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Saturday, August 24, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Dual Encounter 2013
Sem. Marjun Almario is a 1st Yr. Theologian from the Diocese of San Carlos. He is currently enrolled at the UST Faculty of Sacred Theology.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Journey Within, Journey with Jesus
It is indeed a difficult task for me to write something about the 30-day Ignatian Retreat, my very own retreat. It is difficult because no words could ever capture the profound meaning of a relationship with Him who, Himself, is beyond mere human words. It is difficult because it is impossible for me to put into writing an experience, no less than a grace-filled experience with a dear friend Jesus.
Anyhow, let me just present in a simple narrative how my days went through in the retreat house where the envisioned desert experiences providentially took place. Kuya Dindo, my retreat companion, has also been very instrumental in keeping me on right pacing throughout the journey.
My first week was marked with ambivalence. I was dreadfully excited to get into the prayer exercises following the proposed schedule. At the same time, I was missing the life in the city with all the luxury of company, communication and entertainment. I interestingly did the suggested prayer guides and hastily looked for the possible immediate effect.
But nothing happened.
The more I forced myself, the more I grew helpless. Such disposition led me to be harsh on myself, pushing me too heavily into the exercises, and the consequence waiting for me was disappointment. I was lost. I was disappointed. There, I found myself so down, deep down on my knees.
One Friday morning, at the brink of giving up, I found myself totally caught by a text from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians 4:30, "Do not do anything that will sadden the Holy Spirit…"
These words breathed to me like a soft whisper yet bearing a strong message. Then I knew that it was His message.
It was His message of love. It was His message of mercy.
I could not help but shed tears of joy and gratitude. It dawned on me that I have been very proud and confident about myself, confident about what I can do. That message called for the awareness that I am but weak and frail every time I get so conceited about myself. And in my helplessness, the Lord extended His hands full of concern, showing to me that His grace is enough and that He is always there for me. I just have to humbly surrender myself and allow Him to embrace me from the bounty of His love.
That awakening introduced the graceful pace for the formal four weeks of prayer exercises. I was already at home with silence. I was getting comfortable with prayer. This disposition lasted for a week until a big group of Australian guests came. They visited the Philippines for some outreach programs and will be staying at the retreat house for two weeks. These guests just graduated from High School and were also eager in making friends especially with us, Filipino seminarians. Personally, I found it difficult to ignore their relatively ‘bizarre' presence. This time, however, we were already centering on the reality of sin in our prayers. Deep within me, I can feel an enormous battle. It is a battle against myself. It is a battle against what I want to do and what I should need to do. I have struggled on how to find reconciliation within. I wanted to faithfully do what a retreatant should do. But I just couldn't. I felt what St. Paul felt as written in his letter to the Romans 7:14,
"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."
This awareness again pulled me down and snapped me back. To my senses, I was becoming conscious about how easy it was for me to be attracted to honor, riches and pride. I likewise saw these ways as a prevalent energy adopted by individuals and communities of our world today. Great indeed is the contrast from the ways of poverty-contempt of worldly pleasures-and humility as exemplified by the Lord Jesus. It was just so disheartening. I even felt like melting, melting in shame and regret.
However, having been usurped in distressful lament, the Lord again sought for my gaze and had it fixed on him beyond the dimness of horizon. In my humblest prayer, I was captivated by my uplifting contemplation on the very life of Jesus himself. It was very much like personally journeying with Him. It was so special. It was so true. I believe it was the apex of my entire retreat experience. There was no need for rationalization, no need for intense thinking. There was just me and my dear friend Jesus. It was a journey within, a journey with Jesus.
And these were the lasting words to say after the momentary journey:
"The divine child whom I love to honor during Christmas, I came to embrace and cuddle under the warmth of a lowly stable. The boy who was lost in the temple after the feast of Passover, I was able to gleefully play and crack jokes with. I have seen the ever-present company of Him whose life was hidden before His baptism at Jordan. I was absorbed in drowning sadness and unfathomable fear as a dear friend welcomed His agonizing fate in Calvary. And finally, I likewise rose up in great jubilation as He, in glory, came back to life."
Jesus invited me to relish the beauty of experiencing Him so that I may long for Him forever. Friend, please don't let me stray from your company.
Sem. Christian Durango is a 4th Yr. Theologian from the Diocese of Dumaguete taking up Licentiate in Philosophy. He is currently the ALPA Coordinator of the UST-CS. This article ws made during his SPFY last year.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Insights: For the Philosopher
Insights: For the Philosopher: Thy World which is ever finite Hath hidden to men its glorious light And brought the void to the very height Impossible to be grasped by ...
Sem. Kenneth Rey Parsad is a 2nd Yr. Theologian from the Diocese of Bangued. He is currently the Psalterion Coordinator of the UST-CS. This article was re-blogged from his own blogsite. Please check out the link to know more about him.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Let go and let God!
Have you ever experienced losing someone? Perhaps one of your loved ones; your mother, your father, or anyone whom you loved and treasured in life. Isn’t it hurting?
It has been for a while since my beloved father had passed away. I still remember that sad feeling of letting him go. How I wish that God would bring him back again to life so that I can say thank you to him and tell him that I am very proud of him as my father. How I wish...but it had already happened. His death, although painful, must be accepted.
It was a sad reality that my father left us. I blamed God to allow such thing to happen. I still saw my father in the morning, but then in the afternoon he was already in the coffin. I felt like he abandoned me. I was, in some way, like a street child struggling to survive without someone to hold on but my very own self; to stand in my own feet.
This was perhaps the feeling of Jesus when He was on the cross, suffering for the salvation of mankind. It seemed like He was forgotten by His Father when He said: “Eloi! Eloi! Lema sabachtani?”(My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?). These words of Jesus show His humanity, His human frailty. He complains to the Father why He allowed such thing to happen to Him, His only beloved Son. However, this was not the end of the story; instead it brings us, if we would examine profoundly, to a deeper meaning.
In the mystery of Incarnation, Jesus’ coming into the world implies that He would have to undergo suffering, that is, His passion, death, and resurrection in order to save the humanity from the slavery of sin. When Jesus was sent by the Father, it is part and parcel of Jesus’ mission to face this reality of dying on the cross for the salvation of the world. His approval of death on the cross is the inexorable consequence of fidelity to His mission. However, it is but important to note that although He complained to God, He still in the end submit His entire will to the Father who sent Him. That is somehow the difference between my experience of being forsaken by God and Jesus’ experience of being forsaken by His Father.
The death of my father somehow hinders me to submit my will to the plan of God. I keep on insisting to be with my father where, in fact, he is now in heaven dwelling with the One who created him (who knows???). Somehow, I still have in my heart the pain of letting him go. I know that it would really take time to heal the wounded heart especially that it was still fresh in my memory. He died in a motorcycle accident on April 7, 2011.
Moreover, I am hoping and praying that despite my yearning to my father; God will accept him in heaven, to dwell with Him forever. Let us remember that God has always a plan for us; we need, on our part, to let His will be done for us.
Let go and let God! Amen.
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Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Moral Ambivalence: A Second Time Around
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It is very interesting and even commendable how the article tries to infiltrate the legal bounds of the notion of crime to explain as much as possible a morally upright ground from which this could be imagined tenable. Promising it is, to depict two moral principles: one of Locke, that the obligation to obey the law can be reduced or even eliminated in the context of injustice; and the other of Hobbes, that every citizen is obligated to obey the law to ensure peace. It was a kind attempt to sketch a fair juxtaposition of the committal of crime in the legal sense along the moral sense. Yet, there is in no way that this has been successful enough in portraying ambivalence in morality with regard in committing crime as illustrated. Instead, the greater ambivalence that can be identified in the article is the author’s evident personal hatred of being a helpless victim of crime and as well his very own pretentious motive to deny it smoothly as possible. That is why, to concern himself in elucidating the moral sense of crime in this moment of denial, he fails to consider the nature of human action and its implications thereof, neglects to question the apparent selfishness of the subscribed moral principles, and ultimately falters to consider law as a mental experiment, disregarding natural law as a preëmptive assurance.
Stealing is the glaring issue throughout the article and the author struggles to extract claims of uprightness from such. However, it was a weak argument that stealing as reclamation of one’s possession disproves its criminality. For as a human action, there should always be an adherence to the right object, with right intention and under the right circumstance. Simply speaking, the first and last requirements in such light are very much debatable. It would be much more appealing if the controversy has been handed through right authorities and not as pathetic as to reclaim it right there and then. Needless to say, it was also human action that designed these prerogatives, a reason aside from the examination of prudence.
The two philosophical giants, Locke and Hobbes, adored by this article seem to be mishandled or demonstrated inadequately. To sermon about morality, it is not enough to focus the report to sincere personal inclinations or interests. Otherwise, morality which is universal in nature and altruistic in impulse will be contained into a pathetic self-imposition of unreasonable whines and pretense. Driving from the Lockean argument that to obey the law belongs only to those who experience justice leaves those victims of injustice unobligated. However, human as we are, egoism tells us that there would always be a reason to see ourselves victims of injustice in one way or another, and others will have no right to debunk our own perspective. In fact, they might as well join us, sympathize with us, and rally with us to share the privilege of being unobligated to obey the law, if that is the case. On the other hand, the Hobbesian principle of achieving peace begins to be questionable when one is to define it for themselves. And the closest way to formalize the notion of peace is through societal limits. But practically, the observance of societal law is not stimulated through the dream of brotherhood and harmony but through the nightmare of police power. There may be peace in traffic enforcements and economic relations, but the peace dreamt within the person’s undying integrity and beliefs places societal peace in the edge of danger. The point is pampering conceited human actions promotes immature conscience. After all, morality is in the aim of attaining common good far higher than satisfying personal good.
This now brings us to the significance of re-echoing civil law through natural law. For, to regard civil law as less as mental experiment proves to be the primary mistake. It should be noted that civil law come from man’s own examination of conscience on the natural law. This declares that any mistake observed in the laws is not a failure of experiment but a failure of conscience. In fact, no one can even determine a ‘rightful mistake’ unless seen through right conscience. It is then a matter of progression rather than mere replacement. Civil law would always be a sign of maturity of heart and not of satirical cleverness that more often tries to reconfigure the imperatives even of natural law. Simply speaking, civil laws should always be a reflection of natural law and not mere decisions that come from ill-disposed morals or worse from thin air of ignorance. Stealing is wrong, because if it is not, it is not stealing; just as contraception is wrong, because if it is not, it is life that would be wrong – the greatest absurdity leading to nothing less than suicide.
Hence, to save this article from its suicidal phase, it should be delivered not through definite intellectual arrogance but instead, through the indefinite humble understanding of conscience. It is true that there is no actual criminal justice system that acknowledges injustice as enough reason for the inobservance of law, yet natural law dictates us through the purity of our conscience to go against civil authorities if it is to be discerned wrong – whereby the greater moral ambivalence lies.
Sem. Baltazar Acebedo Jr. is a first year Theologian from the Diocese of Parañaque. He is currently enrolled in the STB Program of the UST Faculty of Sacred Theology. This is a CRITIQUE on Jeffrey Reiman's, The Moral Ambivalence of Crime in an Unjust Society during his class in Moral Theology.
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Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Understanding our Parents
I grew up in a family where I can play with my brother and sister every time. My father used to tell me bedtime stories. My mother took charge of checking my assignments and correcting my mistakes. All of them contributed much to make my childhood years a memorable one. I have a very supporting family and a home where I can never be unwanted.
As I grow, I slowly realized the bigger picture of life. I encountered a diverse reality - different people, struggles and achievements. My childhood years began to change. There are no more playtime, bed stories, and assignments to be checked by my mother. I belong now to the decision-making community.
Yes, I can decide on my own but this is the stage where I often encounter problems. When I have something to do with my classmates, we usually do the activities away from home. And what usually happens, I come home late. My parents then start to scold me for not respecting the house rules, or other instances like spending too much time in leisure, bonding time with my classmates than staying at home. Sometimes when I want to visit some friends during night-time, they don’t allow me to go with them and punish me for not obeying their decisions. It seems that I don’t have freedom. I feel unloved and disrespected. I don’t get what I wanted. This leads me to rebellion.
Nonetheless, as a philosopher, it is my task to unravel the ‘mystery’ of the family. It is my job to comprehend the situation I have with my parents. I am their child and I am their responsibility. Whatever happens to me disturbs them. I exist because two persons offered themselves to each other – an expression of their mutual surrender. I am the significant unfolding and blossoming of the unity of love of my parents. My existence is the meaning of their existence.
As their child, I have my role in the welfare of the family. I have my responsibility in keeping the family united. The moment I was born, I became their life. My existence brings forth their meaningful existence. My life is also their life.
Now that I realized the situation, I can now take part without hesitation to contribute for the sake of the family. Their intention when they don’t allow me to go outside during night-time is their expression of love for me. Their actions remind me that I am their responsibility. And most of all, since I am their life, without me in their side, life seems worthless to them.
A ‘mystery’ indeed.
Sem. Dennis Rey Ortojan is a 2nd Year Theologian from the Diocese of Tandag. He is currently enrolled at the UST Faculty of Sacred Theology. He is also the Secretary for External Affairs of the UST Central Seminary. This article was first posted in his Facebook account last January 13, 2011.
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