Does Learning End After Graduation?

Congratulations to all the graduates of 2012!  Now you are ready to work and apply what you have learned in college.  I advise you to have the attitude of diligence in learning.

There is this anecdote I have read in a book about a young man who, right after the commencement exercises, rushed outside and shouted: “Here I am, world!  I have my A. B.!”  But then, he seemed to hear a voice ... the voice of the world: “Sit down, son and I will teach you the rest of the alphabet.”  The commencement exercises that we all have attended, for some, just about a month ago, for the others, fairly recent and still some others, a long long time ago, is really just a beginning of the learning process because formation never ends.  Newton D. Baker says: “The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.”

When you tell people that in order to climb that corporate ladder, it is imperative that one possesses a well-rounded personality, they would agree with you.  But while they agree, why is it that most often, professional formation is not taken seriously, or worse, neglected?  Why is it that people lose their study discipline after graduation?   I had a boss who was allergic to professional seminars.  When the concept of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) was introduced in my profession, he told me: “What they are doing is a racket.  They just want to earn money from us.”  Under the concept of CPE, one has to complete several hours of seminar credits before the Professional Regulation Commission approves the renewal of a professional license.  The last time I heard about this boss of mine was he was having a hard time renewing his CPA license.

Why do we need professional formation anyway?  In anything we do, it is easier when we know and understand why we do it.  The other questions of what and how necessarily follow.  As E. G. Lettermen says: “The man who knows how will always find a job but the man who knows why will be the boss.” It is very simple and  I’ll tell you why.  Professional work is the hinge of one’s sanctity.  It is the raw material needed to produce fruits of sanctity.  Therefore, we have to be good in our work... we have to be good in our chosen profession.  We cannot say “sorry” all the time.  To commit mistakes and say “I’m sorry once in a while – that’s ok – but if you do that all the time, it is a completely different story.  We have to work not only efficiently but also effectively.  And to be able to do this, we need to continuously learn all the time, updating our knowledge in our chosen field. 

Let me end with this quotation from St. Josemaria in Friends of God:  “We would therefore be on the wrong path if we were to disregard temporal affairs, for Our Lord awaits us there as well.  You can be sure that it is through the circumstances of ordinary life, ordained or permitted by the infinite wisdom of divine Providence, that we come close to God. But we shall not attain our goal if we do not strive to finish our work well; if we do not sustain the effort we put in when we began our work with human and supernatural zeal; if we do not carry out our work as well as the best do and, if possible, even better than the best. And I think that if you and I really want to, we will work better than the best, because we will use all the honest human means as well as the supernatural ones which are required in order to offer Our Lord a perfect job of work, finished like filigree and pleasing in every way.”

Does Obedience Hurt?

There was this anecdote about a boy caught in fire.  He was upstairs and his father was downstairs.  The house was already full of smoke.  The father looking upstairs saw his son and told him: Common son, jump.  The son replied: I can’t see you dad.  Never mind if you don’t see me, I see you, common, jump.  So, full of trust in his father, the boy jumped and he was saved from being barbecued.  Obedience is the safest path even if at times, we resist to obey.

Obedience forms an essential part of the mystery of Redemption.  Sin is disobedience to God.  It is just but right therefore for Jesus Christ to attain our salvation through obedience.  How did Christ obey?  Obediens usque ad mortem.  Mortem autem crucis.  Obedience unto death.  Death on the Cross.  That is how our Lord Jesus Christ obeyed.  And we as followers of Christ, are called upon to imitate Christ.  We are called upon to co-redeem with Him.  And the way to do this is to obey always and in everything God’s will., even if sometimes we don’t understand why we have to obey.  Just like St. Peter who did not understand why our Lord had asked that his feet be washed by Christ.  “You shall never wash my feet.”(cf. John 13: 8).  But when our Lord told him that if he doesn’t allow him to wash his feet, he cannot take part in Him, we see a sudden conversion in Peter.  He now wants to take a bath: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”(John 13: 9)  

The best sacrifice we can offer God is our obedience.  To be able to say “Yes” to God, we have to learn to say “No” to many things.  For example, a student who wants to offer to God and her parents a “Summa cum Laude”  says “No” to window shopping, non-stop TV viewing, pleasure seeking, etc.  An employee who wants to offer her work to God as a form of prayer will say “No” to gossip in the office, prolonged break time, lack of order in material things, etc.  We, Catholics, have a higher good.  Each one of us knows her painful points which we mention in spiritual direction with a good priest or with a friend who knows us well.  And we will be advised to say “No” to our pride, laziness, vanity, unbridled sensuality, etc.

Pope Benedict, in his homily in the Mass of the Lord’s Supper , April 6, 2012, asked us to direct our attention to Jesus’ prayer in his agony in the garden: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36).  Let me reproduce the last paragraph of his homily:

The natural will of the man Jesus recoils in fear before the enormity of the matter. He asks to be spared. Yet as the Son, he places this human will into the Father’s will: not I, but you. In this way he transformed the stance of Adam, the primordial human sin, and thus heals humanity. The stance of Adam was: not what you, O God, have desired; rather, I myself want to be a god. This pride is the real essence of sin. We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom. We need to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free. This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves against God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being and consequently do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to God. Then we become truly “like God” – not by resisting God, eliminating him, or denying him. In his anguished prayer on the Mount of Olives, Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom, and opened the path to freedom. Let us ask the Lord to draw us into this “yes” to God’s will, and in this way to make us truly free.

If in obeying God’s will then will make us truly free, does it matter if it hurts?.

TO RH BILL SAY "BYE"

My friend Helen Lim, gave me the following poem she herself wrote last year.  I know I kept it but forgot all about it.  Now as I was cleaning my office drawer, it suddenly popped up as if telling me to do something.  And so I thought of publishing it here in my blog.  So here it is...

To RH Bill Say "Bye"

Abort the RH Bill

Before it starts to kill

Our babies Jack and Jill

Upon my word it will

Just look at U.S.A.

How come she cannot say

"Hey man, don't ever slay

Your little one, okay?

                                                         The bill's advocacy

                                                         Tempts promiscuity

                                                         And infidelity

                                                        That breaks the family

                                                        Let marriages succeed

                                                        And healthy lives proceed

                                                        Economy will speed

                                                        To make the things we need

                                                        Why not help educate

                                                        Help fill the empty plate

                                                        And jobs let's help create

                                                       With steadfastness and faith

                                                       To RH Bill say "Bye"

                                                       The truth we can't deny

                                                       If God we don't defy

                                                       All help He will supply

If you want more poems against the RH Bill, go to this blogsite: http://johnjuatpoetry.blogspot.com/.  John Juat is a son of a friend, Patricia Juat and a grandson of my former bosses and owners of the Brown group of Companies: Dr. Walter and Mrs. Annabelle Brown.  He is an intelligent UP student whose advocacy is to protect the unborn, preserve the sanctity of marriage and respect the dignity of each human life.

We might be relaxing in this fight against the RH Bill thinking that the Senate is busy on the impeachment of Chief Justice Corona.  If this will be our attitude, we run the risk of slowly letting up.  We need prayers and continued vigilance.

Are You and I Ready?

These days, I keep on receiving news of death of someone I know or someone related to people I know.   I visited the wake of the dad of my friend in Loyola, Guadalupe.  Unfortunately, my friend was not there.  It was her sister whom I consoled but I think it was the other way around.  She was the one who consoled me when she said that she has accepted the death of her dad and in retrospect, she thinks that her dad’s illness was a blessing in disguise because it was his illness that made their family intact and much closer to each other.

Death is a certainty that each one of us will face one day.  No one can escape this certainty.  However, in spite of the fact that  it is sure to come one day, why is it that we consider it an enigma?  Is it because we believe that there is life after death and we are not familiar with that kind of life which some people call eternity?  Does one’s life story end with death?  Are you and I ready to face it when it comes?  These questions are mind boggling.  I remember an anecdote I heard several years ago when I first attended  a circle in an Opus Dei center.  There was a man who was jogging when somebody shouted at him from a distance: Juan, your wife gave birth!  And instinctively, he ran as fast as he could.  After around ten minutes of running, he suddenly stopped and gave it a thought ... why am I running? ... my wife gave birth? ... I don't have a wife... And worse, my name is not Juan!

We can be like this young man, running our life without direction, only to find out in the end that time is running out on us.  Time flies so fast.  It's as if we just celebrated Christmas yesterday and now in a few weeks time, we will soon enter the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012.  We need to manage our time well before it manages us.  God is so generous in giving us twenty four hours everyday without fail.  But at the end of our life here on earth, God will ask us for an accounting of what we did with the time he gave us.  Are you and I ready to account for it?

I reproduce below an email I received from a friend some weeks ago about a beautiful explanation of death:

~DEATH~ 
WHAT A WONDERFUL WAY TO EXPLAIN IT .  A sick man turned to his doctor as he was preparing to leave the examination room and said, 'Doctor, I am afraid to die. Tell me what lies on the other side.' Very quietly, the doctor said, 'I don't know.'  'You don't know? You're a Christian man, and don't know what's on the other side?' The doctor was holding the handle of the door; on the other side came a sound of scratching and whining, and as he opened the door, a dog sprang into the room and leaped on him with an eager show of gladness. Turning to the patient, the doctor said, 'Did you notice my dog? He's never been in this room before. He didn't know what was inside. He knew nothing except that his master was here, and when the door opened, he sprang in without fear. I know little of what is on the other side of death, but I do know one thing... 

I know my Master is there and that is enough.'





May today there be peace within you. 

May you trust God that you are exactly 
Where you are meant to be. 
I believe that friends are quiet angels 
Who lift us to our feet when our wings 
Have trouble remembering how to fly. 







This is my short consideration to the foregoing: 

It is good to think of death as seeing our good and generous Master.  We will surely see Him if we have faithfully obeyed all his commands, for we will die the way we lived!

How Well Do We Know Ourselves?

There was this alien couple from outer space.  I think they are the ancestors of Thor.  They have not seen a mirror so they don’t know what a mirror looks like nor do they know what and how their faces look like.  They accidentally landed on our planet Earth, specifically in the country of 7,100 islands, the Philippines.  Let us give them a name.  We can call the man Odin and the woman Frigga.  Odin is a born seeker just like we all are.  One day he was walking along the streets of Tondo and he saw something that caught his attention.  He picked it up, looked at it and saw a face.  He smiled and thought to himself: “of all places, the photo of my Dad… I’d better hide it from Frigga since she does not really like Dad.” He placed it in his pocket and went home.  The normal routine for the remainder of the day happened: they ate dinner, watched TV and went to bed.  While they were already sleeping, he suddenly remembered the picture of his dad.  His wife might find it in his pocket!  So when he thought he saw his wife deep in slumber, he went to the strongroom to hide the picture of his Dad.  But then, Frigga is a light sleeper.  She saw Odin went to the strongroom and when she thought he was asleep, she moved quietly and stealthily into the strongroom to find out what he had hidden.  After a long search, she saw the mirror and saw not the photo of Dad but a woman’s face.  She then snorted: “Aha, this is the woman he is running around with!”   Well, believe it or not, this happens to most of us.  Sometimes, we see ourselves and don’t recognize ourselves. We need someone to guide us.  We need a mentor, a coach, an adviser.  All of us need spiritual direction.  Spiritual direction is a one-on-one talk with someone who can guide us along our path to Christ, the path to eternity.  In Opus Dei, we call this fraternal chat.  Every single week, I do my chat with a person in the Center where I live to ask for advice on how to better my life in all aspects: human, professional, doctrinal-religious, cultural and apostolic.  And little by little, I see a bit of improvement.  When before I get irritated driving in Manila one hundred times a day, now it has gone down to ninety nine!  Just kidding but believe me, spiritual direction helps.  Wanna try?

Saint of the Ordinary

Today is the Baptism of Jesus, the last day of the Christmas season.  Today is also the 110th birth anniversary of St. Josemaria Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei.  I was lucky enough to have attended both his beatification in 1992 and his canonization in 2002.  When I was in my 20s, like the Magi, I was looking for a guiding star in my life.  And I found it in the teachings of St. Josemaria, whom Blessed John Paul II called  the "saint of the ordinary".  St. Josemaria tirelessly preached the universal calling to holiness, that ordinary people can be holy in the middle of the world.  When we went to the Church of St. Josemaria in EUR, we found ourselves in front of a big image of the saint made of something like ivory.  And one of us held St. Josemaria and told him: “Father, you are already a saint.  How did you do it?”  When I reflected at that question: Father, how did you become a saint?  Well, I thought of the legacy left by our Founder: Opus Dei’s spirituality.  Article 2 of the Opus Dei Statutes states: “The specific objectives of Opus Dei, that is, the sanctification of the members and the salvation of souls, will be achieved by means of the sanctification of ordinary work and the accomplishment of professional duties.”  The core of his teaching is his idea of “sanctified work” and the Christian validation of professional life.  Christ comes to find us in the carrying out of our daily tasks.  Our way of perfection is accomplished in the ordinary, in the joy, in the sorrow, in the success, in the failure that ordinary daily life offers.  Our whole life consists of ordinary things: family life, professional life, social life.  And besides, for all these, we dispose of a time that passes drop by drop, minute by minute.  Everything, even the greatest things, are reduced to the sum of many little things.  Ordinarily, big things appear only in our imagination. 

St. Josemaria, commenting on the parable of the virgins in the gospel, wrote: “they took their lamps to go out to meet the bridegroom.  They went out to meet the bridegroom.  They made good use of their time.  They discretely provided themselves with oil and when someone says: Hey, it’s time!, they go joyfully to receive the bridegroom.  And the foolish ones?  In that moment, they make the effort they can.  It isn’t as if they hadn’t done anything.  They did do something…, but they have to hear the voice that tells them: I do not know you.  They didn’t have time to get ready, to take the reasonable precaution of getting oil."  We have to start thinking: why do I sometimes arrive late to my scheduled appointments?  Why can't I control my temper?  Why do I rush through the work that has been entrusted to me?  Why do I always complain?  Why do I have critical thoughts against my boss or my subordinates?  Why am I not mortified at meals?  Why do I delay that act of service?  Why do I show my rough manners in my dealings with the others?  Why so much disorder?  … "They are trifles, but they are the oil.”