SPIRITUAL THOUGHTS FROM A FORMER HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATE WHOSE PERSONALITY BRINGS A LOT OF COUNTLESS HOURS OF FUN, NEAR-MISSES OF SEMINARY RULES VIOLATIONS AND MISADVANTURES OF SORTS. YOUR INFECTIOUS ANTICS ARE SORELY MISSED BY THIS WRITER: Sacerdos in Aeternum (a priest forever) Rev. Fr. Rommel M. Arcilla In Memoriam People go to cemeteries not on All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2) but on All Saints’ Day (Nov.1). This is because of our belief that our departed loved ones are now in God’s hands and enjoying the fruits of their labors in God’s Kingdom. We believe this because of our great faith that God is a loving and merciful God and not so much as the God who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. Indeed, I am inclined to believe this fact because punishment, I think, does not belong to the vocabulary of a loving God. We are aware of the presence of good and bad people in this world. There are generous ones and there are also people who may have inherited selfishness to the maximum level. There are peace-loving people and there are also those who seem to want to live all by themselves alone and they do not want the company of others. We know that goodness and evil both abound in this world and God allowed the wheat and the weeds to grow together. In the end time, as our faith suggests, the wheat will be stored in the barn and the weeds will be burned. The good men will be rewarded with a new life in Christ, and the bad ones will be thrown to the state where there is wailing and grinding of teeth due to eternal suffering in hell. We all fear this belief and most of us are forced to be good not because we want to be in heaven but because we are so afraid to be in hell. Goodness for people with this kind of mindset is not pure but rather influenced much by fear. It is not a conviction to do good but a convulsion to be in the state of eternal damnation. In this sense, the driving force to do good is the fear to be in hell and, I believe, this is not a positive way of eliciting goodness in a person. There are other ways to stimulate the goodness that is actually innate in a person. We were all created to be good, but somewhere along the way, maybe because of extreme situations that we encountered, we lost sight of our goal. Sometimes a person can turn out to be what he is not when he is pushed against the wall of pain and suffering. Thus a good man can turn to be a killer once he’s got too much ounce of pain inflicted to him by others. Given all these existential truths about our life here on earth, maybe those who have gone before us also experienced the same. Maybe some of them died in the state of sin not because they were sinners, but because some other people molded them to be sinners. This is one sad fact about our life here on earth that we have to deal with whether we like it or not. Purgatory is good news for all because, at least, we are still given a chance to finally reach our final destiny which is the Kingdom of God. However, my personal opinion is that there is actually no soul in hell. Satan is alone there with all the fallen angels. I still would want to cling on to the fact that God is, indeed, a very loving God and His love is beyond measure. His love is so unconditional that He can even love those who despised Him in their life. He is so capable of loving even those who cannot love Him in return. His love always triumphs over justice, and so He would still save even the supposed to be condemned souls. If this is true, then we have all the reasons to celebrate the All Saints’ Day as we prayerfully remember our dear departed loved ones. They are now under God’s loving embrace and no one can harm them now. They lived their lives maybe not perfectly at all but because of God’s immense love for them, they are still saved. After all, a single drop of Christ’s redeeming blood on the cross is more than enough to wipe away the sinfulness of all mankind. This is the positive driving force for us to do good and be perfect as He is. We are all called to be good, not because there is the pain of hell, but because God suffered and died on the cross because He wanted to save us all. It is just right and proper for us to return the favor by trying our best to be saved. All we need to do is to cooperate with His grace and all the rest will follow.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 11:55:02 +0000
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