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.”