The Daily Experience of Conflicts

The daily experience of conflicts, of resentments, of inner division gives me motives to lament, to moan, to complain, to give up, and even to cry. Human nature can be mysterious at times or should I say always. If you are young, you regret that your dream is not life. If you are old, you grumble because your life is no longer a dream. If you are poor, you complain because you don’t possess anything. If you are rich, you grieve because you will leave all behind. If you love, you lament because there is no love without suffering. If you hate, you mourn because there is no hate without anguish. If you are alive, you deplore because death is approaching. If you are weak and weary, you bewail because life is declining. If you are not up to the mark, you grumble for the little that you achieve. If you are idle, you growl for the work which is wanting. If you work, you sigh because fatigue is tiring. In the practice of virtue, you fret for the effort. If you are deep in vice, you bemoan its chains. Looking at such things causes me to grieve and to feel that my own existence doesn’t really mean a thing. I never seem to realize the value of getting up and staying strong whenever I stumble and fall. I become hopeless- afraid to fail again. The dream of having Heaven and to have a foretaste of it on earth disappears. My image of a new heaven and a new earth seems to fade away slowly. These are the reasons why I pray. But whenever I pray to Christ because of my sufferings, I would also see him suffering, hanging on the cross. The cross, which in Christ’s time was a symbol of crime or as a punishment for criminals and sinners, gives me the thought which I often wonder, am I really going to follow this man? Becoming like him as a priest, as an alter Christus, means I would someday be nailed on the cross. Bearing this idea in mind gives me the creeps of following Jesus’ call.

But as I reflect and look at him on the cross, I see a different side of Christ that is his humility and love. The humility of Christ is something extra-ordinary, from being a God; he became man for us to be saved. With this act of humility comes the picture of the grandeur of God’s love for man, for me, for all of us. And with this realization, I come to ponder and come up with a new view in life and a mission that I must trod as I journey in my seminary formation.

Remembering the parable of the Rose, Life is said to be likened to a rose. We praise its beauty but we despise its thorns. We only appreciate the beauty that the rose has and never accepting the thorns within. Many of us look at ourselves and see only the thorns, the defects. I despair; thinking nothing good can possibly come from me. I neglect to water the good within me, and eventually it dies. I never realize my potentials. Within every soul, there is a rose. The “God-like” qualities planted in us at birth, growing amidst the thorns of our faults. Some don’t see the rose