Too much zumba, too little "simba," all "tsamba"
Today is Palm Sunday. It is important that we reflect on the lives of mankind viz-a-viz the will of the Lord.
The problem with our young people today, and even with many adults, is that there is too much fixation on the physical, the body, the beauty and the looks, and too little, if at all, too limited and too peremptory and symbolic attention to the spiritual, the moral, the ethical, if you will, and the higher values which matter most. Too much time, money and efforts are spent in the gym, the spa, the parlor and the basketball courts. Fewer and fewer people are attending religious activities. And some only visit the churches, the mosques, and the synagogues whenever they have serious problems. Some Catholics only go to Church for KBL...Kasal, Bunyag, Lubong.
Men and women spend a lot of time in the gym, taking care of their figures, and doing strenuous exercises. Well, of course, this can be justified by the need to maintain good health, taking care of the body, which, after all, is supposed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. But when such emphasis on physical health is not balanced by an equal, if not more, concern for one's spiritual life, then an imbalance is promoted as a way of life. The result is that we have people who are physical giants but spiritual and moral pygmies. The schools also educate the minds but leave the hearts illiterate and the conscience ignorant.
Nowadays also, the world has become too secular and materialistic. People are too focused on making money, and in getting pleasures of the flesh and of the human body. These human fixations at hedonism and materialism are the twin evils that led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, if we care to remember the scriptures, and the Gospel. In fact, in today's gospel of John, we read of Jesus' outrage in seeing His Father's House being used as the trading center of greedy merchants and a den of thieves. The world has become a giant supermall, or a huge Carbon Market. Each one is out there to get our "pound of flesh." Each one of us has become "a merchant of Venice."
The whole nation only took a few days of focus on the spiritual aspects of life last January when Pope Francis visited us. The rest of our days are spent trying to do business, make money, and amass material and financial possessions, even to the extent of trampling on others. Many of us even make the house of God a place for promoting business and accumulating more and more, to the prejudice of others who have nothing. Others use the pulpit to promote partisan political agenda and ideological biases. The world has become too secular, too greedy. Each one has a selfish agendum. No one is minding the life after. Kanya-kanyang kayod. Iyhay ug katkat, just like crabs trying to escape from the pan.
There is too much economic and financial success in the Philippines today, but only twenty to thirty families are amassing 90% of the nation's wealth. Ten Filipinos are listed by Forbes among the 500 richest people in the whole world. But some of them have serious labor issues among their own workers. Millions are suffering from extreme poverty, jobless, homeless, and hopeless. The poor and the very poor have no decent shelter. They have no access to clean water and to healthy and affordable foods. They cannot afford medical care and quality education. The country's development is not inclusive. Only the rich get richer, while the poor are condemned to the bondage of systemic and structural poverty.
The rich matrons and hunks dance the zumba to take care of their abs and the contours of their well-proportioned bodies. The husbands also take care of their bodies with their mistresses and paramours. The poor go to make ''simba'' hoping that God can liberate them from shacles of a very dehumanizing poverty. But when, and how? How can the church liberate the soul when the body is dying of hunger, malnutrition, disease, and social neglect ? Many of us face these nasty issues with much doubts and a lot of tsamba. Que sera, sera. Pastilan gayod.
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