Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Second Life

As Christians, we believe that there is life beyond death. We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting which is in our Apostle’s Creed. The scripture tells us that ‘death is the separation of the body and soul’ [1]  where the soul, unlike the body that is corrupted, remains immortal.[2]

A decade ago, before my religious formation, I usually reflected on man’s history (my history) without understanding our divine origin. Somehow, I even live my life without Jesus Christ in the picture. My secularized understanding has tempted me to settle for less even to the point of accepting my vicious cycle in life as my final end, “eto na ako… kasi tao lang…” Like others, I searched for life’s meaning with unending joy but series of broken relationships in terms of love and the idea of death have frustrated me to change… “bakit pa kailangang mag-effort, e masasayang lang din naman.” I became so ‘stoic’… so cold as a person and eventually ‘fatalistic…’ because life for me became meaningless then.

Perhaps, within those years, being a Scouter was the only thin line that connected me with God. I do not usually pray but I enjoyed the company of my fellow Scouts every time we do our yearly mission of distributing medicines from our friends to the aborigines called Dumagat dwelling in the deep forest covered mountainous range of Sierra Madre. Delivering these boxes of goods and medicines was a tedious task—with back breaking heavy loads to carry on our shoulders and a very long journey that would took days just to reach them by hiking. I still remember, there was a time when the heavy rain made our trekking going back even harder. When we needed to cross a forge-- me, being the last one to cut through… I was suddenly engulfed by a sudden rushing of floodwater. The current was so strong that I was dragged and trapped into a whirlpool… it was like a washing machine experience… so cold, so dark and nowhere to climb on. I don’t hear anymore their voice; in no time, I felt that I was out of breath. The whirling water kept on devouring me into its bosom.  Being fatalistic, I told myself “this is it!” I thought I was strong but deep within me was a child who was too afraid, “saan kaya pupulutin ang kaluluwa kong ‘happy go lucky’ at kanino ako, after this, pupunta?” It’s getting darker and colder. I knew, death for me was so near and too inevitable. I just closed my eyes and all of my good memories flashed inside my mind. I needed to gasp for air… I told God, “not now... I’m not yet prepared…" . 'Be Prepared' is our Scouting motto... but up to that time, I was not. When I opened my eyes there was a ray of light… beaming over a rock formation.  I tried to kick over that and escaped that abyss. The last thing I remembered was, they were already dragging me ashore. Exhausted, gasping for air as I was vomiting water… I thanked God… they revived me.

From then on, I started to ask God why did He let me to live. Was there any purpose... even for a wretched person like me? Was there any reason for everything that is happening: to death, to suffering, to the chaos that were all around me? If there is, how should I see them, how should I look now into my future?  

For many days, I was in deep silence. My only question was “WHY?” The silence has led me into a moment of solitude. I just let God to talk to me… and I realized that I was starting to look for my God, for Jesus Christ. I was longing for a true God who would suffice all of my hunger and thirst. I began to look unto myself… I realized that I contented myself with the crumbs through the things that I enjoyed; and have forsaken the greatest person of all who is God... the pearl of great price.

Lumen Fidei captured perfectly what I have experienced:

…[U]ltimately the future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown. As a result, humanity renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself, in order to be content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment yet prove incapable of showing the way. Yet in the absence of light everything becomes confused; it is impossible to tell good from evil, or the road to our destination from other roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.”[3]

My personal and spiritual change started to took shape when I started to go back again in the Church. Christopher West was right, “the path to real happiness is to orient my desire according to its design that I may reach my destiny.”


(...to be continued)



[1] Cf. 1 John 4:2-3.
[2] On the statement that the ‘soul is immortal’- Cf. St. Augustine, “The City of God (Book XIII, Chapter 2),”in Great Books of the Western World: Book 18: Augustine, edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britanica, 1987), p. 360.
[3] Lumen Fidei, no. 3.

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