5Star Story from Philippine Star

 

4

Interaksyon Singles Day Coverage by Catalina Ricci S. Madarang Almost everyone now knows the much-awaited 11/11, the largest online shopping event in Asia and the counterpart of the massive annual Black Friday sale in the U.S. Leading e-commerce platform Shopee released early data showing 11 million items sold in the first five minutes of November 11. Zoom out: While online shopping is getting a larger share of shopping malls' original foot traffic, it relies on footprints more heavily than malls. These online footprints are large data sets on customers' browsing behavior and preferences shared across platforms.   Facebook, for one, is able to push the targeted ads for users to buy on Lazada, for example, even when our accounts are not linked.

Let’s always be compassionate and merciful

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

          THAT beautiful gospel story of Zacchaeus, the rich but short

chief tax collector who was privileged to have Christ stay in his

house, (cfr Lk 19,1-10) teaches us precious lessons about why and how

we should be friendly, compassionate and merciful with everyone,

irrespective of whether they are rich or poor, saintly or sinful.

          Our Christian faith tells us that God’s love for us is

eternal. It’s a love that goes all the way to showing mercy for us in

the form of his Son becoming man and taking up all the sins of men by

dying on the cross. No greater love can there be other than this love

of God for us.

          St. Paul drives home this point when he said in his Letter

to the Romans: “He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him

up for us all, how has he not also, with him, given us all things?”

(8,32)

          That’s why, in spite of our proclivity to sin and make a

mess of our own lives, we can always have reason to be hopeful,

because God never gives up on us. The problem is that we can give up

on him and go our own desperate ways which we try to sweeten with all

sorts of defense mechanisms.

          While we should try to be most aware of our sinfulness, we

should also try to strengthen our conviction about God’s mercy. That

we are sinful is not hard to see. We see our weaknesses and

vulnerabilities quite openly. Temptations are also abundant.

          We should try our best to fight and cope with them as best

that we can, using all the means that Christ himself and the Church

now are giving us. We have a very precious treasure in fragile vessels

of clay. (cfr. 2 Cor 4,7) We may have a lot of talents and other

brilliant endowments, but let’s never forget that we have feet of

clay.

          This realization should make us most careful and ever

vigilant, and should elicit in us great desires to follow Christ as

closely as possible and to learn the art and skills of spiritual

combat to tackle the unavoidable weaknesses, temptations and falls we

will have in life.

          On top of all this, and since our best efforts may still be

found wanting, let’s never forget the abundant and ever-ready mercy of

God whenever we find ourselves in the worst scenarios in life.

          We have to continually check on our attitude towards others

because today’s dominant culture is filled precisely by the viruses of

self-righteousness, that feeling that we are superior to others, and

that would prevent us from being compassionate and merciful with

everyone. We have to do constant battle against that culture.

          That’s why we need to douse immediately any flame of pride

and egoism that can come to us anytime. We have to learn to understand

others, to accept them as they are, warts and all, while praying and

doing whatever we can to help them. It’s not for us to judge their

motives which will always be a mystery to us.

          We should not fall into the trap of putting justice and

mercy in conflict. Both have to go together. Their distinction does

not mean they are opposed to each other. Any appearance of conflict is

only apparent.

          But obviously the way to blend them together is to follow

the example of Christ, and not just to rely on our own lights, no

matter how brilliant these lights may appear.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE),Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com