Complexities
June 2, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? Last Sunday we celebrated the Solemnity of The Most Holy Trinity. The entrance antiphon of the Mass, Blest be God the Father, and the only Begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit: for he has shown us his merciful love.
A Nation’s Prayer for Enlightenment, Conversion, and Renewal
On 20 May 2026, the
CBCP issued a National Prayer to be recited beginning Pentecost Sunday and
continuing at least through July.
Loving Father, God of truth and justice,
You sent Your Only Son, Jesus Christ,
who by His Paschal Mystery revealed Your mercy
and reconciled us to You and the world.
We come before You seeking healing, righteousness,
and renewal for our land.
Our nation stands at a difficult
crossroads.
We see truth being cast aside, justice delayed,
and division, weakening the fiber of our society.
We pray for those entrusted with
leadership.
Call them back to the sacred duty of their office.
May they serve with honesty, justice, and compassion.
Grant them wisdom to act with discernment,
strength to persevere with integrity, and humility to seek not revenge,
but righteousness; not personal ambition, but the common good.
Forgive us for closing our eyes to
what is right,
for accepting excuses in place of accountability,
and for allowing despair and division to weaken our hope for our people.
We confess the many times we remained silent in the face of wrongdoing,
when we chose convenience over conscience, fear over courage,
and apathy over responsibility.
O Holy Spirit, renew our hearts and
enlighten our minds.
Turn us from indifference to compassion,
from silence to faithful action,
from division to unity, and from despair to hope.
Teach us to defend truth with charity, to pursue justice with mercy,
and to become instruments of peace and reconciliation.
Shine Your light upon our nation.
Heal what is broken, restore what is wounded,
and raise a people who will not trade truth for comfort,
nor surrender goodness to fear.
May this become a sacred time of
conversion and renewal for our country,
so that we may truly become one nation living in faith, hope,
and love under Your Fatherly care.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus
Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God forever and ever. Amen.
Holy Mary, Mother of the Filipino
people and Queen of Peace,
guide and intercede for us always.
San Lorenzo Ruiz and San Pedro Calungsod, pray for us.
St. Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
I must say it is
beautifully worded prayer, appropriate for the times and situation we are
living through. It must be a personal prayer directed to each and every person. Each one is alluded to
in this prayer. It is a call to conversion
Let us pray that each one receives the enlightenment she/he needs for personal conversion and renewal. At the same time let each one of us pray for one another especially for the ignorant, those who do not believe in God, those driven by sin, the envious, the jealous, the greedy, etc.
Let us now continue with the second word of Christ on the Cross (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
4 Envy
Envy is sadness at another’s good, and joy at another’s evil. What rust is to iron, what moths are to wool, what termites are to wood, that envy is to the soul: the assassination of brotherly love.
We are not here concerned with just envy or zeal that inspires us to emulate good example and to progress with those who are our betters, for the Scriptures enjoin us to “be zealous for spiritual gifts”; rather, we here touch on that sinful envy, which is a willful grieving at another’s good, either spiritual or temporal, for the reason that it seems to diminish our own good. The honor paid to another is regarded by the envious man as a reflected disgrace on himself, and he is sad in consequence. Envy manifests itself in discord, hatred, malicious joy, backbiting, detraction, imputing of evil motives, jealousy, and calumny.
A sample of this kind of envy we find in one of the two women who asked Solomon to adjudicate their dispute. The first woman said, “I and this woman dwelt in one house. . . . And this woman’s child died in the night: for in her sleep, she overlaid him. And rising in the dead time of the night, she took my child from my side while I thy handmaid was asleep . . . and laid her dead child in my bosom.” To which the other woman answered: “It is not so as thou sayest, but thy child is dead, and mine is alive.”
Since there were no witnesses, Solomon ordered a sword to be brought to him, for he rightly judged that the motherly heart of the real mother would rather give up her child than see it killed. Brandishing the glittering sword, he said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.” Hearing this, the woman whose child was alive cried out in terror and pity, “I beseech thee, my lord, give her the child alive, and do not kill it.” But the other said, “Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.”
Then the king commanded the child be given to her who would rather give it up to another than have it killed, knowing that she must be the mother (1 Kings 3:16–27). The point of the story is that envy, which is so jealous of the good of another, may reach a point where it scruples not to take a life.
In our times, envy has taken on an economic form. The avarice of the rich is being matched by the envy of the poor. Some poor hate the rich, not because they have unjustly stolen their possessions, but because they want their possessions. Certain have-nots are scandalized at the wealth of the haves, only because they are tempted by lust for their possessions.
The communists hate the capitalists only because they want to be capitalists themselves; they envy the rich, not because of their need, but because of their greed.
Combined with this is social envy or snobbery, which sneers at the higher position of others because the snobs want to sit in their chairs and enjoy their applause. They assume that in not arriving at such popular favor themselves, they were deprived of their due. That is why we hate those who do not pay sufficient attention to us and why we love those who flatter us.
If envy is on the increase today, as it undoubtedly is, it is because of the surrender of the belief of a future life and righteous divine justice. If this life is all, they think they should have all. From that point on, envy of others becomes their rule of life.
Our Lord was unceasing in His preaching against envy. To those who were envious of the mercy extended to lost sheep, He pictured the angels of Heaven rejoicing more at the one sinner doing penance than at the ninety-nine just who needed not penance. To those who were envious of wealth, He warned: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth consume and where thieves do not break through, nor steal” (Matt. 6:19–20).
To those who were envious of power, such as the Apostles quarreling about first place, He placed a child in the midst of them and, “putting His arms around him” reminded them that heaven was open only to those who were as simple children, for Christ is not in the great but in the little: “Whosoever shall receive one such child as this in my name, receiveth me. And whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me” (Mark 9:36).
But His preaching against envy did not save Him from the envious. Pilate was envious of His power; Annas was envious of His innocence; Caiphas was envious of His popularity; Herod was envious of His moral superiority; the scribes and Pharisees were envious of His wisdom. Each of these had built his judgment seat of mock moral superiority from which to sentence Morality to the Cross. And in order that He might no longer be a person to be envied, they reputed Him with the wicked.
Born between an ox and an ass, they now crucify Him between two criminals. That was the last insult they could give Him. To the public eye, they created the impression that three thieves and not two were silhouetted against the sky. In a certain sense, it was true: two stole gold out of avarice; one stole hearts out of love. Salvandus, Salvator, and Salvatus: The thief who could have been saved; the thief who was saved; and the Savior who saved them. The crosses spelled out the words envy, mercy, and pity.
The thief on the left envied the power that Our Blessed Lord claimed. As the chief priests, the scribes, and the ancients ridiculed the Savior, sneering: “He saved others; himself he cannot save,” the thief on the left added to their revilings: “If thou be Christ, save thyself and us” (Matt. 27:42; Luke 23:39). In other words: “If I had that power of yours, that power which you claim as the Messiah, I would use it differently than to hang helpless on a tree. I would step down from the cross, smite my enemies, and prove what power really is.”
Thus did envy reveal that if it had the gifts which it envies in others, it would misuse them, as the thief on the left would have surrendered redemption from sin for release from a nail. In like manner, many in the world today who are envious of wealth would probably lose their souls if they had that wealth. Envy never thinks of responsibilities. Looking only to self, it misuses every gift that comes its way.
Pity has quite a different effect on the soul. The thief on the right had no envy of the Master’s power but only pity for the Master’s sufferings. Rebuking his companion on the left, the good thief said: “Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation? And we indeed, justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done no evil” (Luke 23:40–41).
There was not a spark of envy in him. He wanted nothing in all the world, not even to be removed from tragic companioning with his cross. He was not envious of God’s power, for God knows best what to do with His power. He was not envious of his fellow men, for they had nothing worth giving.
So he threw himself upon Divine Providence and asked only for forgiveness: “Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom.” A dying man asked a dying Man for life; a man without possessions asked a Poor Man for a kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die a thief and steal paradise. And because He envied nothing, He received all: “Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42–43).
One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of redemption, but in the divine plan, it is a thief who steals that privilege and marches as the escort of the King of Kings into paradise.
Two lessons are taught us by this second word
from the Cross. The first is that envy is the source of our wrong judgments
about others. The chances are that if we are envious of others, nine times out
of ten, we will misjudge their characters.
Because the thief on the left was envious of the power of Our Lord, he misjudged Him and missed both the divinity of the Savior and his own salvation. He falsely argued that power should always be used the way he would have used it — namely, to turn nails into rosebuds, a cross into a throne, blood into royal purple, and the blades of grass on the hillside into bayonets of offensive steel.
No one in the history of the world ever came closer to redemption, and yet no one ever missed it so far. His envy made him ask for the wrong thing; he asked to be taken down when he should have asked to be taken up. It makes one think of how much the envy of Herod resulted in an equally false judgment: He massacred the Innocents because He thought the Infant King came to destroy an earthly kingdom, whereas He came only to announce a heavenly one.
So it is with us. Backbiting, calumny, false judgments: are all born of our envy. We say, “Oh, he is jealous,” or “she is jealous”; but how do we know that he or she is jealous unless we ourselves have felt that way? How do we know others are acting proudly unless we know how pride asserts itself? Every envious word is based on a false judgment of our own moral superiority. To sit in judgment makes us feel as if we are above those who are judged and more righteous and more innocent than they.
To accuse others is to say: “I am not like that.” To be envious of others is to say: “You have stolen that which is mine.” Envy of others’ wealth has resulted in the gross misjudgment that the best way to do away with its abuse in the hands of the rich is to dispossess them violently, so that the dispossessors may, in their turn, enjoy its abuse.
Envy of others’ political power has given rise to the erroneous philosophy that even governments may be overthrown if organized violence is strong enough to do so.
Envy thus becomes the denial of all justice and love. In individuals, it develops a cynicism that destroys all moral values, for by bankrupting others we ourselves become bankrupt. In groups, it produces a deceit that extends the glad hand of welcome to those who differ, only until they are strong enough to cut it off.
Since envy is so rampant in the world today, it is extremely good counsel to disbelieve 99 to 100 percent of the wicked statements we hear about others. Think of how much the thief on the right had to discount to arrive at the truth. He had to disbelieve the judgment of four envious judges, the raillery of envious scribes and ancients, the blasphemous utterances of curious onlookers who loved murders, and the envious taunts of the thief on the left, who was willing to lose his soul if only he could keep his fingers nimble for more thefts.
But if he had been envious of the Lord’s power, he would never have been saved. He found peace by disbelieving the envious scandalmongers. Our peace is found in the same incredulity.
The chances are that there is a bit of jealousy,
a bit of envy, behind every cutting remark and barbed whispering we hear about
our neighbor. It is always well to remember that there are always more sticks
under the tree that has the most apples. There should be some consolation for
those who are so unjustly attacked to remember that it is a physical
impossibility for any man to get ahead of us who stays behind to kick us.
A second lesson to be learned from this word is that the only way to overcome envy is, like the thief on the right, to show pity. As Christians in good faith, we are all members of the Mystical Body of Christ and should therefore love one another as Christ has loved us.
If our arm suffers an injury, our whole body feels the pain. In like manner, if the Church in any part of the world suffers martyrdom, we should feel pity toward it as part of our body, and that pity should express itself in prayer and good works. Pity should be extended not only to those outside the Church who are living as if the earth never bore a Cross but also to the enemies of the Church who would destroy even the shadow of the Cross. God is their Judge, not we.
And as potential brothers of Christ, sons of a Heavenly Father and children of Mary, they must be worth our pity since they were worth the Savior’s Blood. Unfortunately, there are some who blame the Church for receiving great sinners into the Church on their deathbeds.
A few years ago, one who was generally believed to be a racketeer and murderer met death at the hands of his fellow criminals. A few minutes before his death, he asked to be received into the Church, was baptized, received First Communion, and was anointed and given the last blessing. Some who should have known better protested against the Church. Imagine! Envy at the salvation of a soul!
Why not rather rejoice in God’s mercy, for, after all, did he not belong to the same profession as the thief on the right — and why should not Our Lord be just as eager to save twentieth-century thieves as first-century thieves? They both have souls. It would seem that sinful envy of the salvation of a thief is a greater sin than thievery.
One thief was saved: therefore, let no one
despair. One thief was lost: therefore, let no one presume. Have pity, then, on
the miserable, and divine mercy will be the reward for your pity. When the
Pharisees accused Our Lord of eating with publicans and sinners, He retorted by
reiterating the necessity of mercy: “The healthy have no need of a physician,
but the sick have. Now go and learn what this means; I will have mercy and not
sacrifice. For I am not come to call the just, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12–13).
One day a woman went to the saintly Father John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, in France, and said: “My husband has not been to the sacraments or to Mass for years. He has been unfaithful, wicked, and unjust. He has just fallen from a bridge and was drowned — a double death of body and soul.” The Curé answered: “Madam, there is a short distance between the bridge and the water, and it is that distance which forbids you to judge.”
There was just that distance between the two crosses that saved the penitent thief. If the thief on the right had been self-righteous, he would have looked down on Jesus and lost his soul. But because he was conscious of his own sin, he left room for divine pardon.
And the answer of the Redeemer to his request proves that to the merciful, love is blind — for if we love God and our neighbor, who may even be our enemy, Divine Love will go blind, as it did for the thief on the right. Christ will no longer be able to see our faults, and that blindness will be for us the dawn of the vision of Love.
“Say, bold but blessed thief,
What arms?
What charms?”
“Love and belief.”
“Say, bold but blessed thief,
How couldst thou read
A crown upon that head?
What text, what gloss —
A kingdom and a cross?
How couldst thou come to spy
God in a man to die?
What light?
What sight?”
“The sight of grief —”
“I sight to God his pain;
And by that sight
I saw the light,
Thus did my grief
Beget relief.
And take this rule from me,
Pity thou him he’ll pity thee.
Use this,
Ne’er miss,
Heaven may be stolen again” (Anonymous, “The Penitent Thief.”).
— Victory over Vice
As always
there is much to ponder on and reflect with Our Lord in our quiet moments of
conversation with Him during the day.
The prayer for enlightenment, conversion and renewal is full of what
really matters that should guide us in our personal prayer for enlightenment,
conversion and renewal. ‘May the most just and most
lovable will of God be done, be fulfilled, be praised and eternally exalted
above all things. Amen’ (St. Josemaria).
Please accompany me and other participants with your prayers
and offerings during my annual retreat in Tagaytay from June 2 – 8. I am finishing this post for you making sure
it will be published on Tuesday as scheduled.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
Comments
Post a Comment