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 )

Pope Francis’ The Joy of Love: Some Initial Comments

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP

       I wish to offer to our dear readers another appetizer before the main course, which is the reading of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia (AL), or The Joy of Love. I invite you to read this wonderful papal Apostolic Exhortation on love in the family. This papal document represents the magisterial conclusion of the two synods on the family: the extraordinary of 2014 and the ordinary of 2015. Signed by Pope Francis on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, and presented at the Vatican on April 8, 2016, the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation is a long text of 261 pages, 325 paragraphs and 391 footnotes. In all, we are told, nearly 60,000.00 words. The language of the text is not speculative or idealistic but doctrinal and practical, which makes this document of the ordinary magisterium of the Church quite readable.

       The main sources of Amoris Laetitia are the Sacred Scriptures, the teachings of Vatican II and of popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and particularly of Pope Francis himself and of the Final Reports of the two Synods on the Family. Pope Francis also quotes from the teachings on the family of Episcopal Conferences from different countries. He also quotes the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (quoted 13 times), and some modern authors and figures including Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, Mario Benedetti, Erich Fromm and Martin Luther King Jr.  According to Antonio Pelayo, the documents most quoted by Pope Francis, after his own papal writings, are the two synods’ Final Reports (quoted 98 times), and John Paul II 1981 Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Family in the Modern World Familiaris Consortio (34 times).

       AL is divided into nine chapters which develop with clarity the fundamental teachings of the Church on marriage and family mixed with the existential reality of married couples and Christian families. It might be helpful to put the titles of the nine chapters: (1) In the Light of the Word; (2) The Experiences and Challenges of Families; (3) Looking to Jesus: The Vocation of the Family; (4) Love and Marriage; (5) Love Made Fruitful; (6) Some Pastoral Perspectives; (7) Towards a Better Education of Children; (8) Accomanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness; (9) Spirituality of Marriage and the Family.  Pope Francis has said that the central chapters of the document are chapter 4 on love in marriage (the longest chapter: 52 pages), and chapter 5 on fruitful love. The secular press centers its comments particularly on chapter six (second longest) and chapter eight that deal with problematic cases such as the divorced re-married, the civilly married, single parents, and same sex unions. The shortest, and a lovely chapter, is the last on spirituality of marriage and family (21 pages).

       Amoris Laetitia is a unique papal document: doctrinally traditional and practically pastoral. It is permeated by what I would call “Pope Francis mode,” which is faithful to the classical teachings on marriage and the family, joyful in love of the family, and open to all, especially to families in different and difficult situations. Through his pontificate and in particular in the Apostolic Exhortation on love and family, Pope Francis offers understanding, help and mercy to all. The papal exhortation is, as Cardinal Schonborn says, “positive and realistic.” It is, according to Vida Nueva, “a document which does not pretend to break with the previous documents, but a healthy and necessary evolution.”

       The Joy of Love develops engagingly the so-called pastoral cycle method: the social reality of marriage and the family in our world and in the Church in particular (sociological analysis), the theological discernment (the light of faith to discern lights and shadows in that reality), and the pastoral action (the concrete program to improve the situation of the family by diminishing the shadows and strengthening the lights).

       In general, AL seems to be well accepted by the secular world and the international press. As it happened in the Synods on the family there are basically – like in politics, in social life, among bishops and theologians in the Church – two groups of commentators: one group accepts AL and another criticizes it with more or less intensity – some for not being open enough and others for being too open and a bit confusing regarding some concrete problems. Where are we? The best approach, perhaps, is to reserve the personal opinions until after having read the full text. Catholics, of course, know that the official papal documents belong to the ordinary teaching or magisterium of the Church and therefore have to be given “religious assent” (Vatican II, GS, 25).

       The Apostolic Exhortation presents the traditional teachings of the Church on marriage and the family. According to Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, AL summarizes faithfully the great tradition of the Church on the family. This living tradition teaches unwaveringly that marriage is a natural and sacred reality; it is heterosexual and indissoluble. Furthermore: the end of marriage – covenantal sacrament – is the loving union of the spouses and the procreation and education of children; the marital acts are unitive (love-making) and procreative (life-making). Doctrinally and practically, “divorce is an evil and the increasing number of divorces is very troubling.” Hence, Pope Francis says, “our most important pastoral task with regard to families is to strengthen their love, helping to heal wounds and working to prevent the spread of this drama of our times” (AL 246).

       The family is “the basis of society,” a community love and life (Vatican II). In the family today there are shadows and lights. As Pope Francis writes, “We must be grateful that most people do value family relationships that are permanent and marked by mutual respect” (AL, 38). To couples and families in difficult and different situation, the Church offers a compassionate approach. The Pope writes: “Many people feel that the Church’s message on marriage and the family does not clearly reflect the preaching and attitudes of Jesus, who set forth a demanding ideal yet never failed to show compassion and closeness to the frailty of individuals like the Samaritan woman or the woman caught in adultery” (AL, 38).  Later on, he writes: “Such persons need to feel not as excommunicated members of the Church, but instead as living members, able to live and grow in the Church and experience her as a mother who welcomes them always, who takes care of them with affection and encourages them along the path of life and the Gospel” (AL, 299).

       Concerning different “irregular” situations, the Synod Fathers reached a general consensus, which  is supported by Pope Francis: “In considering a pastoral approach towards people who have contracted a civil marriage, who are divorced and remarried, or simply living together, the Church has the responsibility of helping them understand the divine pedagogy of grace in their lives and offering them assistance so they can reach the fullness of God’s plan for them, something which is always possible by the power of the Holy Spirit” (AL, 297).

       With regards to the particular situation of the divorced and remarried, Pope Francis makes his own the answer of the Ordinary Synod of 2015.  The Church affirms its teaching: a valid marriage is forever and therefore a second marriage is not truly a Catholic marriage.  However, there are different situations and distinct degrees of responsibility. Here comes the appeal to conscience, discernment, accompanying, and a pastoral care that integrates as much as possible these brothers and sisters in the faith (cf. AL, 299 and 300). Need, in particular, of “the formation of the conscience of the faithful: “We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them” (AL 37).Pope Francis writes: “It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations. At the same time, it must be said that, precisely for that reason, what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule” (AL, 304).

       Does AL have all the answers? The Pope’s answer: “Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church.” However, “not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium.” Indeed, for some concrete questions – following the traditional teaching -, “each country or region can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs” (AL 3).

       Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia is a marvelous song of love in the family.

       After this appetizer – one more! -, let us plunge into the main course: reading little by little Pope Francis’ Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation The Joy of Love.

Happy reading!

(Published in O Clarim, June 17, 2016).

 

MERCY PATHWAYS: Comforting The Sick

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP.

The Holy Year of Mercy invites Christians to be merciful. Mercy, or compassion for the needy, is a necessary expression of love of neighbor, which includes comforting the suffering. In the heart of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives the Second Beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted” (Mt 5:4), which means to be sorry for the suffering and miseries in the world and for our miseries and sins. Comforting those who suffer is a spiritual work of mercy.

Our humanity is a wounded humanity. So much suffering in our world: the lonely elderly, the battered wife, the abandoned child, the family of refugees, the persecuted, tortured and killed, the youth surviving a meaningless life, the “different” among us who are alienated, new slaves …  

How may God be a tender mother and allow so much misery and poverty and violence and injustice? Suffering is truly mysterious, mysterium doloris!  How do we relate suffering to an all-good and omnipotent God? And the perennial question: Why do innocent children suffer? Other heart-breaking questions are these: Why the terrorist massacres? “Why the Holocaust?” Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?” (Benedict XVI, Address at Auschwitz-Birkenau: May 28, 2006).

Certainly the God of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a vengeful, nor a masochistic God, but the compassionate Father of the prodigal son, the Abba of his Son Jesus Christ, who died on the Cross! We believe that God is love (I Jn 4:16), and that there is heaven.  Suffering is part of the project of human life, which is realized in love. God does not rejoice in our infirmities; in fact, in his Son Jesus Christ, he shared suffering with us. Our God is not an insensitive God. Jesus, God and man, wept over Jerusalem, the beautiful city that some years later would be totally destroyed (Lk 19:41-48). Jesus weeps seeing the terrible sufferings of so many people in the world! The only answer to those questions is Christ on the cross. Out of love, Christ died for all humanity. But He did not do away with suffering and death: “He came down from heaven to take them upon himself; he did not do away with them, he did something more: he gave them meaning and lit them up from within, transfiguring them and making them God-like” (Charles Journet). (Where was God on September 11, 2001, on March 11, 2004, On December 26, 2004, on November 13, 2015…? He was nailed to the Cross! He is on the cross with those who suffer).

Suffering may become a path to meet God. With God’s grace and our cooperation, the cross may be turned from a place of pain and suffering into “an appointment with the Crucified Lord” (J.M. Cabodevilla). The saints not only bore their sufferings patiently but also joyfully – for the love of God. They even asked the Lord to increase their sufferings so that they would be united, in a closer manner, to the Crucified Lord, and thus become co-redeemers with Him. The deepest meaning of the mystery of suffering is co-redemptive suffering (Col 1:24).

The mystery of evil continues! And in the midst of suffering, the mystery of an omnipotent and merciful God! We know that God loves us, “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son.” Moreover, we believe Jesus died on the cross to show us the evilness of sin: Sin is darkness, night, and unhappiness: a betrayal of God’s love and of the blood of Christ shed for us. Facing those sufferings, we are asked by our humanity and our faith to help others carry their cross not with sermons, but with compassion. One of the gravest things one can do in life is to make others suffer (A. Camus). Hereafter, I reflect on the suffering of our loved ones and of our own suffering.

Pope Francis has often used the image of a field hospital after a battle and applied to a merciful Church. She is the tender mother who cares for the wounded. She cares in particular for her children who are sick, or abandoned in many places.

As Christians, we have to love the neighbor. Who is my neighbor? In the lovely Parable of the Samaritan, Jesus asked the teacher of the law: Who among the three in the parable is your neighbor? The teacher answered: “The one who showed mercy” (Cf. Lk 10:25-37). Blessed Paul VI said at closing of Vatican II that the model of the spirituality of the Council was the story of the Good Samaritan.

             How do we face the suffering of others?  To face properly the pain and suffering of others, we need to face properly pain and suffering in our own life. If we are not able to integrate our own sufferings in the story of our personal life, we will have a hard time in helping others bear their sufferings in a humane and/or Christian way.

How do we face our own personal suffering? The Psalmist says: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (Ps 119:71).We try to face our sufferings and pains with courage, hope and respect for life – and prayer. With courage: we try hard to be patient and to persevere in patience: fortitude is the cardinal virtue that helps us with patience and perseverance to carry the cross of life – our pains and sufferings. We struggle to carry our cross with hope: God cares for us, is in us and in front of us as our hope. We bear our sufferings respecting our life, which belongs to God, up to its end – against the shortcuts of euthanasia and also against the undue prolongation of dying through useless and extremely burdensome treatments. As we fix our eyes on Jesus on the Cross, we also think of our own cross: you know that you will be saved on your cross, and I know that I will be saved on mine! “If anyone wants to be my disciple let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus, our savior and friend, adds: “My yoke is light,” “come to me all who are burdened and I will give you rest.” No wonder, for the saints, the truly happy ones, when the cross comes, it is the Lord who comes!

How do we face the suffering of others? We face the sufferings of others with compassion and in solidarity with them – and with prayer. The suffering persons need not only pain relief, but also empathetic solidarity. In general, healthcare givers try to free the patient from pain, while the significant others – immediate family, friends, and also the members of the healthcare team, especially physicians and nurses – provide support, protection, security, and “a warm heart” so that patients may be able to suffer human weakness in solidarity: homo patiens and homo compatiens. Philosopher E. Levinas reminds us that our answer to the suffering of the other is compassion, not explanation. True compassion, however, is not expressed by cooperating in euthanasia unjustly called mercy killing! How may killing be merciful? Compassion implies solidarity, or justice plus love of neighbor, a love that respects the dignity and rights of the human person, including the fundamental right to life. God is the Lord of life and death. We are only stewards.

            Following Christ, the Good Samaritan – the best paradigm of the healing and caring ministry -, we all have to be at the side of those who suffer in our families and communities, to help them bear their suffering, and not to increase it! In his play Caligula, Albert Camus put these words in the mouth of Scipio: “Caligula often told me that the only mistake one makes in life is causing suffering to others.”  We have to be at the side of those who suffer in a nonjudgmental, not paternalistic, but understanding, respectful, merciful and prayerful attitude, as they pass through different psychological stages, like the classical five of Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

 Another point we must not forget: The sick around us evangelize the healthy. The suffering of others, particularly of our loved ones, calls us to reflecting on the meaning of life and of suffering. The sick invite us silently to meditate on the gifts of our health and relationships, on God, on our own sufferings, on the finitude of our life and on our constant need to be united to the passion, death and resurrection of Christ.

            Is there a pedagogy of suffering? When suffering knocks on our door, what ought we to do? I wish to share with you my own recipe for personal suffering and of the loved ones.

We do not blame God. God permits but does not like our suffering. In Christ, He assumed our suffering, and He accompanies us.

We ask God to help us either by eliminating our suffering or pain, or by aiding us to bear it. We believe in God the Father who loves each one of us   and we pray – like Jesus – for help: “My Father, if this (passion, crucifixion) cannot pass me by without my drinking it, your will be done” (Mt 26:42).

United to the Crucified Lord, we try to carry our cross patiently; perhaps limping at times, perhaps complaining a bit! “God does not give more suffering than what can be endured, and, in the first place, He gives patience” (St. Teresa of Avila)

We try to carry our cross, our suffering joyful in hope (Rom 12:12). “Blessed are the sorrowful, they shall be consoled” (Mt 5:4).

We bear our sufferings out of love: “The way we came to understand love was that he laid down his life for us; we too must lay down our lives for our brothers” (I Jn 3:16).

And from beginning to end, we pray. We ask the good Lord to remedy our weakness, our impatience, our irritation, our depression, our hopelessness …

If we follow this recipe, we shall love the cross: not for its own sake but because of the Crucified Lord. Then, our suffering – joined to Christ’s – becomes redemptive suffering: “It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church” (Col 1:24

Pope Francis speaks of the Church mainly as mother, as a tender mother, and – he adds – and so must also be the followers of Christ, the Merciful One, who is “the face of the Father’s mercy” (Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, 1).

 

MERCY PATHWAYS: Alms-Giving

 FAUSTO GOMEZ OP.

The paths of mercy are many. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy are paths of mercy (cf. CCC 2447). Pope Francis in his Bull of Proclamation of the Jubilee of Mercy Misericordiae Vultus, the Face of Mercy (no. 15): “It is my burning desire that, during this Jubilee, the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty. And let us enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy. Jesus introduces us to these works of mercy in his preaching so that we can know whether or not we are living as his disciples.”

The three classical exercises of penance are paths of mercy: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. “Prayer with fasting and alms with uprightness are better than riches with iniquity… Almsgiving saves from death and purges every kind of sin” (Tob 12:8-9; Dan 4:27; cf. Mt 6:2-4, 5-6, 16-18; cf. EG 193). Often, prayer is presented as directed to fasting and almsgiving – to virtuous living.

Fasting to be a good act must be accompanied by almsgiving. Fasting without almsgiving is not a saving act on the way to heaven. It is insufficient as John Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine tell us. St. Peter Chrysologus (406-450) writes: “He who does not fast for the poor fools God.” On the other hand, fasting with almsgiving is pleasing to God.  St. Clement of Rome (d. end of first Century) writes: “Almsgiving is as good as repentance from sin; fasting is better than prayer; almsgiving is better than either.”

In the teaching of Sacred Scriptures, patristic and classical theology true almsgiving is a necessary expression of mercy and compassion. In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis writes: “The wisdom literature sees almsgiving as a concrete exercise of mercy towards those in need” (EG 193). For those who believe in God, almsgiving is an obligation (Tob 1:7-11; Sir 7:10). Why? Because, all need to practice charity as love of neighbor, as merciful love, which is the highest expression of love of neighbor. All the Fathers of the Church recommend strongly and persistently sharing of goods, almsgiving. St Cyprian, the first Father to give us a theological treatise on almsgiving entitled On Almsgiving, speaks of almsgiving as an obligation of all Christians. He says that almsgiving is an act of mercy, an act of justice, and a means of penance for our sins and for obtaining forgiveness for them.

Almsgiving is an outward or external act of mercy. Based on Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church consider almsgiving also an expression of justice in the sense that the poor are entitled to it. Almsgiving is more than justice: it is love that gives value to almsgiving and everything (1 Cor 13:3). Without love, almsgiving may be unjust, for it does not make people involved equal; charity does (José María Cabodevilla).

Authentic almsgiving is what is called formal almsgiving. There is material almsgiving and formal almsgiving. Giving to others in need without love is merely material but not formal or authentic almsgiving: “Almsgiving can be materially without charity, but to give alms formally, that is for God’s sake, with delight and readiness, and altogether as one ought, is not possible without charity” as love of God and neighbor (St. Thomas Aquinas).

Almsgiving is more than justice: it is love that gives value to almsgiving and everything (1 Cor 13:3). Without love, almsgiving may be unjust, for it does not make people involved equal; charity does (J. M. Cabodevilla).

Not giving alms when one can give is a source of condemnation (cf. Mt 25:41-43). We read in CCC: “Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren” (CCC 1033; cf. Mt 25:31-46). The Second Plenary Council of the Philippines keeps telling us: “Eternal salvation depend on the living out of a love of preference for the poor because the poor and needy bear the privileged presence of Christ” (PCPII, 312)

In case of real need, corporal need is more important than spiritual need, which is generally more important: “a man in hunger is to be fed rather than instructed, and for a needy man money is better than philosophy, although the latter is better.” Love of neighbor, St. Thomas adds, implies beneficence and almsgiving, “for love of neighbor requires not only that we should be our neighbors’ well-wishers, but also his well-doers.”

The classical theory of charity and mercy may appears as more concerned with the individual person than with the social order or disorder.  Hence, almsgiving may be used as a cover up for injustice. Of course, almsgiving as a pathway of mercy cannot be unjust for it necessarily presupposes justice. Today more than yesterday, we speak of almsgiving not only to a person but also to a needy poor people, an ethnic group, the poor, the refugees, and the excluded from the banquet of life. Corporate almsgiving – donations -, or the Church’ s Caritas are much needed, irreplaceable in our world, and the rich nations  are obliged to share with the poor ones as taught by the social doctrine of the Church (cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, GS, 69; Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, PP, 23, 26, 43). In this context, excessive spending and squandering are sins (CCC, 2409). Religious men and women are asked by their vow of poverty to practice a simple life style, a life comparable to the life of the middle class – and not higher. “Let us live simply so that others may simply live” (Canadian Bishops).

Moreover, each one of us always needs to give something to the poor: to concrete individual poor persons. In November 2013, Pope Francis said to the religious and all: “Sometime of real contact with the poor is necessary.”

Compassionate love urges Christians and all humans to “loving the unlovely, the unlovable, the least, the lost, and the last.” Mercy is not only sharing with the materially poor, although this aspect is much underlined, but also for all others in need, especially those in urgent need.

The merciful Jesus hopes to be able to tell you and me after crossing the bridge that links this life and the afterlife: “Come…, take as your heritage the kingdom prepared for you… For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed me … “Why, Lord?” Because “In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (Mt 25:34-40). I remember the words of Pope Francis during his visit to the Philippines (January 2015): “Our treatment of the poor is the criterion on which each one of us will be judged.”

Words to ponder:

He who takes the clothes from a man is a thief.  He who does not clothe the indigent, when he can, does he deserve another name but thief?  The bread that you keep belongs to the hungry; to the naked, the coat that you hide in your coffers; to the shoeless, the shoes that are dusty at your home; to the destitute, the silver that you hide.  In brief, you offend all those who can be helped by you (St. Basil the Great).