BELIEVING AND BELONGING
I know I have written a reflection on these twin words either in this publication or in one of my blogs. I alluded to it in passing in yesterday’s entry. Today, I’d like to throw in a few more thoughts on the issue. I start by stating what seems obvious in the First Reading. God is displeased, humanly speaking, on account of what the people did. Simply put, they betrayed Him, the true God. They experimented with other gods their tormentor neighbors worshiped. They stopped believing, and their belonging to the true fold was compromised.
We live in a pluralistic world. We move in a world filled with a multiplicity of choices. We are surrounded by so many disparate groupings. Even the legislative branch of government is populated by cause-oriented groups who have been given seats by the Constitution. Each one of those groupings espouses and pushes their own agenda. Nowhere is this fragmentation and polarization made more visible than in last year’s debacle with regard to the superficially sanitized issue on reproductive health.
The issue has definitely divided the nation, at times even bitterly. Years of soft liberal “Catholic” education have watered down doctrine, and has effectively muffled the voice of a living, teaching Church, the only institution left in all the world that really stands for the total good and inviolable dignity of the human person, born or unborn.
It is all too easy for us now who live in a world of infinite choices to choose also what to believe and where to belong. But faith in God entails faith and credence in the Church that is Christ’s mystical body. One cannot call on God as Father unless he or she has the Church as mother. One cannot claim he or she believes and yet at the same time not belong — fully, truly, sincerely. Faith cannot be reduced to shallow oceanic feelings that make no demands whatsoever in our personal and societal lives. We need to have both sound personal and social ethics. We need to be attuned to the same teachings and attached to the same teaching Church. Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB
REFLECTION QUESTIONS: Do you believe and belong to the Catholic fold? Or do you believe but do not belong?
Lord Jesus, grant me the grace to accept and submit to the teachings of the Catholic Church so that I may truly belong to Your Body.
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