We Worship in the Whispers: Why Prepare for Advent

In omnibus amare
In omnibus servire
In omnibus amare et servire Domino
In everything, love and serve the Lord

These words, sung by the Bukas Palad Music Ministry in their current album To Love and Serve (and which may also be found in the emblem of Ateneo de Iloilo), recalls in a sense the very manner of life by which we, as the people of God in this dispensation, should follow. Having been called through vocare, we are expected to be not only mindless followers of doctrines and manners of living that our beloved Mother Church has set for us, but also a life that has been well thought out and consulted with not only our spiritual guides, but also those we love and those around us. It is, in a sense, what differentiates the Christian religion amongst others: it is a religion based on immersing oneself in the world and speaking to instigate change, not mere meditation away from the world or a violent negation of the world (not that I disparage them, mind you).

It must be in this light that we see our duty as Catholics in a world that has, in Nietzsche's words, "killed God" by assuming His position, to disastrous effects. In modernity's understanding of life as mere supply which should be sustained but could be disposed of carelessly when the necessity arises, masking it with the honor and glory of the secular world but are as vain as the empires and temples of antiquity, we as members of the community of Christ should seek to engage those among us to rethink life as we know it and rediscover that which is age-old, but ever new.

For the past years, I for one have been struck by that jadedness that comes with our hyper-commercialize d, somewhat spiritually- devoid Christmases of years past. Despite the warming feelings of having friends be with me when attending simbang gabi, that feeling dissipates, ironically, when I come home to our ancestral home in the province. The ennui of the environment, the inanity of the situations by which I find myself in there, as well as the ill-behavior of some of our family members (even elders) somewhat intensified my antipathy to celebrating Christmas in the province, preferring to remain at home and live out Christmas Day like any vacation day, without fanfare and devoting it to my more pressing responsibilities like papers and the like, to the consternation of my parents. No matter how I try to psych up myself to behave like a good family member and join in the traditional family gatherings, I just felt out of place and view things as senseless.

I was only reminded of how wrong was this when I remember that homily of Fr. Vic de Jesus last December 16's Simbang Gabi mass, which once mentioned how our God is a God which takes his time, which chooses to speak one on one to those who are in need. Our God is a God who will not deny His time to those who need His Help, those who would be willing to stop and talk a while and get to know each other. (Yeah, I had to put it in.)

But probably that is exactly what we need. We've had enough of the parties, we've had enough of the wastage, we've had enough of all the fluff and the noise. It's about time we stop, talk to those who need someone to talk to, and then sort out the loose strings on our relations to each other. It's not my fault, likely, but it might be that my absence is why some of my cousins are suffering indifferences with each other. It might probably why my younger cousin is already a mother at the age of 17. All because I was not there to talk to. That over-quoted statement of Edmund Burke remains true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Fr. RB Hizon, Principal of the Ateneo de Manila High School, once mentioned in a homily last October 6 in the aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy:

Mother Teresa, I am told, once asked to address the American Senate as she and her sisters were looking for assistance to feed and clothe the big numbers of homeless in Washington , D.C. One high government official (who was not particularly impressed by her nor convinced that what she was doing was particularly good or helpful) wanted to embarrass Mother Theresa and asked her: “So sister, would you mind please telling us how it is you intend to feed the thousands who are hungry and homeless in DC?

Mother Theresa looked at him and said simply, “One by one.”

One by one. That is perhaps the best way we can respond right now…one by one…one student, one staff, one teacher, one neighbor…one community…one by one.

It's probably that reason why, despite all the academic work that has been thrown upon myshoulders by "challenging" professors (the term "inconsiderate" would be inappropriate I would presume), I shall still strive to attend to my duties to my relatives and friends. In that way, I would probably be able to deserve that name of Catholic that I carry. The best gift I would give to my family is that which is what I am best at: what I know and what I feel. After all, we also have for a God one who is not in the rumblings, but is in the silence or the faintest whisper:

And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him (1 Kings 19:11-13).

A merry Christmas to all.

Welcoming and Living Through the Season of Advent

As members of the Roman Catholic Church, we are invited to another year of service and living out the commandments of God through his son Jesus Christ. We define Advent, as per Newadvent.org, as the season which begins the Liturgical year. We quote:

During this time the faithful are admonished

• to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord's coming into the world as the incarnate God of love,
• thus to make their souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy Communion and through grace, and
• thereby to make themselves ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world.

In many ways, Advent, if we are going to take to heart the implications and the traditions which are embedded in Catholic faith, is not at all characterized by the highly-materialisti c, highly-consumptive and highly-promiscuous (I will justify the usage of such words) sashaying and bacchanalia of wastage and consumption that almost if not all our media advertisements and shopping malls have led us to believe. Advent, in a sense, is not supposed to be about a feast: it is about trembling, about anxiety, about an urgency to reform one's life in light of being a resident of the world's "valley of tears." The onslaught of Christmas is not about the reindeers, it is not about Saint Nicholas (who by the way was already stricken off the Calendar of Saints), it is not about the mistletoes where all our hormanal imbalances are let loose, it is ESPECIALLY NOT ABOUT GIFTS, but about looking at how destitute our lives, whether we be materially sufficient, overflowing, or lacking, without the grace of God moving us into this Earthly existence.

To observe Advent, in a sense, is not at all to be deluded into memories of childhood innocence nor an excuse to affluence. In fact, we are invited to put away our vanities, our desires, and try looking at what we have done to merit being part of the Holy Catholic Church. The I, as invited to participate in Advent, should not find relaxation in Advent from the cyclical and day-to-day activities. In fact, Advent should be an evaluative and formative period: looking back at how we fared as Christians, what we have accomplished doing, where we have failed or faltered, and what could be done to remedy them and/or to go further what we have accomplished.

It is not surprising, given our concupiscence, that we shall find in most of our actions failures to reach out and live out what Christ really means and asks us to be. But this should not discourage us. We should always strive to improve, labor, work and act (the last three words having a lot of differences as Hannah Arendt, a Jew, in her book The Human Condition has outlined; the first for sustenance, the second for utility, and the third for community-building) . It is a tiring and demanding experience, yes, but then again salvation from our sinful condition was never easy to begin with. St. Augustine was not alien to it and wholly embraced it, as in this paraphrase by Bukas Palad:

Kay tagal bago Kita minahal
Gandang sinauna at sariwa
Akong nilikha Mo, uuwi rin sa 'Yo
Ako'y papayapa lamang sa piling Mo

But I do not, at all, attempt to depress the living daylights out of everyone with what I am saying. We do acknowledge our Lord Jesus's pronouncement himself that our laboring should be done with a smile and joyful praise to God. But the danger of always of thinking about what is joyful in the Catholic life might blind us to the necessary pains and sacrifices it entails, as what most of us who are still very much stunted in the Faith are prone to be. In seeking the joys and pleasures of life, we have traded off the road less traveled but should be for salvation and righteousness. There must be balance, indeed. We must remember, as John 3:16 immortally reminds us that God sent his only begotten son to save us and grant us eternal life. Therefore, in the same way we shall prepare all our gifts to our beloveds, we should also prepare ourselves for the accounting of Christ with regards to our duties as our brothers' and sisters' keepers.

Why I Still Hope For a Youth Revolution

Frankly, I have not been into writing much lately. Most of you know that I have been so bogged down by ideas and responsibilities and much shit has hit so many fans recently. However, they say that the Muse of Writing does drop by sometimes to give you a pinch and turn out some ideas sifting in your brain for a long time.

The following writing after the video jump is my response to the video "Lost Generation" by AARP, which was assigned as a point of discussion for our Th 131 discussion under Ms. Maria Elisa Borja. This is actually raw me: all my idealism bottled up and tempered by discourse waiting to explode for such a long time. Sure, they are not what you would expect to hear of me if you read my writings for about a year now, but I recall them.

I've come across these inspirational "bad pessimists then reverse to be optimist" messages for quite a while. On a formalist note, they look good. But it does not end there.

Now, on to my idea on this. I don't know if anyone will respond to this, this is quite long.

There are many grave problems that face the world that, more often than not, we are prone to just take them in stride, following the life-saving trait of the chameleon. We follow the conditions by which we find ourselves in to make us more pleasable, more acceptable to our societal constructs and the values of the world we were born in. "When in Rome, do what the Romans do, right?" I have had many elders telling me these since I was a child: "matuto kang makibagay. You cannot bend everyone to your will, let them be." Not one of us got the message of Rizal about the story of the moth and the flame: "the flame, though dangerous, is worth dying for."

Yes, they have promoted "stable societies." And they also have fueled lynch mobs.

True, I would not deny it, the youth are becoming more and more, at face value, apathetic and lethargic. They have elected to be more on the safe side, the side of authority, the good life. And in more ways than one, they are proud of it. They think of it as their privilege to be beyond issues of political participation because they have no stake in it, because they are of those sectors which do not have any supposed NEED, I stress, NEED to speak out against injustices and the problems of people. And they even have the gall to speak of them being among the Silent Majority, those who are content with the world as it is as if creation is so beautiful it ended at the seventh day when God rested, not knowing that they forebears have done every mentionable blunder to make our "pale blue dot," as Carl Sagan put it, awash with blood, "all to conquer a speck of dust on the face of the universe."

I have not seen it better than last Monday, the anniversary of the Hacienda Luisita massacre. With a handful of course mates we decried the 15 years of injustice that have been denied to tenants who have been gunned down mercilessly while all they did was to ask for rights, a peaceful dialogue for the preservation of a relationship of tenant-landlord towards a more developmental one. We sought to be heard and were met by blank stares and ridiculing smiles. I have not seen a more MANHID bunch of youth than here, to be quite blunt about. Forget about all your momentous Ondoy relief support, forget about your JEEP, forget your NSTP. When push comes to shove, when issues of justice come into play, when ideals are put to the test, I wonder if Ateneans really possess that sapientia et eloquentia the Jesuits have promised will impart to us.

But are they really apathetic? Are they really too habituated to be benumbed to the endless cries of a society in chains?

I do not think so. I believe the past four decades has done so much to form and rattle a hundred generations to become aware, to become stakeholders in the future of a world that will end but should be made to last while it can. But in the ensuing new world we have opened, our activists have been consumed by anger and thirst for equity they have lost their reason in a momentum that will leave them dead in our hinterlands. The state that has lost its legitimacy in our community has resorted to systematic repression, first by confrontaion, then by denying education to a majority of our countrymen. And the result of this is a generation that has been disillusioned from birth, a generation habituated to playing the safe side. A generation of spoiled brats of history, as a 14 year old Florianne Jimenez would write in the Philippine Daily Inquirer's Youngblood about six years ago.

But I still refuse to believe the youth is apathetic and lethargic. They know what is happening. They know what should be done. They know justice. But they are afraid. And they are disempowered. As a colleague of mine succinctly described: DISEMPOWERMENT IS THE NEW APATHY.

We have been so habituated to happiness we do not know how to be sad, and we are afraid of loneliness. We have been so habituated to be seeking comfort we have refused to become exposed to hardship even though it is what we need to steer a world on the twilight years of its existence. And when we are faced by hardships, we deny. We escape. We drown ourselves in vice only to feel. And then we snuff our own lives.

I don't think this is what God wanted with us when he gave us free will.

He would have wanted us to be inflamed. He would have wanted us to see His Son in the millions that die in our midst. He would want us to be at every parapet and tell every living soul in our midst to stop a while and ask ourselves: "Have you looked at your neighbor today." He would have wanted us to engage our emotions, have splagchnizomai.

HE WANTS US TO BE MAD.

I remember this clip from the film Network. The newscaster Howard Beale, in a fit of rage, told every person with a television what they should feel in times of challenges:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm a HUMAN BEING, GODDAMNIT! My LIFE has VALUE!!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!

Sure, we need a clear thinking mind when we get down to the nitty-gritty of our problems, but I don't think anything can be solved without this seeming understanding of urgency. Hannah Arendt has stressed action with deliberation. I think we have been too reified by our desires for the good life. We think we are privileged, that like its namesake, this is Athens, the space of freedom where we can think of only ourselves without introspection and understanding of the necessities of those beyond us. But I think it is about time we have our katabasis, towards the Piraeus we just pass by and never contemplate on. It's about time we answer that faded cry of going down from the hill.

Why I Still Hope For a Youth Revolution by Hansley A. Juliano is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Philippines License.
Based on a work at kalisnglawin.blogspot.com.