On Happiness

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

The best thing about happiness is that you can give it to yourself anytime.  You don’t need somebody else to give it to you. You don’t even need to have anything in order to be happy.  That’s because happiness is ultimately a choice.  You can choose to be happy anytime, anywhere -- whatever your circumstances may be.  You may be in the middle of the most miserable circumstances, but you can still choose to be happy.  No one and nothing can stop you from choosing to be happy if you really want to.

In fact, we can go beyond saying that you don’t need someone else to make you happy.  We can go so far as to say that it would be a big mistake to ask or expect anyone to make you happy.  You may have a very beautiful, talented and intelligent wife who loves and cares for you as though you were the most important person in the world.  But if you still choose to be unhappy in spite of all that, you will be unhappy.

In the same manner, no matter how much you shower your young children or your old parents with all the gifts that are within your power to give, if they still opt to be unhappy in the end, you can do nothing about that.

No one has the power (nor the obligation) to make you happy except yourself; just as you do not have the power (nor the obligation) to make anyone else happy, no matter how much you love him or her.  That power (and that obligation) belongs to the person who wants to be happy.  To think otherwise is to put oneself in a position that will inevitably lead to many disappointments.

It would likewise be a big mistake to think that finally having the things you want will make you happy.  The possession of beautiful and expensive things is by no means the key (much less, the prerequisite) to happiness.  

Not so long ago, I stumbled upon two pictures on the internet that powerfully showed me how true that statement is. One was a picture of five little children pretending to take a “selfie” of themselves using, not a mobile phone, but the sole of a rubber slipper.  From the picture, one could tell that the kids were not rich.  Three of them were barefooted.  The humble house in the background had a fence made of rusty G.I. sheets. Obviously, their parents could not afford to buy any of them a mobile phone – not even a cheap, second-hand one.  They had to make-believe that the rubber slipper was a mobile phone. But their young faces glowed with immense happiness – one that made you yourself happy just by looking at it.

The other picture was that of a little girl sitting inside a small pail filled with water.  Again, from the picture, one could tell that she did not come from a rich family.  The pail looked old and rather dirty.  But on the little girl’s face shone a ray of joy that many of us would gladly exchange our precious possessions for, if it were only possible to make such a barter.

Those children were happy not because they possessed beautiful and expensive things but because they had chosen to be happy with whatever it was that they had.  In contrast, many children of rich families are perpetually unhappy in spite of the fact that they have the latest models of the most expensive mobile phone brands, and they have huge swimming pools right in front of their living rooms!

Indeed, happiness does not come from getting what you like, but from liking what you get -- even if what you get is not exactly what you wanted originally.  It’s the attitude you choose to adopt vis-à-vis your current circumstances that makes all the difference.

But, at this point, one can ask:  can I choose to be happy even if I have just lost my job, or someone has just broken my heart into many little pieces, or someone I love has just died?  Of course, people will probably think you have gone crazy if you choose to be happy in the middle of such circumstances.  And if you choose to be happy after you have just lost a “loved one,” the police will probably suspect that you had something to do with his or her death. But, humour aside, the answer to the question is yes – you can still choose to be happy even in the middle of such unhappy circumstances.  

At the height of Adolf Hitler’s madness, when he was sending people with the slightest Jewish blood to concentration camps and gas chambers, one of his prisoners was a man named Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who happened to have a Jewish ancestry.  Frankl survived the experience and later wrote a book about how he was able to endure the horrors of being a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps by finding a personal meaning in the unspeakable sufferings that he and his fellow prisoners had to go through.  He kept his sanity and his will to survive intact by choosing to find meaning in his sufferings. He then concluded that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  [1]

If we find ourselves frequently (or worse, perennially) unhappy, it is probably because we have unconsciously chosen to be unhappy in any set of circumstances.  We have probably adopted an attitude of unhappiness towards life in general, without our knowing it. And there are many ways by which we could be unwittingly led to make such a choice.  

For instance, our cultural upbringing probably discouraged us from being “too happy” lest we would end up being very unhappy.  I recall that, in the town where I grew up, older people used to warn us, children, against laughing too much or smiling too frequently.  They told us that unhappiness is the jealous rival of happiness.  Once unhappiness sees us being “too happy,” it will make every effort to drive away our happiness and put itself in its place.  It took me a while to disabuse myself of this cultural belief.

Our distorted religious views could also make us adopt an overall attitude of unhappiness.  I used the adjective “distorted” for a reason:  more often than not, it is our erroneous interpretation of the doctrines of our religion that encourages us to be unhappy, and not the doctrines themselves.

As Christians, for example, we are taught to be sorry for our sins and do penance for them.  We are taught to make amends for the wrongs we have done.  But, we are not taught to spend the rest of our lives torturing ourselves for the sins we have committed, or destroying our lives in order to “pay” for our sins.  Rather, after having asked and received God’s forgiveness, we are taught to stand up, sin no more, and proclaim – by word and deed – the good news of God’s salvation.  As sinners, we are not taught to follow in Judas’ footsteps but Peter’s.  Judas could not bring himself to believe that God would forgive his sin, and he ended up taking his own life.  Peter, on the contrary, deeply regretted his own sin but allowed God to forgive him and make him whole again.  Yet, how many of us, to a certain extent, wrongly follow in Judas’ footsteps instead of Peter’s?

Incidentally, Christianity is ultimately a religion that brims with joy.  As Pope Francis points out in his apostolic exhortation, “Envangelii Gaudium”:  “The Joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew….  The Gospel, radiant with the glory of Christ’s cross, constantly invites us to rejoice.” [2]. Still, no amount of Gospel passages that invite us to rejoice will ever succeed in doing so unless we decide to believe and heed them.

Finally, it is possible that the view of life which we have adopted inclines us towards unhappiness rather than happiness.  Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us possesses what the Germans call a “weltanschauung” – a certain view of life, a personal “philosophy” of life (if you will).  If  the personal “philosophy” we have adopted makes us see life as nothing but an endless parade of useless tasks, meaningless events, worthless persons and what not, it would very difficult for us to choose to be happy at the same time.

And yet, the Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus convincingly asserts that even if life is indeed “absurd” as we believe it is, even if life is indeed bereft of any inherent meaning as we believe it is, we can still choose to be happy.  Like the Greek mythological figure, Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to spend his entire life pushing a huge rock up a hill, only to see the rock roll back down every time it neared the top, we can choose to adopt a very different attitude towards our “futile and meaningless existence.”  In his famous essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus imagines Sisyphus choosing to find meaning in his apparently futile and meaningless task.  He imagines Sisyphus going down the hill after the rock has rolled back down, and making up his mind that the there is meaning in what he is doing.  “If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow,” Camus then concludes, “it can also take place in joy….  The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” [3]

At the end of the day, the wonderful thing is that we do not have to remain prisoners of the faulty elements of our cultural upbringing, our misinterpretations of the teachings of our religion, or the pessimistic personal philosophies we have unconsciously adopted.  We can always break free from them; and the process of our liberation begins with our being aware of the existence of our attitudinal enslavements. 

We can choose to be happy anytime, anywhere, and in spite of anything.  Or we can choose not to.  It’s really all up to us.

_______________

[1] Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning  (Boston, Mass.:  Beacon Press, 1992 ), p. 75.

[2] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Holy See:  Vatican Press, 2013), pp. 3 & 6.

[3] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (London: Penguin Books, 1975), pp. 109 & 111. 

On Growing Old

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

Those of us who sometimes find ourselves complaining of the inconveniences that come with growing old would do well to remember what the French entertainer, Maurice Chevalier, once said:  “Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.”  The alternative to growing old is, of course, dying young.  If we don’t like to die young, then we should be ready to bear with the inevitable inconveniences that come with growing old.  We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

One thing good about growing old is that its manifestations come in gradual, almost predictable stages.  Can you imagine what a terrifying experience growing old would be if its manifestations appeared in sudden, unpredictable surges?  How would you feel if you slept one night with a full hair on your head and woke up the following morning with all your hair suddenly gone?  Can you imagine what a shock it would be if you took a nap one afternoon with a beautiful and youthful face, and woke up an hour later to see an old, heavily wrinkled face in the mirror?   Fortunately, nature is very kind when it comes to the manifestations of old age.  We generally lose our hair, our teeth, our youthful features in gradual, almost predictable stages.  Nature gently prepares us for our old age step by step.  Unless we have resolved to closely monitor every little manifestation of our own aging process, we will hardly notice the fact that we are indeed growing older every single day.

Not so long ago, I had several vicarious experiences of what it would be like if old age manifested itself in surge-like movements.  When I first started using YouTube, I enjoyed searching for the music videos of the 70s rock stars I used to idolize when I was still in high school.  Back then, I collected posters of such rock stars and secretly wished I had their long, uncombed hair; their young, devil-may-care looks…  I expected to see the same young, carefree rock stars in the music videos I searched for on YouTube.  Well, some of their old videos met my expectations.  But their latest ones were quite a shock!  Not a few of the videos featured old men with white hair and wrinkled faces; and it took a while for me to get used to the idea of old men beating their drums and making their electric guitars weep like wild teenagers.  The shock was, of course, a result of the fact that I had not been able to see how they looked during the years in between.  I did not witness the gradual transition.  All I saw was the sudden metamorphosis.

The shock would be the same if old age came to us all of a sudden, and not in the progressive, almost foreseeable way it comes to each of us now

Not everyone lasts long enough to reach old age.  For that reason alone, old age is indeed a gift – a gift we should be immensely grateful for because we happen to be among the lucky ones to whom it has been given.  But, it is also a gift for several other reasons. 

Old age is a gift because it is a time in our life when we can finally take a more relaxed attitude towards life in general.  Much of our young life had been spent doing things that we “needed” to do – getting an education, preparing ourselves for our future, obtaining a degree, finding a good job, working hard to provide for our family, building a house of our own, sending our children to school…  But, by the time we reach our sixties (and even if we have not officially retired yet), much of that should have been over and done with.  Finally, we can slow down and find time for the things we “want” to do:  to travel, to read all the books we’ve been wanting to read but simply had no time to, to play the guitar or the piano again after many years of having to put them aside in order to concentrate on our studies and our careers.  Old age is “me-time” in the truest of that phrase.  

Old age is also a gift because it is an opportunity to celebrate what we have achieved in life, regardless of its degree of significance in other people’s eyes.  Even if others think we have not really achieved that much in our life according to their standards, there is always something we have done which deserves to be celebrated by us – something that we should feel proud of and happy about.  When I graduated from San Pablo Seminary in 1982, one of the best gifts I received was a card from one of my teachers, the late Ms. Agnes Bautista, the caption of which read:  “It is not how far you have reached that matters.  It is how many obstacles you had to overcome in order to get there.”  Indeed, it is not the size of the house we have built, the kind of car we drive around, or the names of the schools we were able to send our children to that matter.  It is the struggles we had to wage in order to achieve them that ultimately count.  Many of us had to overcome enormous obstacles in order to reach where we are now.  While we were out there struggling, there was not much time to stop and pat ourselves on the back for our own efforts.  Old age provides us with the long overdue opportunity to do precisely that:  to be grateful for what we were able to achieve, to celebrate not only our victories but also the battles we needed to wage in order to achieve them.

Old age is, moreover, a gift because it provides us with the opportunity to put a proper closure on our life – something which many of those who die all of a sudden will not have the privilege of doing.  Sudden death often leaves the deceased – as well as the bereaved – with plenty of “unfinished business.”  Growing old until one dies, on the other hand, gives us the time to finish our pending business before we depart from this life for good.  We are given the time to ask forgiveness from those we have wronged, to make amends, to try to repair what can still be repaired with regard to the things we might have broken, to rebuild the bridges we have burnt, to reconnect with the people we have alienated along our way.  

More importantly, old age provides us with the opportunity to reconnect and, perhaps, even make peace with our own past selves.  I read somewhere that each of us is, in a way, a house inhabited by several past “selves.”  Inside one room of that house lives the young boy we once were still struggling with his fears.  Inside another is the teenager we once were still grappling with his regrets.  Out in the garden, alone, is the disillusioned young man we once were still trying to get his faith in life back.  We are often unaware of the presence of these “co-inhabitants.”  But they are very much a part of us; nay, they are “us.”  Their unresolved issues, their unaddressed cares and concerns influence the decisions we make and the steps we take in our present journey, without our knowing it.

Old age gives us the time and the opportunity to reach out to the young boy we once were and assure him that there’s nothing more to fear, for the monsters and the demons he continues to be afraid of are now gone; to reach out to the teenager we once were and assure him that making mistakes is part of growing up and that his 60-year old self has actually become a much better person because of the lessons he learned from his mistakes; and to reach out to the disillusioned young man we once were and tell him the good news that, many years later, his 60-year old self has discovered that, in spite of everything, life is good – and it’s a great privilege merely to be alive.

Old age is, furthermore, a gift because it gives us the opportunity to give something back to life without expecting anything in return.  In our younger years, much of what we did was probably done with a view to receiving a corresponding reward: a promotion, a salary raise, a good professional reputation, the respect of our peers…  We needed those things then and, hence, many of our efforts were exerted in the hope of attaining them in return.  In old age, we can finally serve for the sake of serving, and give for the sake of giving – with no eye on what will come back to us as a result.  Old age is “me-time,” but it can also be, at the same time, the very opposite of “me-time” which is “others-time.” Those two “times” can comfortably sit together when one is old.

Finally, old age is a gift because it affords us the opportunity to prepare for our death according to what our own religious beliefs tell us.  As Catholics, we believe that part of the preparation we must undertake for our death is to approach it with a soul cleansed through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Other religions have their own prescriptions for their followers as to what they must do to prepare for their own death.  Old age, fortunately, gives all of us the time and the opportunity to undertake those prescribed preparations for our inevitable leap into The Great Beyond.

I am not saying, of course, that everything about growing old is good and beautiful.  I have no intention of sugar-coating old age.  Let’s face it:  old age is  something we all wish we would not have to go through without having to die young.  And the older we get, the more our minds are visited by questions about who will take care of us when we get sick, how we shall die, how long and how painful our dying will be, and so on and so forth.  We will all die someday; and no matter how hard we try to prepare for it -- the time, the place and the manner of our dying are ultimately beyond our control.  The thing to do is to cherish each new day of our life as a priceless gift, and to trust that He who knew what was the best time, the best place and the best way for us to be born into this world also knows what would be the best time, the best place, and the best way for us to leave it.

Thoughts on an Italian Summer Night

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

                It is 10: 37 PM, on the 30th of August 2005, the second to the last night of summer, and I am lying in my bed trying so hard to go to sleep.    But the harder I try, the more sleep eludes me.   I feel like a little boy who has already counted hundreds of sheep yet still feels wide awake despite his closed eyes. 

             It should not really surprise me why I cannot sleep tonight.  This particular working day didn’t go very well.  It was one of those rare days when you drove home from your office and wished you could just keep moving farther and farther away and finally escape from it all.  If the office were a boxing ring, today’s fight had been unusually cruel.   The blows I had to take were rather hard; and the punches I myself gave---intentionally and otherwise---only left a bitter taste in my mouth afterwards.   By mid-afternoon,  I found myself (so to speak) untying my boxing gloves in disgust.  I stood up from my swivel chair and took an aimless, solitary walk in the park a few meters away from where I worked.  Barely had I breathed the fresh air I craved when I realized I had to go back to the ring for another scheduled meeting.  And the ruthless games of power that had to be played across the meeting table made me wish I were elsewhere…  anywhere but there.

             It is 10: 56 PM, on the eve of summer’s last day.   I toss and turn in my bed, praying that sleep would finally embrace me.  Realizing how determined sleep is to make me a loser in its game of hide-and-seek, I rise up, switch on my bedside table lamp, and begin to read.  But my mind soon sees through the trick I am trying to play on it.   I put the book away, switch off the light and resume my hopeless quest for sleep. 

             It is 11:10 PM and I wonder:  What has gone to the heads of these young people?  Everyone else in the neighborhood is trying to get some sleep.  Yet all of a sudden---here they are, singing and laughing as though the day has just started.  Yes, I know, I know… These teenagers are in the neighborhood piazza where one can do what one wants---but not at this time in the evening, for goodness’ sake!  Could some “responsible citizen” please get up and remind these kids of older people’s right to rest for the morrow’s battles?   

            The “responsible citizen” doesn’t get up.  Having no choice but to bear with the youngsters’ unwelcome sound,  I open my eyes in the darkness of my room and try to make out the lyrics of their song.   It is an Italian song.   I can hardly understand its words.   But I soon realize it is a happy song, for after every line or two, someone bursts into laughter and is quickly joined by the others.   Another song is sung, then another, and yet another.   And, always, laughter pops up like a bottle of champagne in between the singing. 

            Wasn’t there a time---many, many years ago---when I myself was young; when, like these young people, all that my friends and I cared about was to play our guitars and sing, regardless of where or when---or how we sounded?   Wasn’t there a time when, like them, all that mattered to me was the here and now?   Not tomorrow.  Not even yesterday.   Wasn’t there a time when I couldn’t understand why older people should give so much importance to achieving success, attaining power, gaining fame and  accumulating wealth?   Their preoccupation with such matters looked ridiculous to me then.  Alas, here I am now breaking my heart and head over things I used to consider not worth the bother at all!   Something must have gone wrong somewhere along the way.   At some point, I must have started believing older people’s lies about the importance of making a name for oneself, of leaving one’s mark in the world, and of winning grown-ups’ wars at all costs. 

            It is almost midnight, on the 30th of August, in this Italian neighborhood thousands of miles away from that small town in the Philippines where I spent a good part of my youth.  I am still wide awake, even though the young people must have grown tired of singing and laughing and have probably gone home, for I no longer hear the sound of them.  I rise up from my bed and look out my window… and I soon realize, in spite of everything, what a beautiful summer night it is!  Si, che bella notte d'estate e davvero!

             In a few hours’ time, regardless of whether or not I can still manage to sleep, I shall have to drive back to that “boxing ring” I left in disgust several hours earlier.  But, though back in the ring, I shall no longer have a prizefighter’s heart.  For this penultimate night of summer has made me a lover of life once more.

 

Father Peter Michael, SVD: A Latinist in Swineherd's Clothing

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ 

              Nowadays, learning a foreign language is so much easier than it used to be.  One does not even have to go to a language school anymore.  One can learn online via computer applications (or apps) that offer grammar e-books and other virtual reading materials, assessment tests, interactive games and even conversation opportunities with fellow online learners.  Moreover, there are countless foreign-language movies and other video clips on the internet that one can watch in order to learn more about the language one wants to study.  

            This was not the case in the mid-1970s when my classmates and I studied Latin under Father Peter Michael, the German-American missionary-priest of the Society of the Divine Word who served as Latin Professor of the Mary Help of Christians Seminary (MHCS) from 1971 to 1976.  Aside from the dearth of learning materials at that time, Latin itself was not an easy language to learn, primarily because it was (and still is) what the field of linguistics calls a “dead language.”  It has no living native speakers.  There is no place in the world where you can sojourn and imbibe the language while interacting with its Latin-speaking inhabitants.  Not even The Vatican can claim to be such a place. 

            To Father Michael’s credit, he tried to make his Latin lessons as easy and as fun-to-learn as he possibly could. He even used teaching methods that were quite advanced.  For instance, he personally created a prototype of sorts of what we now call “infographics.”  To help us etch on our minds the rules of Latin grammar, he drew figures that were accompanied by Latin rhymes which were as easy to memorize as nursery rhymes. He even used different colors in his drawings to help us distinguish one rule from the other. And, best of all, he introduced the rhymes to us by personally reciting them himself at first -- complete with hand and arm gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements that only a “Father Peter Michael” could make.  His method was so effective that, up to now, more than four decades later, my classmates and I can still recite Father Michael’s Latin grammar rhymes at the drop of a hat, and without much effort!  We once spent almost an entire morning in our Facebook chat room playfully exchanging with one another the Latin grammar rhymes we still remembered from our days under Father Michael. 

            Our Latin classes under Father Michael also proved to be particularly useful to me many years later when I had to study Italian to prepare for my first diplomatic assignment in Italy. Although there are many differences between Latin and Italian, the latter happens to be the closest language to Latin among the so-called “Romance languages” (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian, all of which have their origins in Latin).  Somehow, it was easier for me to get a handle on Italian grammar because of its affinity to Latin. 

            Notwithstanding his efforts to make Latin easy and fun-to-learn, Father Michael was by no means an easy teacher.  While teaching, he would be walking around our desks and asking questions at random.  Woe to the student who could not answer his questions correctly!  If his answer exasperated Father Michael, such a student could get a knock on the head from our Latin Professor’s knuckles  – a knock that was neither too soft nor too hard, but just enough to make the correct answer drop from one’s skull (in case it just got stuck there) to the correct part of the brain underneath. Students who were prone to daydreaming during Father Michael’s Latin classes would be jolted out of their reveries; while those who were wide awake but knew they had not studied well enough prayed hard that the bell would ring before those dreaded knuckles had a chance to land on their heads. 

            Father Michael also kept track of our progress by means of regular written quizzes and tests.  Those who did not score well in the quizzes would be required to see him afterwards for special tutorials.  He would patiently explain why your answers were wrong, and tell you what answers you should have given instead. If you still failed the quizzes and the tests despite those tutorials, you would be required to spend your summer vacation taking remedial lessons in Latin.  And if you still did not do well, you would be asked to repeat the course or, if you also happened to fail in other subjects besides Latin, the seminary administration itself would advise you to look for another school. 

            Aside from Latin, Father Michael also taught Greek, German, Religion and American History in the other seminaries he was assigned to before MHCS.  That was how wide-ranging his knowledge was. In addition, Father Michael was a writer who chose to place his pen entirely at the service of God. While teaching Latin at MHCS, he published a book entitled “Traveling Along the Gospel Trail,” a collection of his gospel reflections.  The book did not interest me very much at that time since it was neither a novel nor a collection of short stories.  But, years later, when I got interested in non-fiction writing, I came across Father Michael’s old book again and I could not help admiring his simple but elegant writing style. He went on to write more books, inspiring his readers both by what he wrote and by how well he wrote them.

             Yet, for all his erudition in Latin and Greek, Father Michael was one of the simplest, humblest, and most ascetic men I have ever known.  If my memory serves me right, he only had two sets of shirts and trousers, and one could tell that both sets were regularly overused not only from how they looked but also from how they smelled. As a religious priest, Father Michael could have asked for another set or two.  But he never did, at least not during those two years when he was our Latin professor at MHCS.  He was content with having only two.  That was how simple he was.  In fact, I even heard from some former seminarians of Christ The King Seminary in Quezon City that when Father Michael stayed there in his old age, he used to go around the common bathrooms of the seminary to collect the seminarians’ leftover soap. He put together whatever he managed to collect and used the combined leftover soap when taking a bath, instead of asking for his own supply of bathroom soap.  Indeed, Father Michael was a witness to the truth that you can live with only the barest of possessions yet still have a happy and fulfilled life.  

            The most eloquent manifestation of Father Michael’s humility and simplicity was, of course, the activity he spent most of his time on if he was not teaching Latin or writing his reflections:  raising pigs and selling them to raise money for charity.  He was a swineherd by choice, and a very hands-on one at that.  He maintained a piggery a few meters away from the seminary kitchen, and he personally did all the work that was required -- from feeding the pigs to bathing them to cleaning the pig pens with his own hands. He did not mind getting himself dirtied in the process.  Of course, the running joke among seminarians at that time was that one should never go to Father Michael’s room for the Latin tutorials or go to him for confession if he had just finished tending his pigs, for it would be hard for one’s nose to tell, at that point, the difference between the swineherd and the swine. Father Michael must have been aware of that running joke somehow.  But, I do not think he ever minded it.  Other people’s good opinion, like all other earthly treasures, seemed to be the least of his concerns.  He always came across to me as a man who wished to store up not treasures on earth but treasures in heaven, “where neither moths nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Mt. 6:20). 

            We live in a world that often places more value on “having” rather than on “being.”  We live in a world where a man’s worth is often measured by how much money and possessions he has accumulated, how much power he has acquired, how many honors he has reaped, and how high he has climbed on the ever-slippery pole of worldly success. And, as the Christian existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel once correctly observed, “being and having in our society teaches us how to take possession of things, when it should rather initiate us in the art of letting go.  For there is neither freedom nor real life without an apprenticeship in letting go.”  

            Father Peter Michael was a living lesson in the art of letting go. We were fortunate to have lived with him at one point in our young lives, to have seen up close that letting go is indeed the key to living a happy and fulfilled life.  Father Michael lived until the ripe old age of a hundred and four.  We may not be able to live as long as he did.  But our own lives could be happier and more fulfilled if we ourselves learned the art of letting go.

Father Isidoro Kemmerer, SVD, and the Pruner's Burden

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ 

If he were not assigned the role of Prefect of Discipline at that time, he would have been the most likable of the four SVD formators* who were at the helm of the Mary Help of Christians (Minor) Seminary just before it was turned over to diocesan formators in 1976. Father Isidoro Kemmerer of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) was a short and plump missionary priest from Argentina, who was blessed with a baby face and a pair of boyish eyes.  That he had a hairless, shiny forehead which occupied more than its fair share of space, in fact, made him look even more babyish.  He was the youngest of our four formators (or so it seemed to me then), and as I shall later show, he had a sense of humor that, unfortunately, he felt he had to keep in check on account of his official role. He would have been the priest we felt most at home with.  But he had a job to do and he was bent on doing it well.  

As Prefect of Discipline, he was in charge of ensuring that the seminarians faithfully followed the rules and regulations of the minor seminary, with a view to making self-discipline an inextricable part of their character.   He was, in a manner of speaking, the “pruner” in that vineyard; and he did not hesitate to use his shears whenever he felt that doing so was necessary. 

Father Kemmerer was on duty 24 x 7; and he had this uncanny talent for suddenly appearing on the scene just when you least expected him to be there – and you thought you could get away with the transgression you had just committed or were about to commit.  He employed this uncommon skill of his especially during our study period and during the first two hours after the bell had rung to signal to seminarians that it was time to take a good night’s rest. 

During our study period, Father Kemmerer would be stealthily walking up and down the corridor along which our classrooms were lined up, trying to see who was not studying his lessons; who was breaking the rule of silence by talking to his neighbor (or talking to himself!); or who was doing some other thing which could be considered an infraction of sorts.  Woe to him who was not smart enough to escape Father Kemmerer’s watchful gaze!  Father Kemmerer’s favorite punishment was to order the erring seminarian to walk to the back of the classroom, kneel down, raise his arms sideways, and remain in that position for 15, 30, 45 minutes or one hour – depending on the gravity of his offence.  Sometimes, Father Kemmerer added an extra feature to the punishment.  One classmate of mine claimed that he was once caught chatting with some other classmates during study period.  The punishment that Father Kemmerer imposed on them was rather unique, to say the least.  Instead of asking them to walk to the back of the classroom, he asked them to proceed to the corridor, form a line, kneel down, stretch out their arms sideways, and stick  their tongues in and out repeatedly while counting from one to one hundred!   My classmate described the experience as a “comedy of chastisement,” and I can’t think of a better way to describe it.  It was a good thing that Father Kemmerer decided to transfer the venue of that particular punishment to the corridor.  If it were executed at the back of the classroom where the rest of the seminarians could see what was going on, the whole class would have exploded in laughter, and the punishment’s intended effect as a deterrence would have been lost.  But, I suspect that Father Kemmerer couldn’t help laughing inside himself when he saw how comical the punishment he had just imposed turned out to be. 

The same punishment (minus the sui generis tongue-sticking routine) was also imposed on those seminarians whom he caught doing other things during the time when they were supposed to be sleeping.  Even studying one’s lessons or reading a book with a flashlight at bedtime was considered an offence in those days. 

Speaking of books, one of the things that former minor seminarians will never forget about Father Kemmerer was his zealous censorship of all the books and magazines that they brought in with them from “the outside world.”  He patiently went over their pages to make sure that they did not contain anything that might “pollute” his young seminarians’ minds.  And if he came upon a page that contained anything “impure,” it was immediately torn out, crumpled and thrown straight into his waste basket.  Seminary legend has it that some senior seminarians eagerly waited for the chance to be assigned to clean his office so they could get hold of Father Kemmerer’s waste basket.  They would then piece the torn pages together, with the patience and enthusiasm of biblical scholars who have just found the scattered pages of an ancient manuscript on the bank of the Jordan River.  Of course, like most legends, this one remains unverified as of press time. 

Father Kemmerer’s default demeanor was one of sternness. Yet, in his unguarded moments, Father Kemmerer inadvertently revealed a humorous side to him.  Aside from that comical punishment he once imposed on that classmate of mine and his fellow “rule-breakers,” I remember how he used to tease us at mealtimes about who should receive the privilege of getting his leftover food.  The perennial complaint of minor seminarians in my time was that the food they were getting was never enough to satisfy their hunger.  (As to whether the source of the problem was the scarcity of food or the insatiability of minor seminarians’ appetites [or both] is an issue that I sometimes think about with a chuckle.)  Fortunately, there was always a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.  Intentionally, I believe, Father Kemmerer never finished all the food that was placed on his special table in our refectory.  He always had leftover food to give away – and even if these were leftover food, they were consistently special!  They often consisted of carbonara, mashed potatoes, pork chop, fried chicken and other mouth-watering recipes, with matching dessert to boot!  Seminarians, who were seated at separate tables in groups of four, eagerly awaited the moment when Father Kemmerer finally wiped his mouth with his immaculately white napkin and decided which table of seminarians he would give the prized leftover food to. Sometimes, he would turn the moment into an opportunity for humor.  He would glance around the dining room with a naughty smile on his face, pretend that he was having a hard time deciding whom to give the leftover food to, act as though he had finally decided to give them to one table – only to shake his head all of a sudden to indicate that he had changed his mind. Seminarians (especially the ever-starved ones) loved the suspense – and the chance to see the funny side of their Prefect of Discipline!  From where I sat, I could tell that Father Kemmerer was having as much fun as we had on those occasions. 

Aside from having a humorous side, Father Kemmerer also knew how to praise seminarians when they did something he considered commendable.  I recall a time when he made an unannounced check of our individual cabinets in the dormitory.  We were told to stand beside our cabinets and show him what was inside.  When my turn came, he literally shouted with joy at what he saw, saying “Look at this!  Look at this!  This is how you should arrange your clothes!”  I took a look at my own cabinet and I myself was surprised at how well arranged my clothes indeed were.  They were folded and piled so neatly and uniformly, you would think you were looking at a display cabinet in a department store. I remember suddenly feeling so proud of myself, as though I had just won a prize in a tournament.  And I also remember thanking my lucky stars for inspiring me to arrange the contents of my cabinet that day, not knowing that a spot check was actually in the offing.  

Father Kemmerer’s compliment was so effective that, up to now, more than four decades later, I still find myself arranging the clothes in my cabinet as perfectly as I did that fortunate day.  Sometimes, when I open my cabinet, I have this funny thought that Father Kemmerer might suddenly appear behind me to see if I have been able to maintain the habit he had complimented me so generously for, many rainy seasons ago. 

My most touching memory of Father Kemmerer, however, happened at a beach in Binmaley where our freshman class had an outing as a reward for winning a seminary competition.  We were having a lot of fun swimming and playing on the shore when, all of a sudden, someone shouted that two of our classmates were drowning.  From the shore, we could see them desperately trying to keep themselves from being swallowed up by the water. We had no other adult companion with us except Father Kemmerer, who evidently did not know how to swim.  All he could do was to cry out repeatedly “Help them! Pray for them! Help them! Pray for them!”  On his face, one could see a mixture of fear, helplessness, and a growing sense of despair.  Fortunately, a passing fisherman came to our classmates’ rescue.  They were saved from drowning, but they had to be hospitalized for days afterwards. 

Every time I remember Father Kemmerer, that scene at the beach never fails to squeeze its way into the picture in mind.  For all his outward sternness, I saw how profoundly human he was after all.  That day, he looked to me like a helpless grandfather who would never have forgiven himself if those two boys had not been saved. 

Contemporary educators would likely frown upon the disciplinary methods employed by Father Kemmerer.  By their standards, the punishments he imposed would amount to a serious degradation of children’s dignity.  But, it would be an error (and an act of unfairness) to evaluate anything out of its historical and cultural context, or worse, to pass judgment upon it using the criteria of a different historical and cultural context.  Father Kemmerer’s disciplinary methods were considered normal and acceptable in their time and place.  That is not to say, of course, that all the methods employed by some Prefects of Discipline in that era were acceptable.  I have heard sad stories of some Prefects of Discipline who employed forms of corporal punishment that could be considered inappropriate (perhaps even cruel) by any standard.  Fortunately, I do not recall hearing anyone complain that Father Kemmerer imposed a punishment heavier than the ones I have just described. 

A Prefect of Discipline’s job is, without doubt, the most unpopular role that could be given to a seminary formator. I believe that if they had a choice, most seminary formators would rather be assigned as Spiritual Director, Prefect of Studies, Procurator, or Rector.  A “pruner” in God’s vineyard (which is what a Prefect of Discipline’s job is ultimately all about) will always find himself in a perpetual dilemma:  if he wants to be popular with his seminarians, he must be willing to relax the rules a bit, ignore their infractions from time to time, adopt a “hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil” attitude towards his seminarians… But then, he would be running the risk of committing a dereliction of his duty. He might even end up as the laughingstock of his seminarians. 

On the other hand, if he faithfully carries out his duty as a “pruner,” he will have to give up the desire to be consistently popular with his seminarians.  Some of them will play cat-and-mouse with him and brag about the times when they were able to outsmart him. In fact, whenever former seminarians reminisce together, over bottles of beer, about their seminary days, they will almost always end up talking about how they were able to outwit “poor Father Prefect” at one time or another during their stay there. 

I myself had been guilty of such uncharitable talk from time to time in the past.  But the older I get, the more I realize what an immense service our Prefects of Discipline had rendered to us, to the Church, and to God during our seminary formation. If we now feel grateful for the self-discipline that has become an integral component of our character as former seminarians, let us not forget that much of the credit should go to those heroic and charitable priests who accepted the burden of becoming the pruners in God’s vineyard, even if they knew that it would probably take several decades before the plants would finally realize that the wielding of the shears was really meant for their own good.

 ____________________

*The four SVD priests were Father Viktor Holobrady, SVD; Father John Healy, SVD; Father Peter Michael, SVD; and Father Isidoro Kemmerer, SVD.  They were our formators during my first two years in the minor seminary (1974-1976).  In June 1976, the administration of MHCS was turned over to diocesan formators under the leadership of Father (later, Bishop) Jesus Cabrera, who made history as the first diocesan Rector of the minor seminary.  In 1978, my classmates and I became the 2^nd batch of seminarians to graduate from MHCS as an institution run by diocesan formators.

 

Dying

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ 

            From a certain point of view, we should all be glad that we are going to die someday.  It is, in some sense, a blessing that our life will have an end.  Can you imagine what an ordeal it would be to grow old without ever dying, to experience our bodies weakening over the years while knowing that, no matter what happens to our bodies, they would survive for hundreds and thousands of years – for all eternity in fact?  I have heard about some old people in their late nineties who eventually find themselves wishing that God would finally give them their well-deserved rest.  And who can blame them?  It is not easy to grow old, to live inside a body that cannot be prevented from getting sick and weak and helpless with each passing day. There is a limit to what science can do to slow down (much less stop) our aging process and its concomitant pains.  If some old people in their late nineties eventually wish God would at last give them eternal rest, can you imagine how it would feel to turn 250 or 500 years old, with no hope of dying in sight? 

            Some will probably counter:  I would not mind living forever as long as I would not grow old at all, or as long as I would stay forever young AND everyone else stays forever young.  That latter condition (that everyone else stays forever young) is important because it would be horrendous for us to watch our loved ones grow old and die, from one generation to the next, while we ourselves remain young and untouched by time.  It is hard enough to love and lose people to death in one lifetime.  Can you imagine what a scourge it would be to have to do that over and over again in many lifetimes – forever and ever, in fact?  

            I myself would not mind living forever as long as I stay forever young AND everyone else (especially the ones I love) also stays forever young.  Sadly, however, that is not the case with our life.  We all grow old with each passing day.  We all grow weaker, more helpless, more dependent upon other people with each ticking of the clock.  Unless this reality is changed, we should all be glad our life is going to end someday. 

            On top of this very practical reason why we should view death with a sense of gratitude (nay, with a sense of relief!), there is another reason which may not be immediately obvious to many of us:  Death is literally what makes our life complete. Death is what gives our life a form and a potential for meaning. Can you imagine reading a book about a story that will never end, a story that goes on and on over countless pages with no conclusion in sight?  Or watching a telenovela that drags on forever, night after night after night, on your television screen?  Or listening to a piece of music the melody of which has no ending?  The ending of the novels that we read, the telenovelas that we watch, and the music we listen to is what makes them complete. It is their having an end that gives them a decipherable form.  Even if their ending is sad or tragic, the very fact that they have an ending is what makes them interesting and beautiful.  And our life is like that.  Precisely because our lives here on earth will have an end, precisely because they will be “completed” at some point by our dying, we have the opportunity to live them in such a way that they will attain a meaning, a significance, a beauty which they would not otherwise attain. We would never feel the urgency of doing what we want to do and doing what we need to do (in short, the urgency of truly living) if we knew that there would be an infinity of tomorrows during which we could finally do them, if and when we do decide to. 

            Nevertheless, even if we finally open our eyes to the bright side of death as we just described it, most of us will still continue to view death with fear.  And I think there are two main reasons why we shall continue to view death in that manner.  The first is that death always entails some form of pain.  The second is that none of us is really sure about what awaits us beyond the wall of death. 

            Dying is almost always a painful experience – physically, emotionally, psychologically and what have you. Whether it is dying suddenly in an airplane crash or dying slowly due to a lingering illness, whether it is dying by fire or by water or by ice, whether it is dying while one is young or dying while one is old – almost every manner of dying involves pain. And, as human beings, we all want to flee from pain whenever we can.  

            Apropos of the pain that accompanies dying, we can look at it this way:  what is the worst thing that could happen to us as a result of that pain?  The answer of course is that we might die, period.  Perhaps, then, we could look at the pain that accompanies dying as an inextricable part of the path we must traverse to get to our universal and inevitable destination, which is death.  We can also consider this:  God, in Whom “we live and move and have our being” will surely give us whatever strength we will need to “endure” the kind of pain that shall accompany our own manner of dying.  We may not be able to know here on earth why He will allow us to die the way we will; but we can trust that He will make sure that we will be able to “bear” our painful passage from this life to the next. 

            As to the second reason for our fear in the face of death: indeed, it is part of the human heart’s nature to be afraid of the unknown -- and death is literally the Great Unknown.  Up to now, no one has come back from the afterlife to tell us what the afterlife looks like – assuming that there is indeed an afterlife.   Some people claim to have come back from the dead but, sadly, their accounts leave much to be desired in terms of credibility.  We Christians, of course, believe that there is life beyond this life, because no less than Jesus (who, we believe, is the Son of God Himself) assured us so.  But that’s all we can really stand on, in the final analysis:  the firm belief, the unconditional faith in our Lord’s assurance of eternal life.  Beyond that faith, we do not have the scientific proof to back up our claim.  Yet, that is also the case with the other believers who profess a belief in some form of an afterlife, like reincarnation.  They too cannot present scientific proof to substantiate their belief in, say, reincarnation. And, by the same token, even materialists who insist that nothing awaits us beyond this life, that the entirety of our life is extinguished and we literally return to nothingness the moment we die – they too have no scientific proof to put forward for their assertions.  The different religions of the world can, of course, come up with the most persuasive philosophical arguments in support of their respective beliefs.  But the most that these philosophical arguments can do is to show that it is logical/reasonable to hold such beliefs.  They cannot conclusively prove that the afterlife indeed exists (or that it does not exist). Those who think that philosophy can, on its own, answer questions of fact would do well to remember what Bertrand Russell once said of the eminent ancient Greek philosopher:  “Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.”[1] 

            At the end of the day, therefore, anyone who wishes to find meaning in death has to find his way back to faith:  faith that Whoever created this immense and still-evolving universe with its myriad life forms desires to share Life, not Death; and that the apparent “deaths” that all creatures experience are but stages that they have to do undergo in order to reach the Fullness of Life that The Creator wants to share with them – with us.  Faith that Whoever created this intricate work of both art and science which we call the human being, did not create it for the purpose of playing with it only for a while and throwing it away like a useless toy once He has grown tired of it.  Faith in the repeated assurances given by God’s own Son that death is not the end of our road, and that eternal life awaits those who put their trust in Him. 

            “Do not be troubled; trust in God and trust in me.  In my Father’s house there are many rooms.  Otherwise I would not have told you that I go to prepare a place for you.”[2] Indeed, it is only by putting our unconditional faith in our Lord’s promise of eternal life that we can face death with courage, with hope – and with peace.      

_______________

[1] Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (New York:  AMS Press, Inc., 1968), p. 7.

[2] John 14:2.  Christian Community Bible, 35^th ed. (Quezon City:  Pastoral Bible Foundation/Claretian Publications, 2004).

Living (Thoughts on Turning 58)*

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

 

          I am turning fifty-eight years old today.  My father recently passed on at the age of eighty, and his own father (my Lolo Nap) passed away at the age of eighty-eight.  Both of them died of natural causes.  If those who claim that longevity has a genetic basis are correct, there is a big chance that I will still have twenty-two years to live, and perhaps even thirty years if my paternal grandfather’s genes will have the upper hand.  But, my maternal grandfather (my Lolo Santiago) died in his sleep when he was only thirty-seven.  On the basis of the same genetic theory of longevity, there is an equal chance that I will take after my maternal grandfather and not really live very long.  On top of that, of course, I can actually die anytime (even within the next hour, in fact) on account of an accident, a heart attack, a stroke, a COVID-19 complication, or some other unforeseen cause.  After all, life can be taken away from us anytime, anywhere – often in ways, and under circumstances, we least expect.        

          Not only is our life in constant danger of being taken away from us, it is also painfully short.  In some sense, things have a much longer “life span” than us.  In my sojourns and travels abroad, I have seen monuments and edifices that have remained standing after thousands of years, surviving earthquakes and fires and wars and what have you.  Compared to the “life span” of things, ours is but a drop in the bucket. To borrow the words of the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, things “will endure beyond our vanishing.”** 

Life is short.  Time flies fast.  Life can be gone anytime. Yet it is precisely for these reasons that we must consider life the most precious gift we have ever received.  It is a gift because it is not something we earned a right to, in some previous life. None of us was “entitled” to be born.  God was in no way obliged to allow our birth into this world. We were born simply because God wanted to share with us the gift of being alive. And since the Giver of that gift can take it back from us anytime, the value of such a gift is literally beyond measure.  For what value is there in something that we know we will never lose, no matter what we do, no matter what happens?  But if we know that something can be taken away from us anytime, and that we will only have it for a limited period, and that that period is fast running out, then there will be no doubt in our mind as to the worth of that something.  

That’s, for me, the most important lesson I have learned in the course of my fifty-eight journey in this world: that life is a priceless gift.  It might have been given to us in a “package” that we think was “less attractive” than that in which the gift of life had been given to others.  We may think that the potentialities and opportunities we were endowed with at birth were not as “advantageous” as those of our neighbor. But we will only be partially right if we adopt that line of thought.  For the truth is:  it is not what we have been given at birth that shall determine what we shall become later on.  Rather, it is what we do with what we have been given at birth that shall shape the kind of person we shall turn out to be. 

But there is more.  When God decided to allow us to be born, He gave us exactly what we would need to fulfill a unique mission He would like us to accomplish in this life.  Contrary to what existentialist philosophers claim (that we were merely “thrown” into a “meaningless world” and it is then up to us to “create” a meaning for our own lives), nothing about the circumstances of our birth was accidental.  Everything – including the apparent “disadvantages” we had to begin our life with – was placed there for a purpose.  We will not be able to see the purpose (or purposes) right away.  But, at some point in the future, we will understand why God placed them there, and then we will appreciate the awesome wisdom behind it all.  

Which brings me to the next important lesson I have learned in my journey so far:  our fundamental stance towards life should be one of gratitude.  Life is something we should always be grateful for. We should thank God first and foremost, but immediately afterwards -- we should thank our parents for being the channels through which we were given this most precious of gifts.  Our parents may not be perfect; but then, where can we find a perfect parent in this imperfect world?  All parents are imperfect simply because all of them are human beings like the rest of us.  Yet most of them, despite their imperfections, sincerely want to do their best as parents.   So if we think our parents have done us wrong at some point in our lives, we would do well to assume that much of it was probably unintentional (a case of good intentions gone awry).  We will also eventually find that even the emotional hurts that our parents have unintentionally inflicted on us as children, even the mistakes which we think they have committed against us, have actually done us good in some way, if we will but look more closely at how our lives have unfolded as a result thereof.  

Other people have also touched our lives in some other way and helped us become better persons: our siblings and friends, our teachers and mentors, people we hardly know but whose hidden and unrecognized deeds have made it possible for us to continue on our journey.  We ought to be grateful to them as well.  Our spouses, of course, deserve a special place in our hearts’ hymn of gratitude, for the Divine Potter’s hands often make use of them to mold us into the persons He wants us to become. 

But gratitude is not just a matter of saying “Thank you.”  Neither is it just a matter of feeling thankful.  Gratitude – especially, gratitude for the gift of life – must be concretized.  And the way to show our gratitude for life is by spending it in furtherance of the unique mission God wants us to carry out in this world.  Each of us, as we said, has a mission that no one else (not even those who appear to be smarter or more powerful than us) can accomplish.  That mission is something broader than the conventional careers, professions and vocations that society offers us to choose from.  It is a lot more than choosing to become a doctor, or an engineer, or a businessman.  Yes, choosing to heed one of these “callings” is often part of the process of fulfilling our unique mission.  But – and I must underline this – these callings are just the implements by which we can accomplish our true mission in life. 

No one is in a better position to tell us what our unique mission from God is than we ourselves.  At best, our parents, our teachers, our parish priest, our spiritual director, and our friends can only offer us their opinions as to what our mission might be.  They often mean well when they give us their opinions, so it will not hurt us if we listen to their opinions and give them some thought.  Sometimes, in fact, their opinions may turn out to be the marks on the road that God uses to lead us to where our mission is.  But, at the end of the day, we must realize that we – and we alone – will know exactly what our mission is. 

Some of us discover our life’s mission early enough.  Some take a longer time to discover it.  Others think they have finally found it, only to realize later on that they have to resume their search.  Not a few have to try one or two paths first before they finally find the right one.  But, whether we discover our life’s mission right away or only after a long search, it is important to remember that every stage of that discovery, every moment of that journey – including those that appear to be the “wrong turns” we have made along the way – forms an essential part of our personal odyssey.  Not a bit of it has been a waste of time.  Every detour, every U-turn, every flat tire, and every tank that suddenly runs out of gas and forces us to stop and delay our trip, is essential.  Although, of course, we can only say this if we have consciously embarked on the journey of discovering our life’s mission with a view to carrying it out.  If we have not, then everything has been a waste of time. Living life without a clear idea of where one is going is like riding on a rudderless ship that moves everywhere but arrives nowhere. 

Speaking of life-missions, ours may not necessarily be a grand one by earthly standards.  Not everyone has been charged by God with the task of changing the world by means of some history-shaping act or some paradigm-shifting intellectual discovery.  Our life’s mission may simply be to make a difference in a particular person’s life (one’s spouse) or in the life of a particular family (one’s own), by means of words and deeds that probably mean little to other persons. But, in God’s grand design, that mission is by no means less significant than the other missions that appear more remarkable in the world’s eyes.  No one else can fulfill that mission but we; and it cannot be fulfilled if we do not agree to carry it out.  And whether our mission is to make a difference in one person’s life or in an entire nation’s life; whether it is to come up with a better way of teaching basic math to schoolchildren or to construct a philosophical paradigm that will change an entire generation’s way of looking at things; whether it is to be the head of a small household or to be the head of a huge organization, we must never doubt that each mission is important in God’s eyes, because each plays an indispensable role in the gradual unfolding of His divine plan. 

I must forthwith add, however, that although God allowed us to be born into this world in order to fulfill a unique mission, it does not mean we have to go through life “laboring” for the sake of that mission.  God is not a taskmaster whose eyes are focused mainly on the efforts we are exerting to carry out our mission.  On the contrary, He wants us to enjoy the journey of life itself and not to preoccupy ourselves too much with the destination. He wants us to relish every moment of that journey -- the joys and pains of loving, the excitement of trying and failing and trying again, the adventure of winning or losing and bouncing back.  And as regards the mission He wants us to accomplish, I have learned that He wants us to enjoy that too, and that the key to enjoying our mission is to love the things that God wants us to do. Or perhaps, the better way to put it is:  to do what God asks us to do -- for and with love.  The moment we do things with that motivation and attitude, even the most thankless task required by our mission, even the most boring part of what we have to do becomes a source of joy. 

Finally, today, as I look back on the life I have thus far lived, there is one other lesson that fills my heart with profound awe:  God’s patience, understanding and mercy literally know no bounds. There had been times in my journey when the marks that God placed on the road to guide my way were quite clear and easy to understand.  Yet, I chose to ignore them. I would have lost my way altogether if God did not persist in (as it were)  reconfiguring, again and again, the geography of my life so that, whatever road I took, I would ultimately find my way back to where I should be going. 

____________________ 

            *Written in October 2020, in celebration of my 58^th birthday. 

**Jorge Luis Borges, “Things” in Collected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman (London:  Penguin Books, 2000), 277.