Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 09 August 2024

I was recently asked to bless a little store the other day, the seventh day of August. My schedule was toxic with another appointment in another city but the owner begged because she believed it is the most auspicious date for blessing.

How I wanted to ask her why have a blessing at all if you believe in luck than in God? Para wala nang gulo, I blessed her store but explained the meaning of blessing and of superstitions during the rites. It is one of those occasions when all we can do is sigh, saying haynaku and Juice colored!

What a sad reality in our Catholic Christian country where the kind of religiosity that binds most of us is more on rites and rituals but lacking in roots and spirituality, centered on ourselves to be assured of every kind of material blessings, forgetting all about the very object of faith who is God expressed in our concern for one another.

And in the light of all these things going on especially the never ending topics in social media, we ask, pera pera na lang ba talaga ang lahat sa buhay natin?

Consider the name of this month August which was borrowed from the Roman Caesar Augustus that signifies reverence or to hold someone in high regard. As an adjective, august means “respected and impressive” like when we say “in this august hall of men and women of science”.

August is not a ghost month nor any other month of the year.

Like the days of the week, every month is a blessed one. No day nor date nor time is malas because these were all created by God who is all good. Nothing bad can come from God. Period.

Moreover, when God became human like us in the coming of Jesus Christ, life has become holy, filled with God, debunking those ancient beliefs of the Divine being seen in various cosmic forces. Pope Benedict explained this so well in his second encyclical:

In this regard a text by Saint Gregory Nazianzen is enlightening. He says that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ the new king, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ[2]. This scene, in fact, overturns the world-view of that time, which in a different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free. In ancient times, honest enquiring minds were aware of this. Heaven is not empty. Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love[3]. (#5, Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope) by Pope Benedict XVI, 30 November 2007)

I love this part of his encyclical, “It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person.”

It was this Person of Jesus Christ why so many great men and women then and now have abandoned their previous ways of life to lead holy lives even in the face of death. Very interesting in this modern time are two great saints we celebrate on this month of August, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (August 09) and St. Maximilian Kolbe (August 14) who died at the gas chambers of Auschwitz during the Second World War. Let’s reflect first on St. Teresa Benedicta whose memorial we celebrate today.

St. Teresa Benedicta is the German philosopher Edith Stein. She came from a prosperous Jewish family gifted with great mind becoming one of the first female university student and later professor in Germany.

An associate of the famed Edmund Husserl of the philosophical method of phenomenology, St. Teresa Benedicta became an atheist during her teenage years; but, upon further studies and prayer, converted into Catholicism, becoming a Carmelite nun where she adopted her new name. She wrote that “Those who seek truth seek God, whether they realize it or not“.

She actually had all the chances to leave for South America and then to Switzerland to escape the Nazis but opted to stay in their monastery in the Netherlands with her younger sister Rosa who had also converted as Catholic and joined the Third Order Carmelite. When they were arrested on August 2, 1942, she told her, “Come, Rosa… we go for our people.”

St. Teresa Benedicta honored her Jewish roots by dying among them as a martyr of Christ, one who had “learned to live in God’s hands” according to Sr. Josephine Koeppel, OCD, a translator of much of her works. According to various accounts, St. Teresa Benedicta showed great inner strength by encouraging her fellow prisoners to have faith in God while helping in looking after the small children when their mothers were so distressed to do so. One woman who survived the war wrote: “Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.”

Dying ahead of her in Auschwitz on August 14, 1941 was St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest who was arrested for his writings against the evil Nazis. It was actually his second time to be arrested.

When a prisoner had escaped from the camp, authorities rounded up ten men to die in exchange of the lone escapee. Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a married man with children. They were all tortured and starved in order to die slowly in pain. A devotee of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Maximilian was injected with carbolic acid on the eve of the Assumption after guards found him along with three other prisoners still alive, without any signs of fear like screaming but silently praying.

We no longer have gas chambers but atrocities against human life continue in our time, hiding in the pretext of science and laws. Until now, men and women, young and old alike including those not yet born in their mother’s womb are hunted and killed to correct what many perceived as excesses and wrongs in the society. Just like what Hitler and his men have thought of the Jews at that time.

The Nazi officers and soldiers of Auschwitz remind us the true “ghosts” and evil spirits of our time sowing hatred and deaths are people who may be well-dressed, even educated in the best schools, and come from devout or “normal” families. They sow evil every day without choosing any particular month, blindly following orders without much thinking and reflections or introspection.

Many times, they insist on following or speaking the truth – a truth so empty of the person of Jesus Christ. As we have been saying amid this growing trend of wokism and inclusivity that have badly infected the Olympics, people tend to exaggerate the truth they believe or follow when actually, they are just exaggerating themselves.

By the lives of the many great saints of August, or of any other month for that matter, we are reminded that holiness is not being sinless but simply being filled with God, being converted daily to the truth of Jesus Christ by allowing that holiness to spill over and flow onto others with our lives of authenticity expressed in charity and mercy, kindness and justice, humility and openness with one another.

Let us make every month holy and blessed with our good deeds to make everyone aware of Christ’s presence among us. Have a blessed weekend!