MANILA, Philippines – Who am I? Man is half animal half angel. (Yet created in the image and likeness of God.) We cannot overemphasize either side otherwise we get into problems. There is very little in man that does not involve the body or the animal side. even thinking involves the material brains. Of course there are functions of the spirit that go beyond just materiality such as thoughts that initiate feelings in the body or altruistic sentiments like mature love or sacrificing self for the good of others. The body is an equal partner even if does not dominate. The error of the Cathari or Albigensians was that matter or the body is evil. they considered material things especially sex as evil and so feeding the body was not good. St. Dominic countered with the rosary of our Lady which mentions fifty times “the fruit of thy womb” in the Hail Mary. our experience is that the body needs a lot of control but not evil. Orthodox doctrine is that sex is a gift of God to be enjoyed but only in its proper place, which is within marriage. Outside of marriage it causes problems especially for the children. The body or the material part of man is good.
The other half is the angelic or spiritual side of man which makes him capable of flights of poetry, appreciation of beauty, and upholding honor. our spirit side has one attribute that even God will not take away and that is its freedom to choose; between good and evil; between accepting God and rejecting Him. Fundamental freedom is what man received from God which cannot be taken away from him. God even sent his Son to CITYteach man and show the way. But man has to agree to accept. There is nothing that man can offer that God does not already have except this freedom. God made man to adore and love Him which all creatures do, except that man can choose to do it or not. all other creatures have no choice. they do it willy nilly.
Since God is love and love is basically sharing of what one has with the significant other, He shared His light, created land, sea, air, and shared all His other attributes till finally He had only one attribute He had not shared: that was His freedom. He gave this to angels and to men. The angels have made their choice and are no longer free to choose. Man can still choose. There is nothing that God would want better than for us to choose to accept Him. But He will not force us. Otherwise it destroys the very essence of freedom. So when we separated from Him, He sent His Son who appealed with every motivation and even died on the Cross to appeal to our pity. But He will not force us. in Tagalog we have something germane: Pilit na pabibig hindi pagibig. with Luther we agree that our salvation depends completely on the mercy of God. all we have to do is to accept Him. We disagree with him in what our response should be which, according to him they say, is to sin as much as we can because then we will receive more of His mercy. our faith says that after accepting the love of God we reciprocate with love by doing His will. this poses a problem of ferreting out what is the will of God in my regard. To say that we should do good and avoid evil is too general. To say we need to obey the ten Commandments is too negative and may result in sterility. even the great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor have to be translated to specifics of what it means for me today in my circumstances. in the prayer to the Holy Spirit we are promised that we can renew the face of the earth. Jesus asked us to follow Him: He walked the earth curing the sick and feeding the hungry and praying to the Father to be able to do His Will. We need to feed and to cure though not miraculously. We need to pray to know the will of the Father and to be able to do it. Man is both an angel and a material animal. We cannot lean too much on either side. <emeterio_barcelon @yahoo.com>
feelings, initiate, marriage, st dominic
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