The church and the mall

HARDLY any two places can be more different than these, but we should all feel the need to bridge them. This is simply because there has to be consistency in our praying, on the one hand, and our buying and selling, on the other. In fact, there has to be consistency in all our activities.

All our human activities, whether spiritual or mundane, personal or social, should manifest and build up our inherent dignity firstly as thinking and responsible persons and ultimately as children of God.

This is the challenge we always have to face. Our broken and weakened humanity tends to be pulled and swayed by different forces. We tend to lose our true identity this way.

Thus, we should always remember what Saint Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." (10,31)

Just a reminder, we have been created by God and we have been made for Him. All our life, our words and actions should begin and end in God. That's where we can have truth and joy. We cannot serve both God and mammon.

We just have to learn how to build this consistency in our life, because sad to say, because of sin and our weaknesses and the other enemies of our soul, we do not attain this consistency or unity of life automatically.

A prayer offered for us in this season of Advent is very appropriate: "Teach us to judge wisely the things of earth and to love the things of heaven." I believe we have to repeat this often, since our environment can be most tricky.

We should work on this wish. We have to learn how to discern things properly, for indeed many dangers and many other harmful things come to us even in some very attractive and pleasurable ways.

Just the other day, I did some Christmas shopping in a mall with a friend. Sure, the many beautiful things that I saw fascinated me. I marveled to discover that there are gadgets like a mini radio selling only at P70.

But I had to control my urges, otherwise I would simply be swallowed by the overwhelmingly intoxicating air. It was then that I felt this need to be strongly consistent with our Christian dignity.

I remembered what Saint Paul said about being very spiritual, without which the carnal side of our being can pull us down to our perdition. This is what he said:

"We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God: that we may know the things that are given us from God.

"Which things also we speak: not in the learned words of human wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

"But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God. For it is foolishness to him: and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined." (1 Cor 2,12-14)

My fervent prayer this Christmas is for us to assimilate the wisdom of these words. It is not that we should stay away from the malls and our earthly concerns. Hell, no! But we have to learn how to be discerning.

The world that is also God's creation has unfortunately imbibed the sinfulness of man, such that many things in it lead us to sin rather than to God.

For this discerning spirit, we need to pray, develop the virtues, receive the sacraments, and then study the doctrine, especially the social doctrine of our faith.

This social doctrine can tell us how to uphold our true Christian dignity as we go about our earthly affairs. It guides us, and reminds us especially of basic virtues and values that are in keeping with our dignity.

Examining it, we will realize that it is developed not only with the supernatural charism of the Catholic Church magisterium, but also by a careful and multi-disciplinary approach that can only make it rich and relevant to all our earthly concerns.