Putting 'value added' on popular piety

In business and economics, there’s such a term as “value added” which refers to the enhancement added to a product or service by a company before the product is offered to customers.

Another term could be “innovation,” a necessary ingredient of anything that needs to grow and flow with the times. It involves creativity and inventiveness, and the knack to anticipate and discern changes in the environment. It can also involve the ability to reinvent oneself to adapt to new situations.

This is what leaders in society, entrepreneurs and other movers and shakers always think about, be they politicians, social workers, artists and entertainers, etc. It’s the game to play if one wants to stay long and continue to serve the people despite changing circumstances.

I’m impressed, for example, at some business theories and strategies developed by some insightful persons to capture opportunities that otherwise would just pass by unnoticed and unexploited.

Some of these are the “Red Ocean Strategy” and the “Blue Ocean Strategy.” In the Red Ocean market, companies compete with their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. In this environment, the market rules are already set, and one just has to find a profitable niche for his product.

In a Blue Ocean market, demand is created rather than fought over. The market rules are still to be defined. A company using this strategy makes an “innovation that raises and creates value for the market, while simultaneously reducing or eliminating features or services less valued by the current market.”

The faithful of the Church, both the clergy and the laity, should somehow be familiar with these terms and the realities to which they correspond, since the Church needs to be in sync with the varying aspects, levels and circumstances of development in the world. While certain elements are permanent, many others are always in flux.

The Church is always alive and dynamic, since she is animated by the Holy Spirit. But she needs the full cooperation of her members for her to grow and nourish her own self. And so, we have to understand that we have to move on, and not get stuck at a certain level of development.

With the recent celebration of the feast of Sto. Niño with its open display of the rich deposit of faith and piety among the people, we should see to it that we avoid falling into complacency, or self-satisfaction. We have to step up to the next level.

In Church history, we can remember that centuries ago, most of Europe was suffused with popular piety and religion. It was the source of many missionaries that spread the seeds of the gospel to many parts of the world.

Now, that continent is all but dried up in terms of spirituality. In its place is a deep-seated paganism and secularism where God has no more place. Religiosity is practically retreating again to the caves and deserts, the catacombs and the ghettos. How this happened should be a great lesson for us to learn.

We in our country should try to avoid this dark possibility. And we can manage to do just that if we continually rouse ourselves from spiritual lukewarmness, and keep ourselves increasingly hot in our spiritual lives. We need to be more consistent in our pursuit for personal sanctity.

We have to constantly ask ourselves, what can we do to go to the next level of our own personal spiritual life, and to improve the quality of religion in our society? We should not be blind to the challenges that are right before us. We have to remember that in our spiritual life, there is no limit to growth and development.

The young need to be truly grounded on the faith. Progress and development, now accelerating because of technological advances and the spreading global networking, need to be related and oriented toward our ultimate supernatural goal. They just cannot remain in the worldly and temporal level.

How can we effectively engage our friends and people in general so that they learn to turn their minds and hearts, their work and other earthly affairs to God?

Pope Benedict is nowadays talking a lot about a new evangelization that should be carried out by all the members of the Church. What are we doing to attain this objective?

Obviously, a lot of things need to be done. We just have to help one another in discovering the value added, the innovations and creativity, we need to go on.

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