1. LIVING BY FAITH, NOT BY SIGHT: Learning to Grow Like Lilies in a Sea of Corruption

N.B. I am posting the first in the series of talks given to a group of religious priests and brothers during their Spiritual Retreat:

When George Bernanos’ (1937) classic “The Diary of a Country Priest” came out of the French press in the 1930s, with its disarming presentation in prose of “the very simple trivial secrets of a very ordinary kind of life,” those who were “called to serve God” enjoyed a social stature and esteem that can be termed no less than phenomenal. Serving God in the priesthood and apostolic religious life was held high in the estimation of women and men all over the world. If we are to judge by how American popular media even up to three decades later presented the genteel image of the local priest, vocation to the priesthood and religious life was at an all-time high, and anyone could only conjure up positive feelings when the image of the priesthood and religious life came into mind.

We do not have to belabor the obvious in our times. Being in the same line of battle as I am as a priest and religious, you all know that those mainly positive and sympathetic feelings which used to be attached to our person, to our work, and to our roles have all waned and faded to a considerable extent.

Just look at how hard it is to push our usual product – the fostering of more and worthy vocations to religious life and the priesthood – despite the oftentimes “hard sell” and intensive “sales pitch” that we all make. Our invitation, our call, our subtle and not-so-subtle invitations, oftentimes fall on unenthusiastic ears, more attuned to the ubiquitous cell phone beeps and tones, than to our at times pathetic preaching, rousing, and calling.

Tough times are ahead of us. Rough sailing is what we all are exposed to in our times.

Whilst our secular counterparts in the local Philippine Church can boast of overflowing seminaries and inadequate facilities and funds, we religious are left scraping and scrounging for what is left at the bottom of the barrel of the great field of harvest, but with so few laborers to haul and gather it in.

A double whammy has hit us, and still hits us with full force … the perceived loss of priestly identity in a changing and confusing postmodern world, and the lackluster valuation attached to religious life, in a church that looks at lay people as occupying the central place both in theory and in practice, in theology and in pastoral praxis.

When Bernanos’ great classic came out of press, the priest, not the lay people, was at the centerpiece of Christian life, or at least that was what was perceived by a theologically-challenged society. Everything revolved around Monsieur le Cure. He was the local counselor. He, too, was the resident expert in a whole lot of issues, mundane or spiritual. He was healer of spirit – and many times, of body, too. He was wonder-worker. He was the local school headmaster. As prime sacramental minister, he “said Masses” for others in mumbled words that only he could presumably understand. He had a direct line to God, and he was at his best while presiding at a liturgy that only he knew best, only he was an expert of, and only he could do rightly according to prescribed lines written in red – the rubrics. The priest, the local religious brother, or sister, every one who “served God” in a most visible way, dressed as everyone was in a very distinctive and visible manner, was among the ranks of the collective wonder-workers equivalent to the OT wonder-workers like Moses, Aaron, the judges, and the prophets.

Life was simple. Society was neatly divided into a clearly defined hierarchy of leaders and followers, preachers and hearers, the ordained and the non-ordained, clergy and laity – and there was not much anyone could do to upset such a divinely ordained arrangement.

But alas, the aggiornamento brought about by Vatican II, which everybody bandied about as a weapon, but which in reality was poorly digested and insufficiently internalized, let alone, understood, shook this seemingly unshakeable set-up to its foundations. The results? … a rapidly eroding sense of identity of priests, and, with the emphasis on a lay-centered Church, a corresponding loss of identity of the religious brother, or sister.

This is what happened in the international scene. But on the local front, there are other factors that seem to have factored in. Take the two-tiered culture that social scientists now love to talk about when referring to what James Fallows (1987) derisively called the “damaged culture” that is the Philippines. I refer to the two contrasting cultures that our people belong to: the dominant culture, and the popular culture (cf. Ramirez). The dominant culture is represented by a tiny percentage of our society. These are the ones who, like us, are conversant in English, who managed to get a relatively higher education, and who rule the political and economic roost in the country. But underneath this dominant culture – effectively foreign educated – is that which is represented by the greater majority of our people – the popular culture, populated by the teeming poor, the hoi polloi, those who only speak regularly and who communicate in the vernacular, or in popular Taglish, who hold no real power in society, who are usually victims of political manipulation, who, ironically, make the warring two giant TV networks rich, who make Globe, Smart, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever go laughing their way to the banks, what with their shampoo sachets, phone cards, cell cards, and really expensive products pushed in “affordable” little pouches that give them temporary status and prestige without pinching their pockets too much.

Rising above the din of the two contrasting culture is the overriding culture of insecurity. This is the culture of insecurity that explains why religious life has lost its drawing power. When there is no security in Pre-Need plans, when there is no security in terms of government welfare, when there is no material security in banks and financial institutions, the only security left is a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, a mother or a father who is strong and gutsy enough to go abroad, to risk life and limb eking out a living, and possibly sending his or her children to school, rather than being together at home looking at an empty ceiling.

In such a complex situation, whilst priesthood as a vocation has not lost its luster and drawing power, religious life with its traditional symbols revolving around giving up, sacrificing, and renouncing, may have taken a beating. In a country where far too many people have already, or still are giving up so many dreams and possibilities for sheer lack of opportunity, in a society where far too many are really living daily in so many types and forms of deprivations, caught as we all are in this pervasive culture of insecurity, religious life and the way it is presented, may find it very hard to attract eager and willing new adherents.

My job in this opening reflection is to invite you to transcend what sounds like a sour and dour prognostication from a fellow religious and a brother priest. This, I would like to do in the next nine remaining reflections that are coming your way. This morning, I start with the basic foundation that is a conditio sine qua non of our ability to keep our sense of balance, and maintain a sense of trust and faith in the validity and symbolic robustness of the identity, role, and image of the priesthood in the context of religious life, and religious life in general.

I refer not so much to a theology. Whilst I firmly believe that what you see is what you get, what you comprehend is what you also love, I also believe that merely drumming up a high-falutin theology beyond what you already know, what you already cherish and hold on to, won’t clinch the issue. I suggest that what we need most is a spirituality, a spirituality of transcendence, a basic openness and a stance of trust for a God who calls us to growth, a God who beckons us to follow the course of nature that is ever on the march, ever on the rise, ever on the process of rising above one’s weaknesses, one’s sinfulness, one’s limitations.

Parker Palmer(2004) describes vividly what this raging culture in terms of the image of a blizzard. The blizzard, he says, can make us lose our bearings, our sense of direction, and can send us adrift in a sea of white snow, hopelessly lost in our own backyard. The blizzard refers to “economic injustice, ecological ruin, physical and spiritual violence, and their inevitable outcome, war.” (p. 1) He quotes Merton, who wrote: “there is in all things … a hidden wholeness,” although Palmer says that often it sounds more like wishful thinking. Apropos wholeness, Palmer writes: “wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness – mine, yours, ours – need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.”(p. 5) He quotes the poet Rumi, who said: “If you are here unfaithfully with us, you’re causing terrible damage.”

He counsels us to live whole lives. “The divided life, at bottom, is not a failure of ethics. It is a failure of human wholeness. Doctors who are dismissive of patients, politicians who lie to voters, executives who cheat retirees out of their savings, clerics who rob children of their well-being – these people, for the most part, do not lack ethical knowledge or convictions … But they have a well-rehearsed habit of holding their own knowledge and beliefs at great remove from the living of their lives.” (p. 7)

In a state of national insecurity that we Filipinos are in, it is so hard to live united lives with each other. It is a perpetual challenge to be whole and entire for the causes that we choose to espouse, for the congregation we decided to be part of. The poet Rumi, as quoted by Palmer, has a mouthful to say to us at this juncture: “If you are here unfaithfully with us, you are causing terrible damage.” (p. 7)

I suggest that what we need is to trust ourselves and our confreres, and our Church enough to be able to claim our right to grow beyond the sea of corruption, to become holy beyond our sinfulness, to celebrate beyond our discouragement, to grow beyond our weakness, to serve beyond the need for affirmation and recognition, to pray beyond our suffering, to be tender-hearted beyond our cynicism, to become men of communion beyond our social fragmentation, to become joyful beyond our loneliness, and claim our ability to walk on water like Jesus did once beyond our fears.

If you notice, I capitalize a whole lot on the key word “beyond.” This summarizes my call to transcendence. Where the world invites us to be covered over, overwhelmed, and inundated by the so-many pressing concerns and problems of our society in the country and in the world, I would like to invite you to get to a level that gives us proper perspective. They say distance lends enchantment to a view. I say more … To go up higher, to rise above the din of so many conflicting and contrasting values and needs that hem us in from all sides, is to gain perspective. And perspective does not just lend enchantment. It gives one a fresh way of looking at things. It offers one a vantage point from which to see the bigger picture. And where one sees the bigger picture, there is a greater possibility of seeing the whole, the totality – the holy as God sees it. For God can – and does – write even with crooked lines.

The world that we live in now is patently inimical to our values. Droves do not come banging at our doors asking to enter the fraternity of men who espouse values different from a culture of insecurity that our country and people are enmeshed in. Priesthood in religious life, and religious life plain and simple, do not anymore attract the fancy of readers that once avidly read Bernanos and his honest, simple, and disarming account of his life as a country priest. Praised be to God, he and countless others who lived before and after him found holiness and fulfillment in the priesthood, and so did countless others in religious life.

That same holiness is never subject to the changing circumstances of time and place, never mind, if that very set of circumstances is favorable or otherwise. God and his invitation do not become obsolete simply because people have decided they are obsolete.

And holiness, being God’s work first and foremost, grows even in the most unexpected places. Like the lily, it grows surrounded by the dirtiest and blackest of waters. Priesthood and religious life are similar to the lily. They are called to – and can indeed – grow while surrounded by a sea of corruption and sin. At bottom this is what our priesthood and religious life all boils down to. As Michael Heher (2004) puts it so nicely, “we priests are not hopeless, at least not yet. We have plenty of resources, human and graced. And we have all committed ourselves to live by faith, not by sight…”