Year of Faith, Year of Calamities?

From 13 October 2012 to 24 November 2013, if I am not mistaken, we have been celebrating the Year of Faith at the encouragement of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. It was meant to deepen our spiritual capacity, or grace, to be aware, to perceive, and to experience God’s presence and hear His voice in our daily activities and in the events that occur daily in our environment.
Here in Davao Archdiocese the Daughters of St. Paul

organized a year-long week-end seminar on the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) for Religious and Laity at the San Pedro Cathedral with lecturers from the Clergy and the Consecrated Formators. The Diocesan Priests also made their own reflective revisit of the CCC. In addition to the study of the Church’s teachings, several displays of tarpaulin streamers in strategic locations in parish churches as well as many books, pamphlets, brochures, flyers, and liturgies remind us of the Year of Faith.
As if to test our religious faith destructive natural and moral calamities struck within the year.. They shook the moral and physical foundations of the signs and symbols of the faith. These were the anti-life immoral values behind the Reproductive Health Law(RHL) already being introduced locally even before they were legalized. Then came the killer typhoons and strong earthquakes destroying churches, lives and the environment. Sendong, Pablo, Bohol-Cebu tremors, and Yolanda are no longer just proper names; they are linguistic symbols of destruction and death … of Life and Faith!

Why faith? Because the calamities are testing and weakening that faith inspite of the Oratio Imperata or Special Prayers. Media frequently report loaded questions like, “Where is God in the victims of Yolanda?’, “Doesn’t God love us anymore?” These, and many of the same tone, reflect a lack or absence of faith. The Church interpreting Scriptures has answers from the perspective of Revelation but these people cannot accept the answers.

The Church says, God keeps us alive day and night by His power and love; He is never separated from us even for a second. His suffering, death, resurrection and ascension, which we call the Paschal Mystery, gives meaning to human suffering and death. There is life after death. But there is a judgment after death: “Whatever you do to the least of your brothers and sisters you do it to me…come and be with me forever”(Math.25: 16 & ff). “Even if the body decays, the soul is renewed everytime ..(2 Cor. 4:16).
I agree with a friend, a woman of faith, who suggested to reverse the questions. Instead of those questions in the foregoing paragraph, we should ask, “Where and how am I now in relation to God”, “Do I really love Him and the environment?”

Self-examination that is honest and sincere based on the Ten Commandments of God and commandments of the Church would surely reveal the truth about our life as believers in God or our life of faith. All of us, yes definitely All, will be found wanting.

Faith is a grace, a free gift from God. We cannot receive it by getting a school diploma, a TESDA skill and certificate or by being elected into government and big business. Faith is ‘evidence of the things that are unseen”(2 Cor 4:16 & ff). And the Unseen God who is closer to us than we are to ourselves offers this gift if we ask for it always.

Why do many Christians, and Catholics for that matter, cannot accept the Church’s answers and teaching? Why is their faith in God and in the Church getting weaker?