all.

Well, love couldn’t conquer for my friend. Somehow he later began to find her resistible. He kept her at bay. He was making choices. He was listening to what his ideologies are, what is his mental dispositions and preferences in a partner or for that matter, a friend. Eventually, he suppressed his feelings because he couldn't be around her.

I wondered that here is a girl, imperfect like each of us. If she is easily annoyed and is temperamental, perhaps I take things very seriously and have other weaknesses. Was my friend selfish in making his choices? By being assertive that the girl is not for him? Let us keep the selfishness for another blog post. I would like to dwell on the imperfections.

Deep inside, all of us seek perfection. All of us wish to have an efficient motorbike or a good looking house or a well cooked dinner. Man seeks perfection and this is not something new. St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century had cited ‘perfection’ as one of the rational proofs for the existence of God. If some people are more perfect than others, if some cities or governments or processes are more perfect than others, then everyone are at varying degrees of perfection. If there is such a thing as degrees of perfection, then such a thing as perfection exists. St. Thomas Aquinas called this idea of Perfection, God. Whereas us men who are mortals in whom God has infused in us the longing for perfection. So that eventually, we may seek God, the infinitely perfect.

Often when people wish to correct us, change us and we snub them asserting our freedom to be how we are. We fool ourselves by spurning their offer to secure our pride. As we seek perfection, in us and around us, we cannot help but correct our friends because a more perfect object can be loved much more than an object that hasn’t reached the same perfection.

We cannot love stray dogs as much as trained Dogs¹. We love trained dogs because we have perfected them to an extent where they can sit, stand and roll according to our commands. Hence they are more adorable and we are more disposed to shower affection in a dog that can reciprocate a degree of perfection that we have infused in them. A literate wife can be appreciated more for being resourceful than an illiterate wife who may in many quarters, becomes a burden. There is not so much selfishness her but a longing for perfection.

1. Ideas from C.S Lewis, Problem of Pain

It matters what you do

Whenever my friend Antonio asks others why they did what they did, the others will give their classic reply, “What about the whole world of people who are sinning? My action is not going to make any difference.”

Jesus said that when one person is lost He goes in search of the person and even if one person is found He celebrates. The whole world may be sinning but salvation is about you. They had their chance. Now it’s yours! The salvation of many men hangs on what you choose. They are going to choose their cards by something you are going to guide. It matters what you do

G. K Chesterton says, “We live at the wrong side of the tapestry” what we learn, what we encounter, we don’t comprehend that often it is only an experience for us but a lesson for someone else. It is not given to us the gift to look on the other side, to uncover the veil and know the secrets of every mysterious encounter with life. What we do now, we will never know whom it profits. If we are practicing honesty now, it is perhaps a preparation more for the person we will bump into ten years from now and who will be converted by our habits and conduct. But if we aren’t prepared, he is going to bump into us and life is going to be the same. We have lost his salvation for him.

We cannot delay our growth and our virtue for we delay that person our self can be due to which our friends are never the same again. They found the truth through us but if we don't grow the truth doesn't lie in us. If we are lazy in our growth, we are depriving all our friends of what they could meet know and their encounter with truth. It matters what you do!