By Roy Cimagala
I suppose everyone is familiar with this phenomenon. In the face of something new, our immediate reaction hovers first in the level of our senses and emotions. Then it goes to our intelligence. Only with some conscious effort can we start reacting in a spiritual and theological way.
We need to give more thought to this event so we can have a more appropriate response to it, especially when it involves something important in our life. We have to learn how to relate things to God, and to avoid getting stuck in the purely human and natural level.
Very often, what we see are people materially aroused or enriched but spiritually made numb as they make the quest for progress and development. We should not be surprised by this turn of events. That's just how our earthly affairs are.
But neither should just stand by, doing nothing about it. We need to handle things in a manner truly commensurate to our real dignity.
We are not only persons, already a big thing. We are children of God. We have to learn to react to our daily concerns such that it becomes an expression of our relationship with God.
My experience with students confirms this observation. While they are still in school, relatively simple and innocent, and subject to a more controlled environment, they can behave very well.
It's when they get exposed to the industry, when they start doing their on-the-job training, and they experience new things, that they start behaving erratically in the spiritual and moral sense.
Many find themselves unprepared, with their pants down, highly vulnerable in their new but confusing milieu. They find themselves facing many crossroads, and they don't know exactly which path to take.
This is obviously a great challenge for any chaplain who tries to be serious with his task of helping students sustain their spiritual life as they move on in life. But it's one that carries its own rewards too. It's worth all the sweat and blood involved.
For certain, the first thing to be done is to keep the communication lines open. Everything has to be done, like cultivating real friendship with them, in order to maintain contact with the students and to facilitate transparency.
When the idea of spiritual direction is explained well, then appreciated by the students and then implemented, the battle is already half-won. It's in an atmosphere of confidence and loyalty that the laborious and meticulous task of sorting out things can take place effectively.
This point is, I think, crucial, precisely because one characteristic of the present scramble for new things is to make people lose confidence and trust in others. The relationship hardly goes any deeper than mutual exploitation of one another. People are reduced to objects. They lose their personhood.
When the delicate part of clarifying things comes, the spiritual director, acting more as friend, always has to be reassuring, encouraging and positive. While he should call a spade a spade, he should always inspire the confidence that everything will turn out all right in the end.
A lot of patience and understanding is needed. But even more important is the skill to give practical pieces of advice. One should not limit himself to condemning errors. He should offer solutions to problems.
One basic advice, for example, is to tell the students to always thank God for everything, no matter how small, that happens to him during the day. This attitude will keep him in contact with God and set the proper tone of the relationship.
From here, he can start to decipher the role the events of his day play in the over-all plan or will of God for him. This is a very tricky subject, requiring great intimacy with God.
Of course, one has to lead by example. The counsels should be a result not only of an intellectual exercise, but also of a lived experience. It's only in this way, where we can be sure of consistency and effectiveness.
This is the way of the saints. Many of them were ordinary mortals, whose intelligence was average. But their truly holy lives, their living relationship with God, produced nothing less than divine wisdom that shed true light to the world.
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