Free Love, True Love II

John Paul II stated in his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio # 28 “With the creation of man and woman in His own image and likeness, God crowns and brings to perfection the work of His hands: He calls them to a special sharing in His love and in His power as Creator and Father, through their free and responsible cooperation in transmitting the gift of human life[1]” had a close connection with the topics on this reflection. I would like to articulate my reflection through the basic statements mentioned above: the creation of man and woman in God’s image; the call of special sharing in God’s love; the free and responsible cooperation and transmission of the gift of human life.

Let me start with the statement “the creation of man and woman in God’s image was originated in the text of Genesis points to the fact that the sources of creation is God, that unlike any other creature on the planet, we are made in the image and likeness of God. We are His children, his handiwork. At first when God created man, he was still lonely because there was nobody to love, the experience of original solitude. And God said” It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him" (Gn 2:18). This is the human realization of his dignity and superiority among the rest of the animals. Then there should be someone to love by him and God created woman as his suited companion. As Christians we believe that we are created in the image of God in our potential for love. This means in part that when we strive toward our potential for love we grow in expressing the best of our humanity[2] as D. Villegas described. John Paul II stated,

“Man’s original solitude with consciousness of the body”. Through it, man is distinguished from all the animalia and is separated from them, and also through it he is a person. It can be affirmed with certainty that man, thus formed, has at the same time consciousness and awareness of the meaning of his own body, on the basis of the experience of original solitude.”[3]

Then from there I will deal on the second statement, “He calls them for a special sharing of love.” this is the concept of relationship in marriage. The married love according to D. Villegas in her article – married love is a model of God’s love for us. For instance, in Vatican II ( Gaudium et Spes 48-50) marriage is described as a faithful partnership of life that reveals God’s love for the Church and for each other. Accordingly, part of the vocation of married persons consist in striving to give witness to such love, this special sharing of love involves love that is committed to shaping a mutual partnership of life.

When I was working as a volunteer catechist in Davao as part of my apostolate, one day a 16 year old lady approached me and asked me if we could talk in private. In time she opened up and poured herself out, I came to know that she was pregnant and scared to tell her situation to her parents. To make the story short, I had convinced her to something which is good and proper. My point here is that teenagers nowadays know a lot. Perhaps it’s too much. They think that they know about love, but after, it’s more about lust; they really can deceive themselves into believing that “this guy” or “that girl” is the one person they will love forever. And the deception can lead to early and careless sexual activities and into chains of unwanted consequences. The very foundation must be love not lust.

One virtue must be developed in love relationship is mutuality. Mutuality makes that the ideal of married love must be practiced by both spouses equally. Then it will push away the cultural tradition among woman as the one who care for the good of others, the one who forgives, and the one who makes effort to court back the husband. This is a one sided self giving. It should be a kind of love- making based on friendship and partnership in the rest of married life. To say to love another involves a love that is life-giving not just emotions or feeling; but acting with knowledge, respect, responsibility and care. John Paul II mentioned:

“When they both unite so closely as to become one flesh, their conjugal union presupposes a mature consciousness of the body. In fact, it bears within it a particular consciousness of the meaning of that body in the mutual self-giving of the persons.[4]

What I remember in our study of Moral Theology about marriage, love should be based on knowledge. Knowledge is central because it involves being able to see the person as other, different from his/her needs, desires, and preferences.

Erick Fromm stated in his book, “Knowledge of the other requires that we transcends our self- centered perspective and truly see each other[5]”. Knowledge and respect must be actively connected to responsibility and care. Responsibility means a willingness to respond and a willingness to become involved to the needs of the other, he added.

And the last statement which states that “transmission of the gift of life” How do we transmit life? In here, it points out that married life must bear fruit/s. This is of course through marital act. It should have the qualities of free, total, faithful and fruitful. This is also called as Sexual intimacy. It is a love making and not simply a form of physical pleasure, it involves vulnerability and self-giving. As William P. Roberts said:

“Intercourse is performed in a human way that is with mind and heart and soul as well as with body, and then the spouses indeed reveal themselves to each other in all of their nakedness, physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional. Such intimate exchange catches up all the intimate sharing in the rest of their marriage and in turn enhances and enriches them”[6]

[1] John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation on Human Family in the Modern Time # 28

[2] Villegas Dianna. Married Love as Christian Ideal. Human Development. Volume 29. Winter 2008.
[3] Theology of the Body, Man's Awareness Of Being A Person Pope John Paul II. General Audience Of Wednesday, 24 October

[4] Theology of the Body, Marriage One And Indissoluble In First Chapters Of Genesis. Pope John Paul II, General Audience Of 21 November.

[5] Villegas Dianna. Married Love as Christian Ideal.
[6] Roberts P. W. Commitment and Partnership, Exploration in the Theology of Marriage. Paulist. 1987 p. 133.

Freee Love, True Love

Free Love, True Love

Before I entered the seminary, I worked for several years as religious education teacher and guidance counselor in one school in Pampanga. Part of my job, was to spend time with the more “difficult” young adolescents. I remember one student named Roel. He was 16 years old and had been caught in class with pornographic magazines. He was sent to my office for a short talk. In our conversation, I talked to him as if I found the porno as interesting as he did and he was thrilled after knowing that. And then the conversation took more surprising when he asked me if I knew when to get those stuffs. Then I said “ Sure, I even know the people who published it. And I added, In fact they‘re always looking for new people to put in their magazines. How would you feel about them putting a picture of your sister? Or your mother?
He was grossed and ashamed. I told him, “I only wanted you to know that every person used in those stuffs is a member of someone’s family. In the midst of enjoying pornography, do we ever stop to consider how we would feel if we saw someone we love being used to tantalize? We are actually paying then to dehumanize someone’s daughter, son, and sister or mother.

Recognize your dignity[1] as Catechism of the Catholic Church mentioned, allows us to recognize the value of every human person, not by reducing human person to a level of an item, not as an object whose dignity is severely compromised. In other words we are not just a piece of matter that wherever we go we can buy. We are reflection of our Creator. Destruction of human dignity violates the beauty of God’s handiwork which is good and beautiful.

“Man appears in the visible world as the highest expression of the divine gift, because he bears within him the interior dimension of the gift. With it he brings into the world his particular likeness to God”[2]

In my story I will also attach the topic of “our need for an adequate Vision on Man, His Body and of Love and Sex. Are we “thingified[3]” objects? Thingified was a word used by J. Lisante in his book “On life and Love” which means looking at a person as matter or a thing visible to the perception. He explained that nowadays the vision of man to human being had reduced to the level of a thing, a tangible object especially sexual object; for example in pornography, media, videos and the internet, like an item we can buy. And he added, this is a view of man without recognizing the dignity as human persons capable of promoting human good. Many say, Oh. That’s normal thing now, it’s already part of our consumerist world. Yes, that is the fact but that is not normal. We are weakened already by this dilemma; we already had Little Jumbo Syndrome[4] ( Fr. J. Jason, Free Love, True Love)

Another aspect in man that we must understand is the value of his body. If man always looks at his body as a matter, or a thing or instrument to the world, he is not capable of recognizing or appreciating its value. Then it is also tantamount of disvaluing the meaning of love and sex. We are not just a piece of meat! The body is man’s totality, his total being, a unity of body and spirit. Definitely we are not only flesh or not just spiritual energy. We are be souled-body as philosophy tells. John Paul II in his speech on May 30, 1984 mentioned about” This is the peace of the body; the peace of the encounter in mankind as the image of God[5]”.

A negative vision on man will always be a negative connotation on the meaning of love and sex. What is love? That is the question. Is it synonymous to sex? What is the world view about these two realities of life?

They say that love is the most used and abused word. Whenever you ask an adolescent about his idea of love, the first thing will come in his mind is the idea of sex. Or sometimes the he would rather associate it by liking a thing he desires or infatuation to someone. In the recent news, many sex scandals had proliferated in the television which had caught the attention of many viewers. It is just a sign that sex nowadays is just a form of “trip ko lang” or escapade. We cannot also deny the fact that young generation were hooked with the new trend called “ one night stand” and cyber sex, which for them are solely for fun and curiosity. They would say “We just want to have some fun”. Are they saying that sex is for fun? The obvious answer is that sex feels good. Experts say, psychologists and sociologists, young people were hooked to these schema because of personal motives and internal desires that they cannot express in their chaotic emotional, psychological and physical stage. That is why they had the mentality of saying, people who don’t have sex may think they are weird and defective, thus undersexed…. Not cool. Another factor that contributes most is the culture which we live has had made some terrible concept. They tried to convince us that sex equals love. But it doesn’t. Anyone who says that we prove our love by having sex is nothing but a dumb idea. Love doesn’t have to be “proved”. Love is a free gift. Not one we have to pressure another to have it. As John Paul II stated;

“The heart has become a battlefield between love and lust. The more lust dominates the heart, the less the heart experiences the nuptial meaning of the body. It becomes less sensitive to the gift of the person, which expresses that meaning in the mutual relations of man and woman.[6]

Sometimes people believe that Catholics see sex as dirty, as wrong, as sinful. We don’t. We believe sex is beautiful, good and even holy. It is just a question of where you share it and what your motive is for giving it to another person. The place do to it is in marriage that is why it is called as marital act. And the reason to do is LOVE. Therefore we cannot indicate that sex is just a physical activity, a recreation or escapade to have fun but God created it as good and sacred. As John Paul II stated in his Theology of Body:

” The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation, as in the whole natural order. It includes right from the beginning the nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift and—by means of this gift—fulfills the meaning of his being and existence[7]

It was a lovely statement, making me feel that I was begotten by my parent because of love not by just a physical or recreational activity. That I am a fruit of their exchange of love not a product of temporary lust.
[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church 1691.

[2] Man Enters the World as a Subject of Truth and Love .Pope John Paul II General Audience Of Wednesday, 20 February

[3] Lisante James. On Life and Love.
[4] Jason Joel. Free Love, True Love

[5] The Man-Person Becomes a Gift in the Freedom of Love . John Paul II General Audience 16 January

[6] The Man-Person Becomes a Gift in the Freedom of Love . John Paul II General Audience 16 January
[7] The Man-Person Becomes a Gift in the Freedom of Love .John Paul II General Audience Wednesday, 16 January

The Eucharist Is Light Among The Shadows That Threaten The World.

I. Introduction

Light and Shadows
We have a famous adage “we are afraid of our own shadows”. The shadow that we see in front of us is ever present wherever we move and go. We clearly recognized our own shadows because we are away from or we turn back to the light. We cannot see our shadows when we are illuminated by the presence of light. And only the light will eliminates the threats of darkness that troubling our life. Today, we are facing in many threatening realities and even alarming situations that divide us because of pride, material interest and power. This is dilemma that the world is facing and will experience in the course of time. Christian life faces various “shadows” that results of the loss of sense of God and moral principles. We live in tough times; with the economic and spiritual forces that we felt through our choices. We need light to be enlightened by the shadow of a culture that denies respect to life in all its stages; the shadow of indifference that condemns countless people to a life of hunger and underdevelopment, of injustices and racism, of separation and division; the shadow of science whose research is too often at the service of the selfish mighty". We need the light that will illumine our life and lead us to the paths of fully Christian life. John Paul II said,
…the Eucharist is light "for the heart of man oppressed by sin, disoriented and tired", the light for a world that is "in a difficult search for a seemingly distant peace in a new millennium distressed and humiliated by violence, terrorism and war". For the Pope, the "light" of the Eucharist is also a mystery as a way to relate to the problems of our times.[1]

II. The Challenge to Cast the Light
Here is the threatening question of the modern man. Does the world still need God; does it need such a clear sign of his presence as is the Eucharist? Does the world need faith?
Our world today is not so much in danger of losing God but substituting him. Urbanization and the loss of tradition had led to secularized society. Perhaps modern man is blinded by the shadow that confronts him. He is actually hiding in fear with his own shadow and stiff necked in looking back to see the light, with his fully tanked intellect, he don’t considers the need of God in his life. Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia names crucial issues that threateningly "darken the horizon of our time."[2] Among those threats, there is the pressing need to secure peace, to solidify the relationships between nations and peoples on the foundations of justice and solidarity, and for the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Pope John Paul II then focused attention on the dehumanizing fallout in "a 'globalized' world where the weakest, the most powerless and the poorest appear to have so little hope!" Christian hope must penetrate the darkness that shrouds the lives of so many millions of men and women subsisting in radical poverty. The Eucharistic presence of Christ in meal and sacrifice portrayed in the Last Supper narrative in the Gospel according to St. John becomes "the promise of a humanity renewed by his love."[3] And he added that Christians as citizens in the world are called to "the task of contributing with the light of the Gospel to the building of a more human world, a world fully in harmony with God's plan."
Yes, today we are facing a Western agnostic materialism, which seems to go in prosperity, but inside is unhappy and desperate. This agnosticism definitely needs the Eucharist that supplements and nourishes the soul: this is what is needed by this society without life and without faith. The Eucharist give a new social environment: it creates and transforms life, gives a sense of plenitude, give a sense of existence and therefore will not go after suicides, drugs, artificial paradises. The Eucharist can give so much to the world. The Eucharist rebalances man, who needs to change. The Eucharist is the presence of light and that casts light in the midst of the seemingly frightening shadows.
Mystery of light and of faith! The human heart, oppressed by sin, often disoriented, tired and burdened by all sorts of suffering, needs light in order that the seed of faith grows. It is like the plants need the sun to grow and bear fruits. The world, too, needs light in its difficult search for a seemingly distant peace, of distressed and humiliated by violence, terrorism and war. We need to recognize that the presence of Christ is a personal presence and that his primary appeal is to the human heart where faith should start. The Eucharist is light! In the Word of God constantly proclaimed, bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. It is He, the resurrected Lord, who opens minds and hearts. When the bread is broken, He lets Himself be recognized as did the two disciples in Emmaus. It is in this welcoming gesture that we relive the sacrifice on the Cross, experience God's infinite love and are called upon to spread the light of Christ among the men and women of our times".[4] Christ offers himself for us to the Father, letting us participate in his own sacrifice, and gives himself to us as the bread of life for our journey through the world.[5] (cfr Enc. Ecclesia de Eucaristia, 53-58).
It is a Communion. The Eucharist means brotherhood. For John Paul II compels us to feel "the needs of our brothers. We cannot lock our heart away and hide from their calls for help. And yet we cannot forget that Man does not live of bread alone for we also need the bread that comes from the heavens. Jesus is that bread. Feeding from Him means accepting God's life and opening ourselves to love and sharing."[6] In his Apostolic Letter, Mane Nobiscum Domine (2004), Pope John Paul II spoke of the Eucharist as “a project of solidarity”.[7] It is therefore the light that will remove the problem of injustices that will rise to new social order. In the Eucharist there will be no distinction on race, color, ethnicity and social status. It will be a celebration of equality, love and brotherhood.
“As a sacrament, the Eucharist affects what it signifies: covenant; communion with God through Christ and with one another; and Christ’s real and transforming presence that transfigures us into the body of Christ, making us God’s temple and children of God’s Holy Spirit.”[8]

It is a celebration and sacrament of love. The Eucharist and its celebration is an expression of thanksgiving and love. It is where charity and life intermingled together. The Holy Spirit is the immeasurable strength of love which makes it possible for us to be renewed and revitalized and continues to make it effective even we are not in the context of the celebration. Our celebration of the Eucharist cannot be divorced from the injustices around us. “The Eucharist commits us to the poor”[9] (Catechism, 1397).
…..in each celebration of the Eucharist, the transformation of worship into “a great school of charity, justice and peace” remains an ongoing challenge to translate “the banquet of the Lord” into “the banquet of life.” The scope of the Eucharist is global and inclusive. The Eucharist challenges us to reach out to the entire human family and to all God’s creation; to examine, for example, the negative aspects of globalization and its impact on people’s lives.[10]
The Mass is therefore not a game, nor a mere theatrical representation, the launch of social activity, but the re-presentation of the salvific drama of Calvary, re-presentation as biblical and mystical memory. But mystical does not indicate solely something symbolic, something almost fake, far from truth. The Sacrament expresses a living reality. John Paul II calls for the dignity of the celebration.[11] In the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, John Paul II called on the faithful to "start afresh from Christ" (nn. 29 ss.) and that is through the celebration of the Eucharist. To start afresh means to turn back and look the light again. To cast the shadows of life is to be illumined by the Light, and to set the world in true light is to recognize the true presence of Light in our life.

III. The Actions to Move Toward the Light
As I reflected the different dimensions and aspects of the Eucharist, it had made me realized that the Eucharist is such an immense mystery and its dimensions are wholly enormous. As a seminarian, especially a bearer of the name Blessed Sacrament is a challenge to me as a future priest to become a Eucharist for others, to be bread, broken and ready to be shared for all. I believe that we must provide the connection of the theology of Eucharist as a source of solidarity for all humanity and our sacramental practice which is often disconnected from reality. Solidarity requires us to be concerned not only about local issues but also global issues such as war, drugs, guns, human trafficking, HIV/AIDS, crime and violence, abortion, euthanasia etc.
We can say then that the Eucharist changes bread and wine; it changes us also. It has a transformative power and the potential for personal and global transformation. The Eucharist is essentially active, enabling us to “do this”, all of it, “in memory of me”.[12] Therefore the Eucharist must engage the genuine transformation of the world. To keep from being false or trivialized, our Eucharistic worship should embody justice at its very core. The Eucharist provides spiritual food which empowers us in our Christian lives. Therefore, though the Eucharist calls us to ACTION, it nourishes us and strengthens us in virtue so that we can carry out the Church’s mission in the world. It assists us with the discernment process that is necessary for the work in hand. We pray “that we, who are nourished by his body and blood, may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ.”[13]

[1] Cf. Asia News
[2] Ecclesia Eucharistia #49
[3] Eucharist and Social Justice, A. Ketteler Catholic Conference of G. Britain, April 20, 2005
[4] Cf. Asia News, year of the Eucharist
[5] Ecclesia de Eucaristia, 53-58).
[6] Mane Noviscum Domine# 19
[7] Mane Noviscum Domine# 21
[8] Cf. Mane Noviscum Domine # 19
[9] Catechism of Catholic Church #1397
[10] Cf. Eucharist and Social Justice, A. Ketteler Catholic Conference of G. Britain, April 20, 2005
[11] Mane Noviscum Domine#12
[12] Regnum Christi, Documents on Eucharist And Social Justice. May 9, 2005
[13] Cf. Regnum Christi, Documents on Eucharist And Social Justice. May 9, 2005