A clarification in these
uncertain times

DOCTORS become nurses. Engineers, even those with some successful contracting jobs, become caregivers.

Such are the phenomena sweeping the country. They indicate dramatic, even frantic, efforts to adjust to equally dramatic situations, and, yes, even to pure survival.

I will just let others to say how bad things in our country have become that many people are driven to make these radical changes and go abroad.

My concern is to ask how are we taking care of these persons, not only materially but also -- and rather more importantly -- spiritually and morally.

This to me is the more important point to tackle. Let's not forget that we here are dealing with persons, not goods or commodities that can be bundled and shipped anywhere, anytime.

These are persons who have feelings, dreams and aspirations that need to be respected, who have families that need to be protected. Ultimately, they are persons whose spiritual life should always be taken care of.

In number, they cannot be ignored. And they continue to increase. Even I know many of them personally. And this has led me to thinking a lot.

Obviously, I would prefer that they all stay here in our country, stay with their families, and they all be happy and secure. But alas this has become wishful thinking.

The overwhelming reality is that we cannot stop these migrations and changes in profession. We just have to learn how to deal with this situation more properly.

I hope that the government and other entities do all they can to help these persons. A lot of things can be done in terms of placement, family assistance, etc.

But one point worth discussing is the proper attitude and motivation those concerned should have when going through this situation.

It cannot be denied that there is a lot of anxiety involved here, a lot of fear, and even a lot of sense of loss and degradation. It may not show, but there certainly is a lot of agony and mental torture involved here.

This is where the faith in God and his providence may be tested, then doubted, if not denied. This is the most unfortunate development that can happen. This is where the real loss or defeat of a person takes place.

In my dealings with these persons, this concern easily comes to the fore. More than the economic or financial difficulty, what bothers them most is that they sometimes feel their faith is ebbing away.

That's when their sense of meaning in life is disappearing. Even their sense of family and their sense of self-worth get badly bashed. Many suffer from depression. Earnest prayers are in order.

This is when conveying the virtue of hope and optimism is most needed. And it should be done in such a way as to answer the questions of those involved, questions that are often not asked. It should be done in such a way that the fears are removed, apprehensions and anxieties relieved.

This is no easy task. It certainly involves a lot of psychology, of knowing the persons as they really are. But more than that, it involves nothing less than authentic sanctity to effectively give hope to those who are severely tried.

It is sanctity that is based on correct doctrine, so that things could be properly clarified. Such as: any kind of work, as long as it is not sinful, is just as pleasing to God and helpful to all as anything else, even if humanly speaking it may just be a lowly manual job.

This is a very important point to make because many are suffering -- and I would say, unnecessarily -- because they feel they have been degraded since they now feel forced to take a lowly job.

Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence. Many fail to realize that what is more important is the love that one puts into one's work. This is what makes that work more pleasing to God and helpful to others. It's is not how much money it gives, nor the kind of estimation or reputation it generates, that really matters.

I am sure that if only this point is properly understood and lived, a big and crucial part of the problem our country is facing today in these uncertain times would already be taken care of.

* * *

Flowing with the times

ONE skill we have to learn in these exciting times of ours is how to blend the old and the new, the permanent and the changing that our life necessarily involves.

This is part of the human condition that we have to learn to handle properly. Otherwise, we get lost in the maze of life. In short, we need to learn how to flow with the times without getting lost.

This is an indispensable skill, made more urgent now when the pace of development, motored by technological advances that have provoked an explosion of data, information, and many other new things, can be dizzying.

This is when we become most prone to confusion and to getting entangled with all sorts of distractions, each one of them absorbing and blinding, with strong reasons for us to pay our attention to them.

This is when we tend to lose the proper use of reason, weakening our grasp of the distinction between what is essential and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.

This is when we easily get seduced by the allurements of our impressions and perceptions, our feelings and passions. This is when we are tempted to embark on an adventure of thrills and excitement without giving due consideration to our objective end.

The effects can be deadly. On the personal level, we can expect harmful obsessions to develop, wasteful expense of energy, talent and money, indifference to the spiritual reality, etc. One impoverishes his understanding of reality when he is held captive by distractions.

On the social level, there can be confusion and even the loss of a people's cultural identity. Unleashed would be some overwhelming homogenizing pressures that erase legitimate differences of people.

What is worse is when the basic moral sense of the people gets eroded. As they say, the tendency would be that the strong and the rich get stronger and richer, while the weak and poor get weaker and poorer, until they are eliminated. It's the law of the jungle that gets to govern people's lives.

The Pope has been warning us about this very disturbing trend. He has been speaking about the "culture of death" that seems dominating many societies.

I am personally disturbed, for example, at the way some politicians talk about routine corrupt practices that are taking place both in government and in the private sector. They consider these as something given.

Of course, I know we are in a very imperfect world. We just have to learn how to contend with the many evil things that are taking place around us. But rationalizing them is a different story.

How can we flow with the times without getting lost in the process?

Many things are needed. I just would like to mention what I think are a few basic and indispensable requirements.

One would be the capacity to think, to use our reason, to learn to distinguish between what is essential and what is not. At the risk of being branded as pretentious, I think that many people are thinking less and less, while they subject themselves to their feelings more and more.

This situation has to be corrected. We should allow our reason to guide our feelings, and not the other way around.

Otherwise, we can start rationalizing pornography, corruption, contraception, same-sex marriage, divorce, abortion. In the face of a rampant clamor for these vices and perversions, without the proper use of reason, one could easily give in.

But more importantly, what is needed is that people return to God and give to him the importance that can only belong to him. The Gospel of Saint Matthew quotes our Lord:

"Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." (Mt. 6,33)

This Christian attitude is where the true source of wisdom can be found. It is where we can easily detect what is truly good from what may just appear as good.

It is where we can obtain a guidance that comes not only from our own personal estimation of things, but also -- and more importantly -- from a higher, infallible source.

It is where we can get to know what permanent structures we should have in our lives -- in the form of traditions, practices, virtues, habits, etc. -- as we go through the changing conditions and circumstances of our world.