Spiritual stubbornness

"By your perseverance, you will secure your lives." (Lk. 21:19). These words of Jesus from today’s Gospel reading says it all. You and I know that every one of us was born to love and be loved — the very meaning of human life. But learning HOW to love — from birth until death — will give you the greatest happiness as well as the deepest pain. This is what it means to be human. And through it all, you come closer and closer to your Creator, until in the very end, you are totally one with Him.

Today, so many people want to be loved, but avoid and reject the pains of loving. Those who persevere in loving through patient endurance of troubles and pains are the ones who will reach God. And those who persist on their unloving, heartless ways will end in disaster. All this will come about on both the individual and institutional levels.

Let us follow the sequence of the above – quoted reading from Lk. 21: 5-19, and its meaning in our lives.

The Destruction of the Temple. "Some were speaking of how the temple was adorned with precious stones and votive offerings. He said, ‘These things you are contemplating — the day will come when not a stone will be left on another, but it will all be torn down.’" (vv. 5-6). Wordly, Godless forces and institutions, some in the name of religion, will end in ruin and destruction. This is the price of turning away from God’s one and only law of love and compassion.

The Signs of the End. These will be slow and protracted rather than sudden and fast. Many false teachers will come and go, but do not follow them, warns Jesus. (v. 8).

In our own times, Morrie Schwartz likewise warns us: "Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over . . . . Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. We repeat it — and have it repeated to us — over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise."

But money cannot be a substitute for love. Neither can power be a substitute for love. To love is to be vulnerable. To love is to die to one’s self. "When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

On the societal level is violence against violence. Nation against nation. Wars and insurrections. But do not be terrified, Jesus assures us. (vv. 9-10).

The Coming Persecution. Jesus continues: You will be opposed, contradicted, persecuted. In so many ways. Personally. Institutionally. Nationally. Globally. Some of you will even suffer death. All because of me. But because of your spiritual stubbornness, your spirituality of resistance, "by your perseverance you will secure your lives." (vv. 12-19).

On the metapersonal, societal level, we are called to resist collective injustice, oppression, and violence, through active non-violence, as we did in Edsa 1 and Edsa 2, as well as our national protest in support of Chief Justice Hilario Davide.

On the personal level, let us end by living out the inspiring words of Morrie: "As long as we can love each other, and remember the feelings of love we had, we can die without really going away…. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here…. Death ends a life, not a relationship."

We do not die in the hearts of those we leave behind, as we move on from mortal to immortal life. As Christ our Lord rose from death to new life, so shall we rise with Him to eternity. Amen.