Getting back on our
feet
By Fr.
ROY CIMAGALA, roycimagala@gmail.com
October 17, 2013
WE have been floored by a
7.2 magnitude earthquake. The number of casualties is increasing, and
the damage has been extensive in terms of properties and
infrastructure.
Houses and buildings have
fallen. Landslides have blocked roads, bridges destroyed, isolating
towns. But it’s most heartbreaking to see churches collapse or
practically ruined. That sight alone touches right deep in people’s
soul like no other.
Gone, for now, are those
precious treasures that represent our people’s journey of faith and
piety through the centuries. Their mere presence, even as we just
happen to pass them by, never fails to evoke a certain sense of our
identity.
We may not have been a very
good member of the Church or one who is consistently faithful to it,
but somehow we feel we belong to it, just as any child continues to
belong to a family whether he behaves well or not. We are always
welcome to enter it. It does not make easy, uncharitable distinctions.
Some of us are asking why
these churches have to go the way they did during the temblor. Well,
God has his ways, his very mysterious ways. And if we continue to have
faith, we know that everything happens for a good reason. “Omnia in
bonum,” as they say.
We have to reinforce our
belief that God is conveying a beautiful message to us through their
disappearance. Obviously we have to try to decipher and fathom it. We
can always try.
We should not just focus on
the purifying or penalizing aspect of their disappearance, destruction
or damage, though that alone holds a good basis. For one, we have
often taken them for granted, allowing them to drift to deterioration.
Very often, when I visited
many of these old churches, I got the impression that they were
treated like aging great-grandmothers who were more of a bother than a
useful constituent. They seem to be maintained only as a religious
prop or cultural ornament. Their sacramentality as our home with God
is practically lost.
This is not to mention that
in our life of piety, many things have gone sour. We like to strut our
religiosity, yet even in the externals alone, many holes and
inconsistencies can be seen. If we are not lax, our most prevalent
predicament, then we go to the other extreme of being too fastidious
as to be rigid and superstitious.
But I’m sure there is a lot
more of positive reasons why these beautiful churches are gone for
now. I like to believe that God is challenging us to rebuild our
spiritual life so we can rebuild our churches, making them more
beautiful, stronger and more adapted to current and foreseeable
situations and challenges.
God is asking us to get our
act together in both our own personal and collective life. We need to
develop a strong and functioning interior life of love of God, and a
vibrant concern for the others in all aspects of life, both material
and spiritual, both mundane and sacred.
We have to break loose from
our complacency in our relation with God and others, and really enter
into a most meaningful engagement with him and everybody else.
We need to mature in our
faith, after so many centuries already of Christian life. We need to
man up so as to grapple with the real issues of our life and not get
entangled with the non-essentials, though they too need to be duly
attended to and related to what is truly important.
I know the transition is not
easy. But it can be facilitated if we try our best to put our mind and
heart, plus all our resources, into the task of rebuilding
simultaneously our spiritual life and our churches. This can be done.
This is not a quixotic dream.
We need to get back on our
feet and move on with a revitalized and purified sense of purpose in
life. We have to rise from the ruins, counting on God’s grace and our
all-out effort.
Christ has reassured us that
we can resurrect not only on the last day, but also on any day as long
as make the necessary changes in our life. His promise of a new
creation is effective as often as we decide to return to him and to
take him and his beautiful will for us seriously.
This, I believe, is how we
should react to the loss of our beautiful churches and the devastation
of the earthquake. God is planting a seed in us that has to die first
in order to grow and bear more fruit.