Peace 2014

Because we are living in time, our thoughts, words, and actions are time-bound.

It’s difficult to think, speculate, talk, behave and relate to timelessness or eternity. Part of the reasons is our innate tendency towards things material which is attributed to a wrong understanding of modernity which the Church calls the heresy of modernism, the guiding principle of a spirit-less society.

Yet even the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) or Lumads are by nature attuned to, and are delicately keen about, the world of the spirit and of things immaterial. They are in many ways spirit-bound or bound to timelessness although they cannot explain it philosophically,

Our Christian faith has been, and still is, reinforced by Indigenous spirituality. We them we declare our belief in the primacy of spirit over matter. This is the basis of our so-called ‘creation spirituality’. This is what we must continue to declare and preach as we evangelize and become evangelized.

Our faith makes us go beyond it by declaring that God, or Magbabaya, is Spirit and has taken a human form in Jesus Christ. In His divine wisdom God chose to do this, to be born in time and in a sense has become time-bound, albeit temporarily, through the Hebrew race and culture. So in limited time He was born, lived, suffered, died and became alive again, and mysteriously is present now with us. Faith gives us the “third eye” by which to see and perceive His presence in time and in space, that is, in the Here and Now.

The Christ-form, which we referred to in last week’s Shalom column, is “the same yesterday, today and forever” ( Heb. 13: 8). He is both time-bound and spirit-bound, so to say. This is why He was able to help individual humans unite and coordinate body, soul and spirit, as well as unify all humans among themselves by loving them through suffering and dying on the cross. Here people of faith find the glory and splendor of God’s love hidden in suffering.

In Hebrew culture and language this selfless process is called SHALOM, the Hebraic word for Peace. So St. Paul calls Jesus Christ, God in human form, our Shalom, our Peace (Ep. 2:14). The Hebrew understanding of Shalom refers to wholeness, harmony, integrity and orderliness of the individual and consequently of the community.

The coming year 2014, a time before eternity, is and must be a time of peace, a dynamic process of union with Christ and of the unification of fellow human beings with one another.. St Paul prayed for this when he wrote, “may the God of peace make you whole and entire, body, soul and spirit, until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Thess. 5:23).

In this year of peace 2014 we prepare for the Second Coming of Christ by Becoming Christ-like, Peaceful Peace-bringers to the diverse situations of unpeace in especially in our country. We do this by becoming persons of wholeness, harmony, integrity and order; in a word, persons and communities of peace.
A Serene, Tranquil and Peaceful New Year to all!