Remembering Saint John Paul II

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP

On October 22, 2016 the Church celebrates the feast of Saint John Paul II: October 22 (1978) was the day of his papal inauguration. The Polish Pope was proclaimed a Saint by Pope Francis on April 27, 2014. Earlier, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed him Blessed on May I, 2011. Karol Josef Wojtyla – the future Pope – was born in Wadowice, Poland, on May 18, 1920.

I had the great luck of meeting John Paul II personally a few times. The first time I met him was on September 5, 1980 in Castel Gandolfo. Together with twenty eight priests and eight bishops, I had the great luck of concelebrating at the Eucharist presided over by the Holy Father. What impressed me most then was the contemplative attitude of the Holy Father through the Mass:  totally absorbed, following carefully the rhythm of the Mass, pronouncing each word (in Latin) slowly and distinctly, making strategic pauses of silence.

Throughout his 26 years as successor of Saint Peter the (he is the 264^th successor), John Paul II showed the primary place of prayer in his life. Some authors today consider him a modern mystic. It is said that he made decisions on his knees. Monsignor Slawomir, the postulator of the Pontiff’s cause of beatification, was asked: What aspect of the Pope’s life particularly struck you? He answered: He was certainly a mystic, “a mystic in the sense that he  was a man who lived in the presence of God, who let himself be guided by the Holy Spirit, who was in constant dialogue with the Lord, who built his whole life around the question (asked by Jesus to Peter), ‘Do you love me’.” A close collaborator of the Pope said on April 30, 2011: “To see him pray was to see a person who was in conversation with God.”

I remember with special fondness the third time I met him personally. (The second time I met him took place during his first visit to the University of Santo Tomas, Manila in February 1981; in this visit, he beatified Lorenzo Ruiz and Companions Martyrs – now saints – at the Luneta Park, Manila) It was during the World Youth Day in Manila (January 1995), where the Holy Father had the greatest audience ever – until then: more than four million people attended the Pope’s final Mass. (One Hong Kong newspaper wrote that on that occasion the multitude became a megatude). Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in the University of Santo Tomas with the youth delegates – 245 from all over the world – to the 5^th International Youth Forum. This time after the Mass he greeted one by one the students and some others who had the great luck of attending the Mass. While the Holy Father greeted the youth he embraced them – and also some others not so young including me. While he embraced me I could hardly tell him, “Holy Father I have read your lovely book Crossing the Threshold of Hope.” He looked at me intensely and kindly, and told me “Bene, bene.” I was deeply touched! I remember the words of TIME when the magazine named the Pope Man of the Year (1994): “He generates electricity unmatched by anyone else in the world.”

The last time I met the John Paul II was on February 21, 2004 at the Sala Clementina in the Vatican in the company of about a hundred and fifty people, most of us members of the Pontifical Academy for Life. By that time, he was already sickly, with his Parkinson developing slowly. He could not walk anymore and it was hard to understand his speech. But even then, and against the advice of some of his assistants, Pope John Paul II greeted us – about 130 people – one by one: we knelt before him and kissed his ring; he blessed us and smiled.  Many writers on John Paul II underline this characteristic of the late Pope: he was concerned with the person, with each person, each one creature and image of God. This is one of the reason he touched the hearts of so many people throughout the world: the young, the children, the old, men and women from other religions and cultures…

In his first Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, Redeemer of the World (1979), issued a few months after his election, Pope John Paul II explains that man is the road of the Church and Christ is the road of man: Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Son Mary, the primordial foundation of Christian morality, the Way, the Truth and the Life. John Paul II was missionary of the world: he visited about 130 countries during his papacy. He was from Poland but, indeed, the world was his parish. The well-known Catholic convert André Fossard once said: “This is not a Pope from Poland, but a Pope from Galilee.”

St. John Paul II knew Jesus deeply, loved him intimately and followed him unconditionally up to the end. He was a great devotee of Mary the Mother of Jesus and her faithful servant: totus tuus, all yours! The Polish Pope believed that it was mainly the Virgin Mary the one who saved him after being shot and gravely wounded in St. Peter’s Square precisely on May 13 (1991), the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.  In his lovely Apostolic Letter on “the most holy Rosary,” Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002), Pope John Paul II writes that Mary is the best teacher on Jesus. In union with Mary, we “learn” Jesus: we learn “to read Christ, to uncover his secrets and to understand his message.”

October of every year – the month of the Holy Rosary – will remind us of St. John Paul II’s holy life, of his total dedication to Christ, Mary and the Church, of his fundamental writings and teachings. In particular one recalls his teachings on human life found especially in his Encyclical (he wrote fourteen encyclicals) Evangelium Vitae,” or The Gospel of Life (1995), the first encyclical on bioethics, where he repeats one of his constant mottos: “Human life must be defended from the moment of conception to natural death.”  I also treasure his radical and creative social teachings found in his three social encyclicals and many addresses and exhortations. It is worth noting here that John Paul II, a remarkable worker since he was a youth, was beatified on May 1, the day of labor. He wrote a pace-setting social encyclical on human work, Laborem Exercens (1981): “Capital is for labor; work is for man.”  From the social teachings, I consider this point most innovative: heretic is not only the believer who does not accept or distorts an article of the Creed, but also one who does not share something with the poor and weak of the world. (Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, 2001)

I love to underline his substantial teachings on freedom and truth (in his basic encyclical Veritatis Splendor, The Splendor of Truth, 1994): “Freedom is not freedom from the truth but freedom in the truth”; on justice and love: “love is the soul of justice”; on peace and democracy (as it is well known, the late Pope contributed immensely to the collapse of European communism in 1989). Just before the war of Iraq he shouted from the famous papal balcony in the Vatican: “No to war. War doesn’t resolve anything. I have seen war. I know what war is.” The Pope words on justice and forgiveness (after the incredible terrorist attacks against the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001) ring frequently in my ears: “No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness.”

As a consecrated person I appreciate John Paul II Vita Consecrata (1996), his important Apostolic Exhortation in which he invites religious men and women to be holy, that is prayerful and compassionate: to go up to the mountain of prayer and to come down to the market-place of the world and witness their passion for God and compassion for humanity.

I remember that once, somewhere in 2004, I discussed with a Dominican brother from the States the possibility that John Paul II might resign as Pope. Later on I read somewhere that someone asked John Paul II: “Will Your Holiness resign.” The Pope answered him marvelously: “I cannot, because Jesus did not go down from the cross.” On February 21-23, 2005, the members of the Pontifical Academy for Life could not have an audience with the Holy Father. By then John Paul II was gravely ill. He would die one month and a half later, on April 2, 2005, after giving his most moving and last speech to the world:  his patient, compassionate, dignified, exemplary way of dying and facing death. Before dying, when thousands of young people were camping near the Vatican and praying for the Pope, he said to his assistants: “Tell the young, I love them.” We are told that his last words – almost inaudible – were: “Let me go… Let me go to the house of the Father.” I remember the Pope had said at the beginning of his pontificate, then with his booming voice: “Our life is a pilgrimage to the house of the Father.” He is in the house of the Father! I am sure he remembers us singing in Manila, in New York, in London, in Rome: “John Paul II, we love you!” Now we petition him: Saint John Paul II, pray for us!

(Published by O Clarim, October 21, 2016)

The powerful sound of SILENCE

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP

When I was a student of philosophy, we had a holy and wise Master of Students, Fr. Luis López de las Heras. He gave us a lecture every Saturday morning. One lecture that lingered in my mind for life was his talk on silence, a silence he practiced in his humble Dominican life. Later on, I was moved by one of my favorite songs, “The Sound of Silence” of Simon and Garfunkel: the singers, the song, and the lyrics! It is enchanting. I love its title!

As human beings, as Christians in particular, we need to hear and listen to the sound of silence through our life. We are invaded, bombarded today by too many words, too many noises… Silence is a great value and virtue in all religions and faiths. The Church “must discover the power of silence” (Cardinal Luis Antonio de Tagle).

Silence is the other word. After the word, preacher Lacordaire says, silence is the second power in the world. Word and silence are two ways of speaking; two aspects of communication; the two sides of talking. Both words complement each other. “We all need the use of words, but to use them with power we all need to be silent” (John Main).

 I invite you to listen with me to words on the awesome sound of silence – not the sound of bad silence, but of good, virtuous silence.  There is, indeed, bad silence, like the silence that does not utter words when it should speak: “We believe, and so we speak” (II Cor 4:13). The Lord says to Paul: “Do not be afraid, go on speaking and do not be silenced, for I am with you” (Acts 18:9-10). The apostles Peter and John were asked by the Jewish authorities to keep quiet about the Crucified and Risen Lord. Their answer: We have to obey God, rather than men; “we cannot stop proclaiming what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20.

Leo XIII says that at times we ought not to be silent, we have to speak, as when he spoke powerfully of the poverty of workers at the end of the 19^th century: “By keeping silence we would seem to neglect the duty incumbent on us” (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum). The Christian is asked by his humanity and faith to speak on behalf of those who have no voice: children, women, the poor, the elderly, the migrants, and the marginalized.

Forced silence is also bad, such as the silence imposed by dictators and the like on others, on promoters of human dignity and rights, on peaceful followers of religions and faiths. Money, too, may force some of us to keep silent when we ought not: “When money talks, the truth is silent” (Chinese Proverb). Nowadays, moreover, it is not hard to find people who do not talk because speaking is not “politically correct.”

Speaking of silence without adjectives usually means good, positive, healthy and holy silence. We need silence, good silence, not for the sake of silence, but as a way to know ourselves more deeply, to listen to God and his creation, to Jesus, God’s Son and our Savior, to our own hearts, and to all women, men – all creatures and children of God.

Silence is needed to hear the wordless voice of our heart. “Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights” (Khalil Gibran). Silence is needed to listen to God, “to listen to the Voice: “I will keep silent and let God speak within” (Meister Eckhart).  “Speak, Lord, your servant listens.” Like to the prophet Elijah, God speaks to us not in the hurricane, not in the earthquake, not in the fire; God talks to us in a light murmuring sound, in a “still small voice” (Cf. I Kgs 19:11-13). To hear God’s silent voice, our senses, our hearts must be silent: “I hold myself in quiet and silence, like a little child in his mother’s arms, like a little child, so I keep myself” (Ps 131:2).

Silence is needed to listen to God’s creation – to the stars, the ocean, the wind, the flowers, the birds. In his Encyclical letter Laudato Si (2015, Pope Francis invites us to contemplate God’s creation and to listen to its silent voice. He quotes St. John Paul II: “For the believer, to contemplate creation is to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice” (Laudate Si’ 85).

Silence is also needed to listen to others. Job tells his talking friends: “If you would only keep silent that would be your wisdom” (Jb 13:5). Pope Francis speaks of the importance of learning the art of listening, “which is more than simply hearing” and implies “an openness of heart”; he recommends “respectful and compassionate listening” (Evangelii Gaudium 171). Unfortunately, some if not many of us do not listen to others but just wait for them to finish their talking and continue with ours: “People talking without speaking; people hearing without listening…” (The Sound of Silence). We keep silent when our word will be hurtful to the other, or boastful or unkind. Then, as my father used to say, “La mejor palabra es la que está por decir” (the best word is the one not yet spoken).  The great mystic St. John of the Cross advises silence when facing the lives of others: “Great wisdom is to keep silent and not to look to sayings, deeds or the lives of others” (Sayings of Light and Love).

We need silence to speak the saving word. In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini (2010), Pope Benedict XVI recommends that the People of God be educated on the value of silence, which is needed to speak of and listen to the word. The word, in fact, “can only be spoken and heard in silence, outward and inward”; “the great patristic tradition teaches us that the mysteries of Christ all involve silence” (VD 66). The liturgy speaks of “sacred silence,” which is recommended in the Eucharist, and in the recitation of the Psalms. Pauses of silence are also recommended when praying the Rosary, particularly at the beginning of each mystery.

The saints invite us to cultivate good silence in our lives. They practice the silence and silent prayer of Jesus. Like Saint Joseph, who feeling the hand of God accepts silently the motherhood of Mary and the mysterious life of Jesus (cf. Mt 1:24). He does not say a word. He just talks by the good deeds of his daily life attuned to God’s will. Like the Virgin Mary, the greatest saint, who kept all the things happening around Jesus in her heart (Lk 2:51): in her, “all was space for the Beloved and silence to listen” (Bruno Forte).

We are asked to be silent before God, who is usually silent when we talk to him. On the Cross, Jesus faced the silence of God, too. “Why have you abandoned me?” Jesus cried out from the cross. At times, we ask God: Why have you abandoned me? God’s answer was and is silence. The silence of God, yesterday and today in the midst of darkness, of desolation, of injustices and war is a mysterious silence unveiled in his love: “God so loved the world that He gave it his only begotten Son.” Why is the good Lord silent when we suffer? “God does not want suffering; He is present in a silent way” (E. Schillebeeckx). Why is God silent? St. John of the Cross says that God is silent because in his Son Jesus He gave us everything, and in the Word He has said everything (todo): “In giving us his Son, his only Word, God spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word – and He has no more to say.”

On Good Friday, Jesus is silent: his serene silence to the many questions of Pilate and Herod; his calm silence to the cry of the people: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” His humble silence while he is horribly scourged at the pillar. Jesus is patiently silent through his whole passion; at times, he pronounces a few words which dramatize his talking silence. Jesus, the Suffering Servant of Yahweh “never opened his mouth, like a lamb led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep dumb before the shearers, he never opened his mouth” (Is 53:7; cf. Acts 8:32). Yes, “like a silent lamb, but in reality instead of a lamb we have a man, and in the man, Christ that contains everything” (Meliton de Sardis).

Word and silence are two ways of speaking, like the two eyes of the face of life, or the two wings of a bird. Word and silence are ordered to a third word: love, which is silently witnessed in good deeds. “A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak” (Benedict XVI).

The strongest voice of silence is silent love: “The language God hears best is silent love” (St. John of the Cross). Silent love is a most powerful sound: the sound of silence!

(Published in O Clarim, Macau Catholic Weekly: September 9, 2016)

Mary, Mother of Mercy

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP

       The mother, our mother, is the icon and model of mercy and tenderness. Saint John Vianney, a lovely soul, says that the Blessed Virgin is better than the best of mothers. Hence, Mary is the Mother of Mercy, Mater Misericordiae.

       Mary is the Mother of God, of Jesus who is the Son of God and her Son: Mary’s “entire life was patterned after the presence of mercy made flesh” (Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus). Mary, Our Lady, is also our Mother, the Mother of Mercy.

       St John the Evangelist speaks of Mary twice in his Gospel: Mary at Cana, and Mary at Calvary, and in both cases, the Evangelist presents Mary as the Mother of Jesus (Jn 2:1-3; Jn 19:25-27; cf. Lk 1:31-32). In a deep sense, the expression Mother of God tells us everything about Mary. The motherhood of Mary is the source of all her privileges and graces: she was conceived without original sin (she is the Immaculate Conception); she was taken up to heaven in body and soul (the Assumption of Mary); she is the Virgin Mary and the Mother of God.

       Mary, the Mother of God! This is how she is called through the first centuries of Christianity. She was dogmatically declared Mother of God in the Council of Ephesus in 431: “Theotokos,” that is, God’s Mother. Vatican II says that “Mary is the Mother of God and the Mother of the Redeemer, and, therefore, she surpasses all other creatures in heaven and on earth.” In the Church, “she is the highest after Christ and yet very close to us” (LG, 54), and she is the Mother of the Church. Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God: “She conceived, brought forth and nourished Christ; Presented Him to the Father in the temple, and was united with Him in suffering as He died on the cross” (Vatican II, LG, 61).How can Mary, a creature, be the Mother of God, the Creator? Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God, not only of the body of Jesus, but of Him who took flesh in her and who existed before her.

       Mary, the Mother of the Son of God, is our Mother. Jesus from the cross looked at Mary and John and pronounced the third word from the cross. Jesus says to Mary: “Woman, behold your son,” and to John: “Behold your Mother” (Jn 19:25-27). Jesus then and there gives to John, and to each one of us, what was dearest to him – his Mother Mary. From now on, Mary is our Mother too

       What kind of motherhood is the Motherhood of Mary? Mary does not replace our own mother. She is our Mother in a different dimension: Mother in the Spirit, Mother of those reborn in the grace of the Spirit, Mother of the Redeemer and of the redeemed. In the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, Mary is our spiritual Mother under Christ, who is our Head, “because she cooperated with her charity in the birth of the faithful of the Church that are members of the head” (St. Augustine). Mary’s maternity is a maternity of grace – she is the “full of grace.”

       The life of Mary is “a rule of life for all” (St. Ambrose). As the disciple of disciples, Mary is “a model of the virtues” (LG 65). She is an example, in particular, of the following virtues: of faith (“Blessed are you because you have believed”- Lk 1:19); of prayer  (she treasured everything that happened around Jesus in her heart and ponder upon it – Lk 1:19), of obedience (“Let it be, Fiat” – Lk 1:37-38); of missionary zeal (she visited Elizabeth and proclaimed Jesus to her – Lk 1:39-45), of solidarity with the poor neighbor (Lk 1:46-55), and her compassion for all the needy, that is her mercy (Lk 1:45-55).

       Mary is called the Mother of Mercy, our Lady of Mercy, and Mother of Divine Mercy. Mary received mercy from God in “an exceptional way” and in “an equally exceptional way” ‘merits’ God’s mercy through her earthly life by sharing in Jesus’s messianic mission and merciful love. Mary is the Mother of Mercy and, above all, the Mother of the Crucified and Risen Lord. Mary shared like no one else in the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross: “Her sacrifice is a unique sharing in revealing God’s mercy… No one has experienced, to the same degree as the Mother of the Crucified One, the mystery of the Cross, the overwhelming encounter of divine transcendent justice with love: that ‘kiss’ given by mercy to justice” (John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia). “The Mother of the Crucified and Risen One has entered the sanctuary of divine mercy because she participated intimately in the mystery of his love” (Pope Francis, MV 23).

       As the disciple of disciples, Our Lady is the most merciful disciple of Christ. Romanus the Melodist (6^th century) writes: “Fittingly, the Merciful One has a merciful Mother.” As the closest to Jesus, Mary has, according to St. John Paul II, “the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy” (DM, 9).

       As true followers of Christ, the Merciful One, all the saints practiced merciful love after Mary, the Mother of Mercy.  Like the saints, the followers of Christ are asked to imitate Mary’s mercy: Mary is icon and model of mercy. In her Magnificat, Our Lady sings a great song of praise, gratitude and merciful love – a merciful love that “extends from age to age…” (Lk 1:50). God’s infinite merciful love extends to our age, a love which we are asked to respond with merciful love.

       We Christians believe that Mary is the Mother of God. Because she is the Mother of Jesus, Our Savior and Redeemer, and because she is our Mother, we are asked to have a special devotion to her – a devotion that is above our devotions to the saints. Our Marian devotion includes imitating Mary’s mercy.

       Special devotion to Mary means basically filial love to Mary as the Mother of Jesus and Our Mother. As our Mother, Mary wants us, above all, to follow Jesus. Our filial devotion to Mary is ordered to our devotion to Christ. Christ is the end of all devotions, including the devotion to Mary. Saint Bernard, a great devotee of Mary, said: “The reason for our love of Mary is the Lord Jesus; the measure of our love for her is to love her without measure.”

       As Mother of Mercy, Mary prays for us and we approach her to ask her to intercede for us. The Christian prays confidently: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners…” At Cana, Mary shows her role for us as merciful intercessor: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3). We often sing to her: “Salve Regina Mater Misericordiae.” The Marian devotion of the people to merciful Mary is expressed in the varied avocations naming the Virgin Mary, in particular Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Sorrowful Mother and Mother of the Poor (cf. W. Kasper, Mercy).

       At the Immaculate Conception Shrine in Washington D.C., there is an altar presided over by a beautiful statue of Mother and Child, with the inscription: “More Mother than Queen.” I love it! Mary Queen of all creation, of course. Above all, Mary Mother of Jesus, the Son of God, and the Mother of the Church and our Mother, the Mother of Mercy.

       Mother Mary, Mother of Mercy, pray for us!

       With Saint Thomas Aquinas we pray:

O most blessed and sweet Virgin Mary, Mother of God… I entrust to your merciful heart…my entire life… Obtain for me as well, O most Sweet Lady, true charity with which from the depths of my heart I may love your most Holy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and, after him, love you above all other things…and my neighbor, in God and for God

(In Benedict XVI, Great Christian Thinkers from Early Church through the Middle Ages).

(Originally published in O Clarim, Macau Catholic Weekly: July 8, 2016)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Pilgrim’s Summer Reflection: Does Every Moment Of Our Life Matter?

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP.

       Some time ago, a well-known Japanese Dominican, Fr. Shigeto Oshida, stayed at the University of Santo Tomas (UST), Manila for a few days. He had to give a series of lectures at the University’s Faculty of Theology. We knew each other much earlier and had become good friends. Before leaving UST, Fr. Oshida told me: “Fausto, where are you going? You seem to be always on the move, going somewhere! Enjoy the moment, smell the flowers …” I realized then that I was not giving sufficient importance to this moment because I was always looking to the next thing to do – to the next moment!

      A renewed understanding of hope – human as well as Christian – has helped me through the years to become increasingly aware of the unique significance of the moment, of every moment, of this very moment.

       When she was very young, St. Therese of the Child Jesus was worried about the future. After she became a Carmelite nun, she focused her life on the present moment: “I just keep concentrating on the present moment. I forget the past, and preserve myself from worries about the future… When one thinks of the past and the future one loses courage and falls into despair… Let us turn our single moment of suffering to profit; let us see each instant as if there were no other. An instant is a treasure.”

       The Zen Master says: “The past is unreal; the future is unreal too; only the moment is real. Life is a series of moments, either lived or lost.”  Indeed, life is a series of moments either lived or lost! True freedom entails doing “what the present moment demands, what we owe to ourselves and to our neighbors” (Anselm Grun).

       As human beings, as believers we are asked to be faithful to the moment, to this moment, which is the only thing in our hands. To be faithful to the moment implies to live the moment in God’s presence. The “now” really matters. God is the eternal now, and is present in every moment. God says to Abraham: “Live in my presence, be perfect” (Gen 17:1). When the Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, she was deeply surprised by the visit of the most blessed of all women and said: “The moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy” (Lk 1:43-44). On that moment, the two women felt God’s presence.

       The moment for believers is the moment in God’s presence: “What essentially matters is the presence of God in every moment of our life once it becomes oriented towards God, just as a sunflower rotates in the direction of the sun throughout the day” (Y. Congar). The holy man and mystic Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection says that “Every moment permeated by God’s presence is a moment of grace and mercy.” Indeed, the path of life to happiness is “to live only for God and the duties of the present moment” (Jean-Pierre de Caussade).

       Life is a series of moments that form a chain that leads forward. Every moment matters. Some moments possess a special significance, such as, the moment of birth, the moment of commitment – to marriage, to a religious life, to a priestly ordination, to a profession – and the last moment.

       There is an essential use of the word moment when referring to life’s beginning and its end. The joy for a new life! Christians believe in the sacredness of human life and are guided by an ethical principle grounded on Sacred Scriptures and in Tradition: “Human life must be defended from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.” Each human being – born or unborn – has a right to life. Our life is sacred: God created us; God governs us; God adopted us in Jesus as his children, and destined us to eternal life with him. Our life, therefore, is sacred and ought to be defended and promoted from its first moment (against abortion) to its last (against suicide, homicide, euthanasia and the death penalty), and in the series of moments in-between its first and last moments (against violence, injustice, forced poverty, hypocrisy).

       In his book of essays Faith and Spiritual Life, Yves Congar  meditates on the intercessory prayer “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” and in particular on the words: “now and at the hour of our death.” What really matters, he explains, is “the vertical relationship of every moment of our life with God our End that makes these moments holy and acceptable to him.” He continues: “This immediate relationship with God which occurs in every day and every moment – and finally in the last moment – of our lives, is incorporated like grace and holiness in Christ.” To pray daily, to pray every moment means for believers to be aware of the continuing presence of God and of their own vulnerability and sinfulness.

       For Christ, the last moment is “the hour,” the moment of victory, of his triumphant death on the Cross – the Cross of Hope that points to his Resurrection (cf. Mk 14:35; Jn 2:4, 7:30, 12:27, 17:1, etc.). For us Christians, then “the hour” is the last moment of our earthly life, which as Yves Congar affirms, “is essentially relative to another life, the true everlasting life”: the last moment ushers in death, that is, another life – eternal life. In Christian tradition, death is in friendly relationship with life. Death is the end of life, but “not in the sense of its conclusion but of its fulfillment; death is the fusion of two lives.” He advises us: We should not be scared of death; what matters is that this moment is “lived in God’s presence,” as a moment of love and of union with the death of Christ. St. John of the Cross encourages us:  “Because before you die you will be sorry for not employing this time in God’s service, why don’t you use it well as you would have liked to when you were dying?”

       The quality of our moment is measured by our love. To be faithful to the moment signifies to do what we ought to do with love; to carry out our daily duties and obligations with love (Segundo Galilea). “God does not look at the grandeur of the work we do, but at the love we put into it” (St. Teresa of Avila).

       What matters most in life is love: “To be is to love” (E. Mounier).  In this life, love is “always ready to hope” (I Cor 13:7), because we are pilgrims to the house of our Father. True hope, however, is not “a pie in the sky” but fidelity to the present, to today, to ‘now’, to this moment, which is the only thing we actually possess. With the passing of time “one realizes that the best was not the future, but the moment you were living precisely at that instant!” ((José Luis Borges).

       For a pilgrim to eternal life, to be faithful to the moment implies putting love in everything we do. In everything! Big or small, public or secret; in prayer, in work, in walking, in a smile, in a failure – in suffering.

        With love in the heart, we pilgrims journey forward joyful in hope with steps of love (Rom 12:12), “striving towards the goal of resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:11), “racing towards the finishing-point” (Phil 3:14). A Christian with many other brothers and sisters  journeys forward by putting love in every moment, by making of every moment a step of love towards the embrace of Jesus the Lord.

       Does every moment of our life matter? Yes, it does. It matters much. “Life is a series of moments either lived or lost.”

(Published in O Clarim, Macau Catholic Weekly, July 1, 2016 – www.oclarim/com.mo )