Sadly today, success is gauged by material wealth. While men and civilization ought to have become richer, they have become poorer in more ways than one.
Today almost everyone does not have the time anymore to appreciate the sunset, to be awed by the innocence of a baby's smile or to enjoy the rain because everyone is craving for more and more material things. Today the world is suffering from an epidemic which one of my friends aptly calls "affluenza". It is a socially transmitted condition of overload debt resulting from the pursuit of more. Man's way of thinking has become: we ought to have this, we need to have that, we need to keep up with the Joneses. Man is forgetting the reason for his existence. He has become so preoccupied with acquiring material wealth that he has forgotten the very reason why he is in the world. Man has forgotten the reason for his being. So what if he does not have the same mobile
phone as the man beside him in the jeepney, or if he does not have the same trainers as the next person on the line, or if he does not have a mansion as the mayor in town, or if he does not have the same signature clothes as the model on the tarp? If these things could kill, then he would have been ten feet deep down the ground for a long, long time now. If people get shot for not having a Carl Weiss camera on their mobiles then even us would have been all dust and bones by now. There are so many things in life we can actually live without. It is man who makes it real hard and complicated for himself. To all men is given this gentle message: "Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these" (Luke 12:27). Man has forgotten that the best things in life are free: parents, family, friends, relationships... It is always noteworthy to lead a very simple, humble, unclutteres, uncomplicated life...
It is my prayer that the Good Lord will constantly shake us and remind us to rise from our mediocrity and be real men in the world. To be a real man now does not mean we have to always say "yes". Just as the Man (St. Francis of Assisi) we are following was also a sign of contradiction in His time, so also must our lives bear that same sign of contradiction and witness. To provide an alternative option to others, this is our witnessing. May our lives reflect that stark difference.
"They laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at them because they are all the same."
CONStantly yours
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