Lay all our cards on the table

Fr. Roy Cimagala .

IT is indeed necessary that we be brutally sincere when we go to confession and to spiritual direction. We have to learn to lay all our cards on the table so that the human instruments used by God to help us in our spiritual life, can truly help us.

We should not be afraid or ashamed to do so, because in these occasions, it is indeed God who is acting through the human instrumentalities. We have to approach confession and spiritual direction with a strong supernatural outlook, because it is only then that we can go beyond our human respect.

As our dictionary would put it, human respect is “a kind of fear of the judgment of others… one acting from this motive lacks courage or fortitude… it seeks honor rather than the works worthy of honor.”

There is really no reason to fall into human respect when we go to confession and spiritual direction. God is a father who will always understand and love us. He is always ready to forgive us of whatever sin and failures we may commit. He is always there for us, to defend and protect us. His judgments will always be with mercy.

To be truly sincere is not only to say facts and data. It is to probe into the motives of all our actions, especially our sins and misdeeds. In the end, it is to see what the spirit is behind all our actions. Is it the spirit of God or is it another spirit?

To develop this virtue, we need time to get close to God in our prayer and in all the other ways that foster unity with him all throughout the day, especially when we are immersed in our daily concerns. Let’s remember that God is the source of all truth. We can only see the truth through him.

Without God, we can only make some estimation that often misleads us. What is worse is that we can get fully convinced that we are truthful when in fact we are not. Our pursuit for truth is often marred by some forms of self-interest, and these forms can be very subtle and deceptive.

What can help in developing sincerity when we go to confession and spiritual direction is to have faith-based trust in the confessors and the spiritual directors. Yes, they are also human with their own share of weaknesses and sins. But they have what is called the “grace of state” which is different from being in the state of grace. The grace of state is accorded either sacramentally or through some authority.

Of course, it is always helpful if we spend time preparing ourselves well before confessing or going to spiritual direction. We have to put ourselves in the presence of God and really try our best to fathom the real and ultimate reasons for our thoughts, desires, words, actions and omission.

A saint also suggested that to facilitate sincerity, we should say first the thing that we consider to be most shameful. We should avoid saying that we stole a rope when in fact at the end of that rope was a carabao.

To be sure, when we are brutally sincere, we make our life more simple. We can get to see things more objectively. Our judgments of things and events become more fair. We unburden ourselves of many unnecessary baggage. We can act more properly and easily. We somehow manage to stay above the usual drama of our daily life.

We should try our best to be sincere all the time, with God, with ourselves and with others. Let’s avoid making stories or, worse, to create smoke and mirrors in our relation and dialogue with others—that act of “obscuring or embellishing the truth of a situation with misleading or irrelevant information.”

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Avoid over-familiarity. During the proximate preparation for my priestly ordination, an idea that was repeatedly hammered ‘ad nauseam’ on us, the ‘ordinandi,’ was that we should never get accustomed to the sacred things, especially the celebration of the Holy Mass. Our formators told us that we should celebrate each Mass as if it were for the first time.

That immediately reminded me of what the now Saint Mother Teresa once said: “Celebrate this Mass as if it is your first Mass, your last Mass and your only Mass.” Opus Dei founder, St. Josemaria Escriva, said something similar in so many words and showed it in the way he said each Mass. What solemnity he generated every time he said Mass!

Our usual problem is precisely that we get easily over-familiar with the sacred things. We tend to take for granted the many blessings we have. Not only do we not count our blessings, we often complain that we do not have enough. We can then elicit those reproaching words of Christ to his townmates: “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country.”

Instead of being amazed and thankful for having among them not only a very special person but the very son of God, Christ’s townmates found him too much for them, and were in fact scandalized by him. That is why Christ refused to do many miracles there.

This is a very common danger to all of us, and is at bottom a result of letting ourselves be simply guided by our senses, or feelings and our other ways of human estimation, without the guidance of our faith that should lead us to develop the appropriate piety.

We have to be more aware of this danger of over familiarity and install the necessary defenses against it. More than that, we have to aggressively cultivate the art of always being amazed at God and at all his works. That should be the proper state for us to be in.

We have to understand, though, that this abiding state of amazement that we should try to develop is simply not a matter of sensations. Of course, it would be good if we can always feel amazed and in awe. But given the limitations of our bodily organism, we cannot expect that to happen all the time.

The ideal abiding state of amazement is more a matter of conviction, of something spiritual, moral and supernatural. It should be the result of grace that is corresponded to generously and heroically by us.

It is a state of amazement that sooner or later, of course, will have some external manifestations like an aura of serenity and confidence even in the midst of great trials and suffering. It will most likely show itself in the lilt in one’s voice, optimism in his reactions to events, a smile, a warm word of praise and encouragement to others, etc.

To be sure, God will always give us this grace. The problematic area is our correspondence to that grace. In this regard, we should try to pray and meditate on God’s word. Let’s see to it that we get to relish the spirit behind the word of God as presented to us in Bible.

We have to be wary of our tendency to go through God’s word in a mechanical way. We can produce the sound, we can use the word in some sensible and intelligible way, but still miss the very spirit of the word. We can still miss God and ignore his will, because our heart is still not in God’s word.

Besides, we need to develop a deepening sense of total dependence on God. Let’s see to it that our talents, faculties and powers, our achievements do not blunt, but rather sharpen this sense of dependence.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com