Ponder Points: Seeing The Light of Faith

A Quick Look at Lumen Fidei

Members of the Roman Catholic Church have been impressed with their new pontiff Francis starting from day one, and so it would not be surprising if these same Catholics would also respect and revere him all the more as he gets his first encyclical published for all the faithful to read. Entitled Lumen Fidei, the encyclical is Francis' own effort to complete what has been started by his predecessor, the Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI,  as a draft. Eventually, he ended up with a relatively short work composed of four chapters which tackles faith itself, completing the trilogy of the theological virtues. In here, Francis has somehow presented a grand synthesis of the faith that the Church hangs on to and lives with, linking it with the two other theological virtues of hope and love, and bringing to light all the figures and ideas of the Church as part of the faith that it lives.

And regarding this synthetic approach, three things can be said:

1. In its content and form, the whole encyclical seems to be a return to the basics of the Church, touching on the very foundations of the life that it lives. A Catholic might not be able to find something new in the same way that a non-believer desiring to know about the nature of the Church's faith would, but I think both would be filled with wonder as to how the two popes dealt with faith, coming from various points of view within and outside the Church. This can be seen in the various references that both popes used, ranging from Nietzsche, to William of Saint-Thierry, to T. S. Eliot, in which they presented different ways of seeing the faith that Christianity regards as a foundation. All of these perhaps serves a single purpose that, for Benedict and Francis, is very clear: to provide a response to the view of faith in a secular world that has lost an appreciation of it, to let its light shine bright again.

2. Connected to the first, one could see how interesting it is that Benedict and Francis tied everything around faith, which stands alongside hope and love. They were able to talk about not only the crisis of faith in a secular world, but also other issues that have to be dealt with, including the question of other faiths and ecumenism and environmentalism among others. What seems to be emphasized at this point is that faith is not just a matter of private and subjectively held truths, but a commitment that is at the same time a perspective of the whole, which in turn leads the human being to act in a certain manner. But what sets the difference is that it does not come from the initiative of the human being, but is granted as a gift by that whom faith enables the human being to see.

3. I think it is apt for the encyclical to end with the model of faith, the Blessed Virgin herself, who, through his unconditional 'yes' to Christ and to the salvation of humanity, led a life of faith. It started with light and ended with light, the light we receive from the beacon reflecting Christ's life and love herself. And perhaps what Francis would want to point here is not just the fact that the Church as a whole is invited to walk the path of her Blessed Mother, but also and more importantly, to seek her motherly love in the times when we cannot see the light.

Indeed, Lumen Fidei has allowed us to receive once again the light of faith that penetrates our whole existence.

Ponder Points: The God of Surprises

Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.

Setting aside the apocalyptic tone, another way of reading the Gospel is the way the coming of the Lord will shatter our common perceptions and judgments about this world, as well as our "ordinary way" of living where everything is patterned, organized, and calculated according to the natural order that we know of. He is telling us that his very coming is that which does not figure into this world. The Almighty will come to save and not to judge, to serve and not to be served, and to live instead of distance himself among us. He is, after all, the King with no Crown, the Lord with no Land, the God who walks as a human being.And what do we do while we wait? We are called to prepare, to let ourselves be filled with the grace of His eventual coming, to be ready as to how He will make Himself lovingly present among us. Simply put, this preparation is characterized by a radical openness to the God who makes Himself known and revealed.

Let ourselves be surprised. After all, our God is a God of surprises.

Ponder Points: Overflowing

Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more
than all the other contributors to the treasury.
For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood.

The kind of giving that one is called to do goes outside of the economy of exchange, which considers giving as acceptable only if one can receive in exchange or what is given is in excess. Instead, one is asked to give wholly, without any reservation, without any expectation. Through the example of the old, poor widow, the Lord wants us to see that everything in one's life is not for one's own sake only, for everything is meant to be directed in the service of the Other, for one has been given not to keep it, but to let it radiate outside, beyond the self.

The Lord invites us here to enter the order of love, which goes over and outside the economy of exchange and equal worth. Because we have been given more than we ask for, we are called to give more than we can. And it is only when we empty ourselves of anything that we become ultimately ourselves.

To be, as given, is to give as well.

Ponder Points: Love As That Of Oneself

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

We sometimes treat the duty to love as a form of obligatory exchange, in which we love others on the basis of how much we love ourselves. And working within that frame, it seems that there is the tendency to impose a kind of limit or maximum on self-giving, making sure that they don't go outside or beyond the way we give ourselves. There is also the tendency for us to appropriate our own form of self-giving, that we expect others to act in the same way as we do, or to live in the way that we expect them to be.

But that, unfortunately, is not what the Lord meant when he said that we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves.

In saying this, the Lord points out two important things. First, he calls for a recognition of our own selves' being. He is called to recognize the mystery that we are, that our whole selves are full of meaning, that there is more to it than the particulars that we have used to define ourselves. In saying that we ought to love ourselves, the Lord calls us to view our whole selves with a new set of eyes, with a perspective that accounts for the richness of our being as created. We are called to see the "beyond" that is in us, that we cannot be pinned down to anything we can say about ourselves: our identities, our past, our problems, our crises.

And with this view of our own selves as a mystery is the very basis of our own self-giving. Because we cannot box ourselves, all the more are we called towards an openness and acceptance of another who is radically different, and in that difference, radically the same as we are. To love the other is precisely to recognize the mystery of the other, to know and respect that she is different from us. To love is to respond to the call to recognize and cherish the other that we cannot reduce to our own way of understanding or to our own selves, and always be unconditionally open to her as she is, in the same way that we are called to open to who we are. Simply put, the second thing that the Lord calls us is to approach the other simply and precisely as another, standing outside the self yet as rich and as meaningful as the self. Only in the recognition of such difference can one respond towards the call to love, a recognition which the Lord has first and foremost recognized and shown to humanity.

And that is why we are called to love with all our soul, mind, and heart, because it takes great effort to genuinely love. We have the tendency to love what is pleasing to us, to what conforms to our standards, our categories, and our notions of other people; however, in these circumstances, we somehow forgot what we are actually called to do, which is precisely to transcend our own self-defined notions and let the mystery and meaning of the other captivate us by being open and patient to the other which shows herself. This mystery is precisely what will draw us towards giving more than what is expected economically, more than we can actually bear. It is then that we put our lives at risk for the sake of the other, precisely because we have allowed ourselves to be captivated by her.

Thus, it is only in recognizing our own being that we become aware of our called to do regarding the being of others.

It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern.

-Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est 18

Ponder Points: Servire, Dare, Amare

"Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Authentic service breaks out of the economy of exchange. To serve is not in view of gaining power or opportunity to stand above everyone else. It is to wholly give yourself wholly and willfully to everyone whom your presence will be of great help, to the tasks and responsibilities you are called to accomplish, to the community who expects from you because they trust you and you know that you can do great things. To serve is to actually do justice to your own existence, to bring it to its supposed fullness, a fullness that goes inward and not outward. To serve, ultimately, is to provide opportunities to love, to actually be without counting the rewards, the benefits, and the cost. To actually be taken aback by those people whom you are called to live and die for.

Thus, we are called to disrupt the economy, to show that life is not all about doing in view of something received. To orient ourselves towards service, towards giving ourselves in a thoughtful manner, even in times we are perceived to be villains trying to push others to do better or to exist for a greater purpose, is to say that happiness lies not in the things that we expect to get, but in the things we expect ourselves to give.

Indeed, service makes us a gift for others, a gift that the One who Fully Served to everyone whom He calls to be gifts as well.

Ponder Points: Love and the Unknown "You"

"Is love the love of someone or the love of some thing?"

-Jacques Derrida on Love and Being

I love you, for you are you.

What brings people together are the qualities that they possess. What makes one fall in love with another is the fact that there are things that are attractive in the other, something that is so pleasing that one is drawn to approach and become intimate with the other. In whatever form and aspect of the other which we consider as attractive, the very moment that one encounters the other, carrying all that is attractive and pleasing, is an aesthetic encounter, which leaves us amazed, enamored, captivated. It makes us wonder: could this be the one that I am searching for my whole life, that which brings me to eternal bliss?

There is no precise answer as to why human beings develop these feelings of attraction to what is considered pleasing. Men and women of faith say that it is a form of awakening to the Divine, who is the Beautiful and the Good, while those who believe in the grand design of life as described by science insist that it is associated with the desire to propagate better offspring. But whatever one believes in, it cannot be denied that one is led to love the other because there is something in the other that one finds attractive, and without it, perhaps the bringing together of these two beings would not take place. They would remain to be enclosed in themselves, without anything that could draw them to each other.

But that which is pleasing, and the will to be pleased with the other, cannot be the bedrock of love, because if such, love betrays itself by being reductive. When love is taken as a love of the attractive, the appealing, then it ceases to be a love for the other, to be an utmost movement of the heart and of one's being. The love of the attractive serves as a prison that prevents a lover from appreciating the beloved, and in fact hinders the passage of the lover to the beloved. At the most, this kind of the love is the most self-conceited, self-gratifying and narcissistic form of love that fails to reach its fullness, its very actuality.

"somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence"

-e.e. cummings

Love, in its fullness, is an act of a radical movement of the heart, from one's own to that which is absolutely and irreducibly other. It does not rest on the attractive, the comfortable, the stable, and the systematic. This movement is always towards the other constantly, and does not rest with the satisfaction of the self. The lover is that who constantly searches for the beloved, knowing that even in the intimacy with the other, there is still this distance, this insurmountable gap, that keeps them apart, for the beloved is a complete other. It is the very yearning to see, to know, and to recognize the other, to attempt to bridge this gap, which cannot be really brought together.

And who is the beloved as other, whom love cannot ultimately grasp? The beloved as the other i cannot be reduced, a who that cannot be defined as a what which is a part of her. In her very being, the beloved is a revelation and a mystery, a revelation because something is being left in the open to be known, appreciated, and loved, but is also a mystery, for there is something more that is still to emerge, an aletheia that love patiently waits for and excites the lover. In the same way, love is both the greatest affirmation and the greatest refusal, an affirmation of the being of the beloved, but at the same time, a refusal to reduce her to what makes her attractive, likeable, or worth loving. Love does not capture and grasp the other; rather, love lets the beloved be.

That is why love, as a movement, displaces the lover's very own being in a radical way. Love shakes the very foundation of one's existence and gives him a different view not only of the beloved's existence, but his own as well. But in this displacement, it is up to the lover to do something about it: will he curl back to his own self, to his own comforts, or will he let himself be displaced and move into a new direction, to advance to the beloved, the absolute other, which beckons him to responsibility in the same way that she is beckoned by the lover's alterity?

This brings us to the most difficult question that lovers have to answer in every moment of their lives as they live in love (or at least they think they do): when things about the beloved change, and they fade away, and transforms the beloved in an unexpected way, in ways that we don't think are not worth it, do we still love the person? Do we still maintain the lively exchange of meanings, significations, of personhood, the play of all of these which constantly reminds us that not all things go the way we want them to be? And we are brought back to Derrida's question: do we love someone or something?

"Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift."

-Benedict XVI, "Deus Caritas Est"

If love is that which brings together what is irreducible, then the lover must keep on loving, constantly moving from the self to other, to attempt to constantly be attracted and amazed not by the things that the beloved possesses but by who one really is.

And perhaps that is the purpose of commitment, of the lover affirming to himself and to the beloved that he will always love her. It is in commitment that he is reminded that love is being always in motion, in constant attraction and amazement in the very being of the beloved. It is that which reminds the lover that when he approaches the beloved, he does so with wonder, seeing, appreciating, and loving her as if she had never been sought, appreciated, and loved in each and every moment.

That is why Paul speaks of love as being patient, kind, not envy, not boastful, not proud, not self-seeking, not easily angered, not keeping any record of wrongs, and does not delight in evil. These categories speak of love being fixated, attached in a certain image of the beloved. Rather, true love rejoices in the truth, the very truth of the being of the beloved. Her being that cannot be grasped, conceptualized, defined completely.

That is why to love you for you are "you," would be inadequate.

Rather, it is to love you because you are.

Always.

Ponder Points: On The New Archbishop of Manila

I have this bias for leaders who know their philosophy, especially those who received philosophical education during their formation years. And this is such because, as a student of philosophy myself until now, I know that philosophy still has an important place in everyday life, in all its domains. It something has to offer on the table where intentions, goals, and plans meet to come up with decision. It serves as a reminder that what is important in the ends is that the dignity and welfare of the human being is preserved and promoted, towards building a just society where

As an undergraduate, I have looked upon Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle as an ideal figure. He did really well as a philosophy student. As a seminarian, he graduated summa cum laude in a prestigious institution which, at that time, is technical and is far from its present existential phenomenological tradition. He went on to study theology and did even better in it, eventually becoming one of the rising theologians of our time.

But more than that, Archbishop Tagle has been hailed as a servant of and for the poor and the common. Apart from his duties as an educator of theology, he took what he learned to the streets and encountered their lives, problems, and concerns. And I believe that after his success in Cavite, it is time for him to lead in Manila, considered as the center of almost everything in the Philippines, and it is a different flock. It is here where different groups clash with each other, where their decisions affect not only the city itself but other places in the nation that are linked to it. It is here that different ways of thinking encounter each other.

And I believe, without any trace of doubt, that the new shepherd will do well. Cardinal Rosales has already laid the foundations in the exercise of Christian charity despite some limitations, and I believe that Archbishop Tagle can continue and even go beyond what has been started. It is indeed a good time for him to lead the faithful of this city, in a time where the Church faces the pressure of standing its own ground and opening itself up for dialogue regarding the concern of the nation and the government, especially on matters regarding reproductive health, in a time where political and economic turmoil presents a threat to the well-being of the Filipino citizen, in a time where poverty and unequal opportunities bring societies and communities down, with nothing to hold on, and in a time where people of the margins would want to be heard and spoken in behalf of. I believe that he is aware of these challenges, and he will do something about them, in the light of the Gospel of Love and Social Justice.

And perhaps, it is in here where we see how he will use his philosophy and theology, taking them not only in the streets, but also in dialogue, consensus-building, as well as in the rebuilding of the Church and the nation in general.

Congratulations and welcome, Archbishop Tagle!

Credits to the official site of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Manila for the pic.

Ponder Points: An Acting Faith, A Moving Faith (On Christian Social Action)

More than a months ago, I presented a paper in the Philosophical Association of the Philippines' midyear conference, with the theme "Religion and the Public Sphere." Using Paul Ricoeur's Political and Social Essays (which I believe one of the overlooked works since a lot of scholars today focus on Ricoeur's narrative identity and hermeneutics), I came up with a guide towards a Christian response to the condition of humanity today, and emphasized how one can participate in social action and decision-making starting from one's own belief. And perhaps in this time where believers are most needed to respond to the signs of the times, I have come up with a few things to think about, with regard to the importance of the intermingling of faith and social activism.

• Real Faith Is An Active Faith. A faith that does not work for change is as good as having no conviction at all. Faith, if it is to be genuine and related to hope and charity, should be directed to social reforms, the goal of which is the actualization of the Kingdom of God, wherein humanity is preserved and the society is in a state of peace and harmony. A real believer, therefore, is that which seeks to bring about social change, and is not merely a set of feel-good rituals and gatherings that brings one into a spiritual high. A true Christian is one who takes up the role of Christ as a social reformer, one who protects humanity and strives for everyone's unity.

• The Scriptures as Tradition and the Tradition of Scriptures. Paul Ricoeur highlighted the important role of the Scriptures, serving as the foundation for Christian social action. And perhaps it will be helpful for the Christian to go back to the very roots of Scriptures. However, he should interpret the Scripture as part of the Christian tradition, a piece of work that has been influenced and weaved by social contexts and events, as well as how it can help in social reform today, and thus the importance of an "analogizing transfer" from the word of the Scripture to a response in the society.

• Discontinuous Reflection. For Christian social action to be effective, the believer should learn to once in a while step back and reflect on his beliefs and actions. He should learn how to critically doubt and question his convictions in order to determine not only things need to be improved and revised, but also the things that need to be responded to in the best possible way. Perhaps this is what the Church, as an institution concerned with social justice and human rights should do every now and then, especially in times where She faces the danger (and the accusation) of becoming too dogmatic and not really concerned with the present condition that the world is facing and how it would achieve its goals.

• The Task of Unity. Ricoeur asserts that unity is achieved when everyone has been united under the drama of the Cross of Christ, in Him who taught about love, compassion, and mutual understanding. However, he still holds the importance of the differences that reside within every human being, community, group, or culture. And that should be the Church's goal as well, as a significant part of the realization of the Kingdom of God.

• The Role of Religion and the Secular Society. In the end, we can say that religion holds a significant place in the society, inasmuch as other voices hold a special place in the consensus building and dialogue. Religion presents an important viewpoint that should be considered in dialogue, as long as it asserts itself in a reasonable and rational way. Thus, the secular society should learn to open itself up to the voice and reason of religion and not approach it in a biased, negative manner. Likewise, religion should also listen to the voice and reason of the secular society, because, as those standing outside of it, they also have something valuable and important to say, provided that it be expressed in a rational and reasonable manner.

I hope that the following things raised here and in my paper would be helpful for those who are engaging in a meaningful dialogue with religion and believers, as well as in their endeavors to become active members of the society who also aspire for a better society.

Credits to Passionistjpc.org for the image.