November can broaden our mind

THAT’S right. The month of November, which rhymes with somber and ember, all images of things dark and dying, actually invites us to  broaden our mind and enter into a much bigger, brighter and richer reality that we tend to ignore, if not reject.

And that’s because, with the celebration of the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of All Souls ushering it, November is actually the month that reminds us about a beautiful truth of faith that we often take for granted.

We, as men and women, from Adam and Eve to the last man here on earth yet to be born just before the world’s end, form one family with bonds that go far beyond the relations and affinities that can arise due to blood, place, time, social, political, economic conditions or even to the most brilliant legal fictions we can invent.

We form one family because we all are creatures of God, children of his, whether we acknowledge that status or not. We actually possess a most intimate relation with God and with everybody else. More family than this, there cannot be!

In fact, a more intimate relation with whatever we can never have. And that’s simply because, our very own life and existence, and everything in that life, whether good or bad, depends on God, or has God us the ultimate enabler. No other relation can top this one.

Yes, even if we commit wrong, no matter how big it is, God is still in the middle of it, since nothing happens without him at least allowing it to happen. Our freedom to do anything, including what is wrong and evil, while infinite is always conditioned by the fact that it is a freedom that comes from God and is always subject to his laws and wisdom.

To be sure, God does not cause evil. It’s only us who can cause it. In fact, evil is the only original thing we can cause, since everything good we do ultimately comes from God.

But God allows us to do evil, first giving us the grace to resist the temptation, and then if we still manage to fall, he can still do things to derive something good from it. That’s how almighty, God our Creator and Father, is!

We need to broaden our mind and heart to fully take in this beautiful but hard-to-swallow truth of faith. Very often, we allow ourselves to drift into our faith-deprived thinking and reasoning, especially when we encounter evil and suffer the consequences of it, and so we cannot help but plunge into sadness, despair, fear, or bitterness and more hardening and coarsening of conscience.

There’s always hope, a hope that does not deceive us. There will always be a happy ending as long as we allow ourselves to be guided by the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, the main ingredients of our life with God.

We have to disabuse ourselves of our strong tendency to depend solely on our common sense, the sciences and the arts, our politics and other maneuverings, to find meaning in our life, especially in those situations when we find ourselves with problems, difficulties, if not failures and crises.

For this, we need to pause and reflect on the very rich doctrine of our Christian faith, allowing it to form and nourish our basic and abiding attitude toward life with its ups and downs, and to spawn the appropriate practices, habits and virtues that can help us weather all the vagaries of life, tragedies included.

November also marks the transition from the current liturgical year to the new one with the celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King and the beginning of Advent, the immediate preparation for Christmas, the birth of Christ our Redeemer.

That transition highlights the indispensable role of Christ in our life. He is our Savior and Redeemer, the very way, the very truth and life for us!

We need to be more attentive and alive to the significance of these events and celebrations, because they actually steer in the most fundamental manner the course of human history toward its proper destination.

While we cannot help but do politics and things in the fields of science, culture, economics, etc., etc., let’s not get lost in them, but rather be immersed in them with the truths of our faith that we are reminded of in this month of November, guiding us.

Far from being dark and somber, November is actually a happy month that we need to live through properly.