Disgrace

Manila
01 June 2016

Dear H,

I think that as human beings we have a tendency to test our limits even against all common sense in order to confirm what we already know. We like to exhaust all efforts to guarantee ourselves of the certainty we did everything on our part, and we’ve drained ourselves of all energy in trying to accomplish something. While it may not be a necessary step in healing and discovering the Truth, it is often the path we tread when we let ourselves be guided by our impulses and selfish desires. Painful realizations are often the fruit of our abandonment to the Individual will. We are stubborn creatures who want the assurance of control over all matters especially those which concern our interior life. In the end, this desire for control often leads to the loss of it and the humbling experience of conferring control to a much higher power – God.

Last Monday, my own foolishness led me to the painfully clear fact that I’ve depended so much on my sheer willpower to overcome my struggles with same-sex attraction. I chased after someone. I chased after CC.

With a bag the weight symbolic of my cross, I briskly walked, furiously jogged, and then leapt to a stride with my long legs to the train station to follow and find CC. It was an act that was perhaps the most disgustingly foolish yet predictably disappointing a man like me could ever make – a man who had initially thought he was in control thanks to committing himself to a still budding life of prayer. And so as I alternated between weightless murmurs and heavy breathing, as I scurried past the rush hour exile and the afternoon shadows which loomed from increasingly lonely skyscrapers of Manila, I prayed CC would miss the train; that I would catch up with my ‘friend’.

Yes, I prayed. I tested Providence. It was a devil’s request.

Climbing the seemingly endless flight of stairs at the train station, and then running, rushing, pushing past the crowd of urban exiles and nearly breaking the turnstiles at the station, I prayed even harder CC would still be there, waiting for the next crowded train headed North. I don’t know. Was it me hoping for a serendipitous moment, the vapid roots of desire nourished by imagination and nostalgia? Was it me completely forgetting I already had the certainty I was looking for? Was it me allowing myself to be preoccupied by a futile infatuation? In any case, God answered my prayers.

I saw CC from the corner of my eyes. He had missed the train. He was still there…

…albeit on the southbound platform.

There was something poetic the moment I got down to the platform area, saw CC, and then walked past where he was on the other side and finally settled for a queue at the other end of the station. In opposite platforms, backs against one another, and headed towards different directions, it was the disgrace and humiliation I needed to finally recognize the need to end five months of suffering. It was the disappointment over the disappointment which was the necessary element to wake me up: the shock of cold water on a sleepy soul indulging in the showers of spiritual dawn and still reeling from the slumber of his dark pasts.

CC’s train arrived first and from where I was, there was a bit of pang in my heart seeing him board it. Some seconds later, the rickety carriages headed towards Taft pulled out of the cavernous, hollow station and left me waiting. When the northbound train finally arrived, I found myself pushed by a crowd of impatient commuters and thrust into the heat of a packed carriage. This was reality. Soaked in sweat, right shoulder squeaking from the weight of my bag, legs and feet shaking from the furious run, and surrounded by unfamiliar faces of furrowed foreheads and moistened brows, I felt the most alone and the loneliest I had ever been for a long, long time.

And yet, I also felt, the most alive.

Among the many people I had chased, it was CC who, to quote you, touched me in a way I had never been touched before. He shone a light in me which revealed the wicked darkness of an abyss I had been avoiding. He stripped me of my earthly veneers, and with brute force, threw me into the chamber with the beast I’ve been running away from. Forced to confront and own this dark pain under the weight of his penetrating gaze, CC opened “a door of my interior life”, one I had locked, with the keys thrown under the rug as I hastily pursued change with self-seeking intentions only to leave me blinded by the gush of light which poured from the room.

For the last five months, I made myself a fool of the highest kind as I swung between spiritual highs and emotional lows, as I encountered victories and falls, and experienced the snarling evils of division coursing through my veins which tore me apart, all because of CC. Under the lenses of faith and with the clarity of hindsight, the swings wrought in me the conviction I was to pursue a Truth far more demanding, yet far more tangible and real than I could possibly imagine. CC brought great joy and peace which opened me to a different kind of love but also brought back memories of my past anguish and griefs: a double-edged sword which sliced through the excesses of my worldliness while at the same time cut through my flesh.

Arriving at my destination, limp and struggling to catch my breath, and glistening in drying sweat, a part of the Truth became clear to me. My eyes, for so long blinded by the dark, had finally adjusted to the light. I can never explain in words how and why CC changed my life. I asked God for an answer. Why him? Why do I like him? Why can’t Christ simply take away these disordered affections and sentiments, most of them imagined, no matter how much I wanted to place the burden on CC’s actions towards me? What I drew from this cry to my Beloved was that CC was the necessary mistake to help me see that I can never trust myself because I can only trust Him. And so the more the frivolous infatuation grew and the more my worries were magnified, the more I turned to the Lord through Mary whom I ran to in my prayers and imagined engulfed me in the warmth of her protective, maternal embrace.

“Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that disturbs you, the thing that afflicts you, is nothing. Do not let your countenance, your heart be disturbed. Do not fear … anything that is sharp or hurtful. Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”

Despite all the praying, I found myself as weak as when I started for having opted to chase after someone who didn’t really know or could care less, someone who, given the chance, would never chase after me. And yet Christ, the visible face of God himself Who is in no need of our affection, would never second guess chasing after us lost sheep and confused members of the flock. Christ would pull us from the depths of our illusions and remind us, we are loved no matter who we are and just the way we are – provided there is a sincere effort to change and respond to the call for conversion. In fighting my feelings for CC – physically avoiding him, generously stripping myself of the pretense my conversion was complete and sustainable on my own efforts – I discovered Christ as I spent more time than ever in my life seeking Him in the Sacraments. CC enabled me to, as you wrote, “open myself to God’s first love”.

Miles away from the object of my worldly, sinful affection, I experienced the liberating power of a loneliness that is accepted but is never yielded to, found only in what you called a “place without fear.” I still remember what you wrote, “You might find that your loneliness is linked to your call to completely live for God.”

Many of us, dear H, have CC’s in our lives. They are not necessarily persons. They are still CC’s: huge crosses we run away from or allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by because our intentions to follow Christ were flawed in the first place. If we draw our attention away from it being heavy and impossible to carry, and focus instead on others: family, friends, communities and societies all burdened by CC’s, we discover that the thorns of our heart are so trivial against the eloquent backdrop of human suffering that is mankind’s purification, a shared brokenness which calls for us to also share in striving for holiness, wholeness. We realize the Cross after all is lovable and worth carrying. We realize the Cross is Joy.

I finally understand that the real battle is in the steadfast sanctification of the soul through the ordinary means offered in our One Life – means which divert our attention from the excesses of the Ego and direct us towards the only thing which truly overflows: God’s Mercy. I’d like to believe that more than owning that pain, it is offering the cross to be united with the perfect sacrifice of Christ – a vision of the Truth we must never lose sight of – which is essential. Freedom is an escape from the prison cell of our Egos, the prison cell of our self-generated and inflicted pains, the prison cell of the devil’s illusions and fancy theatrics.

Christ died for me. Christ rose from the dead and has set me, the hardened convict and hopeless prisoner, free. It is the Truth. He is Truth. He is Salvation. Christ is Salvation.

It needed a foolish run across a wearied city for me to see God’s love is not only abundant, it is the only certainty guaranteed for all eternity to never fail because it can and will never be exhausted.

Sincerely,

F.L.

P.S.

Amidst all of the griefs, I remember my mother. As a mischievous boy, she ran after me to keep me safe. Her countenance, reflecting a faith solidly rooted in the cornerstone that is Christ, pierced through the darkness like a light, the kind which diffuses across the room and makes all objects seen in proper perspective. Once more, she chased after me as I ran into the darkness. And she spoke in my heart the confidence she bore knowing Christ is my one true Beloved.