THE present global crisis together with our own moral quagmire has many of us worried sick. We fear the consequences they bring. Not that we have experienced any relief from the state of crisis Pinoys have felt their country to be embroiled in since time immemorial. This time something is different. The whole world is also in it. And for Pinoys who always thought that “going abroad” to a world out there with endless possibilities was a way out of misery at home, nothing could be more morally damaging. Thousands of Pinoys abroad face lay-offs along with their local counter parts and, though other countries abroad offer opportunities, they may not have the skills, training or profession being demanded. Every day the government tries hard to downplay the crisis’ impact on the country. Every day facts and realities that are the stuff of news underline it.
If crisis feels like the air we breathe, suffering seems like our twin brother or sister. And, oh, he/she likes to play around and spread the mess. Almost every branch of government, from the executive to the legislative to the judiciary, is now under the thick cloud of public distrust due to mounting reports from both local and foreign observers of pervasive corruption. Worse, our social and political mechanisms meant to expose and check them do not seem to work. Congressional and senate investigations of alleged wrongdoings are mostly going nowhere.
We used to complain of the Pinoy sense of shame being not deep enough to sustain real moral values. Now even that is in danger of extinction. Still, all these bring pain to us all. They must. The pain indicates there’s still a better side of us that is yet alive.
This Lent the ancient book of Sirach, to me, is a mine of wisdom. For one, Sirach reminds us that difficulties, that is, suffering in plain language, do not come from economic or even socio-political sources alone. What’s more, they even come with efforts to toe God’s line. “My son,” it counsels, “when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in time of adversity…” (Sir 2:1). He provides some reason for the effort: “For in fire gold is tested and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation” (Sir 2:5).
Sirach inspires hope. For an Old Testament writing, it glows with New Testament fire.
Shakespeare once said: “The miserable hath no other medicine than hope.” I couldn’t agree more. But, pray tell, old master (and may I speak to the Catholic Shakespeare), is hope enough to lift us up? And what is there to hope for, anyway?
Sirach answers better than Shakespeare. “Study the generations long past,” he continues his counsel from his time and place, “and understand: Has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed?” (Sir 2:10). I would imagine that anyone who would doubt Sirach by saying, “Yes, I’ve hoped and am disappointed!” would hear a counter question: “Have you really hoped in the Lord?” The psalmist cites himself and confirms Sirach: “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry” (Ps 40:2).
Hope in the middle of crisis, ah, that’s just what we need, I hear you say. Not quite, I answer. We rather need its source. If we have its source, then we would have it always. This time St. Paul seals the deal for us: “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).
Hope doesn’t give us salvation. But it keeps us after its trail. It protects us, too, from falling into despair. “Let us… put on the breastplate of faith and charity and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thes 5:8).
The breakdown of human and worldly sources of hope should teach us, then, to look for its more lasting Source. Only then will the words of S. Smiles truly bring us smiles again: “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.”
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Coping with the crisis
LATELY the headlines are as much telling as they are alarming. Otherwise reliable companies report huge losses. Or that they are closing. Millions are losing jobs worldwide. Locally the country’s supposed economic resiliency, often touted by the government as something we can count on, are getting painful reality checks. OFWs are losing their jobs by the thousands; so are local workers in affected companies, for now foreign-owned ones. Hunger and criminality are on the rise. Fuel, food and fare rates continually do a see-saw. Hence, the pervading sense of gloom.
The twin products of the global economic crunch, very palpable even where we stand, are fear and a certain desperation. It’s not too hard to sense that the degree of their seriousness could be greater in families, cultures and societies habituated to more materially prosperous conditions. I find it instructive to go back to 1929 America through the eyes of the movie The Day the Bubble Burst which zeroes in on the stock market crash that led to the era of economic depression in the U.S. Then, as now, fortunes and jobs were lost, and with them, hope. Recently the tragedy of a California family, flashed globally in the headlines and promptly forgotten by the public in the cacophony of other competing news items, continue to haunt me to this day. A father who lost his job, savings and financial resources due to the economic crisis caused the deaths of all his family members and his own (he shot himself). It appears that when all hope is gone, so is sanity.
On the other hand, although we encounter cases of this sort in the Philippines, in the average Filipino psyche the father’s deed, with or without the wife’s and his children’s consent, is almost unthinkable.
I remember talking last Sunday to a group of churchgoers during my homily in a poor barangay chapel of our parish. “Naabat ba kamo hit’ krisis? (Do you feel the economic crisis?)” I asked them. They smiled and said, “(Siempre, Padre) Of course, Father.” It struck me that they could just smile at the mere mention of the crisis. Then it hit me: They have been going through economic crisis all their lives (it’s also called ‘rural poverty’). “When have we been out of a crisis, anyway?” someone asked me facetiously. “The only difference these days is that it’s now being shared by more and more people in the world.”
I say the attitude of our rural poor in that chapel has educated me on what living faith does. Material deprivation (as many of our rural folks are characterized by) does not necessarily mean an impoverished spirit. When faith is misdirected, say, when it is put in material prosperity alone or mainly, any economic crisis could understandably challenge and even ruin some people’s grip on life. “When money is everything,” our bishop, Bishop Bai Varquez, once remarked, “the moment it is lost also means everything is lost.” But when faith is rightly placed in God, the economic and whatever crisis we go through just become a test and a means of purifying that faith.
The figure who, I believe, needs to be recognized on a global scale during this time of global crisis is Job. No, I don’t mean ‘work’, that scarce commodity of these times. I mean the biblical character who lost not only all his material wealth and properties but also his family to an unexpected tragedy. But there is no parallel to his indomitable faith as is obvious in his words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb; naked shall I return. The Lord gave; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be his name” (Job 1:21).
To that we can only say, “How true, how wise Job’s words are.” Our nakedness on the day we were born is a loud testimony not only to our dependence on God’s love and generosity for everything we now have and are but also to real freedom. Yes, the freedom that comes from attachment to God first and foremost, and detachment from his gifts, material things included. It is truly the Lord, says the wisdom of faith, who gives and takes everything away. Without him not only is everything already lost; there is really nothing to gain.
But with him every crisis does not have to end in tragedy but in courage over fear, compassion over self-absorption. This is what I see in people living in faith. And, since Job is a type of Jesus, we must find in Jesus the perfection of the right response to each and every crisis. In the way he eased the sufferings of others we must see our real program in the face of the crisis. Our program is not to simply meet our needs and remedy our sufferings but likewise those of others. In the way Jesus accepted his own sufferings and death to lead us to the victory of his resurrection, we must rediscover self-sacrifice and selflessness as among the essential keys to personal, communal, national and global recovery. This crisis, after all, as US President Barack Obama observed, “was prompted by the greed and irresponsibility of some.” It must be met by the generosity and self-sacrifice of all.
As St. Pio Pietrelcina puts it: “The most beautiful act of faith is one made in darkness, in sacrifice, with extreme effort.” That must also mean the one that the few who are rich can do for the many who are poor. That, further, must also mean the act of faith that does justice and humble, loving service especially to those who suffer the most in this and in every human crisis.
Therein lies the way to peace (personal, national and global).
The twin products of the global economic crunch, very palpable even where we stand, are fear and a certain desperation. It’s not too hard to sense that the degree of their seriousness could be greater in families, cultures and societies habituated to more materially prosperous conditions. I find it instructive to go back to 1929 America through the eyes of the movie The Day the Bubble Burst which zeroes in on the stock market crash that led to the era of economic depression in the U.S. Then, as now, fortunes and jobs were lost, and with them, hope. Recently the tragedy of a California family, flashed globally in the headlines and promptly forgotten by the public in the cacophony of other competing news items, continue to haunt me to this day. A father who lost his job, savings and financial resources due to the economic crisis caused the deaths of all his family members and his own (he shot himself). It appears that when all hope is gone, so is sanity.
On the other hand, although we encounter cases of this sort in the Philippines, in the average Filipino psyche the father’s deed, with or without the wife’s and his children’s consent, is almost unthinkable.
I remember talking last Sunday to a group of churchgoers during my homily in a poor barangay chapel of our parish. “Naabat ba kamo hit’ krisis? (Do you feel the economic crisis?)” I asked them. They smiled and said, “(Siempre, Padre) Of course, Father.” It struck me that they could just smile at the mere mention of the crisis. Then it hit me: They have been going through economic crisis all their lives (it’s also called ‘rural poverty’). “When have we been out of a crisis, anyway?” someone asked me facetiously. “The only difference these days is that it’s now being shared by more and more people in the world.”
I say the attitude of our rural poor in that chapel has educated me on what living faith does. Material deprivation (as many of our rural folks are characterized by) does not necessarily mean an impoverished spirit. When faith is misdirected, say, when it is put in material prosperity alone or mainly, any economic crisis could understandably challenge and even ruin some people’s grip on life. “When money is everything,” our bishop, Bishop Bai Varquez, once remarked, “the moment it is lost also means everything is lost.” But when faith is rightly placed in God, the economic and whatever crisis we go through just become a test and a means of purifying that faith.
The figure who, I believe, needs to be recognized on a global scale during this time of global crisis is Job. No, I don’t mean ‘work’, that scarce commodity of these times. I mean the biblical character who lost not only all his material wealth and properties but also his family to an unexpected tragedy. But there is no parallel to his indomitable faith as is obvious in his words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb; naked shall I return. The Lord gave; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be his name” (Job 1:21).
To that we can only say, “How true, how wise Job’s words are.” Our nakedness on the day we were born is a loud testimony not only to our dependence on God’s love and generosity for everything we now have and are but also to real freedom. Yes, the freedom that comes from attachment to God first and foremost, and detachment from his gifts, material things included. It is truly the Lord, says the wisdom of faith, who gives and takes everything away. Without him not only is everything already lost; there is really nothing to gain.
But with him every crisis does not have to end in tragedy but in courage over fear, compassion over self-absorption. This is what I see in people living in faith. And, since Job is a type of Jesus, we must find in Jesus the perfection of the right response to each and every crisis. In the way he eased the sufferings of others we must see our real program in the face of the crisis. Our program is not to simply meet our needs and remedy our sufferings but likewise those of others. In the way Jesus accepted his own sufferings and death to lead us to the victory of his resurrection, we must rediscover self-sacrifice and selflessness as among the essential keys to personal, communal, national and global recovery. This crisis, after all, as US President Barack Obama observed, “was prompted by the greed and irresponsibility of some.” It must be met by the generosity and self-sacrifice of all.
As St. Pio Pietrelcina puts it: “The most beautiful act of faith is one made in darkness, in sacrifice, with extreme effort.” That must also mean the one that the few who are rich can do for the many who are poor. That, further, must also mean the act of faith that does justice and humble, loving service especially to those who suffer the most in this and in every human crisis.
Therein lies the way to peace (personal, national and global).
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