An Accusation Beyond Telling Current

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Always a part of man is to apprehend truth. Though one can be involved with a lie, man constantly does not appear to be contended by mere acceptance of things he may or may not understand. His disposition to truth continually makes him restless and wrestling with the perennial questions of his day. In this time and age, man though weighed in with the baggage of history seeks truth to satisfy his inner longing -- longing that cannot be satisfied ipso facto because we are made by a Truth-Being whose nature is Truth itself and that this Truth continually seeks those who love the Truth. What is magnificently elaborated in Christian theology is that this truth is personified. A person, indeed, who can love and exchange love in communication through communion.

"Beyond all particular questions, the real problem lies in the question about truth. Can truth be recognized? Or, is the question about truth simply inappropriate in the realm of religion and belief? But what meaning does belief then have, what positive meaning does religion have, if it cannot be connected with truth?" These are the questions of Pope Benedict in his book, Truth and Tolerance Christian Belief and World Religions.
If there is truth in the world of realities, therefore, there is a source of this truth in the world. If there is the wellspring of truth, then this source is truth itself. In Christian revelation, we are taught that in a Trinitarian God, there is one substance, hence one nature, in three persons. What is its nature is common to the three. If the Gospel of John teaches that the Word, whose substance is one with the Father, we can then deduce that the Word itself is an image of the Father. And, when the source of truth is Truth itself, and Christian revelation exhorts us to believe that God is the singular source of truth, then Jesus Christ, who is one in substance and nature of the Father, is truth revealed.

This is the Christian point of reality. A Christian like me does not look the world outside myself as something absolute, but that it is contingent and finite. If it were considered in physics that the universe, which is 12 billion years old, has a beginning, then it would have an end. If we were to transpose this idea within a religious context, then it is more than necessary to infer that the one who created it can also end it. Hence, we can say that it is teleological. The reality of which we apprehend through our senses and abstractions if it were to sustain in itself had to have something in it that subsists to exist. The laws of nature and the inherent mathematical system that seem to govern this vast space could not rule out an order that may or may not pre-ordain such coming into being. The crux of the matter is that this basic presumption can has significant ramifications to both unbelievers and believers. The point of departure can be for both as to this point: if such coherence and order is given by chance or by a transcendent being whose existence has created reality ex nihilo. In and itself, this existent law is a truth already that somehow peeks us into eternity.

What becomes an incessant problem among peoples of today is its suspecting attitude to claims of a creator. It is as if there is a summary dismissal of such assumption that to raise such a question is absolutely unimaginable. Thence, if the claims of science of the existence of laws is true, then what is true is truth in itself. Its existence is already something that exists as it exists external to man himself. If to test it empirically is to assume its existence, then it is truth in and by itself, whether or not it is contingent to time and space or particular to time or space. If it is to be assumed that a particular law can exist only on a particular space and time but not on another is erroneous. It is because the particularity of this law is in itself subsisting as to exist not universally but particularly, valid for a specific milieu. If it becomes non-existent in other realities, hence it does not void in itself since it can exist in itself in the milieu where it can exist.
Now to posit different realities is beyond the limits of man to know; if indeed he can albeit in an almost limited way. We may as well assume that in different dimensions there are laws governing in itself which may speak of different concepts to explicate. But this is where Christianity splits with science. Where the boundaries are marked, there faith finds its remarkable power to bridge the abyss of man's ignorance to contemplation of a Being who is the truth-source. In any way, science in itself is sense-perceived, mechanistic, and empirical almost always. There is speculative and abstract science, but in most ways these have its groundwork from a mechanical point of view to develop concepts and ideas as its point of departure.
In philosophy, there is a distinction of realities. There is the physical and the metaphysical realities in which each participates in the unity of truth. In the history of the religion, it has become inevitable that within the Mediterranean world, an exchange of transcendental ideas and thoughts always happens as the continual traffic of human migration is a known fact. The Phoenicians, Egyptians, Cretans, Greeks, and later Romans had had trade routes mapped out along the seacoasts from Gibraltar to the Black Sea. The natural body of water of the Mediterranean offers possibilities, which helped out the advancing of a truly unique Western Civilization. It does not seem to be a surprise that Jewish religious thought would meld with inherently pagan Greek divine ideas and philosophical speculations of reality within the the so-called pax Romana of the early years of the first century. The Septuagint Bible, the Greek Bible used by the Jews in diaspora, is a unique contribution to this tension of two things: an inherently monotheistic body of Semitic people and polytheistic nation-states, whose glory lies in its boldness in hitherto unknown human capacities of investigating reality. In Regensburg of September, 2006, the present Bishop of Rome spoke of the meeting of these two. And, it is not without any reason that, indeed, the world would eventually witness a civilization that knows no boundaries even of the heavenly space. The radicality of fusion is at the crossroad of a unique phenomenon as the birth of Christianity springs within this milieu. If it is all left to a Jewish phenomenon, the birth of a western civilization would have been unlikely to happen. The attitude of the People of the Law towards other beliefs is only of indifference. Israel does not look as a vocation a missionary ideal in spreading faith, but of a passive relationship to others who have the interest in their belief.

Primarily, the commission of the Lord into baptizing men and women and of teaching what He taught the 12 would continuously resound within their ears of those whose zeal their faith had animated. The nature of Christianity itself is a contrasting characteristic of this religion. To spread its ideas and teaching until the ends of the world for salvation does not come for the believers as relative; it always has an absolute sense of a commandment. That is why some would see this missionary work of Christianity as one of its greatest liability for in the process it hinders growth and existence of other religions. But the glory of Christianity is in the absoluteness of its cl.. to believe in the one Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of humankind. Thus, its essence would then demand precision of thought where reason has become its handmaid. No wonder that in 313 in Nicaea, the council fathers had to hammer in correct terms the definition of one God in three persons. Though first-century church father, Tertullian had some doubts as to using philosophy in the service of faith, Christianity in the centuries to come would exhaust philosophy as its tool in creedal formulations. This materiality of faith as shown in the belief structured in words is Christianity's essence as it tries to explicate an incarnational theology. This idea of a God-made-man is not, however, unique and peculiar to Christian religion. Nevertheless, what makes it particular in this case is that from the concept of a totally transcendent and otherness of a God who manifested Himself in a unique election of Israeli, He has totally become unveiled in the person of Jesus Christ Who proclaims liberation not of the materiality of freedom but from the spiritual oppression that hinders man in his communion with his creator. This physicality of a belief does not render it impossible for man, though weakened by sin but can be imbued with the supernatural grace in the name of a God-man mediator, to push his own limits in his attempt to attain temporal freedom. Hence, some postmodern men have realized that indeed for western civilization to witness such zenith of achievements borne within its cultural locus, it is but not a contradiction to claim that Christianity has served it as its best means to fruition. The reasonableness of God as logos Himself manifested in a being with the materiality of man explains best why man in his capacity to reason out can declare a supernatural reality out not from contradiction of truths but in its harmony using his God-given rationality. This optimism of faith that liberates creates splendid vistas of man to explore his being and the reality around him.

Private Property and Universal Destination of Material Goods

The essay from John Paul II is essentially anthropological that touches on the essential relationship of man toward the material goods, man towards his co-workers, and man toward the economic systems that emerged to being. The pope taught on those categories that are economically symbiotic with man.

Since Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII, the Church has greatly seen the deep moral consequences of economic systems right from the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century until the fall of Communism in 1989. Since the Soviet Socialism, Capitalism has stood unchallenged at its wake for the most part of the 90s until the recent rise of Maoist-inspired merger of political communism and capitalistic economy of People’s Republic of China. Christianity believes that it does not live inoculated from these economic systems, nor does it live in the realm of pure spiritual state alien to the material world.

The essay opened with a reference to Genesis, which recounts the creation of man and his high calling of dominating the whole created order. Pope Wojtyla explores Christian anthropology: its essential nature as creature endowed with gifts and his relations to the whole created order including man himself, his relationship to justice, and his destiny for happiness. He mentions man's right to private property, and its origination rooted in the biblical foundation. From there, he goes on to enunciate two factors beginning human society: land and work. Here, he explicates in details man's inherent interrelatedness with other human beings in what he called the "community of work", and the beneficiary of work: "work with others and work for others". The groundwork of the essay is advanced essentially in the discussion about the nature of man and humanity and his varied gifts in satisfying his different needs, which the foremost are the basic ones. Indeed, no one can claim sole possession, since the destination of the goods is for all and everyone. He acknowledges that the complexity of the present circumstance of man is becoming more evident in the way knowledge has evolved so as to meet the ever-increasing needs of man. Here, he made mention of the scientific knowledge as a form of ownership: "the possession of know-how, technology, and skill". He acknowledges that this is a new form of possession that many vistas of opportunities are opened for man's exploration in the material world.

It is remarkable to note in the essay that the whole system should be submerged within the concept of the intrinsic human freedom: “economic activity is indeed but one sector in a great variety of human activities, and like every other sector, it includes the right to freedom, as well as the duty of making responsible use of freedom.” Like any human project and enterprise, there are risks and problems posed, and he discussed these in detail. The pontiff elaborates the tendency of capitalism to engulf man and enslave him, even mentioning in passing the obvious weakness of socialism. No system is perfect, albeit even in capitalistic states. The essay pointed examples even in first world economies no less than the plight of the third world workers. Both, he says, can expresse any marginalizing situations where workers don't have the "cultural roots" in the latter economies and the intrinsic predilection toward "constant transformation of the methods of production and consumption that devalue certain acquired skills and professional expertise, and, thus, require a continual effort of retraining and updating" in the former. In between these two basic realities, he reminds us of the arching Christian principle of justice governing the ways in which man's lofty value is protected and secured, and the different means that man can legitimately express his quest for satisfying his profound needs: “it is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied”. One of these is the access of third world economies to international market, when he said that “countries which experienced development were those which succeeded in taking part in the general interrelated economic activities at international level”. As well, to advance the cause of man’s rights, the essay did not fail to mention about trade unions and workers’ organizations, which “defend workers’ rights and protect their interests as persons, while fulfilling a vital cultural role, so as to enable workers to participate more fully and honourably in the life of their nation and to assist them along the path of development”. These are mentioned as part of man’s wide range of opportunities for commitment and effort in the name of justice.

Here, the writer apposes this concept of protecting workers’ inherent rights to the idea of a struggle against an economic system. What is understood in this struggle is to fundamentally defend the nature of human work that is “free and personal” against “upholding the absolute predominance of capital, the possession of the means of production and of the land”. Therefore, what is posited is a “society of free work, of enterprise, and of participation”. The relation now is that the market exists subservient to the forces of society itself and the state. The state acts as a regulative entity to preserve the inherent rights of man. The obvious danger of the elevation of absolute free market is comparable to the rise absolute political socialism that marked the history of 20th century. In both cases, the dignity of human person has been gravely compromised.

The pope transitioned his essay to touching the idea of the legitimacy of profit. Again, he endeavoured to enunciate the compatibility of profitability as “regulator of the life of a business” to the existence of the “community of persons”, whose satisfaction of its basic needs comes before anything else. As Christian realism dictates, the integrity of the personhood of every individual that comprises the working community is first in the seeking of profit. At this point, he affirms that the fall of “Real Socialism” did not put Capitalism as the default economic system. This does not infer that capitalism comes out as invulnerable and free of any blind spots. Since capitalism now becomes the model of most countries, moreover, he calls the attention of the entire international community to its noble role in offering weaker countries with opportunities, and also hearken the latter about these opportunities given as part of its goals to rise. It is reasonable to say then that the pope stokes the emergence of the soul of a system to make it more personalistic for the cause of man. Here, the pope was quick to point the problem of foreign debt, which is one of the great reasons that paralyze developing countries: “… it is necessary to find – as in fact is partly happening – ways to lighten, defer, or even cancel the debt, compatible with the fundamental fight of peoples to subsistence and progress”.

Well within the capitalistic milieu, the pontiff puts in a stark contrast the culture of consumerism. The “phenomenon of consumerism” is a grave pitfall in a system that gives everyone the chance to compete in the market. He introduced this idea nicely by putting emphasis on the quest for quality in the markets in this time and age. He says “it is clear that today the problem is not only one of supplying people with a sufficient quantity of goods, but also of responding to a demand for quality: the quality of the goods to be produced and consumed, the quality of the services to be enjoyed, the quality of the environment and of life in general.” Now, what is basically underlined by the pope is that the yearning of man for quality may stem from a wrong “concept of man and his true good”. From his erroneous presuppositions of himself, he is now satisfied by goods that would complement this need. And, if it might be necessary and to further the pope’s idea, this consumeristic idea might as well enclose man within a vicious cycle, entrapping himself in this phantom of personal concept of need. He elaborates that the material and instinctive needs should be subordinated by the spiritual and interior ones. Further, he is weary of the way this would hinder man’s freedom by creating in the society a lifestyle and attitude of consumerism. Man, thereby, is hindered in his ascent to the grasp of personal freedom when he values what is superficial and transitory. This is given a portentous description in his example of drugs. And to strike this in dialectical terms: “it is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards “’having’ rather than ‘being’”. He gives importance to a great educational and cultural work to be done in behalf of these realities.

The essay at the end revisited the question posed in the beginning on the destination of material goods. He puts up a question as a wrap-up between what sort of capitalism is congruous to the needs of third world countries: "can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their conomy and society?". He propounded a kind of capitalism which "recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector". In one sense, the pope is worried about an ideological proclivity to advance radical capitalism as a "system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious...". He accentuates the bitter reality of marginalization and alienation that has bereft workers of their dignity in capitalistic states. Even in an age of freedom, problems of neglect could arise often as a bleak contrast, showing us an ugly face of post-modernity. In this, he advocates a solution that is not blindly hinged to the forces of the market, but addresses the problem in an appropriate and realistic way.

In the concluding paragraphs, he underlines the role of Christian Church's social teaching as indispensable to the life of economy as it affirms the positive contribution and role of business. It is an "ideal orientation" that reminds the market of its innate role subordinate to the nature of man. The essay points that the "teaching also recognizes the legitimacy of workers' efforts to obtain full respect for their dignity and to gain broader areas o participation in the life of industrial enterprises so that, while cooperating with others and under the direction of others, they can in a certain sense 'work for themselves' through the exercise of their intelligence and freedom". Thus, as a parallel to the increase of the business life is the human persons' full integral development because economy is not only a "society of capital goods" but a "society of persons". Man only fulfills himself through the use of his intelligence and freedom, which are his inherent gifts, to the things of this world, which becomes his own. In doing his work, he needs the network of support from others and combines himself with them for the upliftment of their lives, and in the end, elevates the condition of the many others.

The 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today is the Sunday of the 14th of the Ordinary Time of the Liturgical Calendar. The readings have been taken from prophet Zechariah, Psalm 145, an epistle from St. Paul to the Romans, and the Gospel from St. Matthew.

In the first reading, we find Zechariah prophesying the joyful return of the king to the city of David amidst sounds of celebration. In the reading, the prophet is looking to the future of an Israel still constructing itself from the pieces of having been conquered by Babylon. We have to note that Zechariah is one of the two prophets of this period who urged the building of the Second Temple in the time of Ezra. It is in this context that the prophet referred a picture of rejoicing as he envisioned the coming of the messianic kingdom. The building of the temple for the prophet is the coming of the promised One, where the House of Yahweh is the living presence of His Person. That the culmination of the building of Israel is the erection of the temple on Zion. It is here that it is not by chance that the Gospel shows us Jesus the gentle one that our rejoicing rests. Just as the temple on the Mount of Zion symbolizes the stability of the promise of Yahweh and the comfort of the whole People of God, it is also by Jesus that we find the fulfillment of the one that we seek and to rest in thee of His meekness and gentleness.

The 147th Psalm tells of the psalmist effusively extoling his praise to the Almighty One. It continues along the vein prepared by Zechariah in the first reading when Israel rejoices in the coming of Her King. In this song, it extols not only a King but God and Lord at the same time. Who then is this Lord and God, to whom praises have been given in abundance? Who then is this Lord gracious and merciful and slow to anger and of great kindness? In Deuteronomy, we find these words spoken by the lips of Yahweh, the sovereign God of Israel, whose commands, precepts, and laws are conditions imposed upon the community of Israel to follow before entering into the promised land. Here, the clear majesty of the arrival of the King within the midst of Israel is depicted in His transcendence and is posed in connection with the humility of Christ. It is that the benevolent character of the God of Israel in the Old Testament has found its truest expressions and passes without doubt to the person of Christ. This could only be intelligible only in the Gospel, where the Second Person of the Trinity communed with the created order.

The Apostle to the Gentiles, whose jubilee has been recently opened by Pope Benedict XVI to mark the 2000th year of his birth, has taught the early Christians in Rome the duality of a life rooted in the Spirit of Christ and the reality of the equal demands of the flesh. The apostle has reminded the faithful of Rome that they belonged to the same Spirit of God, the Spirit who indwelled the Lord Jesus and raised Him up. He is quick to point out that belonging to this Spirit is to forsake the works of the flesh, that we have to show the fruits of the Spirit in us. Thereby, we are saved.

The Gospel speaks of the equality between the Father and the Son in their essence. In this way, the Father is revealed in the Son as He was seen going about his Father's business at the midst of Israel. This is the reason that the invitation towards the gentleness of Christ is our journey towards the gentleness of the Father because He showed the true nature of God, though in the nature of man. This is the gentleness that Matthew the tax-collector sought in following Him, Him whom they had pierced on the Cross. From being under the control of the fleshly desire of enriching oneself of the material things to a life following Jesus devoid of any oppressive snares of the world. To that of a life immersed in the kindness and mercy of God.

In the Clerus, which is the reference given by the Congregation of the Clergy, the homily for this specific reading of cycle A says that the texts from the Holy Scripture reveal the paradoxes of Christianity: the paradox of the Messiah, the paradox of love, and the paradox of grace. Beginning with with the prophecy of Zephaniah, the projected idea of Lord and God is his otherness and royalty, that it draws awe. However, "He is a Messiah-king, but who reigns – what a mystery! – from the throne of the cross in the midst of the most atrocious suffering". In the Gospel, "the paradox is that of the Lord and Master who, in his simplicity and humility of heart, places the burden and the yoke on his shoulders, so that we, his servants oppressed by the weight, might find the burden lighter and we, his disciples worn out by laws and precepts, might find the yoke easier". From these two paradoxes usher us into the paradox of Grace, which demands a conversion of hearts in men and women of every age: "In Christian life, the terms "to die – to live" are correlative, that is, one must die to live. It is by the death of the deeds of the flesh that the new man is raised, who lives by the Spirit. This is death in the ascetic sense, and, if God wills, also in the real sense to the point of martyrdom, so that Christ may live in us in a way that is not of this world. If this is truly imprinted on him, a Christian is not of this world, but he is in the world as leaven and as light".

It is here that the Neo-Catechumenate grounds its roots to follow in this complex post-modern and post-Christian age, in an age not totally foreign to the realities in the time of Paul of Tarsus. We are besieged of different pagan ideas that tend to mix with Christian faith, ending up relativizing our beliefs. As Pope Benedict XVI said in his homily prior to his election as the Successor St. Peter: "we are living in the dictatorship of relativism" - a relativism that does not give space for religion in the public square, that views Christian beliefs with suspect eyes and scorn. The communities of Neo-Catechumenal Way in our adult catechesis are important in the way we interpret and witness the gentleness and meekness of the Lord into the world that gives us no voice. We hold in us the Spe Salvi, the saving hope, and we cannot keep it to ourselves for our own salvation. We have to sow the mercy and kindness that Jesus had shown us personally to the outside world in need of a Savior. We hold in us the conviction of the paradoxes of Christianity and offer this to the world for it is the will of Jesus in First Timothy that all men maybe saved and come to the knowledge of His love.

P.S.

Today is the Sunday of the 14th of the Ordinary Time of the Liturgical Calendar. The readings have been taken from prophet Zechariah, Psalm 145, the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, and the Gospel from St. Matthew.

The Day of the Lord invites us to reflect on the paradoxes of Christianity. Clerus, the official website for the Congregation of the Clergy, in its liturgical commentary for this Sunday mentioned three main paradoxes that we can learn on today's readings: The Paradox of the Messiah, the Paradox of Love, and the Paradox of Grace. We invite you brothers and sisters to listen to the Word and encounter the meaning of these paradoxes in our lives rooted in the charism of Neo-Catechumenal Way. These readings invite us closer to listening closely to these paradoxes that Christians should learn to hold in faith.

In the passage taken from the book of the Prophet Zechariah, the seer recounts a vision of the King of Peace coming to seize the city and the temple. He was one of the two prophets who was incessant in building the Second Temple of Jerusalem during the time of Ezra, which we know was razed to the ground when Babylon conquered the City. This was the temple of Zorobabel. This same prophet was the one who greatly encouraged the return of the exiles to Palestine, which seventeen years before, Cyrus the Great, a King of Persia, made possible.

The 145th song of the Psalmist has been described in the Clementine Vulgate as Lauda anima, which also corresponds to the first words of the Psalmody. Lauda anima in the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible says "Praise the Lord, O my soul". It is worth noticing that here the Lord has been described as "gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness."

St. Paul to the early Christians in the City of Rome in his epistle explains the duality of Christian reality: the life in the Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, and the flesh, which demands but brings death. In his commentary on this passage from Romans, St. John Crysostom explained that either a believer has to choose the one or the other: "Thus the soul and the flesh belong to things indifferent, since each may become either the one or the other. But the spirit belongs to things good, and at no time becometh any other thing. Again, the mind of the flesh, that is, ill-doing, belongs to things always bad." The Doctor of the Church taught that it is not the flesh itself which is the source of evil but the judgment, the power of our choice to choose our own ruin.

Matthew in the Gospel recounts Jesus' words first of his equality with the Father and the rest which all will find in Him in the second. It is saying that there is no rest but in Him because He is a God rich in mercy and kindness. St. Augustine of Hippo has an extensive commentary on this chapter in Matthew. He said that it is love which makes the difference how our burdens disappear in the Lord: "For love makes all, the hardest and most distressing things, altogether easy, and almost nothing." In our Christian faith, the word love is a Person, who has incarnated Himself to be with His beloved.

My dear brothers and sisters the Leitourgia invites us again to encounter this God of meekness and kindness as we live in this troubled and confusing times. The Lord does not wish us to hide from these realities but to give the world a common witness of Him who was crucified. Being in this community does not shelter us from the harsh living in the flesh, but we are constantly reminded to live in the hope that saves, the Spe Salvi of God. Let us then rise to meet the Lord at the table praying to send His abundant helps and grace.

Pastoral Letter

Conrado's opinion (Healer, Heal Thyself) about the Bishops' Pastoral Letter "Toward a Morally Rebuilt Nation" is somewhat lacking in more ways than one. Corruption in the Philippines has not only seeped in the highest eschelons of the government but to the rank-and-file individuals. The focus of the pastoral letter is to command everyone to look into oneself and discern each his own's responsibility of this "plague". Though to the more has been given, more has been also expected, this does not mean to exempt those who have been given less. At the least, the basic exhortation everyone must heed is what Jesus spoke when everyone would have stoned to the woman from Magdala: "those who have not sinned must cast the first stone". Of course, it would be completely misreading the bishops' pastoral letter to negate the existence of this government's role and responsibility of the corruption; however, it must be borne in mind that the relation each one has to this national sin should also be taken into account. Our subjective contribution to this objective reality is what the focus of this letter without denying the existence of the possibility of the President's own grave role in this mess.

It seems to me also that our national consciousness has fixed our gaze to the government more than our contribution to corruption. Sometimes when we focus intently on one thing, we blur the divisions of its boundaries. It is like putting a wedge between subjectivity (our own culpability) and objectivity (the national sin); we forgot that in part we contribute to this reality. But shouldn't we clean our hands first before preparing the meal? The theological underpinning of the pastoral letter is to implicitly dissuade man from being Pelagians in any way. We have to check our own ascent to national salvation without due regard to the spiritual anchor of grace, which God can only provide. At the backdrop of all this is to stray from the focus of our inward-looking selves but to look at the one who was pierced to cleanse us before we can do the work he has given us: the salvation of our country.

On the other hand, we can take the standpoint of Conrado and to look where it truly stands in perspective. If, indeed, the head represents the whole, then the road toward national redemption must in the first place be actualized by the President before it trickles to the secondary. David was not even spared when he intently planned to kill Uriah beggetting the latter's wife in the end. But more poingnantly, this woman would bear the future great king, Solomon, who has been greatly favored by God. We could gleam from this that, though Filipinos will always be stained by the sin of Adam and found himself in a country besieged of corruption, in the end our efforts will not run into futility and drive us into hopelessness. We will find respite.

Triduum

The word evokes a trilogy, three days of commemoration of something that has been considered special in the subset of a population. This word comes to be associated with most of the cultural events: it can be a three-series boxing fight, it might be a three-part movie installments, and it can even be a three-course meal. Just anything of threes. The number three itself is odd, it is not paired. So, the upshot could mean conclusion of something began. It can be decisive in a sort of way. In the secular world, the number itself has great significance in card games, in some combination of drinks, or even in picture taking.

The holy scriptures is not immune to this sort of category. We had three persons appearing to Abraham one hot day, three ministries in Israel (priest, prophet, and king), three loaves, three disciples of Christ who seemed to be his favorites, the three crosses on the mount of Golgotha, the three magi with of course their three gifts, and so on. We could surmise that three represents balance and proportion, an equally complementary fact of realities that mirrors man's need to something that stabilizes and gives man an equilibrium. This equilibrium thing only mirrors in man what he is part of. When you look at the universe, it is suspended in a balancing of forces and energy.

The holy triduum that has been the unceasing feature of the Roman liturgy every year is a seamless, united events of the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord. When it comes to mind, it speaks of solemnity, that gravity which comes to us from without and imposed upon us with usual urgency - an urgency that has its beginning in the past. The week of the pasch has been a usual staple for most Christians, that though it is celebrated each year, it has been part of the fabric of our seasons. It does not come as new and surprising for it is passively anticipated and accepted. Moreover, this kind of attitude has been fostered culturally and handed over from generations to generations; however, this may be trapped into the pitfall of constancy, that it would soon lose its meaning, where the origin of such event does not come as truly consequential to the ones who hold it in their community.

The Catholic Church as a community of believers has come to be viewed as imposing restrictions, the gird of oppression and ignorance. In this age, she is seen as a bringer of unhappiness and hampers ascent of being himself, of having the capacity of finding himself in himself. This summit of Christian liturgy focuses that decisive event that gives identity to the believers of the messiah of Israel. Hence, our eyes should deviate from the focus of ourselves but turn toward the one whom they have pierced, to the one who had been hanged on the cross for the sake of others. This does not appear as just as anything to Catholicism; it is the lifeblood of its own existing in the world grown hostile to the Gospel. It is but right that the perennial attitude should be that this is accepted as imposed upon to those who have Christ as their identity-giver. Though this becomes visible as something external and coercive, the commemoration invites, albeit constantly bid to enter into the mesh of its narrative, us to penetrate that mystery of our salvation.

It does not come as a surprise that after Vatican Council II, that though the council loosen some strictures of the practices that have been the usual tradition of Catholics, some have gone out of their way rationalizing in their subtle and measured ways how to go about celebrating cuaresma. In one of the discussions over at ANC, a show host asked her panelists how did they usually celebrate the passiontide, I was particularly drawn to a couple who were Catholics who answered in a tone reminiscent of how progressives thought the Church is. They talked so much of the signs of the times, and that in celebrating this special time of the liturgical year, it robs the essence of setting our eyes on the cause of this celebration. They said that it was usual for them to celebrate this with their family and, in the course, would have just any spontaneous call to prayer and reflection. They came close to saying that they had disowned Catholic tradition, though from their lips they said that tradition is good and noble. I came to a question of how such thing could happen, when we praise our tradition but not practice it. How could we say that such is we and we as such, when we relinquish our claims to it and left it to parch under the sun of trivialization and relativization?

There is this thing as holding the tension of opposites and contrarieties that exists within the folds of Catholicism. Yes, indeed, it is a common fact that in the Church there are given differences that lives within its boundaries. Yet, this differences do not undo and nixes the existence of the other one. These apparent dissimilarities develop and find its rightful place that give a logical and intelligibility to the whole picture of truth, which does not demand the non-existence of neither. The attitude is not of the aspersion of that great wealth of patrimony that becomes part of Catholic existence but to insert within the whole stream of our individual responses past and present to that same Gospel, eventually bringing out the full measure of our act of faith. It has been the constant character of the Church to give the widest latitude of our gifts that we can bring to the altar of the Lord. Though we confront the times we are facing in, but we must at all times be conscious of the things behind us without neglecting it definitely.

The narrative of our faith, which in some way is the Word itself, must find its place within the present reality to draw it from there and raise it to the One seated at the right hand of the father. The world amidst the darkness of the times should find redemption within. This only happens when within the majority is a minority of fervent populace that brings forth this gift that does not dwell at a still but always seeks others and returns to the one who sent it. The speech act of the Church is indiscriminate to whom it rests for it invites everyone to heed the Word. Therefore, she does not rest assured but always proclaims loudly to the world the saving grace of God, even to the point that it sounds hollow to whose ears grown dim by the snares and demands of the world. We do not shrink from the challenge of the world, but should we recede when God calls us to meet up His dare?

The Paschal Triduum is clearly manifested from the institution of the Holy Eucharist to the glory of Easter. It is evident in the way culturally, Filipinos have allocated this specific time to prayer and reflection. Businesses close and silence descends to all quarters. Sections of the city, which used to be the hub of shoppers, finds its rest even for a day. People's focus becomes religiously colored; congregations flock to the Church for the liturgical events. We have been accustomed to gatherings before the 14 Stations of the Cross, of the Pabasa of the Pasyon, of the processions, of the candles, of the water, and of the varied prayers of this season. In Catholic countries, we have foods suited for this time and practices of flagellating and crucifixion, which would draw numbers from all persuasions and walks of life. Some would keep things that would create sound, and others would keep from travelling in fear of meeting accidents. Some would go on a pilgrimage of out-of-the-way places, on the mountains, and places of worship.

The Woman at the Well

The Sunday's gospel reading reminds us of a painting, where Jesus sat opposite the Samaritan woman, who was about to fetch water. One could see that there was an on-going conversation, a dramatic encounter locked on their faces. It was midday, the sun was scorching far above their heads but under the shadow of a tree, and Jesus would have been thirsty, when he got to the place. As part the background reflection, it is said that she has had five husbands; in a sense, it is sort of saying, she is muddled in the quamire of adultery. In this scene, it did not take the woman to introduce herself; Jesus himself had known her. It is quite remarkable that the Gospel writer knew what was beyond the obvious dynamics of the encounter: the woman in her particular sinful situation and the whole range of historical implication that this narrative has brought to and its effect it caused to the whole audience - the nation of Israel. The symbolic imagery becomes replete in the geographical environment, that it added to the force of the elements being used. The whole picture is rather hard and difficult both to Israel living in those days and to Christians two thousand years distant.

At a certain basic level, it appears Jesus a Jewish male communicates with female Samaritan. The unfamiliarity exists imposed by the demands of their culture and the difference brought by history itself, though the breach was opened with a question: "Give me a drink". Somehow, the approach was carried from the heavenly to the earthly; it is obviously incarnational naturally. The words that open a conversation did not arise from the woman's lips, but comes out from the mouth of the "one who is to come". The movement, as it were, descends to dwell not just to a fellow Jew but to a woman, consigned as despised by the faith of Israel.

The opening of an encounter came as a surprise to the woman. Here, she perfectly knows the great divide that exists between them, and she did not hesitate to acknowledge such insurmountable delineation: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Here we can glimpse how such passive discrimination exists as lifeblood oftentimes that sustains communities in those days. Not to mention that well within our days, we still have such kind of culturally-imposed boundaries. Her actuations are not foreign to Jesus, and in one other parable about the Good Samaritan, it is more than a casual knowledge because such contrast gives a formal existence of Israel itself, which has been passed from generation to generation. The difference is lived within the social network of the Jews as against those whom they do not share their faith. As such, it does not strike too detached for Israel because they shared history with Samaritans in the days long ago.

However, Jesus again breached the divide: "“If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,‘you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” We could almost perceive the aggravation that the woman would have felt at such gross misstep into the dialogue. It was gross because the imposition of clear division had been blurred, and the words for her did not sound just right - something was amiss. This is quite evident in her reply, since she did not follow the words of Jesus going to the abstract and higher as is obvious and take that as a point of departure to connect the conversation to the identity of the Christ, whom she is talking. It is as if Jesus initiated an opening to the portal of the divine, immateriality, and spirituality, albeit off set by the difficulty of the woman to catch where it was leading. Though her response was always a check to the focal point of the dialogue - the water in the well. It is as if to say, "are you referring to the water? and would you like to drink?", which such reply brings back to the temporality of the dimension of the story. More importantly, the woman went on to inject an important element of her response; she brought up the historicity of the place to the fore, thereby pointing an implication that would unlock the personality of the Christ, the messiah: "Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?”

The character of the patriarch Jacob, which is situated well within the geographical context of the well, evokes scenes of the accounts in Genesis. This coming into the story has met the presence of the one who has been promised by the prophets themselves. Jacob when he met God was challenged in a duel. However, Jesus the promised one had a duel in the person of his descendant, and by extension, to humanity, parched for the water of life.

In one sense, we insert ourselves in the story through the lens of the woman, whose feeble mind tries to grasp the mystery before her. We found ourselves divided in thoughts as we grope to accept such affrontery - an affrontery that brings relief of our restlessly seeking mind. We hope in a conversation of the "I" whose heart is always pierced in seeking those whom he has come for. May we find ourselves in haste, returning to our lives and quickening our responses to His call of repentance and mercy. May we draw ourselves to Him who arrives at a most propitious time.

The Sunday Before The Ash

Christians joyfully celebrate this Sunday as the first before the solemn beginning of the quadragesima, "a season of preparation by fasting and prayer, to imitate the example of Christ (Matthew 4)" that starts with Wednesday of Ash to the celebration of Easter, which marks the end of the triduum, the commemoration of our Lord's passion, death, and resurrection.

Mater Ekklesia is preparing her children for conversion, for the preparation of our hearts in this holiest time of the Christian liturgical year. In the preface of Dom Gueranger's work on the Liturgical Year, it says "prayer is man's boon. It is his light, his nourishment, and his very life, for it brings him into communication with God, who is light, nourishment, and life." And, this prayer finds its exact form in the Eucharistic sacrifice, as the late John Paul the Great said in his encyclical Ekklesia de Eucharistia, "it is the summit of Christian life". However, the Church should not cease Her fervent prayer directed the Trinity because "though the divine mysteries whereby our Saviour wrought our redemption have been consummated, yet are we still sinners: and where there is sin, there must be expiation". We are constantly called to convert and be forgiven.

The Liturgy of the Word opens with the words from the prophet Zephaniah, a seer who is particularly known as the watchman of the Lord. He lived and began to preach in the second half of the seventh century before Christ. To give a little background, He descended from the tribe of Simeon and grew up in the land of Sarabatha. A contemporary of another great prophet Jeremias and King Josias, Zephanja (in Hebrew which means "God conceals", in a certain sense, also means God protects) prophesied the punishment that would come to Israel first and then to the gentiles, the coming of the Messiah, and the conversion of the pagans and the blindness of the chosen people, which in the end of time, they were to be converted.

The reading is taken from the second to the third chapters, which are an exhortation of repentance. Here we read Yahweh rendering "judgment of the Philistines, of the Moabites, of the Ammonites, of the Ethiopians and Assyrians", but with Israel he has given hope, though themselves have been swallowed by their own transgressions. In these verses, the Church underlines the importance of being humble before the Lord. It is even said that the meek and the just are His reasons of his judgment.

The 146th Psalm opens with the words of joy, a praise to the Almighty. He lifts the meek but brings the wicked down to their fall. In Latin, it is particularly obvious with the opening words: Laudate Dominum, quoniam bonus est psalmus, that the Psalmist offers his thanksgiving to the goodness of the Lord, which is made manifest more clearly to those who fear and hope in Him.

St. Paul of Tarsus wrote an epistle to the Corinthians in which the Apostle to the Gentiles reproved the dissensions about their teachers, that the world was to be saved by preaching of the cross, and not by human wisdom and eloquence. The indefatigable Apostle reminded the young Church in Corinth in his day and to us of today that the "But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise: and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong".

The Matthean gospel takes us to a hill overlooking Lake Tiberias, as recounted in the fifth chapter. Here Jesus gathered the multitudes and taught what Christianity has come to know as The Eight Beatitudes or popularly known as The Sermon on the Mount. It is traditionally known that Jesus climbed the hill of Karn Hattin or Kurun Hattin, which is not far from His hometown Nazareth, from Capharnaum where much of his ministry was centered, from Cana where he showed his first miracle, and Mt. Tabor where He showed His glory to the three Apostles. The word Beatitudes is a term coined from the word beatitudo in Latin, which means happiness, but is more tranditionally translated into English as blessed. In Greek, it is μακαριος (makarios), which literally translated to English as "possessing an inward contentedness and joy that is not affected by the physical circumstances". There have been a number of differing opinions about the exact number of the Beatitudes. St. Augustine of Hippo said it is seven because of the significance of the number in scripture and Israel, and the contemporary scholars would say four: the poor, the mourner, the hungry, and those seeking after righteousness. It is said that the other four are just additionals and commentaries to the original four.

Some thinkers in the past had been critical to the Beatitudes. Friedrich Nietzsche saw it as picture of "slave morality of Christianity", while others, like James Joyce, William Blake, and Theodore Dreiser, "condemned it as advocating life without striving".

But for us Christians, let us heed the words of St. Augustine, who in his opening words on his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount said: "If any one will piously and soberly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke on the mount ... he will find in it ... a perfect standard of the Christian life ... For the sermon itself is brought to a close in such a way, that it is clear there are in it all the precepts which go to mould the life." Brothers and sisters, Rise, let us go now. Let us go the Lord and behold the hour is at hand.

A Speech That Was Never Read

It is unbelievable that Sapienza University would block Pope Benedict XVI from speaking on its annual opening of its academic year. Sixty-seven professors had signed a letter of protest to the dean of the university, Renato Guarini. Physics professor Andrea Frova was the main signatory of the letter and came charging that the pontiff in 1990, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had "shown hostile to science", when he spoke about Galileo Galilei's trial under the Holy Roman Inquisition. We could not dwell at length on that speech given by the then-cardinal Ratzinger on the 15th of February in 1990. In that speech, however, Joseph Ratzinger quoted an atheist philosopher of science by the name of Paul Feyerabend, who said that "the Church remained more faithful to reason than Galileo himself." According to Giorgio Israel, a mathematics professor of La Sapienza and who wrote in L'Osservatore Romano defending the Ratzinger, the pope had defended Galilean rationality by using the quote to question the attitude of modernity toward itself and its inventions: science and technology.

The speech was clearly Ratzingerian. There were many themes the pope touched on. But the central theses of his essay were centered on two questions: what is the nature and mission of papacy and what is the nature and mission of the university. He went to and discussed the relationship of truth to faith and university. The pope is always fond of using the Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato in his making a point by outlining the question of the former to Euthyphro about believing the constant bickering of the gods and goddesses and its truth. He points that this question posed is not something antithetical to religious people and does not shake the ground of belief but has always been essential to faith even for the first christians. This question as related to faith has also relation to the episkopoi, since this faith finds its truest expression in a believing community, which has basically a leader, a supervisor. The answer to this is found in the beginning and end of the speech. When the pope said that his ministry begins firstly as a bishop of Rome, he, therefore, "surveys the whole landscape, making sure to keep the flock together and on the right path", who unites the whole flock and shows as being first the way to the Christ, the Logos, the Creative Reason Himself. This brings us to the point of that the pope does not impose his faith, but "it is his task to keep alive man’s responsiveness to the truth" and "must again and always invite reason to seek out truth, goodness and God, and on this path urge it to see the useful lights that emerged during the history of the Christian faith and perceive Jesus Christ as the light that illuminates history and helps find the way towards the future."

In between, the pope finds a common ground why faith should have a voice of reason and should not be dispelled by putting forth the idea of John Rawls, that though religious doctrines could not be considered "public reason", it has in its character a non-public reason that cannot be obliterated as such because it is participating in reason itself. The pope sees in Rawls another criterion of this reasonableness of doctrines that stems from its responsibility and well-grounded tradition "in which over a long span of time sufficiently strong arguments have been developed in support of the respective doctrines."

From there, we can see that, indeed, faith as such cannot be relegated to unreasonableness, to the mythological. Thus, theology itself right from the start of the rise of universities in the west had already been included in the core curriculum. Here, the pope pointed out that in due time philosophy rose as an independent domain capable of standing on itself and raise questions it can capable to answer. This happened in medieval universities, whose basic principles still are operative today. Though the pope pointed out that theology, philosophy, law, and medicine have always been cultivated in the universities, what holds them together is their perceived rationality. So much so that they can talk among each other. This I think can be a reason why the pope at least can be invited to speak within the environment of university freedom. He speaks of the reasonableness of the position of faith in the varied debates of the society because it has rich ethical positions that overlap with mankind and has "become a voice of the ethical reasoning of humanity." He, therefore, can speak with any questions of life because faith has reason in itself that compels humans in their states and beliefs.

Understanding How It Feels

The night did not pass by without sly: a sly of talk but not without a pick of choice. A choice on what topic, indeed, to take up with, though things had not been planned with a forethought. There were three of us who were gathered around an a little over elongated square table. This simple tryst was a jostle of an instant invitation. The place could not be unfamiliar for in the past has been a constant reminder of our presence in the place.

One oftentimes wonder how it comes to be. We just picked on things that we have dwindled on unknowingly but inevitably. The night was passed up with elements of personal opinions on things that are often neglected due to the business of everyday. And, when we try to look at these things one more time, it feels odd that there they are to be focused on. Now it comes to us as a surprise that little do we know of its importance.

Everybody gossips, and it passes from lips to lips. It became a heated discussion among the three where to put gossip as it is. Of course, it had to be resolved that though gossip has in itself its disadvantage, it is a means of something positive. The night did not end weighing only on one thing because after all at least one sociologist opined of its usefulness in venting out stress in a smothering situation.

It is said that I do not see it a waste of anything in any of these little gathering. Rather, it could be said that this is unconsciously anticipated for the three knows that it would not be without anything to discuss. The friendship does not stand static but constantly controverted to stretch a little slack every now and then brought by influences from anywhere.

What could be next if only I happen to know when?

An Inherent Constitutive Weakness

The Other Islam: Scholarly, Written with a Sharp Pen written by Sandro Magister recounts of a lecture delivered by a female scholar from the faculty of human and social sciences at the University of Tunisia. The lecture touched on a core issue of today's Islamic problem: fundamentalism. Not quite a few have said that this strain of thought within Islam has, indeed, grown as an ideology that is slowly taking a permanent hold within some of its believers. Now this lecture tries to link this fundamentalism to orthodoxy that seems to feed strength to the former. In effect, the relationship between the two should be that the latter is transformed inherently, effecting a change to the former, which is primarily the breeding nexus of terrorism. Since September 11, the world has been so conscious of this term, which has since become a political byword, sometimes being used to advance a political agenda, which oftentimes aggravates an already precarious situation. Does, indeed, orthodoxy lend itself up to this deviant strain of thought among those who fervently believe in a religion such as Islam? Do other parallel religions in the world, which at its very core also proclaims its orthodoxy of its belief, could be rendered the same danger?

I had thought of these questions, since it has been a marked criteria even within Christianity. Orthodoxy has been a constant battleground of so many saints and martyrs in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches. How can I not forget Athanasius, who comes to my mind whenever a monolithic example is recalled as to total adherence to faith even within the dangerous lines of defense?

Latifa Lakhdar's fundamental thesis is something positive in light of the present state of her religion: "Islam, just as the optimists say, can be the foundation of a Muslim mindset that is modern, enlightened, and liberal." In her view, there should be a dissociation of the mystifying element engulfing the relationship between Muslim orthodoxy and fundamentalism. In my view, if this has been rendered open, not as a closed system and an elevated thought beyond the grasp of the now and here, an access of rational inquiry can penetrate it and reasonably separate them into categories and proper perspectives.

As the lecturer points out heavily, orthodoxy can be the parent for the evolution of fundamentalism. However, this relationship of cause and effect is not exclusive in the sense that the latter is a necessary effect of the former as its cause. But a more important question points to the issue of identity, which could render the faith of Muslim religion threatened. At the outset, the question of change is well within the possibilities, but what is that change that is needed? And if this would be, would it not be a great paradigm shift for every Muslim believer; something that calls for a total change of perspective. For what is brought before the altar of sacrifice is something that is at the core of what is being a Muslim. How would the world could be changed in the mind of a Muslim if he were to believe that the holy book of Koran is not a handwritten document of Allah, but had been composed by men, who had been gripped with the charisma to write, which could be said to have been under the influence of a deity. What compounds the problem is the idea of a finished theology from the time of Hegira. The Quran could not be interpreted as anything but literalist without inciting public scandal for Muslim adherents.

It could not be anything less than to ask pork not eggs from hogs. However, there are many ramifications attached to a kind of revolution that the author dreams. If we may speak of a sclerotic and obtunded growth of speculative theology in Islam, then this is special vocation for those who see in their religion the source of sinister that corrupts of what they believe is the essence of their faith. But how can it be fostered within a milieu that has so long been captured under the politics of Islamic umas and bureaucrats?

One could ask if the golden age of Islam could again flourish from the Iberian peninsula to the fringes of Southeast Asia? The 9th to the 12th centuries saw the dialogue between Islamic faith and Aristotelian philosophy, and from this encounter is borne the names of Avicenna and Averroes. These names are just some of the Islamic thinkers whose minds had been fostered within a special Islamic city of Cordoba, a city known for its patronage to scholarship. However, one author had said that it became possible because of its possibility within a political figure whose interests were focused on cultivating scholarship. Here it cannot be mistakenly pointed out that the rapprochement between secular knowledge and the ideas of faith gave birth to a flowering civilization that had an impact on every level of Muslim life. This radiating energy did not confine to a locus somewhere south of Spain but spread throughout the Arabic-speaking peoples.

But could we not ask if the turn of European events into what it has become today is the model of every development for others? Should we graft what we believe as positive of European history to nations under Islam? Is there any justification that such pattern is the ideal one over other patterns of history? Or should we not also ask that somehow there is something which Islam can fundamentally teach those under the western influence by reining in some unbridled consequences of modernity? Or else, we might as well speak of the passivity of the west into looking oneself again to see what had become of it.

There could not be even a question that the project of humanism did not dispel the contribution of Christianity in the cultural growth of nations. Certainly, some of the popes of the sixteenth century and onwards have been close patrons of humanistic ideas. The growth of these ideas in fairly homogenized population is one thing that clearly points the uniqueness of western history. The dialecticism of the historical reality between the faith and the development of reason through science had never brought a nihilism and total negation of this dual relationship. Thus, we can conclude that somehow the rationalistic approach of a St. Thomas Aquinas did not at the basic level foster an annihilistic force in the side of faith, enough to destroy what reason has been for former. Hence, this epoch in the history of theology prepares the humanism of the later times, giving fertile ground for the rise to scientific revolution of the 18th century and of our own time. Therefore, it is enough to cast a look on this era to explain out any doubts of the role of the church in the growth of science.

Now, this is the uniqueness of Christianity over against Islam. In Islamic history, there was a spontaneous appeal to the ideas of Aristotle and western philosophical thought early on but was later destroyed by itself, thereby receding Islam itself into the problem of the Will and anchoring its theology to it as its loci of departure over and against Christianity itself. This author could even begin to suspect that what happened to Protestantism in its stance against every Catholic teaching is as true as well as what became of Islam in its attitude toward Christianity following its beginning in the 7th century. It is highly probable that though there was a limited scholarly exchange and access between these two religions there was an endemic idea of one over the other that had been piled up over centuries of battles and wars.

Though at times the papacy has been construed as an impediment in history, that might seem to pose less of an importance in the influence the popes had had in the dialogue of reason and faith. For sure as early as the first century of Christianity, there had been questions raised already on the place of rationalism-intellectualism in the life of faith in Christ. Paul of Tarsus though had an evident reservations of pure rationalism over and against the new-found religion, he too was not imprisoned from the sphere of understanding man's gift from God as totally limited only to his response to the grace he is given. For indeed hovering the mind of Paul was the enduring consciousness of the Genesis' account of God's endowment to man that which was seen as good in itself. Hence, from early on, an idea has already been considered that opens to possibilities of dialogue and rapprochement. The second and third centuries also came with a number of apologists to the faith, e.g. Justin Martyr and Ignatius of Antioch, and theologians, e.g. Alexander of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and others, who did not avoid in their corpus basically the encounter of a Greek-pagan thought with the unique salvific history of Christ. For such universality of salvation as its essence and nature is extended to every man and woman of every age, and that this catholic understanding of the redemption of Christ must not appear as totally annihilating and destructive to what is fundamentally positive in humanity that is in need of saving grace. The dialectics between grace and nature found early investigations within a religion which has grown itself in an advanced civilization with ideas and thoughts teeming with positive contributions to humanity. Though Christianity developed and grew in a hostile Roman empire, it was not deaf also to the transcendental questions that the temporal event of Christ has been wrought. Thus, the early Christians had to defend the religion and its relationship to a paganistic social framework as well as to propose this religion as a unique option in a large empire amassed with different religions, thoughts, ideas, and persuasions. In one end then, Christianity grew to a large extent from the persuasion of the mind more than the use of force. The latter ages just merely picked up from what their predecessors in faith had opened.

It is particularly in this area that the popes of Rome has had a tremendous impact on the fostering of this engagement of reason and faith. The institutionality of the nature of papacy based upon the Matthean promise of perpetual foundation of the ekklesia gave impetus to any human investigations of reality that indeed will have impact on faith. Though there have been a debasing tendencies in the history of renaissance popes, the contribution of the successors of Peter can never be overlooked. It is enough to look back on the growth of humanism in the 16th century as fostered principally by the absolute ruler of the papal states. Thus, this is a factor which Islam can gleam upon. The cohesive factor of a centerpoint is indeed more essential that the centripetal forces in the vicissitudes of human history. And this too is uniquely Christianity's own great accomplishment.

Now this singularity of encounter of faith and reason in Christian history is more than unique in the annals of religions. The Jewish concept as a Chosen People has secluded itself to itself that anyone from outside should either live socially by the rules stemming from the Mosaic Law or convert to the religion of the Patriarchs. The Judaic religion lived with a unique identity among the great civilizations of the east existing on a promise that is in itself a life-force. Hence, the particularity of this religion was punctured through the advent of the redeemer, thus, opening it up to the world under the new command of making all disciples under the trinitarian formula. Therefore, the relationship of Judaism and Christianity cannot be more than evident as given in a consistent thread and progressive unfolding of revelation. And in this development, it has to engage the world at least and baptize it to the fount of the saving waters of Christ.

Islam came after the events of Christ obviously, and in this at least borne a general idea of what constitutes Christianity by and large. And the events of the incessant encounter of Christianity and rationalism did not find itself within the confines of a Christianizing Roman Empire. The Nicean event, for me, became at least a marker that baptizes an outside concept, making it a handmaid of use to explain mysteries of revelation, toward a dogmatization of the divinity of Christ. The history of dogma in part can explain the essential antagonistic attitude of Mohammed toward what he usually calls the Trinitarians. Hence, the isolated Arabian saw a Christian religion before him wrapping itself in a western ideas that is essentially rational. It is my great interest indeed that perhaps the Muslim prophet contributed early on on the general attitude of antipathy towards rational investigations of faith.

What Could Be Long and Far Might Not Be

The phases of life inevitably ends up truly unpredictable. That is why I am quite skeptical when people would say things in absolute terms without an afterthought or so. You might be friends today, but tomorrow you may find yourselves could not stand each other's presence. Oftentimes, it is almost shocking when you find two people whom you have known to be good friends end up in a heated altercation and bitterness. It is as if what words each can come up against the other is truly unbelievable to hear.

I had a recent experience. I was just a spectator of the whole exchange of words. The blow by blow rally of two opposing minds dogging their heels on their points was a part threatening but at the same time induces someone to think clearly. The responses were graded and counted, and the steps of rebuttal were aimed at the eye of the figure before each one.

And the worst hasn't yet arrived. When everything settled and words died down and have all gone to their own, it might be that things become clearer than before. You would immediately hear the almost-like suppressed grumblings that hithertofore not heard. Things that were not brought to light because of the speed of things, and the memories of distant past that did not nag at the very time that it was most needed. This is the time when you can say that after all things did not heal; the wound still continues.

And it all continues, until no one knows exactly that specific time in the past that it all happened after all. The passion of hatred did not cease; the remnant of it now belongs to the self and not a temporary belonging to be discarded at any time. But what can one make of it? Does it need to be continued on as an ember of an anger?

When one thinks it closely, it insults not because of the materiality of the situation but that it behaves as if it is quite an extra from the self. When we think of anger and hatred, it becomes like non-you; it unfolds the animality. I have read it once that anger is an evolutionary defense for preservation, and that it is something man should be thankful. Man reacts to what threatens himself, thereby, preserving his being from destruction. However, it might be thought of that intrinsically what becomes a defense for men is not constituted as normal since it arises not from everyday interaction but when situation only aggravates it.

So it was on that night when my mind was busy tennis balling. I have had my own ratiocination of whose fault was it and whose want it is needed to repair the broken and hurted feelings.

The All-Pervading Death

Always in retrospection, man can gleam on life. I have had several occasions to do this. Whenever I am left alone, things would pass through my mind; it lingers and leaves peculiar units of thoughts that may keep on coming back as time demands. One of the major themes that I keep on coming back to is death. When one considers the frailty of life, you could not escape the inevitability of thinking morbidity. I do not know why people would think otherwise, when, in fact, death is all's end. If we begin to look life devoid of any reference of anything that goes beyond the evident and obvious, we can come to a conclusion that it is meaningless, like Jean Sartre's. Love, hope, and faith (among others) are empty of meaning if left alone by itself without any reference of something transcendent; if, at all, these virtues will be taken up by purely human project and praxis, each will dwindle into relative isolation and will be affronted against each other to the detriment of their harmonious unity under the sway of one's own interpretation. Man could not mount himself superior to anything that he is limited and always is oppressed by the imperfections that he will always have. Goodness is never without in man; he can always advance in life with reference to something his intellect perceives as good. But how much man expends his energy in his skills, talents, and abilities and exhausts his mental prowess to explaining the mysteries and exploring the hitherto unknown horizons and terrains of inventions, he is still under the sting of his own weakness and could do the most horrendous and catastrophic of evils.

This is why I have so much to hope in religion. I always think religion does not offer anything that is convenient to the demand of this world. The dualism of world and religion has always been a theme of the Christian church; the very words of this dichotomy exists in the pages of Paul's epistle and John's short exhortations to the early Christians in Ephesus. These Christian writers project before us not a dialectic of two opposing realities but a conflict. It was only later in the second century that when the great apologists emerged and began to defend the cause of Christianity against the assault of the pagan Roman empire.

Not only Christianity seeks to inculcate the positivity of liberation of man, but this is always a recurring end even of Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and other indigenous religions in the east and Africa. Underneath the rituals and traditions of these religions, there lies a constant ascent to the communion with the otherworldly, of the transcendent, and of the Supreme Being. Though there are different concepts of how one approaches this reality, eventually, to posit something immaterial is real is to conclude, henceforth, a creative being. Once we acknowledge the existence of the world of the spirits, then in the long analysis, it will all lead to acknowledging the existence of a God, who is the creative principle of everything material and immaterial.

This is always a languishing reality in my mind. Then, when I think of death, it does not sound hollow, as if bereft by anything purposeful, because I see someone at the other end of my view. A view that is not often shared by people I have known in life with. There is so much that they avoid about death. It is as if any mention of it stirs a hopeless fear. There is kind of annihilism of the concept of death, though it is one that could never be killed in mind. We are living in an age where death is pushed to the fringes of consciousness and volutarily forgotten. However, though the pervading notion of "deathless" mankind is current, it is kind of thankful for me that within the different cultures in the world, it is the primitive and backward that holds this idea in mind as its background consciousness. In an oriental milieu, death is not something alien and imported from without but comes as a natural consequence. The different forms of rituals and beliefs we have, and the importance we give to the departed loved ones, as though they are just floating around, carried by the wind in which direction it blows, is a thing that we cannot shake off and leave to parch under the dryness of rationalism, skepticism, and materialism. It is embedded within the mesh of our growth that it seems to become foreign if held abandoned as such.

This oriental predisposition toward accepting and embracing death has been shown akin to the Christian religion, an affinity not without grounds considering Christianity's humble beginnings. Though the peculiarities of oriental concepts have its own idiosyncrasies and mythic elements, the Christian religion seeks to purge it of its blindspots, thereby eliminating it of its cyclical and non-purposeful end. The eschatological concept of Christianity is far richer than the noblest of eastern beliefs. Why? The concept of monotheism orients the whole vision of man toward a teleological path of his own existence. That is why St. Augustine could say that his and our hearts are restless until it rests on thee, who is one in Being.

Hence, I would say that to think death just shows how much restless is man in his endeavors. This agitation of mind and body is evident in his movement and motion that tend toward peace and tranquility, toward a state of utmost justice, where everything dwells without lacking and wanting. In this passage of his movement comes the precariousness of the risks of his judgment. While the other religions' undercurrent thought gravitates toward prescriptive liberation theology, Christianity's is corrective liberation theology. Christ filled what the world needs.

There is here a transcendental nature of the coming of the One who is to come, who proceeds from the Father and the visible manifestation of the unseen God. This movement is downward, a motion that descends and dwells and unites to the different being. This action is grace in the Christian parlance. In this way, it is absolutely a gratuitous action of the One who sends. And, the disposition of the receiver is of ultimate reception of this gift with thanksgiving.

With death comes the end of the existence of a reality that is shown in the temporal dimension, and the person embraces the spiritual world, a world that is by nature transcendentary. This enables the being to communicate that which he longs to be in communion for. For as St. Augustine says that man is restless until it rests in thee is as saying that man in his being has to return to the source of his being.

Death also in sort of way liberates man from an existence viewed as something alien to God. In the beginning, we see man downgraded himself by committing sin, and through his action that truly violates the law of God, death came as a punishment. St. Thomas said that the will and the intellect of man did not deviate but in complete harmony with the Creator-Being. The relationship is copenetrating: man dwells completely in his knowledge of God and God could diffuse easily to the being of man. In one sense, it could be liken to the concept of the oneness of God in its triadic personality. Man was completely open to the presence of God that no amount and no speck of dusts settles in the unitive garment of this relationship. It seems to me to be completely awashed by the waters of the fountainhead.

I have every bit of wonderment as to the amazing narrative of the biblical account of the beginning and fall of man. The account is brought forth from the authors whose background did not wedge from its surroundings. They completely show their peculiar influences under the sway of the Near East cultural surroundings. The elements and characters is so organic that it has affinity to the other accounts of the beginning of man whose source grew from the cradle of the fertile crescent.

In a way, in almost all religious idea of death, it is evoked as something not constitutive to the intention of a deity. The Greeks themselves did not exalt death, but feared it with an expression of darkness, estrangement, isolation, and joyless abode. In this sense, the bible is not far from the emotions of the ancient world. Even the Israelites liken the expiration of life as to going to the pit so dark, to the place that engulfs and swallows. The Book of Job and the Psalms, which are oftentimes songs of praise and thanksgiving and of triumph, could not escape its characterization of death.

Though Christianity finds itself in a completely pessimistic concept of death, it offers a breath of hope with its hopeful eschatological theology. In a greater analysis, the movement of christian concept of temporal living is more linear than cyclical, a more characteristic of eastern religions. It would appear that the oriental could not settle on a purely abstract existential epistemology; it is constantly drawn to the sphere of materialism. Much so that it cannot arise from the mundane to the spiritual and exists outside of this world. This is quite obvious how the Chinese have their ancestors' tombstones are situated. Their spirits have a direct intervention into the lives of the living, and oftentimes they are invoked in many occasions.

The Inherent Weakness

The Other Islam: Scholarly, Written with a Sharp Pen written by Sandro Magister recounts of a lecture delivered by a female scholar from the faculty of human and social sciences at the University of Tunisia. The lecture touched on a core issue of today's Islamic problem: fundamentalism. Not quite a few have said that this strain of thought within Islam has, indeed, grown as an ideology that is slowly taking a permanent hold within some of its believers. Now this lecture tries to link this fundamentalism to orthodoxy that seems to feed strength to the former. In effect, the relationship between the two should be that the latter is transformed inherently, effecting a change to the former, which is primarily the breeding nexus of terrorism. Since September 11, the world has been so conscious of this term, which has since become a political byword, sometimes being used to advance a political agenda, which oftentimes aggravates an already precarious situation. Does, indeed, orthodoxy lend itself up to this deviant strain of thought among those who fervently believe in a religion such as Islam? Do other parallel religions in the world, which at its very core also proclaims its orthodoxy of its belief, could be rendered the same danger?

I had thought of these questions, since it has been a marked criteria even within Christianity. Orthodoxy has been a constant battleground of so many saints and martyrs in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches. How can I not forget Athanasius, who comes to my mind whenever a monolithic example is recalled as to total adherence to faith even within the dangerous lines of defense?

Latifa Lakhdar's fundamental thesis is something positive in light of the present state of her religion: "Islam, just as the optimists say, can be the foundation of a Muslim mindset that is modern, enlightened, and liberal." In her view, there should be a dissociation of the mystifying element engulfing the relationship between Muslim orthodoxy and fundamentalism. In my view, if this has been rendered open, not as a closed system and an elevated thought beyond the grasp of the now and here, an access of rational inquiry can penetrate it and reasonably separate them into categories and proper perspectives.

As the lecturer points out heavily, orthodoxy can be the parent for the evolution of fundamentalism. However, this relationship of cause and effect is not exclusive in the sense that the latter is a necessary effect of the former as its cause. But a more important question points to the issue of identity, which could render the faith of Muslim religion threatened. At the outset, the question of change is well within the possibilities, but what is that change that is needed? And if this would be, would it not be a great paradigm shift for every Muslim believer; something that calls for a total change of perspective. For what is brought before the altar of sacrifice is something that is at the core of what is being a Muslim. How would the world could be changed in the mind of a Muslim if he were to believe that the holy book of Koran is not a handwritten document of Allah, but had been composed by men, who had been gripped with the charisma to write, which could be said to have been under the influence of a deity. What compounds the problem is the idea of a finished theology from the time of Hegira. The Quran could not be interpreted as anything but literalist without inciting public scandal for Muslim adherents.

It could not be anything less than to ask pork not eggs from hogs. However, there are many ramifications attached to a kind of revolution that the author dreams. If we may speak of a sclerotic and obtunded growth of speculative theology in Islam, then this is special vocation for those who see in their religion the source of sinister that corrupts of what they believe is the essence of their faith. But how can it be fostered within a milieu that has so long been captured under the politics of Islamic umas and bureaucrats?

One could ask if the golden age of Islam could again flourish from the Iberian peninsula to the fringes of Southeast Asia? The 9th to the 12th centuries saw the dialogue between Islamic faith and Aristotelian philosophy, and from this encounter is borne the names of Avicenna and Averroes. These names are just some of the Islamic thinkers whose minds had been fostered within a special Islamic city of Cordoba, a city known for its patronage to scholarship. However, one author had said that it became possible because of its possibility within a political figure whose interests were focused on cultivating scholarship. Here it cannot be mistakenly pointed out that the rapprochement between secular knowledge and the ideas of faith gave birth to a flowering civilization that had an impact on every level of Muslim life. This radiating energy did not confine to a locus somewhere south of Spain but spread throughout the Arabic-speaking peoples.

But could we not ask if the turn of European events into what it has become today is the model of every development for others? Should we graft what we believe as positive of European history to nations under Islam? Is there any justification that such pattern is the ideal one over other patterns of history? Or should we not also ask that somehow there is something which Islam can fundamentally teach those under the western influence by reining in some unbridled consequences of modernity? Or else, we might as well speak of the passivity of the west into looking oneself again to see what had become of it.

There could not be even a question that the project of humanism did not dispel the contribution of Christianity in the cultural growth of nations. Certainly, some of the popes of the sixteenth century and onwards have been close patrons of humanistic ideas. The growth of these ideas in fairly homogenized population is one thing that clearly points the uniqueness of western history. The dialecticism of the historical reality between the faith and the development of reason through science had never brought a nihilism and total negation of this dual relationship. Thus, we can conclude that somehow the rationalistic approach of a St. Thomas Aquinas did not at the basic level foster an annihilistic force in the side of faith, enough to destroy what reason has been for former. Hence, this epoch in the history of theology prepares the humanism of the later times, giving fertile ground for the rise to scientific revolution of the 18th century and of our own time. Therefore, it is enough to cast a look on this era to explain out any doubts of the role of the church in the growth of science.

Now, this is the uniqueness of Christianity over against Islam. In Islamic history, there was a spontaneous appeal to the ideas of Aristotle and western philosophical thought early on but was later destroyed by itself, thereby receding Islam itself into the problem of the Will and anchoring its theology to it as its loci of departure over and against Christianity itself. This author could even begin to suspect that what happened to Protestantism in its stance against every Catholic teaching is as true as well as what became of Islam in its attitude toward Christianity following its beginning in the 7th century. It is highly probable that though there was a limited scholarly exchange and access between these two religions there was an endemic idea of one over the other that had been piled up over centuries of battles and wars.

Though at times the papacy has been construed as an impediment in history, that might seem to pose less of an importance in the influence the popes had had in the dialogue of reason and faith. For sure as early as the first century of Christianity, there had been questions raised already on the place of rationalism-intellectualism in the life of faith in Christ. Paul of Tarsus though had an evident reservations of pure rationalism over and against the new-found religion, he too was not imprisoned from the sphere of understanding man's gift from God as totally limited only to his response to the grace he is given. For indeed hovering the mind of Paul was the enduring consciousness of the Genesis' account of God's endowment to man that which was seen as good in itself. Hence, from early on, an idea has already been considered that opens to possibilities of dialogue and rapprochement. The second and third centuries also came with a number of apologists to the faith, e.g. Justin Martyr and Ignatius of Antioch, and theologians, e.g. Alexander of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and others, who did not avoid in their corpus basically the encounter of a Greek-pagan thought with the unique salvific history of Christ. For such universality of salvation as its essence and nature is extended to every man and woman of every age, and that this catholic understanding of the redemption of Christ must not appear as totally annihilating and destructive to what is fundamentally positive in humanity that is in need of saving grace. The dialectics between grace and nature found early investigations within a religion which has grown itself in an advanced civilization with ideas and thoughts teeming with positive contributions to humanity. Though Christianity developed and grew in a hostile Roman empire, it was not deaf also to the transcendental questions that the temporal event of Christ has been wrought. Thus, the early Christians had to defend the religion and its relationship to a paganistic social framework as well as to propose this religion as a unique option in a large empire amassed with different religions, thoughts, ideas, and persuasions. In one end then, Christianity grew to a large extent from the persuasion of the mind more than the use of force. The latter ages just merely picked up from what their predecessors in faith had opened.

It is particularly in this area that the popes of Rome has had a tremendous impact on the fostering of this engagement of reason and faith. The institutionality of the nature of papacy based upon the Matthean promise of perpetual foundation of the ekklesia gave impetus to any human investigations of reality that indeed will have impact on faith. Though there have been a debasing tendencies in the history of renaissance popes, the contribution of the successors of Peter can never be overlooked. It is enough to look back on the growth of humanism in the 16th century as fostered principally by the absolute ruler of the papal states. Thus, this is a factor which Islam can gleam upon. The cohesive factor of a centerpoint is indeed more essential that the centripetal forces in the vicissitudes of human history. And this too is uniquely Christianity's own great accomplishment.

Now this singularity of encounter of faith and reason in Christian history is more than unique in the annals of religions. The Jewish concept as a Chosen People has secluded itself to itself that anyone from outside should either live socially by the rules stemming from the Mosaic Law or convert to the religion of the Patriarchs. The Judaic religion lived with a unique identity among the great civilizations of the east existing on a promise that is in itself a life-force. Hence, the particularity of this religion was punctured through the advent of the redeemer, thus, opening it up to the world under the new command of making all disciples under the trinitarian formula. Therefore, the relationship of Judaism and Christianity cannot be more than evident as given in a consistent thread and progressive unfolding of revelation. And in this development, it has to engage the world at least and baptize it to the fount of the saving waters of Christ.

Islam came after the events of Christ obviously, and in this at least borne a general idea of what constitutes Christianity by and large. And the events of the incessant encounter of Christianity and rationalism did not find itself within the confines of a Christianizing Roman Empire. The Nicean event, for me, became at least a marker that baptizes an outside concept, making it a handmaid of use to explain mysteries of revelation, toward a dogmatization of the divinity of Christ. The history of dogma in part can explain the essential antagonistic attitude of Mohammed toward what he usually calls the Trinitarians. Hence, the isolated Arabian saw a Christian religion before him wrapping itself in a western ideas that is essentially rational. It is my great interest indeed that perhaps the Muslim prophet contributed early on on the general attitude of antipathy towards rational investigations of faith.

July 07, 2007 in Religion Permalink

Jenkins, Neuhaus, and Europe

I have the opportunity of reading Richard John Neuhaus's The Much Exaggerated Death of Europe . He wrote something about Philip Jenkins's God's Continent: The Coming of Global Christianity over at the First Things magazine. I did not read Philip's book but basing upon the review done by Richard, I think, it is much also to ponder, since it does not concern only to Europe's fate but so is Christianity's. One particular term I have gathered in his essay is deracinated or if turned to be a noun, deracination. This is particularly interesting since, indeed, Europe is experiencing low birth rates and higher life expectancies. Within a generation or two, it would become apparent that other racial stock would replenish its dying population as George Wiegel repeatedly points out in his interview over at EWTN sometime ago. That would spell a kind of European race death.

The sort of Philip's own raciocination is that what these "prophets of doom" have always been prognosing does not come closer to any of their predictions. He actually paints a more hopeful Europe, unlike the ones being portrayed by Wiegel, Bat Y'eor, Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, and Mark Steyn. Towards the end of the prose, Neuhaus raised some questions that have logical implications, pointing against Philip's own positive assessment of the following: islamic immigration's history and affectation to the larger secular context of present day Europe, the creative minority status of Christian in the midst of Eurosecularity, the presence of moderate Islam and some scholarship whose projection is toward an attempt of using modern techniques in Quranic exegecies, the correlative apposition of European particularity and American experience, etc.

All in all, it remains for us to see in the next decades whose particular assessment could give a true picture of the fate of Europe. It is true that today Christianity is in the defense for its own identity, where tensions speak of a greater reality in behalf of the rest of the world. The threat posed by Islam is not a threat posed only to religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc. It is a threat that poses the individual freedom to coexist within a state as defined by political theories and concepts as patrimony in what we now call as western civilization. The states under Muslim sway is radically different from the concept of constitutional governments at the very least.

Thus, I firmly believe that if Christianity loses in this battle with Islam, everything else will be confronted and would spell how its fate would turn out to be. Let us quite remember that, though there are many instances that the Church and the secular institutions and ideas had had its altercations on several issues and fronts and that violence is not exempted within the Christian milieu, the environment in which reason has thrived has been fostered in greater part by Christianity and saw its development to the fullest possible as evident in the sciences, mathematical, sociological, intellectual, technological, medical, and the quality of state of life experienced by some Christian countries. This is not to disparage some countries who have seen growth and expansive economies and life like Japan and some Middle East countries. However, we must take into account how does Europe and America stand in relation to these countries. Hasn't it not been that these countries benefited by the influences of Europe and America in part? Hence, the symbiotic relationship of Christianity and reason is truly one that is quite significant in its scope and breadth and cannot in any way be downgraded as something fleeting and transient, as though reason could find its total independence from other factors it is being surrounded with.

Let us not be too naive to think that man could exist as purely non-religious. Man's apprehension toward a transcendent reality has had a far longer precedent than the history of science. Long before man used his mind to build complex implements, he had had some vague concepts of otherworldly realities as evident by Neanderthal's practice of burying their dead. Therefore, science has to coexist with the spirituality of man, which has had noble consequences in the history of the world. Some of the great historical events have been done in favor for religion and beliefs. This is no truer than what the present Pope has pointed out that it is almost like an offense to the most religious peoples on earth that the question of belief and faith is sidetracked and marginalized to favor a materialistic concept of reality.

This is indeed why I would lament that the death of Christianity would signal a death of one of reason's cradle. Exactly, it is not reasonable to paint a grim and negative picture on how Islam will confront reason at its naked self; however, it is quite another when history tells us on past and present sign posts for the future. Though I am negative to the total death of Christianity, it does not seem to me good that the remarkable feat of the synthesis of this great religion and reason would turn out to be a muted spectator, sidelined and brushed off as "creative minority" as Jenkins would like to agree. After all, it's oxymoronic to state the creative minority of Christianity when it stands as a muted character in a secular state it has become hostile with.

The MTs That Were

I have just finished my x-ray examination, and it will be taken before 12 noon. My life has taken another turn again. This time another kind of job in another kind of setting. There is really this feeling of abandonment and desertion of the past that you cling to somehow. Though I am still to start with this new job, the nostalgia of two years in medical transcription still reigns in on me. It is true then that old horse die hard; only this time it is a job which is the horse. Were it not of the resolve to meet new mornings of opportunities, I would have rather succumbed to an agonizing reminicience. It is not looking backward to the job per se which I loathed much to, but it is the thinking of those personalities whom you had been for two years and a month that you have had the hardest cleaving from.

You become factually helpless when you acknowledge that indeed your group becomes you and you become your group. Doubtless that there are difficulties each one had encountered through the two years, but the homogeneity of a specific population of medical transcriptionists could not be ruled out as if it does not exist. Maybe there was a rift between two camps inside our work, but the rift is but a part of that uniformity of life we had become accustomed to. This is usually because we have known the character of each of us that it is easy to conclude that we are patterned in each one's mind. We expect to see that which we have expecting to see. So much of that much that my memory of the group can distinctly classify each one of my colleagues that their own personality and identity shows amidst the variance it is found within. When I happen to think of Mitchelle, the one at my right, she is captured in my mind as something this and not that. I could perfectly describe her.

This is one of the many reasons why thinking of them could not help my wistful bent. This is what keeps on gluing my mind to. I do not know if in any particular way my colleagues my find themselves in like manner, but I think in more than one occasion even if days have passed us by and many a year has left us, they would turn their attention for once to that two years they had spent and somehow conclude that it changed them.

The background circumstance is another matter of the story. Though the centrifugal force is apparent within the group, what binds us is one acknowledged enemy. Externally speaking, this common ground of perceived enemy has at least the adherence that we can all speak in one mind. But more than just from any external factor, there is indeed an internal cohesive force that each one tends to. Though it might be hard to admit it for some, we have liked each other for the most part if only in a subjective-relative sense. What do I mean? Each one of us admits difference as an inherent value, however, this difference in more ways becomes a bridge to each one in his identification of who he really is. Like Marigold, she is closely identified with her christian values and sets quite a landmark of this in her behaving towards her colleagues, and this becomes more than a demarcation on the sand because everyday she is challenged to pursue her identity against the perceived threat in the beliefs of some of her colleagues. So more than an identified fact, it is that others are sustained by the presence of others.

But of course there are others which vaccilate from one end to another; those who belong to the gray zone. If it is of any political nuance, they are the center field. They are the people who might believe what the left profess or swing to the right if they find their affinity to it. For myself, I would rather describe myself as right center. I am one of those whose attraction is close to the likes of Marigolds in some things, while keeping in touch with the likes of Michelle Cruzs.

What can be fierce is when they chose to forget and never recognize that inherent goodness of such an encounter. If one becomes to wallow on the superficial feelings of hate and hostility and never getting beyond the thick of things and depth of reality. They would lose the opportunity of an existential value of such an encounter considering that such would not occur again probably.