Learning inter-subjectivity

I was deeply touched when a staffer of the school told me recently that a young alumnus just called him from deep in the forest of Malaysia where he is now working.

The alumnus just wanted to say hi, and then to ask for prayers, because according to him, he has not gone to Mass for sometime now. The nearest church was like going from Cebu to Manila, and he could not afford it yet.

The staffer then told me he was impressed with the attitude of many of our graduates, who are concerned about their spiritual duties. His high school classmates, from another school, appeared not to mind whether they went to Mass or not on Sundays.

So I told him to be thankful to God. That’s precisely the culture we try to develop in the school, and to spread later on—that together with a thorough technical competence, the students cultivate an authentic spiritual life, a living relationship with God and with everybody else.

Then I told him why we have set up different programs to give hopefully effective attention to this need. Aside from Christian doctrine classes, students are invited to hear Mass everyday in school, to go to regular confession and spiritual direction, attend meditations, recollections, etc.

All of these are done without pressuring the students. They have to be convinced of the importance of these means of formation. If they go and attend, it’s because they want to.

Of course, to achieve this, a conducive atmosphere has to be kept in campus. So for this purpose, we have stepped up our program of providing mentors and tutors to all, not just some, students.

The idea is to make friendship, trust and confidence bloom among the teachers, staff and students. The relationship should not remain in the purely academic. It has to filter down to the personal and spiritual levels.

This means involving everyone, including our old driver and janitor who have been acting like father figures to the students. This means we have to motivate everyone for this task and to equip them with the proper attitudes and skills.

Lately, the school management has organized monthly seminars for the staff to take up matters related to the integral formation of the students. This is where I’m asked to give classes in the philosophy of man.

This is quite a tall order, since I have to adjust to the level and ways of my disparate. Philosophical terms have to be translated into layman’s language. Well, I’m learning also.

But among the concepts that many found very interesting were those of “person,” “self-transcendence” and “inter-subjectivity.” I went through the long and winding road of explaining these terms to them, since I could not find a short-cut.

In the end, I think everyone was happy. I told them that to be effective mentors and tutors they have to respect these basic truths about ourselves.

We are persons with spiritual faculties of intelligence and will that need to be properly engaged, orienting them to their proper objects and keeping them always active.

We grow in our personhood as long as we reinforce our capacity to self-transcend ourselves, that is, to be open to different objects, to act on them and to possess and assimilate what are proper to us.

This is how we grow, and be in the condition to share things with others, which is our basic behavioral pattern. This is where we find joy and fulfillment. This growing up is a self-perpetuating spiral of giving and receiving, of loving and being loved. It’s dialogic and relational.

As persons, we are both individuals and social beings. Both aspects are inseparable and need to be built up. There is a stable subject, but it’s a stability that undertakes an endless process of becoming. Our subject is an active subjectivity.

Thus, in our relationships, progress and maturity develop when we know how to handle the process of inter-subjectivity, a sensitivity to both the stable and dynamic aspects among ourselves.

We cannot remain in the externals. We have to go deep into people’s life, but all through the proper ways. This inter-subjectivity has to start with our relationship with God that offers us the pattern and laws in developing our relationship with others. Samples are needed to illustrate this concept.