“High on Drugs or High on God?”

The issue that hug the front pages of national dailies, Facebooks, Twitters and TV and radio breaking reports is the issue of drug lords, drug pushers, drug addicts and the war on drugs being relentlessly waged by the Duterte administration. While Duterte supporters are cheering the killings of suspects in violation of the law on due process the human rights advocates are worried. More worried are the moral leaders because of the culture of violence and anti-life mentality spreading throughout the land.

While the above issues are unresolved and the future of the country’s development, progress and peace is uncertain, it is helpful to remind ourselves of our important role in the resolution of the issues, that is, our role as people of faith.

In last week’s Shalom I quoted the words of Pope Benedict XVI who as theologian Joseph Ratzinger believed that the conversion of peoples to the early Church was due, not to any planned evangelizing strategy, but the faith life of the early Christians. Their faith in, and personal experience of, the Risen Lord in the eucharistic celebration and in daily life was the power, guided by the Holy Spirit, that attracted, fascinated and converted unbelievers to a new life of intimacy with God. To express this special, beautiful and deep religious experience in modern American slang, we can say that the early Church members and their converts were HIGH ON GOD!

Which reminds us of its linguistic equivalent – HIGH ON DRUGS! There is no similarity in the experience of extreme pleasure and satisfaction. There is only linguistic equivalence. For, God cannot be compared to opium, marijuana or shabu.

To be sure, to be high on God‎ is the work of every one of us who believe and live in, and experience the presence, of the Risen Lord Jesus in our daily or Sunday Mass and daily life. We are embodied souls, that is, souls or spirits with body. We can know and experience God and spiritual and moral values through the materiality of our bodies. This is our individual role and challenge. To get rid of drug addiction, we have to have God addiction!