Daily Reflections- July 23, 2012

RIGHTEOUSNESS, GOODNESS, HUMILITY

 

Many institutions adopt mottos made up of three words. One famous institution in the Philippines boasts of “courage, integrity, loyalty,” even if its products are very far from what the motto says. Be that as it may, everyone believes in the power of axioms and aphorisms, or watchwords to live by. Such mottos sum up the institution’s highest ideals. They represent the best that the institution upholds and considers important. They serve as goals to attain, dreams to pursue, and ideals to gradually espouse.

Today, the prophet Micah offers us such a watchword with three essential elements: righteousness, goodness and humility. “[This is] what the Lord requires of you: only to do right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

It is easy to do what everybody else seems to be doing. Somehow, when many do it, the sense of rightness or wrongness does not factor in as we discern and decide.

Micah cautions us to “love goodness.” The good is something that goes beyond being good for me, for now, and for here. It is that which is good from God, in itself, and good that transcends merely personal or individual good.

Too bad the same new information and communications media twist not only the right but also the concept of the good. The individual becomes the supreme arbiter of what is right and what is good. This is nothing but moral relativism.

We would do well to be reminded that for us to do right and good, there has to be another value — a virtue, in fact, which is humility. Humility is the virtue that puts us in place and makes us see ourselves for what we really are — dependent creatures who rely on the Creator. Though created free and intelligent, that freedom can never be taken apart from truth — moral truth. We still need to walk humbly with God.Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SSP

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: How strong are you in standing up for the right when everyone else is doing the wrong thing?

 

Grant me the courage, Lord, to be firm in my values — to always choose righteousness, goodness and humility over what’s popular.