For a dear friend

Not like trees in the woods green and ever

Are my friends so many

But a few of them, some hard, some clever

Have I got now without losing a penny

And this one, you, funny and true

Doesn’t possess to many folds, don’t need a clue

Simple within, simple without

They made paper-boats before, he makes laughter-shouts

But for laughter, joys and friendship, years and ears

I can’t say much but, thank you

I could promise the moon, the shine, to someone so dear

But there ain’t no exchange, God knows this and so should you.

Bare Necessities

"Hey, what room are you in?, I want to know if the AC is working"

"Well, err…third floor"

I have been caught off guard with little details. Not knowing what is your room number for instance. There is in us a inherent latency to live with a minimum of information in order to survive. We will know our pant size but not our collar or know our height but not our shoe size. Being perplexed while filling forms or someone asking your Constituency ward number are things of sun sets and sun rise:welcome to ordinary life

And isn't this a great trophy of human life, to survive with the least information? Why should I know my street name and full abbreviation of my college? Why should I know the name of that flower, I just want to buy it, not do a thesis! Queen comes to my mind, singing: Let me live!

Aye, but the necessities of life are not the measure of human perfection. It is not about a dog's life. Our ideal image of ourselves is always of greatness not of fighting fires and living camp-life until we are seventy. I suppose we have a tendency to live but for necessity.

A measure of a man is the measure of the finest details he ponders on. Why would Man care so much about blending colors of a table cloth, or the bucking pressure of Nadal, or the serenity of a Tenor, or the majestic beauty of a gothic cathedral? Why not just wallow around like a dog until food has been put on the plate? Because we have not been made for comfort, chico, but for greatness, bellows Benedict XI.

Then next time I get caught with an address but no envelope, a number without a code, or an important document but without a photocopy, I would like to remind myself that it is better to say mea culpa than to say "damn! There is so much negativity around"

Yes, and when are you planning to get that air freshener for it?

No one buys Peace

Today, I left my mother to a place on my bike. It was a tense ride and slowest I've driven so far. Even my mom could only heave a sigh of relief only after the bike came to a halt with her still in one piece. I asked her, "Wouldn't it have made more sense to pay 10 rupees, hire a rickshaw and earn some peace?" She said she'd prefer carrying the heavy bag and break a sweat than take a rickshaw

I believe many people think peace is an absence of strife, having no problems, no catastrophes, no troubles or tribulations. Very few people believe peace is also attained as a sum of good decisions. Good decisions that don't create momentary tensions.

My mother preferred carrying that heavy bag in the scorching heat and deafening noise than pay 10 rupees and make a good decision. The consequence of choosing the former also would be to curse the purpose of doing the work, sympathize with oneself, "…what a difficult life I lead", and not being able to do anything cheerfully or with love.

Like everything else, peace comes at a price. I stand here outside a long queue with people complaining about slow service. Sir, please take a little pain to learn how to pay bills online. Wage a war on yourself and your less than average existence. Peace will follow this War

Resurrection gives a chance, gives Hope

As Ash Wednesday has begun today, I was meditating on the homily of Pope Benedict XVI. He mentions and I quote,

"God created men and women for resurrection and life, and this truth gives an authentic and definitive meaning to human history, to the personal and social lives of men and women,

to culture, politics and the economy. Without the light of faith, the entire universe finishes shut within a tomb devoid of any future, any hope."

All of history has seen triumphant victories and big-hearted losers. What comes to my mind are those countries, or regimes or periods which saw victims, or generosities that had a price to pay. To take one example is the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were massacred. My point is that Human History cannot be a page without being a part of a book. A book points somewhere, it leads to a climax or an end where everything is understood in proper light. Detaching one particular murder on a page makes and reading it independently would make you wonder why such injustice. Our Human histories of War or Terrorism or misfortune, whether individual or historical, should also make us think? Does not it make us wonder that everything loses meaning and is pointless to fight for just a better world, or to have to pay a price, an individual, or for an entire community or people to pay a price for an ideal. Is it worth it just to make a day or two better? Will this human history of people who have died more valiant than others go up as smoke if we are to believe that life is here and now and while you and I are here, let's talk, give and take?

Resurrection changes it all. Human History of fortunes and misfortunes, stroke of luck and grave evil and injustice all can be seen in perspective. There is accountability, there is reward. There is a chance!

Surrogate Pregnancy: Buying and Selling Life

An excellent article by Clare O Neil in the Sydney Morning Herald where she argues about the moral, commercial and societal difficulties that surrogacy poses. Here's a snippet

 

A second, more complex set of moral concerns is that commercial surrogacy could commodify pregnancy, babies and motherhood, leading to the breakdown of cultural beliefs we may not wish to change.

Babies and pregnancy are seen by society as sacrosanct. Through commercial surrogacy, they are given a price, and sold and exchanged much like other goods and services. If we allow babies to be bought, why not a two-year-old child? Should we allow babies to be sold at auction? For many, these (albeit extreme) hypotheticals feel intuitively wrong, contravening a basic belief that some things simply should not be bought and sold.

Moral Absolutes: Some acts are always wrong no matter what the circumstance or great good (purpose) acheived

Here is a very good snippet from this column written by Christopher O. Tollefse called, Speaking Truth to Evil (in Public Discourse), on how certain acts not matter what the circumstance or the good one wishes to attain, is always wrong by the virtue of choosing that object, an evil object i.e (say) murder, Rape, Contraception ect.

 

Only "Unjustified" False Assertion?

The first challenge has to do with the nature of moral absolutes, such as the absolute norm against murder, or, as I believe, the absolute norm against lying. Hadley Arkes and Francis Beckwith, while seeming to agree that these are moral absolutes, have both argued that absolute norms such as these contain within them a moral qualifier. The prohibition on murder is a prohibition on unjustified killing. Likewise, the prohibition on lying is on unjustified false assertion.

Yet no critic, speaking from the Catholic intellectual or faith tradition, has drawn the obvious conclusion from this that therefore the (absolute) norm regarding adultery is a norm against unjustified extramarital congress; or that the (absolute) norm against contraception is a norm against unjustified prevention of conception. And this is hardly surprising, for it is widely recognized that this is not, in fact, the nature of these norms.

As John Paul II labored to explain, there are acts which, independently of their further ends, or of their circumstances, are wrong precisely in virtue of the object chosen. That object—the form of behavior settled upon by the agent—is incompatible with the human good, including the human being's ultimate orientation to God. Choices of these sorts are wrong everywhere and always. Their objects are designated "intrinsically evil" precisely to indicate that their moral character can be recognized by considering only the object of the act itself (other questions, concerning the gravity of any particular violation, for example, will require attention to ends and circumstances).

One does not, therefore, look to whether extramarital intercourse is being performed at the right time, with the right person, in the right way, or with a view to some good end (perhaps an abortionist will give up his trade if a married woman were willing to be his mistress, thus saving the lives of many unborn in the area). Rather, one recognizes that the choice of such intercourse is incompatible with the human good because of its violation of the good of marriage, full stop. In asserting that adultery is always and everywhere impermissible, then, the tradition does not hold that adultery is "unjustified extramarital intercourse," but that it is simply extramarital intercourse as such.

Education is a progression

I have recently taken up teaching a few computer courses. When I plan them, I plan assuming that the student already has some prerequisite knowledge of element A (say) without which you cannot learn element B.

The problem begins when the person has enrolled to learn Course C without having any knowledge of Course A - B. You end up teaching him A - B - C or left gasping for air.

Education is a progression. You cannot jump to Dante or Shakspeare without an elementary appreciation of Poetry neither can you appreciate Plato or a novel if you have not already had patience with lesser books of humble length. The latter are a training for the former. They lead you to it. Without that training, you wither give up the truly noble because you haven't yet been training on those less noble stairways leading up to the great Hall.

Newman on Friendships

An Article on Mercatornet that delves in deeper into Cardinal Newman's understanding of Freindships, something lost today

Being 15 years Newman's junior, when he died suddenly aged 60, Newman was devastated. "I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or awife's," he wrote, "but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one's sorrow greater, than mine." Some 15 centuries earlier, St Augustine in his Confessions wrote in the same way about thedeath not of his mistress, but of his best friend. "My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did not see him; and I hated all places because he was not in them, because they could not say to me, 'Look, he is coming,'as they did when he was alive and absent."

Newman's desire to share a tomb with St John may seem unusual to the modern eye. Yet Alan Bray in his seminal work The Friend (2003) cites many such examples of friends sharing tombs in previous centuries. Such public commitments to "marriages of the soul" were common in pre-modern times. Bray's conclusion is striking: "Newman's burial with St John cannot be detached from Newman's understanding of the place of friendship in Christian belief or its longhistory."

Reading the final page of Newman's Apologia – lyrically dedicated to all his Oratorian brothers and especially to "Ambrose St John, whom God gave me, when He took everyone else away; who are the link between my old life and my new; who have now for 21 years been so devoted to me, so patient, so zealous, so tender" – the writer George Eliot was impressed. "Pray mark that beautiful passage in which he thanks his friend Ambrose St John," she wrote to a friend. "I know hardly anything that delights me more than such evidences of sweet brotherly love being a reality in the world."

Do we – can we – today applaud such friendship? Do we – can we – make room, now, for such"evidences of sweet brotherly love"? Men and women often have intense friendships with members of their own sex, friendships that have no sexual component; yet we are losing the vocabulary to speak about them, or we are embarrassed to do so. A "friend" is one you add to a social networking profile on the web; or it is a euphemism for a sexual partneroutside marriage. Can a man nowadays own up with pride to having a dearand close friend, another man to whom he is devoted? Can he, without itbeing suspected as repressed homosexuality? I fear the answer to both may be "no". And it is hard to know which is the sadder.

Not everything can be explained

My friend and I were asked recently what possibly can be the benefit of learning a language. As my friend and I come from the same school of thought that learning is an asset that everything has to be looked at not as ‘benefit’ or otherwise but as ‘learning’ and knowledge, we began to elucidate.

Soon we ran out of arguments. While we knew taking up any art form, music, an instrument, language, delicacy or culture only enriches and ennobles life, we fell short of convincing people that evening. We begged them to consider that perhaps if they learned French, one day a client would hire them simply because doing business with them complements his growth as they have familiarity with French. We tried other natural arguments that ‘nothing ever is a waste’ or ‘you don’t know when it may help you’

We reached higher planes too and discussions turned more mystical with having us saying that when we aspire for certain nobilities, it imprints on our character and personality a hint and trace of the nobility. We have a part of nobility within us. Our personality is sealed with nobility and often becomes synonymous with it. Our identities find new expression and a breath of life. They manifest because we aspire to reach a higher goal (than usual sustenance) as to indulge in the enrichment of life by yielding to its calling.

Our friends weren’t convinced. I don’t blame them. My own friend in my team acknowledged that what has taken years to learn, with hard perseverance and effort, cannot possible be explained loosely and nonchalantly in an evening soiree and expect to be understood.

But another thing we learned is that often, when it comes to things we cannot touch or explain because they cannot be studied under a microscope but can only be conceived and experienced, it is often the testimony of God in our hearts. He explains to us the value of things because He is eventually the source of all goodness. If we have been attracted to Him, surely we will be attracted and find Him in all things that His beauty manifests in.

And surely, it wouldn’t be wrong to say His beauty has manifested in music, art, sculpture, architecture, nature, Poetry and literature, theatre to name a few. Thus appreciation of these nobilities often presupposes knowledge of God that God fills these things with meaning. These things then manifest in our personalities and give us Life. Surely, anyone who understands this simply understands this by the testimony God creates in his mind as a witness to all things good in the world. But that doesn’t guarantee that we would be able to explain the same to others. Another reason, we cannot fully understand neither God‘s reality nor explain it to others with clarity. Eventually, some things are left as a witness in the heart and don’t become advocates in expression.

Dr. Vost on Thomas Aquinas and Virtues

You can find the complete interview here

Kapler: I know that Aquinas was very instrumental in bringing you back to Catholicism. How did that happen?

Vost: I was drawn into atheism by various philosophers: Ayn Rand, a philosopher associated with a philosophy called Objectivism was one. Albert Ellis was a psychologist. He had a system called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy; he also happened to be an atheist. These people, Ayn Rand in particular, said her system was based on the philosophy of Aristotle. Albert Ellis said his psychology was based on an ancient system of the Stoic philosophers. Now it just so happened that both those Stoic philosophers and Aristotle were not atheists; they were theists. These were also systematic thinkers that St. Thomas Aquinas knew very, very well.

Well, it wasn’t until my early forties that I first came across the writings of Thomas Aquinas himself. Here I saw an absolute, true master of the writings of Aristotle. There’s a saying I like to quote from Charles Darwin, “My modern peers of the day are like mere school boys compared to old Aristotle.” I had that kind of an ah-ha when I came across Aquinas!

Kapler: Aquinas – I’ve heard you describe him, most recently in your book Unearthing Your Ten Talents, as a master of psychology. What did you find in St. Thomas that you didn’t find in the other great psychologists you have studied, and even taught about as a college psychology professor?

Vost: Much of his work in psychology comes through in the Second Part of his Summa Theologica. Thomas examines in great detail what it means to be a human being. How is it that we think, and how is it that we feel? How does this reflect us being made in God’s image? Thomas looks at things like: Virtue, how do we make ourselves our best possible selves? Sin, how do we avoid those things that pull us away from God and make us less than what we are? There’s a true profundity of thought there.

Kapler: When you talk in Unearthing Your Ten Talents about “the virtues,” they aren’t something we hear a great deal about today – not in pop psychology, not even from the pulpit, at least not in my experience. Why does Aquinas put such emphasis on “the virtues,” this list of habitual qualities; and why do we need to pay attention to that today?

Vost: Thomas wrote in the thirteenth century, and much of theology focused on sins and our fallen human nature, things that are very important. Thomas also wrote a great deal about those, but he also had an emphasis on how we are good, very good – wondrously made in the image of God. So to understand ourselves, we have to understand the powers God gave us. And virtues are basically perfections of those various powers.

The Catholic Church and the upside down faith

The Catholic Church teaches this upside down faith of Christianity. What the world calls popular, The Church shouts it down. When world makes everything a personal choice, The Church cries out for the lack of love. What the world cherishes, The Church reminds will pass away. What the world too easily embraces, The Church reminds to be slow to befriend. The Church fights a lone battle, preaches the love of a God made Man who died to exemplify it. It makes its way to every road and station of the world glorifying the love of God and whistling the praises of his mercy. It celebrates the dignity of life and the nobility of human action. It condemns commoditizing human dignity and rationalizations of the human mind. The Church dances its way to serve and willingly lays itself as a carpet for anyone who has found the love of Christ to enter into its triumphant mysteries. The Church has been doing all these down centuries defending its creeds and guarding the good of Mankind in a passing world which it pilgrims.

for His friends

Giving up your life doesn’t seem so difficult when the question is of a friend that is going to gain. Jesus said no man has greater love than one who lays his life down for a friend. It seems Jesus knew that love moves us to lay our lives down for others without thinking of losing our money, our time, our desires, dreams and our very lives. A patriot dies for his country. He loves his country. And what is friendship but love. We offer a seat to a friend we see in the bus not because we are selfish and couldn’t see the plight of tens of others standing next to us but because giving your seat to a friend is a iota of giving your life in a little way. The train journey only demands your seat. But it is the model derived from Jesus’ example of no man having greater love than one who lays his life down for a friend. And Jesus did the same. He invited us to friendship when he laid his life down. We are his friends. We have no other way to love others than befriending them. Sure, we often are protagonists in a passing act of compassion or generosity. But that is what it is, a passing act, a burst of compassion or zeal of generosity. But the zeal of friendship flows constantly in the blood reminding us “Love…Love…give your life for your friend…lay it down” Friendship affirms a committed heroic love, unlike a passing heroic compassion or generosity, which is always ready when a friend requires to be loved. Friendship doesn’t leave you to the mercy of a heroic leap in virtue. Friendship silently mortifies oneself as a testimony of love. It readily crucifies one’s own passions and interests so that those of a friend can be redeemed.

We just stay where we are

I can understand just staying where you are. It is difficult to take a dip and contemplate how it would be to learn swimming. It is easy to contemplate but difficult to take the leap in to the cold water. It is easy to just stay where you are: I don’t know to swim. But this list is endless. Who really doesn’t want to learn a musical instrument or read a profound and moving book or watch a musical performance that leaves you blushing and child-like, or trek the cold, moist and wet mountain or take children on a camp or listen to a wise person share his experience. We all can contemplate this, but difficult to actually give ourselves to our contemplation. We eventually stay where we are. It is easy to go with life not bothering, not trying harder, not going out of your way to make someone happy, not trying to intervene in another’s life as it is too much of a discomfort and we are afraid of what they will think. Life is good however it is, live and let live. We just stay where we are, believing what we want, doing what we feel, living each day unable to tell one day from another, unable to tell one hue from another on a canvas. It takes courage to feel accountable. It takes courage to grieve and to burst out in enthusiasm. It takes courage to be cheerful all day. It takes courage to believe that one is a child of God and so one has to seek Him in all things. It is easy to stay where you are, to preach a religion of love and brotherhood because everyone loves Love and agrees that we have a common brotherhood but difficult to imagine an undying faith, a sustaining relationship with God and a journey of transformation. This is difficult. Love and brotherhood is easy, they are lofty words, no one tries to delve deeper, what really that love means. So we can keep saying the same things on and on. We just stay where we are.

Faith in a post modern world

Temptations come in strange often creative ways. One of the strongest temptations yet underrated and under talked about is the temptation to think nothing really counts or has meaning or is supernatural or my actions, my smile, my courage, my love was just a passing moment and does not possess eternal consequences and effects. These temptations subtly throw darts on one’s faith and deflate the enthusiasm on a dry afternoon or a sulking evening when everyone is busy doing what is done every day. Conversations aren’t exciting, people don’t have inspiring faces, everyone simply looks like they have come to fill their stomach gluttonously and get back to work in an equally reluctant fashion. Everything around seems lacking significance and just another purposeless moment. It is at these moments when you look around and you see hounds racing toward your heart, what now looks like juicy meat in order to dispel your sense of grandeur about faith, about a Lord who died for you and that it is not worth fighting for, it is not worth living, everything is but a evolutionary process and instinct. Just pass through it and have a good time. This, I believe is the intellectual decoy of The Enemy which he uses when your heart doesn’t seem to be fired up and you have not enthusiasm to go with. This is The Enemy’s world and you are playing an eternal game in his corrupting and perishing backyard. He is going to play hard, on your mind by crushing entirely or making us believe what we hold on to, Love in Creation, Justice in Condemnation and Mercy in Redemption is but a mere delusion and a romantic fairy tale. And he is going to attack your heart with all the shallowness and mediocrity around establishing that the heart cannot love for there is no such thing as love. Each one only looks after himself. There are prayers we say shut within our rooms. There are prayers we say like thoughts shooting out of our heart when we think of people, aspirations. There are prayers we say when we think deeply on a virtue or on an event. But to overcome this temptation of nothing really counts is a battle field prayer, a war cry, choosing ‘faith and meaning’ and standing your ground on enemy line. This is nothing short of an act of faith in a modern and post-modern world.

The man who loves

Love makes us leave everything in order to serve the lover. No sooner has the phone rang, than he has left his books and his pen, he has stopped eating and forgotten himself. Some leave their bath when the phone beeps, for the call they are expecting. Some spend all day waiting for the letter or email. Love makes us cut off all the attachments. Everything else seems unimportant and unessential save the affection of the lover, to be at his or her feet and to serve him.

Prayer requires often at least an iota of such love. Where do I go, Lord, my hope is in you? A man who cuts off all the many little things vying for his heart, those men or women vying for a minute of his time, who switches off the TV or the iPOD, or minimizes the website, or gets off the phone call or stops talking or studying because it is time for Prayer. This man is in love. It takes love to pray, more than anything else. All of us can dance and watch a movie or cuddle a loved one. But many of us cannot always listen to another or talk to another. We are into everything but love. The man who leaves everything and sits down to pray listens and talks. He is in love.

Two contradictions: Sanctity and Comfort

Comfort and sanctity can not go hand in hand. In this world, all pursue comfort whereas in reality, it is a garden to grow sanctity. It is the battle field where soldiers of sanctity are born but what is left of us, comfort-driven men, are merchants and traders of pleasures: one for another. Comfort sees the joy of rest and Sanctity sees the joy of watching the neighbor at rest. Sanctity is always trying to protect itself in a Man who wishes to be always at work. Through work, he guards his sanctity for work is harsh, work has thorns, work has sweat and work presupposes humility. Work and discipline embraces many little crosses which adds more coal to the fire of Sanctity. Comfort avoid all crosses, where there is no cross, there is no sanctity. Comfort seeks the conventions of the world, to live life as a king, sprawled on a couch hands outstretched, a visible glory. But sanctity seeks only greatness. It hides its glory portraying the ordinariness of the man without and greatness of the soul within.

Original Sin: The trophyism of human nature

I have a friend who apologized to me a couple of days ago. A few days later he apologized that he apologized. While digging deeper into his struggles, he shared with me the following. He had neglected a particular favor I had asked of him. He was busy with many things and those things turned into obstacles for granting me my favor. As he realized it, he apologized.

But he said he felt a longing to apologize. Somewhere deep inside of him was an intention however little and dormant that ‘I am a good person as I am apologizing for my mistake. I have the magnanimity to accept it’ we all are no different from my friend

Man can never have a purified intention. This is the doctrine of Original Sin. It says that Man’s intentions and purpose for doing things got corrupted and he since then has to put much effort to have rectitude of intention. He can give but cautiously doubting the other rather than trusting. He can dispense knowledge but liberally wishing to present his eloquence than to edify the other. He can do a lot of selfless work and when it is time for glory, he may be unable to discern how much the work is selfish and selfless. He can help a friend and not know if he wills to do it because he desires the friend’s good, whether he would do it if his friend was his competitor, whether he is doing it because he has spare time and he has anyways nothing more useful to do. He can donate but wonders what point is donation if no one knows about it or if it is not appreciated.

Basically, with Original sin, Man desired self-glory and hence our intentions have been perverted. Whenever it comes to doing anything that does not involve ourselves, we somehow manage to include ourselves whether in trumpeting our contributions, desiring to be the funniest, or simply to be different and seek attention. The first Man desired to be like God, his first sin, known as Original Sin. Its effects today are seeking ourselves through everything.

And this has imprisoned us. Somehow every good thing you want to do will come with a tinge of self-interest which mostly roots in pride: seeking the glory of self. Humble people perhaps the saints may have had more rectitude of intention than most of us. My friend apologized found scores of people to apologize and thank. While it is really noble to apologize, how much of it is caused by a contrite heart that is really sorry for its sin is left to introspection.

We all have perceptions of ourselves. We are fooling ourselves if we think we are awful people. More or less every one of us has some vague perception that we are good people. We think-‘I am not like the bad world everyone is discussing over coffee’. So while we generally or vaguely accept that we are good people, we are concerned when not having said sorry or thanked the person enough, because we are scared people might not think we are good anymore. If we know we are good and others share the same opinion, it is our greatest treasure. “I have to do things faster as they all know me as very efficient and independent”. We don’t ask for help and often mess things up. “I have to study this well as I am known as a good student”. We try to go out of our way to prove people right. Our action or atonement is more caused by worry of our goodness being at stake than our contrition for being fallen creatures.

And hence we are imprisoned by our perception of self- ‘I am a good person’. Many times we are going to do things well or quickly or neatly because we want to showcase to others we are fine people. We want to be little gods everywhere seeking self-glory wherever we can. We are imprisoned by these perceptions and it is not going to go away anytime soon unless one has a humble and contrite heart. For a humble and contrite heart, God does not despise¹. I now understand in so many ways what Jesus means when he says, I am the truth. It means all goodness and grace comes from him.

We have muddled and confounded our intentions and perceptions of things. Often we can say we are good Christians and deep inside of us always aspiring to better our image. Many highly esteem us but we won’t stop until they keep little trophies in their drawing rooms. We really seem to believe that we are good people and it all seems to come from us because we choose it or cooperate with good things we do. Jesus says this truth shall set you free. The truth simply is that the angel said to Joseph: She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins²

We keep forgetting that if Jesus was sent to save the world, of course we are sinful people. If it wasn’t so, then why would a savior had to be sent to suffer and die for our sins? We are imprisoned in our perceptions until we accept mercy that no matter how much we try, how much we try to grow in love, virtue, and grace, we cannot completely get rid of pride.

All of the saints died still considering themselves sinners that God must have mercy upon. They were simply adhering to the truth that set them free. We are all sinners the sooner we know it, the sooner we stop this self-investment of creating trophies of ourselves in the other people’s houses. That is why humble people who don’t have pride allow God to do great things within them. For they go not where glory lies but renounce all those desires being ready to be broken, wasted, and trampled upon so that the path is straightened for God to do his work.

1 Psalms 51:17

2 Matthew 1:21

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.