Pope Benedict XVI 2009 Lenten message

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

At the beginning of Lent, which constitutes an itinerary of more intense spiritual training, the Liturgy sets before us again three penitential practices that are very dear to the biblical and Christian tradition – prayer, almsgiving, fasting – to prepare us to better celebrate Easter and thus experience God’s power that, as we shall hear in the Paschal Vigil, “dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy, casts out hatred, brings us peace and humbles earthly pride” (Paschal Præconium). For this year’s Lenten Message, I wish to focus my reflections especially on the value and meaning of fasting. Indeed, Lent recalls the forty days of our Lord’s fasting in the desert, which He undertook before entering into His public ministry. We read in the Gospel: “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry” (Mt 4,1-2). Like Moses, who fasted before receiving the tablets of the Law (cf. Ex 34,28) and Elijah’s fast before meeting the Lord on Mount Horeb (cf. 1 Kings 19,8), Jesus, too, through prayer and fasting, prepared Himself for the mission that lay before Him, marked at the start by a serious battle with the tempter.

We might wonder what value and meaning there is for us Christians in depriving ourselves of something that in itself is good and useful for our bodily sustenance. The Sacred Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition teach that fasting is a great help to avoid sin and all that leads to it. For this reason, the history of salvation is replete with occasions that invite fasting. In the very first pages of Sacred Scripture, the Lord commands man to abstain from partaking of the prohibited fruit: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gn 2, 16-17). Commenting on the divine injunction, Saint Basil observes that “fasting was ordained in Paradise,” and “the first commandment in this sense was delivered to Adam.” He thus concludes: “ ‘You shall not eat’ is a law of fasting and abstinence” (cf. Sermo de jejunio: PG 31, 163, 98). Since all of us are weighed down by sin and its consequences, fasting is proposed to us as an instrument to restore friendship with God. Such was the case with Ezra, who, in preparation for the journey from exile back to the Promised Land, calls upon the assembled people to fast so that “we might humble ourselves before our God” (8,21). The Almighty heard their prayer and assured them of His favor and protection. In the same way, the people of Nineveh, responding to Jonah’s call to repentance, proclaimed a fast, as a sign of their sincerity, saying: “Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?” (3,9). In this instance, too, God saw their works and spared them.

In the New Testament, Jesus brings to light the profound motive for fasting, condemning the attitude of the Pharisees, who scrupulously observed the prescriptions of the law, but whose hearts were far from God. True fasting, as the divine Master repeats elsewhere, is rather to do the will of the Heavenly Father, who “sees in secret, and will reward you” (Mt 6,18). He Himself sets the example, answering Satan, at the end of the forty days spent in the desert that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4,4). The true fast is thus directed to eating the “true food,” which is to do the Father’s will (cf. Jn 4,34). If, therefore, Adam disobeyed the Lord’s command “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,” the believer, through fasting, intends to submit himself humbly to God, trusting in His goodness and mercy.

The practice of fasting is very present in the first Christian community (cf. Acts 13,3; 14,22; 27,21; 2 Cor 6,5). The Church Fathers, too, speak of the force of fasting to bridle sin, especially the lusts of the “old Adam,” and open in the heart of the believer a path to God. Moreover, fasting is a practice that is encountered frequently and recommended by the saints of every age. Saint Peter Chrysologus writes: “Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself” (Sermo 43: PL 52, 320. 322).

In our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning, and has taken on, in a culture characterized by the search for material well-being, a therapeutic value for the care of one’s body. Fasting certainly bring benefits to physical well-being, but for believers, it is, in the first place, a “therapy” to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God. In the Apostolic Constitution Pænitemini of 1966, the Servant of God Paul VI saw the need to present fasting within the call of every Christian to “no longer live for himself, but for Him who loves him and gave himself for him … he will also have to live for his brethren“ (cf. Ch. I). Lent could be a propitious time to present again the norms contained in the Apostolic Constitution, so that the authentic and perennial significance of this long held practice may be rediscovered, and thus assist us to mortify our egoism and open our heart to love of God and neighbor, the first and greatest Commandment of the new Law and compendium of the entire Gospel (cf. Mt 22, 34-40).

The faithful practice of fasting contributes, moreover, to conferring unity to the whole person, body and soul, helping to avoid sin and grow in intimacy with the Lord. Saint Augustine, who knew all too well his own negative impulses, defining them as “twisted and tangled knottiness” (Confessions, II, 10.18), writes: “I will certainly impose privation, but it is so that he will forgive me, to be pleasing in his eyes, that I may enjoy his delightfulness” (Sermo 400, 3, 3: PL 40, 708). Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word. Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God.

At the same time, fasting is an aid to open our eyes to the situation in which so many of our brothers and sisters live. In his First Letter, Saint John admonishes: “If anyone has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, yet shuts up his bowels of compassion from him – how does the love of God abide in him?” (3,17). Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bends low and goes to the help of his suffering brother (cf. Encyclical Deus caritas est, 15). By freely embracing an act of self-denial for the sake of another, we make a statement that our brother or sister in need is not a stranger. It is precisely to keep alive this welcoming and attentive attitude towards our brothers and sisters that I encourage the parishes and every other community to intensify in Lent the custom of private and communal fasts, joined to the reading of the Word of God, prayer and almsgiving. From the beginning, this has been the hallmark of the Christian community, in which special collections were taken up (cf. 2 Cor 8-9; Rm 15, 25-27), the faithful being invited to give to the poor what had been set aside from their fast (Didascalia Ap., V, 20,18). This practice needs to be rediscovered and encouraged again in our day, especially during the liturgical season of Lent.

From what I have said thus far, it seems abundantly clear that fasting represents an important ascetical practice, a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves. Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person. Quite opportunely, an ancient hymn of the Lenten liturgy exhorts: “Utamur ergo parcius, / verbis cibis et potibus, / somno, iocis et arctius / perstemus in custodia – Let us use sparingly words, food and drink, sleep and amusements. May we be more alert in the custody of our senses.”

Dear brothers and sisters, it is good to see how the ultimate goal of fasting is to help each one of us, as the Servant of God Pope John Paul II wrote, to make the complete gift of self to God (cf. Encyclical Veritatis splendor, 21). May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor. I am thinking especially of a greater commitment to prayer, lectio divina, recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and active participation in the Eucharist, especially the Holy Sunday Mass. With this interior disposition, let us enter the penitential spirit of Lent. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Causa nostrae laetitiae, accompany and support us in the effort to free our heart from slavery to sin, making it evermore a “living tabernacle of God.” With these wishes, while assuring every believer and ecclesial community of my prayer for a fruitful Lenten journey, I cordially impart to all of you my Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 11 December 2008.

It Is Finished!

Dear blog visitors,

Finally I'm done with my "special project". It's actually a blog for Courage Philippines and I hope you can visit the site at this address:

http://www.couragephilippines.blogspot.com/

Please support this blog and add this to your links, although unfortunately I cannot add you because the blog is exclusively for topics dealing with same sex attraction. However, I can drop by your blog once in a while and I can enlist you here in this blog.

If you have a friend, a family member, or a relative who is struggling with homosexuality, please refer them to the above blog site. This site is entirely dedicated for people like me struggling with SSA. In the blog, they can find many resources and information to help them better understand their condition and struggles.

I'm looking forward for all your support. God bless everyone.

Solving the Problem of Poverty

There is no solution to poverty; and anyone who claims to have a solution is just running for a political office. The Catholic Church has a way of handling it but does not have a way of eliminating poverty.

Christ, Himself, said, "The poor you will always have with you." St. Augustine explains that God made the poor man poor, and the rich man rich (though all rich men think they made themselves rich). He made the poor man poor because that's the best way for him to go to heaven -- by bearing his poverty. He made the rich man rich because that' the only way he can go to heaven, by generously giving to the poor. This is clearly shown in the parable of Lazarus and Dives.

The poor man needs only his poverty to save his soul. The rich man needs the poor to be saved. Note that in the mentioned parable the poor did not need the rich to be saved; but the rich needed the poor to be saved. The reason Dives went to hell is because he did not take advantage of the presence of Lazarus and use his riches to save his soul. If poverty is abolished, the rich man has no way by which to save his soul; if he had other ways of being saved, God would not have made him rich.

Now, how should the rich and poor relate to one another?

The Catholic Church has no stand on slavery. During the age of slavery , the Church was silent. However, the Church, as in the case of St. Paul, commanded the slaves to obey and respect their masters while with the same breath telling the masters to love their slaves. With such teachings, soon, the masters gave their beloved and obedient slaves their freedom and the slaves remained faithful and loyal friends of their former masters. That was the end of slavery. It only returned when Europe turned Protestant. Slavery returned with a vengeance.

The Church never condemned riches while praising poverty. She taught the poor to be contented with what they have, never to steal, never to go on strike or attend demonstrations. While with the same breath telling the rich to give generously to the poor, not only once a year, but continuously. The result is, as St. Paul described, the poor were never in want and the rich did not have too much in excess. Now that is a Catholic Society. But who will tell the poor not to go on strike and tell the rich to give more generously? No one. And herein lies the problem. Outside the Christian solution, there is no other solution. It is said that the solutions of the Catholic Church were not tried and found wanting. They were never tried. As it is turning out, we are a Catholic nation with a Protestant, Calvinistic social and economic setup.

The Catholic ethic would never make a nation into an economic giant. Pope Leo XIII had delineated the Catholic option in his Panis Humanus, the just wage. This concept can never make any businessman or nation very rich because a big portion of the profits goes to the poor workers. While the poor are contented because their needs are met.

Nations in Europe, who adopted economic systems close to the Catholic system, are labeled backward, like Spain, Ireland and even Italy; while thoroughly Protestant economies, like Switzerland, the Scandinavians, Germany, Britain and the United States are very progressive. The state of the Philippines being the only Catholic nation in the Far East is similar. She is behind Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong. But Catholic nations are catching up in that they are becoming Protestant in their economic outlook wherein the poor is neglected that profits may grow and business capital increase. When Catholic businessmen become un-Catholic, the poor in turn would become un-Catholic by going on strike.

Our present economic system was pioneered by the anti-Catholic Huguenots in France. The Calvinists actively fostered it. The Catholic nations of Europe rejected it and remained "backward." Calvinism works on the concept of keeping the workers fed enough to work well but poor enough to need the job. It is a form of slavery of the poor by men who have power just because they have wealth. They control the poor by arbitrarily depriving them of their livelihood. They enslave the poor because of their power to deprive the poor of food from their table and a roof over their heads. In a true Catholic state, no citizen is at the mercy of a mere possessor of wealth.

This Calvinistic economic system, wherewith man is used for the accumulation of wealth, is antagonistic to the Catholic Spirit. The Church has nothing against one possessing some machineries or stores for a living; it even respects the rights of man to acquire property. We are taking notice to the way an economy is handled.

It is, therefore, un-Catholic to say to the poor: it is your right to fight the rich merely because they are rich and in order to make yourselves less poor...which is the foundation of all revolutions. You can only say: I have the right to prevent the conditions of my life from becoming inhuman...which is the rationale for strikes. But neither can happen in a Catholic situation. It can happen in all other situations.

The problem in most economies is its origin, the Protestant ethic. The solution can only come from a Catholic ethic. The problem is due to a denial of Catholicism; the solution is an affirmation of Catholicism.

CONCLUSION: When the Catholic Church solved the problem of slavery, the slaves remained slaves and the masters remained masters. But because of Christian charity, the slaves were not treated as slaves but as part of the family and the masters did not behave arrogantly. The same applies with the poor and the rich. In a Christian society, the poor remain poor but are never lacking in their needs; while the rich remain rich, but not so rich because of their charity towards the poor.

But with the disappearance of Catholic ethics even in Catholic countries, slavery is coming back like a tide. It is all over. There is absolutely no charity between rich and poor, in fact, in the whole of society. The world economy is moving towards the re-establishment of a servile state, a new age of paganism...wherein man presumes to solve the problems of life with a non-existent future economic program...a power God never gave mankind.

The Catholic solution repeated so often through history and lastly enunciated by Pope Leo XIII is the only appropriate response to the problem of poverty. Only in a truly Catholic state can man live freely with a measure of joy and free from penury. We must solve this by starting from the beginning. But maybe its too late.

(Source: caryana.org)

Wazzup, wazzup!?

Dear blog visitors,

Please bear with me if I haven't updated my blog for days now coz I'm busy on a "very special project" for my ministry. Right now, I am currently revising and renovating an old blog of Courage and I envision it to be a vehicle of hope and change for all people struggling out there with same-sex attraction like me. I want to thank God for inspiring me so much to do His work through this website. At this moment I cannot give you the URL of this blog until approved by our spiritual director, but rest assured I will post it here.

I never thought that my experience in setting up this personal blog of mine has paved the way for me to apply the little knowledge and skills I've learned in creating blogs! God is truly amazing and His ways indeed are way above ours. To all my regular blog visitors, I hope you can add this new website in the future although I cannot promise that I can add you because it is a group blog specifically dealing with issues about homosexuality. I would gladly appreciate though if you can link this future blog to your blog as your way of supporting our cause.

In case you are wondering what Courage is, you can visit this site for the mean time.

God bless you all.