This is how St. Matthew’s gospel ends, as quoted in today’s liturgical reading: "Teach them to carry out everything I have commanded you. And know that I am with you always, until the end of the world" (Mt. 28: 20). This is how much God loves us and cares for us.
This inner awareness of the Divine Presence on our part is an affective experience of the heart that flows from a habitual use of our human freedom and power of choice. We can choose to be aware and feel His presence in our heart, or we can choose to turn Him off. We can choose to do this anywhere we are, whatever we are doing, at any time of day or night. You can imagine what difference this can make in our way of life - a life of love, justice, and peace.
The secret of it all is awareness, awareness, awareness – as the spiritual guru Fr. Anthony de Mello insists. Such a way of life is contagious, and carries a ripple effect. We can pass it on to others, and they in turn to others still. This can be our family, community, nay, nationwide crusade against the Godless elements that continually seduce us. Let this be our counter-culture against the nationwide culture of corruption that has been poisoning our political and socio-economic lives for all these past decades.
It is in this spirit that we must start with our personal selves. We are called by the Lord to be agents of change, and not victims of the status quo. Even common sense tells us that in every breath of life that we take in – there God’s presence is, for He is the loving and sustaining source and author of life. I am nothing less than a temple of God, as St. Paul keeps reminding us. Feel and experience this right now.
Stop reading this column, close your eyes, and be aware of God’s presence in each breath of life that comes in and out of you. Stay there for a while. With this inner awareness, how then can I cheat or do injustice or commit violence against any one? No way!
Thus, government employees and officials, in any and all departments, are called by God to feel and experience His presence in the very work that they are doing, from the barangay, municipal, provincial, all the way to the national levels.
And so it is with all private sectors of work and profession. This freely-chosen and habitual awareness of God’s presence cannot but lead us to the one and only meaning of human life, expressed by Christ in the one and only law of God. "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself" (Lk. 10: 27-28; Mt. 22: 37-39; Mk. 12: 30-31).
Christ lived this to the hilt, and died for it. He showed us the way, and so many have followed His example – Christians and non-Christians alike. Let me just single out one recent source of inspiration – the life and death of a 25-year-old young man named Edris Sultan, a devoted Muslim from Lanao del Sur.
Sultan had been an active peace worker, and was likewise involved in a lot of volunteer work, including rehabilitation of displaced residents of Kapatagan and Matanog. He then became a dedicated policeman, and it was precisely during his active line of duty that he was killed, while rescuing a group of students, mostly Christians, from the Mindanao State University, who were abducted by armed men. He was remembered by a close friend as one who prayed five times a day, and would often tell his mother to remind his siblings to pray.
Salamat, Sultan, salamat.